Article

Sexuality in Role-Playing Games

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

Role-playing games offer a chance to pretend, make believe, and share fantasy. They often invoke heavy themes into their game play: morality, violence, politics, spirituality, or sexuality. Although interesting moral debates perennially appear in the media and academia concerning the appropriateness of games ability to deal with such adult concepts, very little is known about the intersection between games, playfulness, and sexuality and what this might mean for players. This book offers an in-depth, ethnographic look into the phenomenon of erotic role-play through the experiences of players in multiplayer and tabletop role-playing games. Brown explores why participants engage in erotic role-play; discusses the rules involved in erotic role-play; and uncovers what playing with sexuality in ludic environments means for players, their partners, and their everyday lives. Taken together, this book provides a rich, nuanced, and detailed account of a provocative topic.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.

... Games are not made, played or discussed in cultural vacuums, just as those who make and play them do not exist in a space removed from cultural influence. Regardless of how we might define culture, games are the result of a complex interweaving of industrial and economic forces (O'Donnell, 2014; Castronova, 2006), government agencies and rating review boards (Brown, 2015; Karlsen, 2014), medical discourses of healthy play (Karlsen, 2013), journalists and media reports (Kirkpatrick, 2012; Shaw, 2010), moral and ethical frameworks (Sicart, 2009; Linderoth & Mortensen, 2015), and research (Mäyrä, Van Looy & Quandt, 2014; Sotamaa & Suominen, 2014). Or, perhaps, games have emerged out of play, the origin of culture itself (Huizinga, 2009 [1949])? ...
... The current, third wave (2009 till present) is primarily characterised by in some sense a growing maturity, both in terms of digital games' increased willingness to engage with topics and themes often considered " mature " in media ratings (as in " just for adults " , e.g., sexuality -and especially its variations) and by increased nuance and space within the field to describe sexuality, at least to some extent inspired by developments within gender studies and queer theory. Examples of this maturity come from discussions concerning the ethics of play (Sicart, 2009; Brown, 2015; Linderoth & Mortensen, 2015), particularly with difficult concepts such as sexual violence (Montola, 2010), a return to seeing some sexual activities as potentially games (Brown, 2012; Harviainen, 2011) and finally legal and popular concerns about perceptions of safety and responsibility in playful environments (Entertainment Software Rating Board, 2012; McCurley, 2010). In making a broad generalisation, the topics of conversation in the third wave have not changed, but the academic response to them has, as has the extent to which the researchers now analyse their topics. ...
... Likewise, Annika Waern (2011) found that Dragon Age: Origins players used forums and blogs to express their romantic feelings toward non-player characters. A recently published study focusing on World of Warcraft erotic role player communities additionally found that if sexual content is not coded into a game, players will make clever use of resources to implement it themselves nevertheless (Brown, 2015; see also Brathwaite, 2006, on emergent sex play). Such studies highlight the discrepancy between what adult players want and what is acceptable to ratings boards, governing bodies and retailers, through showing how players account for the limitation of encoded game content by creating their own. ...
Article
Full-text available
This article critically evaluates and questions the growth and maturity of game studies as a scholarly set of related approaches to the study of games, by providing an account of studies of sexuality in (mostly digital) games from 1978 to present. The main goal of this article is to highlight overarching themes and patterns in the literature, with a focus on theories and methodologies commonly used and the way game studies is still risk aware, even awkward in its discussions of sexuality. In addition to a review of 37 years of literature, the article employs a chronological and thematic metaphor analysis of past research texts to analyze whether game studies is growing up or in perpetual puberty and whether it really is exploring sexual maturity alongside the games we study. It finds that while different periods of time can be identified in research as far as approaches to sexuality in games go, game studies is still to a large extent engaged in the management of the stigma that discussing sexuality may cause. Rather than a maturation process, the waves are shown to be manifestations of different types of environmentally influenced risk awareness, consecutive risk avoidance, and a resulting awkwardness.
... Desde juegos de mesa y juegos de rol de acción real hasta sus contrapartes digitales, cualquier tipo de juego de rol tiene el potencial de volverse erótico. Tomado en su definición más vaga, el juego de roles erótico es una forma de juego de roles que involucra temas que implican deseo sexual (Brown, 2015). ...
