Challenging the Other: Exploring the Role of Opponent Gender in Digital Game Competition for Female Players

Abstract

The present study investigated the effect of opponent gender on the game experience of female players. Concretely, it looked into skill perception and player emotions of women in same gender and cross-gender game competition. We set up a 2 · 2 · 2 (male vs. female opponent · low vs. high competitive women · lost vs. won game) experimental design in which women were instructed to play against a proclaimed male and female competitor. Unknowingly, however, participants played against an AI, which was configured to produce a winning and a losing condition for each opponent by manipulating difficulty. Results indicated that opponent gender only had an effect on perceived stress, which was higher with male opponents. Moreover, players evaluated their own gaming skills as lower and the skills of presumed male opponents as higher when they thought they were playing against men. Importantly, our results also showed that the above described pattern for self-perceived skills and perceived opponent skills was modulated by trait competitiveness with a larger effect size for low competitive women. Overall, this study illustrates that gender dynamics affect the play experience of women in cross-gender gaming competition. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Female Gamers’ Experience of Online Harassment and Social Support in Online Gaming: A Qualitative Study

“…A study by Kaye and Pennington (2016) further indicated the negative impact of stereotype threat on females' experience of gaming, and found that it led to females' underperformance on the gaming task, relative to males in the control condition. Similar findings have been reported with impact on females' skill perception and wellbeing (Vermeulen et al 2014), and performance (Vermeulen and Looy 2016). McLean and Griffiths (2013) argued that female gamers valued their identity as gamers, but paradoxically, gamers often feel the need to hide their identity when gaming online, due to the behaviour of other male gamers (Cote 2015;Vermeulen et al 2017).…”

“…It is now recognised that female gamers often report the experience of harassment and other negative behaviours while playing online (Cote 2015;Gray et al 2017;Holz Ivory et al 2014;McLean and Griffiths 2013;Vermeulen et al 2014). Yee (2006) has argued that online games promote sociability, communication, and collaboration amongst players.…”

Do Men Advance Faster Than Women? Debunking the Gender Performance Gap in Two Massively Multiplayer Online Games

“…This line of reasoning is supported by Stereotype Threat Theory (Steele & Aronson, 1995), which posits that reminders of a negative stereotype that applies to a person's demographic make that person more likely to conform to the negative stereotype. In one of the few studies on stereotype threat in gaming, Vermeulen, Núñez Castellar, and Van Looy (2014) found that women reported feeling more stress and perceived their skills as lower when they thought they were playing a game against a man (as opposed to a woman). A similarly designed study also found that gender-based stereotype threat induced in a gaming context led women to perceive some STEM fields as better suited for men than women (Ratan, Fordham, Huang, & Strayer, 2015).…”

New Perspectives on the Social Aspects of Digital Gaming

“…This was outside the scope, but is a non-negligible part of the categorization and player experience (Williams & Clippinger, 2002;Vermeulen, Núñez Castellar, & Van Looy, 2014;Eklund, 2015). A follow-up study could research this, including not just traits of the player and other people, but also of the game and of the situation.…”