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LET THE GIRLS GAME: How Video Games Became 'Gendered' · Mini Scroll

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  In late 2014, a harassment campaign swept the online world,
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  targeting women who spoke out against misogyny in the video
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  games industry. This campaign, which reportedly
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  started as a movement about ethics in video games journalism
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  and quickly devolved into a coordinated attack, is known as
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  Gamergate, and it's still one of the most controversial topics in
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  the gaming space to date. At the time, Gamergaters claimed
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  they were the vanguards of ethical gaming journalism,
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  fighting to, quote UN quote, expose corruption by any means
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  necessary, while critics of the movement believed that
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  Gamergaters used that ideology as an excuse to justify
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  harassing women and progressive voices in gaming.
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  Regardless, many high profile women in gaming received
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  incessant abuse both on and offline, including serious
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  threats against their safety, even resulting in an FBI
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  investigation into some of these attacks. 10 years on, the impact
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  of this movement is still felt throughout the industry and some
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  believe we are now on the precipice of a Gamergate 2 Point
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  OA movement targeting the video game narrative development
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  company Sweet Baby Inc for pushing a quote UN quote woke
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  agenda on the industry. Quote.
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  This time, instead of assembling under the false banner of ethics
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  and journalism, this new campaign has chosen Woke ISM and
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  Sweet Baby as the focus of their grievances, writes Ash Parish
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  for The Verge Quote. The result has been a wave of
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  bigoted harassment targeting marginalized developers,
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  journalists and gamers on social media.
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  The employees of Sweet Baby are subject to a deluge of death
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  threats. Developers who've spoken out in
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  support of Sweet Baby are faced with similar treatment, with
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  several making their accounts private in an attempt to stem
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  the tide of abuse. Journalists reporting on the
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  story have become subject to the same harassment they're
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  covering. While the industry has certainly
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  made strides in the last few decades, movements like
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  Gamergate and now Gamergate 2 Point O highlights the extent of
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  the abuse that women and gender diverse people face for simply
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  existing in an online space primarily built for white sis.
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  Het men from Centennial World. Welcome to Let the Girls Game, a
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  podcast miniseries where we explore the history and stories
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  of women in gaming. Powered by Let's Sing.
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  I'm your host Lauren Meisner, and today we're exploring the
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  harassment that women, girls and gender diverse people face in
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  the gaming space. Now, most of us are aware of how
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  challenging things can be for women and gender diverse people
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  in the video game space. So rather than dive into the
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  darkness, the next two episodes will focus on how the industry
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  got here and some of the positive steps happening in the
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  space for women and gender diverse people.
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  And to help me unpack that, I am joined for the next two episodes
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  by Doctor Melianne Butt and Doctor Lucy Sparrow, who are
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  both digital culture experts and researchers in the gaming
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  industry. Thank you so much, Doctor
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  Melianne and Dr. Lucy for joining me today.
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  Thanks for having us, Lauren. Thank.
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  You so much. I'm so excited to chat with you
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  both about your research and your experience in this
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  industry. So first, could you both give us
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  a little insight into your career and how you came to
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  specialize in your respective? Fields, Absolutely.
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  So we're both game studies academics.
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  I'm housed in cultural studies and I generally research
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  questions around diversity in games and games cultures and
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  industries. I came to game studies to the
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  Digital Games Research Association of Australia
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  conference back in 2013 or 14 and it just felt like home.
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  I have to admit it just felt really supportive, really great
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  community. 10 years later, I'm now the President of Digra
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  Australia, and so it's been a real honor to serve the game
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  studies academic community of Australia here.
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  I'm a lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of
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  Melbourne, where Lucy is also as well, but in a different part of
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  the university. Yeah, so I am in human computer
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  interaction and my research mainly looks at basically the
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  ethics of multiplayer gaming. And So what that means is I'm
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  interested in looking at what people think is right or wrong
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  in these kinds of digital playful spaces, and also how we
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  can design these spaces in ethical ways.
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  I came to this work, I mean, basically because I love games
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  and I love research and I thought bringing them together
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  would be a really fun thing to do, and I was.
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  Right. That's awesome.
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  So I understand that you are both collaborating together on a
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  project about AI. Could you tell us a little bit
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  about that? Yes.
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  So AI Ally is a project that we've started up at the
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  University of Melbourne. It's funded by the E Safety
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  Commissioner from the Australian Government and basically we're
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  looking to develop an AI application that helps to
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  intervene into online harassment and online abuse, particularly
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  for girls, women and gender diverse individuals.
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  So the idea of AI ally is that it's kind of like a friend you
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  can add on social media that will act like an upstander or an
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  active bystander. So it will intervene into into
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  situations of online harassment that involves detecting the
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  harassment and then responding in a particular way.
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  We have yet to determine exactly those the functions it will
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  perform. But because, and that's partly
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  because we're going to be Co designing that with actual
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  participants that we're hoping to get more of.
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  But potential options would be things like helping people to
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  create reports to document the harassment or to connect them
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  with a support network. These are the kinds of things
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  we're looking. At that sounds awesome.
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  So obviously, you know, there's been AII suppose cultural issue
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  in the gaming industry around gender based harassment and
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  Gamergate is an extreme example of that.