Book
Full-text available
En la actual era digital, la crianza de los hijos presenta desafíos únicos y complejos, especialmente en lo que respecta al acceso a contenidos inapropiados en línea. La facilidad con la que los menores pueden encontrar material pornográfico en internet (Torres-Toukoumidis y Figueroa Sacoto, 2023) y la creciente popularidad de los videojuegos (Torres-Toukoumidis et al., 2019) han dado lugar a una intersección preocupante: los vi- deojuegos pornográficos. Estos juegos, que combinan elementos interactivos con contenido sexual explícito, representan un riesgo significativo para el bienestar emocional y psicológico de los jóvenes.
... Brief examples of such include calls for the sense of authenticity in such play recorded by Mortensen (2003), a description of Gorean communities in the virtual world Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003) by Sixma (2009), and Frank's (2013) forays into the study of various types of group sex online, rough play included. More extensive cases include Brown's (2015) book on sexuality in online roleplaying that includes material on, for instance, the enactment of rape fantasies in World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), and Harviainen's (2015b) study of game-like narratives in especially online sadomasochism. Many massively multiplayer online RPGs, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, indeed seem to have sparked BDSM-related play practices, and thus studies on sexuality and these games touch upon BDSM thematics, as well. ...
Article
Full-text available
This article examines connections between games and BDSM (consensual bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism), theoretically speaking (in their respective research areas) as well as in practice. A common grounding behind these connections is the consideration of play as a foundational component in games and game studies as well as in BDSM practices and the studies of BDSM as a cultural phenomenon. We identify five sets of relevant connections. First, there are direct comparisons between the two types of play. Second, several live-action role-playing games have been made about BDSM, or for BDSM. Third, many other games have borrowed ideas from BDSM, as well, as have some BDSM activities, in turn, from games and play. Fourth, queer game studies frequently discuss subversive and transgressive play practices, which provide a fruitful context for analyzing play elements in BDSM, and BDSM-inspired elements in games. And fifth, both games and BDSM are frequently discussed in the research contexts related to performance, theater, and rituals, which forms a potential bridge between these activities. Through this five-strand exploratory analysis, we show how deeply interconnected these two realms are, even if the connection is only rarely mentioned, and to this date, not fully recognized as a valid research topic.
... The interviews were supplemented by participant observation. I chose to actively engage myself with the practices of the communities I studied, instead of remaining a passive observer (Jackson, 1989;Spradley, 1980;see Frank, 2015, for an opposing viewpoint regarding sex research; e.g., Brown, 2015;Moser, 1998;Sundén, 2012, on ethnography relating to sex in playful environments). A researcher may increasingly engage in local practices in order to understand performers and their actions in the cultural contexts, as long as that engagement is neither disruptive nor disrespectful. ...
Article
Full-text available
Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifestyle (“swinging”) events, this article explores the implicit and explicit rules influencing negotiations for group sex as a type of play. Participants maintain a sense of freedom and spontaneity while acting within situational constraints—ethical expectations, preexplicated rules, implicit rules, and complex negotiations that occur during the play itself either openly or more subtly. Because it has implications for the participants’ everyday lives, lifestyle group sex is a phenomenon on the border between games and adult play. Through an analysis of the rules and social contracts arising in group sex, we demonstrate how participants learn to read interactions at group sex events in the way that players learn game systems and how they can and do become “good players” in such situations.
... Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015) are, throughout this article, considered to be primarily based around adult sexual game play. Sex has long been employed as a topic in game studies (see: Suits 1978; Brown 2015), but there are relatively few studies on how sex toys are designed , manufactured and marketed—or indeed, used in sexual play. Notably, Clarissa Smith (2007) suggests that the consumption of accessories for sex depends on gender and class identities, and contributes to the construction of a particular form of hedonistic femininity. ...
... RPGs allow players to become a character in a game by taking control of the character's dialogue and actions. This can be a deeply personal process in which a player delves into the character's psyche (May, 1994). When a player merges minds with a fictional character, the process can result in a significantly higher level of character attachment compared to other forms of character-driven media (Lewis, Weber, & Bowman, 2008). ...
