Women just want to have fun – a study of adult female players of digital games


Kerr Aphra
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

In the past twenty-five years, the production of digital games has become a global media industry stretching from Japan, to the UK, France and the US. Despite this growth playing digital games, particularly computer games, is still seen by many as a boy’s pastime and part of boy’s bedroom culture. While these perceptions may serve to exclude, this paper set out to explore the experiences of women who game despite these perceptions. This paper addresses the topic of gender and games from two perspectives: the producer’s and the consumer’s. The first part of the paper explores how Sony represented the PS2 in advertisements in Ireland and how adult female game players interpreted these representations. The second part goes on to chart the gaming biographies of these women and how this leisure activity is incorporated into their adult everyday life. It also discuses their views about the gendered nature of game culture, public game spaces and game content; and how these influence their enjoyment of game playing and their views of themselves as women. These research findings are based on semi-structured interviews with two marketing professionals and ten female game players aged 18 and over. The paper concludes that the construction of both gender and digital games are highly contested and even when access is difficult, and representations in the media, in console design and in games are strongly masculine these interviewees were able to contest and appropriate the technology for their own means. Indeed ‘social networks’ were important in relation to their recruitment into, and sustained playing of, digital games. At the same time, the paper found that these interviewees were largely ‘invisible’ to the wider gaming community and producers, an issue raised by Bryce and Rutter (2002:244) in an earlier paper, which has important implications for the development of the games industry.

 

The representation of gender and ethnicity in digital interactive games


Janz Jeroen Martis Raynel G.
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

The actual content of games is an understudied area in social scientific research about digital interactive games (DIGs). This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of game content, in particular with respect to the portrayal of men, women, and people of different ethnic origin. Earlier studies by Provenzo [14], Gailey [8], and Dietz [6] concluded that games were dominated by stereotypic male characters with a few stereotypic females in minor roles. Nowadays, quite a few DIGs have women in leading parts. We want to establish if this change resulted in a multiplicity of meaning in the representation of gender and ethnicity [10]. This paper reports a content analysis about the ways in which gender and ethnicity are represented in the game. We concentrate on the portrayal of the leading character, and supporting role in the introductory film of the DIG. Our sample consists of 12 games that run on ‘Next Generation Consoles’ (PS2, X Box, Game Cube). Among the titles studied are games with a female leading character (for example, Tomb Raider, Parasite Eve), and with a male leading character (for example, GTA ViceCity, Splinter Cell). Characters in supporting roles are diverse: colored, and non-colored men, as well as colored and non-colored women

 

Agency Reconsidered


Wardrip-Fruin Noah Mateas Michael Dow Steven Sali Serdar
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The concept of “agency” in games and other playable media (also referred to as “intention”) has been discussed as a player experience and a structural property of works. We shift focus, considering agency, instead, as a phenomenon involving both player and game, one that occurs when the actions players desire are among those they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational model. This shifts attention away from questions such as whether agency is “free will” (it is not) and toward questions such as how works evoke the desires agency satisfies, employ computational models in the service of player action and ongoing dramatic probability, use interfaces and mediation to encourage appropriate audience expectation, shift from initial audience expectation to an understanding of the computational model, and can be shaped with recognition of the inherently improvisational nature of agency. We focus particularly on agency in relation to the fictional worlds of games and other playable media.

 

A Method For Discovering Values in Digital Games


Flanagan Mary Belman Jonathan Nissenbaum Helen Diamond Jim
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

In this paper, our research team demonstrates how groups of game designers can open the discussion on human principles in game design by using a tool we call “Values Cards.” Drawing on prior play experiences, participants identify examples of games or game segments that express the value represented on one of the values cards. This sparks deep analysis of how values are expressed through particular game mechanics and representational elements. The analysis can be posted to a collective wiki and shared amongst other designers who are interested in examining game mechanics and representational elements from a values perspective. These exercises can be considered first steps in a broader attempt to produce and implement a systematic methodology to better integrate human principles into the design process.

 

This is not a Door: an Ecological approach to Computer Games


Linderoth Jonas Bennerstedt Ulrika
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

In this chapter we outline an ecological approach to computer games and test out how the theory of ecological psychology can be used for understanding digital games and game-play. Ecological psychology holds that learning is a process of differentiating and not of interpreting or construing. Therefore semiotic/cognitive views on learning and perception with computer games, were the perceptual act is thought to be adding experiences to the things we see in a game in order to make meaning, can be questioned. The theoretical points are illustrated with data from an interaction study made on players playing the game Timesplitters 2 on an X-box.

 

Family Values: Ideology, Computer Games & Sims


Sicart Miguel
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

This article discusses some ideological issues related with the simulation of social systems in The Sims, proposing an interpretation of The Sims as an ideological game. This paper will focus on describing The Sims as a social simulator of a postcapitalist society: what The Sims proposes as an ideological game is a simulation of a specific set of values linked with a capitalist culture. Therefore, it can be considered not as a social simulator, but as a simulator of an ideology of modern capitalist societies. The last goal of this article is, then, to propose an analysis of the relation between rules, gameplay and ideology in certain computer game simulations.

 

Use of Computer and Video Games in the Classroom


Kirriemuir John McFarlane Angela
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

This paper examines the use of “pure” computer and video games in classrooms. It reports the findings of an ongoing informal survey of how and why such games are used as an integrated part of formal classroom learning. The paper presents a number of examples of the use of such games, and tries to determine likely trends in their use in such an environment. Of significance is an examination of the obstacles that teaching staff encounter in attempting to use such software during lesson times, and how some staff have overcome these obstacles.

 

Breaking the flow: Intervention in computer game play through physical and Intervention in computer game play through physical and on-screen interaction


Eggen Berry Feijs Loe de Graaf Mark Peters Peter
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

This article investigates issues of controlling the amount of time during computer game play and potential solutions to help prevent excessive gaming. The study incorporates the realization of three different variants. Two screen based solutions and one based on a physical agent, outside the computer screen, provide notification and additionally even “intervention” to the user. The three realizations have been put to the test and the results, both quantitative and qualitative are presented. The physical agent-based solution was most attractive.

 

The Construction of Ludic Space


Adams Ernest
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

Most modern graphics-based computer games entertain the player in part by presenting him or her with a simulated space, an imaginary two- or threedimensional region whose visual appearance is mapped onto the twodimensional surface of the video screen. The player observes this space and sometimes virtually explores or moves through it in the course of playing the game. As an imaginary space, it is necessarily constructed by human beings, and therefore may be thought of as the product of architectural design processes. In this paper I discuss the psychosensory limitations of perceiving ludic space compared with real-world architectural space, and the primary and secondary functions of ludic space. The primary function is to support the gameplay by providing a context for challenges, and I discuss how this occurs; secondarily, the space informs and entertains in its own right by a variety of means: Familiarity, Allusion, Novelty, Atmosphere, and others, which I illustrate by example.

 

Anxiety, Openness, and Activist Games:A Case Study for Critical Play


Flanagan Mary Lotko Anna
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper explores the boundaries of social issues or‘activist’ games with a case study on a popular gamereleased in 2009 which fosters a critical type of play amongthe audience. We assess the game’s public reception tobetter understand how contradictory play elements led to ananxiety of ambiguity during open play. Borrowing from the“poetics of open work,” we will demonstrate how the mostpowerful play experience in activist games result from anew relationship formed between the audience and theplayer through mechanics, subject position, representation,and content.