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  But could you speak to what has led to this culture, if there's
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  any specific moments or if it's just kind of a general
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  sentiment? What have you found?
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  So Gamergate intensified problems, as you said, that were
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  already there and it brought it to a wider mainstream audience
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  with the news coverage that it had.
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  But of course these issues predate that.
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  And we also see these issues across the Internet, right, But
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  particularly more so in really male dominated spaces or things
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  seen as, you know, a boys only club or something like that.
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  But it goes back from the gendering of the meeting itself.
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  So originally video games in the 70s weren't marketed towards
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  boys or men. They were first marketed towards
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  families. And then it wasn't until 1980,
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  three, 1984 where there was a massive, what is known as video
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  game crash of 1983 or also known as the Atari Shock in Japan.
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  And so we saw this video game industry collapse by millions
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  and millions of dollars, partly due to oversaturation of
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  multiple consoles, having more of a bedroom Coda culture where
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  people were just kind of making games on the fly.
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  And then it kind of shifted where people needed to be more
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  risk averse. And this is where things like
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  Nintendo came in with the seal of excellence, quality and
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  marketing was now allowed for children in the 80s.
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  And so they they went along where this is, I guess like a
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  crash course of the history. No, I love.
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  That. And like other kind of
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  technologies, when they entered the home, like the microwave,
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  part of the marketing for it would become gendered in one way
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  or another, Like television shows became a bit more
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  feminized, the same way that microwaves were also feminized.
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  And so the role of computers entering the home, at first
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  people weren't really sure and then pinged on to the fact that
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  getting people to buy computers to play video games was a really
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  good way to market them. And that's where it comes into
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  being marketed towards boys. And then we see the term gamer
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  appear in video game magazines in the late 80s and the idea of
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  a hardcore gamer that's kind of hypermasculine, kind of trying
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  to push away from the uncool parent figure.
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  And so that's kind of how we have this idea of what a gamer
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  is becomes constructed by the industry itself.
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  And that is perpetuated through the 80s, late 80s, through the
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  90s. And we still have that
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  persistent image of the gamer identity today.
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  But of course the problems have not gone away, right?
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  We saw Sweet Baby Ink and the controversy around that and the
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  attempts of the Gamergate 2 point O earlier this year.
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  So even 10 years on, there's still persistent ideas that
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  gaming is meant to be this masculine dominated space.
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  So women and gender diverse people seeing as intruders or
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  invaders into their space, therefore being allowed for
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  these, you know, self identifying as true gamers or to
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  kind of defend what they view to be the correct way to game.
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  I actually wanted to circle back a bit to your point on labels,
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  because I was. Reading through.
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  Some of your dissertation. And I was.
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  Really interested in the section that you had on labels and the
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  concept of a gamer and how there's a lot of modern quote UN
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  quote gamers or people that play games that are trying to
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  redefine that label or move away from that label.
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  Could you speak a bit more to that?
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  Yeah, so in my dissertation I coined the term the postgame a
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  turn pretty much to give an overview or make notes of the
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  tensions between the gamer identity, that is the
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  constructed audience versus the practice of playing games.
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  So the term player in itself is already somewhat more inclusive,
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  could have pretty much just describes anyone who plays games
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  since the gamer identity was constructed.
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  You see these tensions and pushes and pulls between that
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  kind of dominant public versus the counter publics who have
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  always played games and who have always been there, who are kind
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  of saying like, hey, we, we play to, we've always been here.
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  And then becoming more visible in the last decade or so.
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  I guess the best way to kind of capture this is this anecdote
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  that I like to say. So as much as those who may
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  identify as gamers or who could easily represent gamers, I think
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  our distance or wanting to push away from it is also really
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  important to understand the culture of games.
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  So I used to work at EB Games and I was standing in uniform
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  behind the counter and a guy walks up to me and asks, but do
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  you really play video games? And I go, no, I just work here.
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  And just, you know, like, kind of come on.
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  My boss came along and had to kind of clarify being like, no,
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  no, no, she's a real nerd. You know, she's a big, big nerd.
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  She totally plays video games. So I think it's like, it's very,
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  very common. And Adrian Schwar's work has
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  really great research onto this, particularly her paper.
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  Do you identify as a gamer? And what she found is that those
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  who were women or gender diverse were least likely to identify as
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  gamers. Because the gamer identity that
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  what we have in our head makes them feel like this idea of
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  being like a well-rounded woman in society doesn't fit, just
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  being a gamer, which is you must just play games and nothing
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  else, or other kinds of complicated relationships or
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  feeling like that identity doesn't fit for them.
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  And we see this replicated across social media, not just in
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  gaming, right? Where how the Internet itself
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  was constructed and seen as perhaps a genderless utopia from
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  the 90s. Also kind of means that whenever
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  people wanted to speak about their own gender, it was seen as
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  making it about gender rather than just talking about their
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  own experiences. And the default was always
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  assumed to be generally white, male, straight, so and talking
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  about anything or just being anything else would get backlash
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  for making it political way of being.
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  Thank you so much to Doctor Melianne and Dr. Lucy for
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  joining me. Thank you to Let's Sing for
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  powering this miniseries. TuneIn next week for Part 2 of
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  this interview, where we discussed the path forward in
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  combating harassment against women and gender diverse people
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  in the gaming industry and how AI might be the answer.