Article
Adams, A. (2013). Needs met through role-playing games: A fantasy theme analysis of Dungeons & Dragons. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research, 12, 69-86. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope/vol12/iss1/6/ Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is an immersive fantasy role-playing game (RPG) which allows players to fulfill real-world social needs through interaction. Although D&D may appear to be a game of simple make-believe, the emotions, camaraderie, and accomplishments experienced by players are real, thus suggesting that RPGs have real-world implications for players. Therefore, the goal of this study is to explore the ways in which players fulfill social needs through group communication during the context of D&D table-top role-play. Utilizing Bormann’s (1972) fantasy theme analysis, this study uses a case study approach to identify four themes which emerged within player talk on Facebook: (1) democratic ideologies; (2) friendship maintenance; (3) extraordinary experiences; and (4) good versus evil. Findings provide a description of group members’ real-world needs met through symbolic in-game interactions evidenced by communicative markers.
Article
В статье рассматривается репрезентация феномена компьютерной игры как одного из видов аудиально-визуализированных искусств, особенностей ее восприятия и анализа на примере тех историографических традиций, которые сложились в поле англоязычного и русскоязычного сегментов культурологической науки. Очерчиваются рамки философских коннотаций, которые применимы при рассмотрении виртуализированного игрового контента, характеризуемого в том числе в качестве особого вида текста-кибертекста. Уделено внимание возможности рассмотрения пространства компьютерной игры в качестве специфической формы «симуляции исторического процесса». The article considers the representation of the phenomenon of computer games as one of the types of auditory-visualized arts, the peculiarities of its perception and analysis on the example of those historiographical traditions that have developed in the field of English-speaking and Russian-speaking segments of cultural science. In addition, the framework of those philosophical connotations that are applicable when considering virtualized game content, characterized, among other things, as a special type of text-cybertext, is outlined. The author pays attention to the possibility of considering the space of a computer game as a specific form of "simulation of the historical process".
Article
Full-text available
Rating systems have been ranking digital games based on potentially dangerous content for almost 30 years. What they have successfully avoided so far, however, is assessing potentially beneficial elements. Nevertheless, digital games can have a positive impact on children’s development in a number of areas, including emotional, intellectual, moral and social. This study focuses on the digital game This War of Mine, which was inspired by events during the 1992 – 1996 siege of Sarajevo and the story itself was inspired by the poor living conditions of civilians. According to the rating institution Pan European Game Information, the title is unsuitable for gamers under the age of 18 and company Entertainment Software Rating Board states, that the game is inappropriate for players under the age of 17. In this study, we focus on assessing the potential benefits of the digital game for younger individuals. We assume that playing it properly can help teens better understand the issues faced by millions of people around the world, in the context of the ongoing war conflicts and migration crisis.
Article
Full-text available
Since 2016, China’s online LGBTQ platforms, such as Blued and Aloha, have been seeking to increase user acquisition and retention by introducing new functionalities to their interfaces. Although these attempts were promising at first, most of their endeavors proved unsustainable, largely due to the condition in which their businesses operate: a niche audience segment in a winner-take-all mobile market and a highly regulatory market in which LGBTQ content is often made a site for the execution of power. This article investigates the now-defunct role-playing social game Werewolf embedded in Aloha, one of the popular dating apps for queer men in China. By bringing together scholarship on game studies and queer media studies, it is argued that social games embedded in dating apps foster a new form of sexual sociality in which desires become increasingly gamified and intimacy networked, which are essential for queer social media to retain users. Although Werewolf was ultimately closed due to Aloha’s budgetary controls, queer players have emerged as a promising market for their unique engagement in social games. LGBTQ platforms, however, are not the main beneficiary of the queer gaming market because of the winner-take-all mobile ecosystem. The article highlights the inherent limits of “outward” expansion of China’s LGBTQ platforms into the mainstream market and suggests that prioritizing the unaddressed needs of their niche audience through an inward approach may be a more viable strategy for business growth in a mobile ecosystem dominated by a handful of major players.
