Ardis Storm-Mathisen

Gender and digital gaming – how girls, boys and their parents account of their everyday

practices concerning use and regulation

Paper presented at the ESA conference Lisbon, September 5th 2009, RN5 Sociology of Consumption

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Outline of the presentation

I. Question/ background

II.The Contextualizing adolescents’ egaming project (CAE) -data

III.Sexed bodies and the regulation of digital gaming - broad patterns

IV.Diversity in gendered regulation of digital gaming

V.Tentative conclusions

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I. Question/background

Question:How do sexed bodies and conceptions of what is

masculine and feminine play a part in the regulatory practices and logics surrounding adolescents egaming in everyday life?

Background:1. Debates on digital divides-digital threats2. Theoretical/analytical calls for consumer/ICT research

– to implement insights from gender research and– to apply more context-oriented approaches

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Definition of termsDigital games - playing and gambling on electronic

devices like TV, pc and the internet.

Sex – reference to the female and male bodies that account of their everyday practices and logics concerning the use and regulation of digital games.

Gender - how ideas of femininity and masculinity, play a role and are made relevant in these accounts of regulation.

Regulation – observed or accounted attempts to influence the consumption of digital gaming, either by others on the adolescents or by the adolescents to themselves through self-regulations.

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SIMS Call of DutyFeminine ? Masculine ?

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II. The CAE project

Contextualizing adolescents egaming (CAE) - a project that seeks to map and contextualize adolescents' egaming activities and problems.

Egaming – a concept referring to both

-‘eplaying’ (egaming without money) and to

-‘egambling’ (gaming with money).

Project period

2007-2010

Designed and conducted

by SIFO (Norwegian National Institute for Consumer Research), Digimedia group

Funded

by the NFR (Norwegian Research Council)

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CAE - AimsAims

To supplement present gaming research

Develop context-based knowledge about households’ regulation of adolescents’ egaming

Discuss implications for further research, prevention and treatment of adolescents’ egaming problems, particularly focusing at the household level

Main analytical concepts and theoretical perspectives

Contextualization and regulation:

Domestication theory, the moral economy of the home (Silverstone et al 1992)

Practice theory, language-games (late-Wittgensteinian thinking, Helle-Valle 2007, 2008)

Discipline, governmentality (Foucaultian thinking)

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CAE – data/methodologyi) A strategic survey among all 15 and 18 year olds pupils in 7

secondary and high schools in Norway (a total of 611)

ii) Conversational interviews with (high frequent) eplaying/egaming 15 and 18 year olds in 32 households/families: – with egaming problems (6) – without identified/reported egaming problems (eplaying; 20,

egambling; 6).

iii) Observations and video-recordings of individual and peer-group gaming

The adolescents were interviewed in 3 different settings -communicative contexts:

i)Individually (often when gaming)ii)with parentsiii)with (gaming) friends

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Accounts in different communicative contexts

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III. Sexed bodies and the regulation of digital gaming - large patterns

– Difficult to find girls who were much engaged in gaming (especially among the youngest teenagers). We found no girls with identified egaming problems

- Boys played more than girls

- Boys had personal technical equipment, girls tended to use equipment belonging to other members of the household.

- Adolescents and parents argue that the eplaying of boys need more regulation than the eplaying of girls

- A common argument was that girls perform more self-regulation than boys to digital gaming, and that boys therefore need more external parental regulation than girls

- Parents and girls express more ambivalence and concern with respect to the regulation of and problems connected to eplaying

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General regulation as accounted for by the playing adolescents, their parents and local peers

- large patterns

Values involved in regulation- enjoy but behave: prioritize school, out-door physical

activities, family sociality/ temporalities and social activities with friends, very little co-playing.

Indicators of successful regulation:

- engagement in other (out-door) leisure activities, good school performances and normal body shape

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IV. Diversity in gendered regulation of digital gaming

Example cases that illustrate how sex/gender ‘rules’ of digital gaming are variable and context dependent:

Case 1: how boy gamers perspectives on the gender-gaming relationship changes from one moment in play to the next due to a transfer from an all-boys to a boys versus girls context

Case 2: how a male sexed gamer used femininity as an expression of self-regulation to stop playing Doom

Case 3: how a female sexed gamer changed her expression of femininity in relation to gaming from one year to the next

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Case I: 15 year old males gaming

2008: three 15-year old boys were interviewed together while they were engaged in a game of counterstrike

Incident a): All-boys activity. No voice-chat on

- The boys claim gender does not matter in the game, only competence

Incident b): Boys versus girls activity. Voice chat turned on - Gender does matter. When the voice chat was turned on they realize

they are playing with an all-girl team that threaten to beat them. They express and tune up their engagement to win the game.

The case illustrates that femininity (and masculinity) is perceived and performed differently in various communicative contexts. It hence also illustrates how the sex and gender of co-players impacts on gaming activity not as a rule but with a context-specific diversity

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Case II: 18-year old male gamer2008: an 18-year old boy interviewed alone when playing Doom, a game

where aliens attack at unpredictable moments in a scary setting

Incident a) to enjoy playing Doom is a masculine activity - he says he enjoys to fight down aliens and also the occasional fright,

and it is a game he sometimes also plays together with his male friends

Incident b) to stop the playing of Doom by expressing femininity

– at one moment in the game he jumps from fright, exclaims “iik” and shows fear in a feminine embodied way. He then aborts the game

The case illustrates that male bodies do not only perform masculinity but also femininity within activities of digital gaming. The feminine expression and way of performing the body is used to stop the gaming activity.

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Case III: 21 year old female gamerWas interviewed twice:

1. As part of an all-female-gamer focus group 2008- She portrayed herself as an engaged gamerheavy into online role

play games like World of Warcraft. She spoke of her gaming as a ‘girl thing’- something she did with girl-friends. She was single.

2. Alone, in her home 2009- She said she had quit playing online role games on her computer.

Now much of her online gaming activity was small crossword puzzle games on food recipes and knitting patterns. She had moved in with her boyfriend

This case illustrates how female bodies can understand and perform femininity with respect to gaming in radical different ways. Being single and doing gaming with girl friends is a different circumstance for expressing feminity than living with a boyfriend and playing recipe games. The change in contexts influenced on how she expressed, understood and performed her femininity.

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V. Tentative conclusions: How do sexed bodies and conceptions of what is masculine and

feminine play a part in the regulatory practices surrounding adolescents egaming?

Sexed bodies and gender regulate digital gaming in context specific ways• The broad patterns of statements and practices indicate some

commonalities: e.g. being a boy and performing masculinity tends to up-scale gaming engagement and regulatory concern whereas being a girl and performing femininity tends to down-scale actual engagement and hence also regulatory concern

• There is however no common rule to the gender-gaming relationship. The presented cases illustrate how sexed bodies and gender regulate digital gameplay in context-specific and hence diverse ways. Although masculinity is more strongly associated to strong gaming engagement than femininity, femininity is not by necessity something that down-regulates gaming.

• We should thus be careful to argue we know what feminity and masculinity is and how sex and gender influence our practices. To further enhance our understanding of this issue future research needs to continue approaching gendered conceptions and actual digital gameplay in open and exploratory ways

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SIFO DIGIMEDIAStrategic Research Project on Digital Media and ICT http://

www.sifo.no/digimedia/