Discourse of Gaming: A Conceptual Framework of Gaming as an Interpretive Community

Abstract

Situating gaming as a cultural practice aimed at constructing issues of power through cultural discussions necessitates a framework of discourse of gaming to explain how meanings around gaming practice develop. Built on the premise that gaming offers multimodal opportunities for interaction, we introduce the discourse of gaming framework to connect processes of boundary work, definition making, and legitimization to the activities of gaming, the gamer's identity, and the consequences of gaming. Through a survey of Reddit gaming fan communities, discourse of gaming here reflects the power perceived outsiders (e.g., journalists, academics, and politicians) have on shaping the discourse.

Threat and Enhancement

“…After providing consent, participants answered questions about gaming identity and open-ended questions related to their gaming experiences. We report our interpretive analysis of these qualitative results in a separate manuscript (Perreault & Lynch, 2022) and consider how those findings relate to our work here in the Discussion. We then asked participants whether they were familiar with the 2018 Jacksonville mass shooting.…”

“…A final future direction in light of our results is that it is worth considering when and how social identity becomes persistent ; that is, not necessarily requiring activation by a stimulus (e.g., an attack) for the identity to influence emotion and cognition (Steele et al, 2002). Because individuals are motivated by a desire to enhance perceptions of their groups, any interaction may present a strategic opportunity to signal and manage social identity publicly (see Perreault & Lynch, 2022). Although gamers tend to exhibit vigilance regarding gaming-related messaging (Kneer & Ward, 2021), receiving uplifting messages about their group may produce unexpectedly strong positive responses.…”

“…We conducted this experimental data collection as part of a larger study that included both qualitative and quantitative data collection procedures. The other study that emerged from this effort (Perreault & Lynch, 2022) involved asking participants broad open-ended questions about their experiences with gaming and we used interpretive techniques to extract themes from those data. The results of those analyses revealed patterns in how gamers interpret and situate their identities in the context of gaming communities.…”

“…Amidst high-profile, identity-laden controversies in gaming culture (e.g., GamerGate), unflattering stereotypes of gamers persist (e.g., the awkward nerd; Stone, 2021). The persistence of these characterizations can fuel intergroup tensions with gamers engaging in discursive practices that draw boundaries between gamers (in-group) and non-gamers (out-group; Perreault & Lynch, 2022). Kneer and Ward (2021) propose that the prevalence of moral panics around gaming fuels gamers’ inordinately high vigilance to group-relevant messages.…”

“…Media messages often characterize gaming as problematic, insinuating that violent game content causes societal violence (Kain, 2018). These characterizations have led to significant discourse within the gaming community (see Perreault & Lynch, 2022). Some of this discourse centers on messages about the community by perceived outsiders (Dutton et al, 2011), which may instigate intergroup hostility.…”