Chapter
This chapter begins to unpack what is understood as cultures of desire. The chapter begins by suggesting that sex clubs are places that project different forms of public intimacy. Public intimacy provides the contours through which cultures of desire emerge. The chapter then begins to explain how sexual encounters are often initiated and traces those initial interactions through to the playrooms where a range of sexual cultures can be found. In doing so, it explores conventional heterosexual scripts about intimacy and how these are sometimes broken and inadequate. The chapter then begins to explain a number of the dynamics of sex clubs through the interplay of two concepts: erotic hierarchies and affective atmospheres. It suggests that cultures of desire emerge within the space where these sexual fields and affectivity converge. Using examples of racism and sexual violence, the chapter questions the hedonism that is often associated with clubs, whilst also highlighting the possibilities of pleasure that circulate through clubs.
Article
Full-text available
This paper situates gamer discussions of the fantasy race the drow, or dark elves, in masculinity theory. I examine threads from a Facebook group discussing the topic, and code the reactions of men participating. I discuss how some gamer masculinities that are displayed reinforces a belief of epistemic privilege among White men that allows for hegemonic responses to discussions that involve structural racism. I propose larp gamer masculinity as a hybrid masculinity, complicit in its support of hegemonic models but appropriating elements of subordinated populations to allow individuals to feel like an “outsider.” In these gaming discourse spaces, men employ an anti-intellectualized form of digital hooliganism as a rationale for their claims. These men dismiss claims of discrimination as they see those as characteristics outside the scope of the game. The resistance exhibited by these men reacting to changes should be viewed differently than extremist discourses.
Article
Full-text available
Sexuality, as it relates to video games in particular, has received increasing attention over the past decade in studies of games and play, even as the notion of play remains relatively underexplored within sexuality studies. This special issue asks what shift is effected when sexual representation, networked forms of connecting and relating, and the experimentation with sexual likes are approached through the notion of play. Bringing together the notions of sex and play, it both foregrounds the role of experimentation and improvisation in sexual pleasure practices and inquires after the rules and norms that these are embedded in. Contributors to this special issue combine the study of sexuality with diverse theoretical conceptions of play in order to explore the entanglements of affect, cognition, and the somatic in sexual lives, broadening current understandings of how these are lived through repetitive routines and improvisational sprees alike. In so doing, they focus on the specific sites and scenes where sexual play unfolds (from constantly morphing online pornographic archives to on- and offline party spaces, dungeons, and saunas), while also attending to the props and objects of play (from sex toys and orgasmic vocalizations to sensation-enhancing chemicals and pornographic imageries), as well as the social and technological settings where these activities occur. This introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale of thinking sex in and as play, before presenting the articles that make up this special issue.
Article
Full-text available
This article discusses the ‘computer game’ as a pragmatic concept. A dual nature of the computer game as both a pragmatic idea and a pragmatic meaning is introduced. Practical meanings of the computer game correspond with the concrete effects that engaging with computer games produces in an individual. Practical ideas of the computer game correspond with the subjectively constituted conceptual families concerning the computer game’s assumed practical meaning. Individual computer games can be considered flat or round depending on the range of their practical meanings. Thus, the article contributes to the study of cultural objects by offering a framework for examining the evolution and existence of such objects as cross-cultural practical entities – less in terms of communication, media, and materiality, and more in terms of concrete actions and events that individuals across societies commence and conceptualize.
Chapter
Representations of LGBTQ (or queer) themes and characters have been scarce throughout the history of role-playing games. However, there is a gap between source material of a game and the actual play of it. Our chapter explores this gap with two objectives: first, the authors review what kind of queer existence is possible in tabletop, online multiplayer, and live-action role-playing. Second, this chapter addresses how players negotiate with these “urtexts” in carving out queer potentials. Drawing from numerous examples, the authors conclude that the emergence of queer play necessitates the affordances of the urtext of the game, each player’s unique approach to play, and the core player group or online community in which the play is situated.
Article
This essay explores the features in virtue of which games are valuable or worthwhile to play. The difficulty view of games holds that the goodness of games lies in their difficulty: by making activities more complex or making them require greater effort, they structure easier activities into more difficult, therefore more worthwhile, activities. I argue that a further source of the value of games is that they provide players with an experience of freedom, which they provide both as paradigmatically unnecessary activities and by offering opportunities for relatively unconstrained choice inside the ‘lusory’ world that players inhabit.
Article
Full-text available
This article makes a theoretical argument for the productivity of the notions of playfulness and play in feminist and queer studies of sexuality. Defined as a mode of sensory openness and drive towards improvisation, playfulness can be seen as central to a range of sexual activities from fumbling, random motions to elaborate, rehearsed scenarios. Play in the realm of sexuality involves experimentations with what bodies can feel and do. As pleasurable activity practised for its own sake, play involves the exploration of different bodily capacities, appetites, orientations and connections. Understood in this vein, play is not the opposite of seriousness or simply synonymous with fun. Driven by the quest for bodily pleasure, play may just as well be strained, dark and hurtful in the forms that it takes and the sensory intensities that it engenders. This article argues that the mode of playfulness and acts of play allow for pushing previously perceived and imagined horizons of embodied potentiality in terms of sexual routines and identifications alike. It examines the productive avenues that the notions of playfulness and play open up in conceptualising the urgency of sexual pleasures, the contingency of desires and their congealment in categories of identity.
Article
Full-text available
With increasing popular and academic attention being paid to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) content in video games, the time has come for a thorough account of the history of this content in this medium. In the project reviewed here, we have documented more than 300 games and more than 500 examples of LGBTQ content spanning 30 years. Using a grounded theoretical approach, we were able to classify this content into nine large categories—characters, relationships/romance/sex, actions, locations, mentions, artifacts, traits, queer games/narratives, and homophobia/transphobia—each of which contains several subcategories. In outlining our classification system here, we will demonstrate the myriad ways queerness in gender and sexuality have been integrated into digital games.
Article
Full-text available
This article describes sadomasochist role-playing which is physically performed by its participants. All sadomasochist activities have a role-playing component to them. It is a form of role-playing where people consensually take on dominant and submissive roles, for the purpose of inflicting things such as pain and humiliation, in order to create pleasure for all participants. In some cases, participants agree to emphasize those roles, or make them fetishistically attractive, by adding complexity and definitions to them, and then act them out in semi-scripted fantasy scenes. This paper examines that activity, commonly called “sadomasochistic role-play”, as opposed to the more generic “sadomasochism” of which it is only one facet. Furthermore, the article compares this form of play with live-action role-playing (larp). Its main emphasis is on the question of how closely related the two activities are. To determine this, the article examines sadomasochist role-playing as being potentially a game, the question of its goal-orientation and the issue of whether or not it contains a character in the sense of a live-action role-playing character. Based on this process, it comes to the conclusion that sadomasochist role-playing is not a separate type of role-playing, but rather one kind of live-action role-playing. As its theoretical framework, this text utilizes studies done on both live-action role-playing games and on sadomasochist role-playing. Reliable material on the latter being quite limited, descriptions have been gathered from both academic works and practical manuals. The data gained from these is further supported by interviews of practitioners with personal experience in playing sadomasochist fantasy scenes. This article has two key purposes: The research of a relatively understudied form of role-playing, and the building of bridges from that to live-action role-playing research.
Article
Full-text available
This paper looks at the process of role-playing that takes place in various games. Role-play is a social activity, where three elements are always present: An imaginary game world, a power structure and personified player characters. In a nutshell, all role-playing activities about imaginary people acting out in an imaginary environment; the power structure is needed to differentiate these activities from free make-believe and children’s play. After the basics, the paper moves on to discuss the various components in detail, going through how rules, goals, worlds, power, information and identity function in role-play. While the paper does not lead to a simple conclusion, it seeks to present a solid foundation for further research.
Article
Full-text available
The present study sought to examine the extent to which the cultural portrayal of online gamers, often in comical, caricatured, or sensational forms, has become transformed into sets of cognitive associations between the category and traits. A total of 342 participants completed an online survey in which they rated how applicable each of a list of traits was to the group of online gamers. Ratings were made for both personal beliefs (how participants themselves see gamers) and stereotypical beliefs (how most others see gamers). While these beliefs were highly consensual as stereotypes, personal beliefs varied, suggesting that the cultural portrayal of online gamers is beginning to shift into cognitive associations. The role of stereotypes in negotiating a group’s social position are discussed arguing that these stereotypes currently position online gamers as low in social status and socially peripheral. The function of the media in generating stereotypical representations of social groups and convincing the public of their validity is also discussed.
Article
Full-text available
Overview - in the March 2010 Inroads, Steve Cooper and Steve Cunningham presented an editorial arguing for "Teaching computer science in context" (Cooper and Cunningham 2010). Context is the use of a consistent application or domain area, which effectively ...
Article
Full-text available
There are over 300 multi‐user games based on at least 13 different kinds of software on the international computer network known as the Internet. Here I use the term “MUD “ to refer to all the various kinds. All provide worlds for social interaction in a virtual space, worlds in which you can present yourself as a “character,” in which you can be anonymous, in which you can play a role or roles as close or as far away from your “real self as you choose.In the MUDS, the projections of self are engaged in a resolutely postmodern context. Authorship is not only displaced from a solitary voice, it is exploded. The self is not only decentered but multiplied without limit. There is an unparalleled opportunity to play with one's identity and to “try out” new ones. MUDS are a new environment for the construction and reconstruction of self.
Article
Full-text available
A two-part quantitative and qualitative study of role players within a virtual game world examined their prevalence, practices, and identity formation. Drawing on unobtrusive behavioral data captured by the game, combined with a large survey and traditional ethnographic methods, the study found that role players both negotiate identity and use their time online as a moratorium for their offline lives. Descriptive results showed that role players are a relatively small, but psychologically burdened subgroup. When examined from the theoretical perspectives of Goffman’s Self-Presentation theory, Huizenga’s Magic Circle, and Turkle’s early work on online identity formation, these players were seen as largely using virtual spaces as creative outlets and for socialization. The worlds also functioned as coping mechanisms for players frequently unable to gain acceptance, social connectivity or social support offline due to their personal situation, psychological profile, or their minority status.
Article
Full-text available
Cybersex can be defined as a social interaction between at least two persons who are exchanging real-time digital messages in order to become sexually aroused and satisfied. This article first describes video- and text-based cybersex as a new kind of sexual encounter with its own particularities. Then the feminist literature on cybersex is reviewed revealing two basic perspectives: The victimization perspective interprets cybersex as a heterosexist practice, and focuses on how women and girls as individuals and as a group are harmed by online harassment, virtual rape, and cyberprostitution. From this viewpoint it is the (heterosexual) male who seeks cybersex and forces it on the female, who is supposed to be online for all kinds of reasons but surely not for sexual ones. The liberation perspective, in contrast, focuses on the options computer-mediated communication offers women and girls who actively seek sexual pleasure online: Looks don't matter, it's easy to find mates, anonymity minimizes social control, the physical distance between the parties, and the computer's off switch prevent dangerous or harmful situations. From that viewpoint, cybersex frees females to explore their sexualities more safely and to enjoy more sex, better sex, and different sex. This article criticizes both the victimization and the liberation perspective and offers an integrative empowerment perspective that acknowledges power discourse as an essential sexual issue online and offline.
Article
Full-text available
The current study examined problematic Internet use (PIU) among people who play MMO games and sought to determine whether aspects of the MMO experience are useful predictors of PIU. The study sought to determine whether game-related variables could predict PIU scores after accounting for their relationships with psychosocial well-being. Novel methods allowed us, for the first time, to connect in-game behaviors with survey results of over 4000 MMO players. The results revealed that MMO gaming variables contributed a substantively small, but statistically significant amount of explained variance to PIU scores.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We present a structural framework to describe games in terms of components. The components are divided into four major areas: meta-structure, bounding, narrative and objective. The framework is developed to be used in conjunction with game design patterns, descriptions of patterns of interaction relevant to game play. We describe the development of the framework and how it relates to patterns.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Chapter
Although gender can have different meanings in different contexts, there is a recurring tendency for gender to be perceived as a dualism of men-women, male-female, masculine-feminine. Thus, an important aspect of our understanding of gender is the relationship between the genders, and gender as a relational category is a premise in all three feminist positions. The premise for difference feminism is that women are special and complementary to men. The premise for equality feminism is that women are identical to men, which often implies a masculine norm. In her book Only Paradoxes to Offer, Scott describes how one of the feminists even broke the law of early twentieth century Paris and wore trousers, finding pleasure in sometimes being mistaken for being a man. The paritaristes rejected the masculine norm, and claimed equality based on the always present, but ‘‘essential meaninglessness, of sexed bodies’’ (Scott 2005). These three feminist positions are not the only ones, but they serve the purpose here by presenting three different suggestions for how to organize gender in a society, and they will help us explore the gender constructions of the game universe of World of Warcraft.
Book
Computer role-playing games (CRPGs) are a special genre of computer games that bring the tabletop role-playing experience of games such as Dungeons & Dragons to the computer screen. This genre includes classics such as Ultima and The Bard’s Tale as well as more modern games such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. Written in an engaging style for both the computer game enthusiast and the more casual computer game player, this book explores the history of the genre by telling the stories of the developers, games, and gamers who created it.
Book
In his discussion of power, Foucault establishes a new, interpretation that challenges the typical view of power as a possession held by certain people and groups in a society. Foucault argues that it is the set of force relations that constitute a perpetual struggle among people as well as the strategies that people employ as they attempt to control the behavior of others. This differs from previous views of power in that it sees power as existing everywhere and deriving from everywhere. No person holds power. Rather, power is expressed in relationships between people. Related to this view is Foucault's argument that resistance is inextricably linked with power and also exists everywhere. No single point of power or resistance can be found. Each point at where power is exercised also reveals a point of resistance. Power is also intimately connected with discourse because discourse becomes a mechanism of power. Not only is discourse both an instrument and an effect of power, but discourse can serve both to liberate and oppress.
Chapter
It’s common for news media to relish stories about sex in games in order to generate the attractions of salacious capital. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has been particularly good at soliciting such interest and making its own capital from the lure of sexual transgression. But despite the lurid copy, there has, in fact, been very little explicit sex in video games. This chapter analyses why this is the case. The first half of this chapter maps the conditions on which sex can be present in video games. I divide games from across a range of platforms, genres and era into those where sex is core to gameplay, those where the game itself becomes a mise-en-scene for cybersex and those where sex is not present in direct form but evoked tangentially to solicit desire. The second half of this chapter appraises why it is that explicit sex has been largely absent from the game arena, as distinct from other emergent media. Why should this be so? Are games so welded in the public imagination to childhood that ‘pornographic’ games are rendered too outré? Does ‘doing’ in games preclude the use of hands in other activities? Are games inherently more about promise and deferral than other media? When games are predicated on action and sensation, why is it that sex seems subject to taboo?
Article
Social research yields knowledge which powerfully affects our daily lives. The 'facts' it generates shape not just how we see ourselves and others, but also whether or not we see the existing status quo as normal, just and legitimate. This book examines and questions the methods used by social researchers to produce such knowledge. It focuses chiefly on research into human sexuality and madness. It introduces and critically assesses everything from survey methods to participant observation. It opens up broader philosophical debates about the nature of knowledge, and highlights issues surrounding the ethics and politics of research.
Book
A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture. In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces. Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)—including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online—and offline life—and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play—and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space—what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.
Article
This article elaborates the interactional freedom of friendship and its limits. It shows that friendship is marked by a normative freedom that makes it relatively resistant to reification, especially when compared to erotic love. It argues further, however, that due to friendship's embeddedness in the contemporary gender order, this freedom is limited. Having first outlined the freedom hypothesis, the article goes on to argue that friendship's normative freedom is made possible by its weak 'institutional connectivity'. To clarify that point, the article illustrates friendship's resistance to the reifying tendencies of therapy culture and then draws the gendered boundary of friendship's freedom with reference to the position of heterosexual cross-sex friendship in the heteronormative social imaginary. The article concludes by way of argument for a differentiated approach to friendship and suggests that the analysis of its freedom provides significant clues concerning the work that remains to be done towards equal gender relations.
Article
Extensive attention has been given to understanding the nature of adolescent identity, but little consideration has been given to the everyday social experiences and processes by which the content of teenagers' self-perceptions are formed and remain stable or change within educational settings. Since studies have focused on members of "popular" cliques or "deviant" subcultures, it is important to examine the daily lives of teenagers whose peers have labeled them unpopular "nerds" in schools to document how these adolescents are able to overcome the stigma of this label. Using intensive interviews and observations, this study delineated the impact of school activities, school social structure, and peer culture on the self-perceptions of nerds. The findings indicate that adolescents who were unpopular in middle school and who became involved in high school activities and friendship groups were able to recover by becoming self-confident and reconstructing themselves as "normal" within a changing school social system.
Article
This paper presents a definition and typology of "awareness contexts" and offers a paradigm for their study. The paradigm emphasizes the developmental interaction processes deriving from given awareness contexts, and directs attention to transformations of those contexts. The writings of four sociologists are located within the paradigm with respect to the types of awareness context they assume and the segments of the paradigm they treat. Implications of the paradigm for future research and theory are discussed.
Article
Despite the fact that most players of video games are now adults, the medium continues to shy away from the question of sex. This article considers some of the reasons for this reticence, offering close readings of a number of games in which sex’s absence seems especially significant. Attending to these absences can, I argue, throw light on some prevalent misconceptions regarding the nature of video games and the appeal of play. Debates concerning games and sex reveal that commentators, critics, and game developers alike are, by and large, still too ready to judge games using standards developed in relation to other media forms. In doing so they tend both to ignore games’ unique characteristics and to misrepresent their potential as vehicles for creative expression—a potential suggested by the ways in which the medium has already begun to explore how technology is altering our understanding of sex.
Article
This article discusses knowledge production in game studies by exploring notions of emotion, closeness and (queer) desire in new media ethnography. It uses field notes and experiences from an ethnographic study of the online game World of Warcraft. As opposed to the kind of fieldwork where being, living, and staying in the field is the only option, new media ethnography brings with it the possibility of moving through different locations and bodies to the point where the borders between them may start to blur. The text positions itself within this very uncertainty to investigate its consequences for ways of knowing online game cultures. Drawing on autoethnography, as well as the body of ethnographic work interrogating erotic subjectivity and desire in the field, the discussion makes use of personal experiences - in particular an in-game as well as out-of-the game love affair - as potentially important sources of knowledge. Was it her, regardless of the game? Was it her through the game? Or was it the game “itself ”? The article provides the story of a particular way of being introduced to and of falling for a game, a woman, and the ways in which these two were intensely connected. Set against the backdrop of “the affective turn” in cultural and feminist theory, and in making visible how desire may circulate through game spaces, the article argues for an articulation of desire as intimately related to technology; of desiring technology and of technological, or perhaps technologized desires.
Article
The world of Middle-earth first opened to public view in 1937 when The Hobbit appeared, with its famous first line, echoing its title: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.…” This line brings readers immediately into the presence of a member of one of the most famous invented races in all of English literature, who is about to be swept into a vast and fantastic adventure, carrying readers with him. This particular hobbit, Bilbo, is characterized as a rather quaint, bookish Edwardian Englishman of retiring habits who is fond of good food and good tobacco, of beer and comfortable slippers. He also has literary tendencies; in The Hobbit he is said to be fond of “runes and letters and cunning handwriting, through when he [writes] himself it [is] a bit thin and spidery” (H, III, 95), and by the end of The Lord of the Rings he has developed into a historian and scholar, responsible for large sections of the Red Book of Westmarch (FR, Prologue, 23-24). In this he is like the other inhabitants of the Shire, who are described as inveterate letter-writers (FR, Prologue, 19). Yet the wider world Bilbo is hurried into (without a pocket-handkerchief) is peopled by cultures much more oral in their traditions. Though many references are made to written records, and many characters, including Gandalf, Aragorn and Faramir are undoubtedly scholars of these records, most of the lore and literature mentioned in the story is presented in oral form, as tales or songs. If the hobbits are like country-loving Edwardian Englishmen, then the Rohirrim and the men of Gondor have more about them reminiscent of the Achaean civilization of Homeric Greece, or the Germanic hoards described by Tacitus. This familiar comparison suggests a slightly unusual avenue of enquiry into The Lord of the Rings: tracing in Tolkien’s text linguistic and stylistic patterns characteristic of the ancient tales he drew on in creating Middle-earth, tales like the Iliad and the Elder Edda, produced by ancient heavily oral cultures like those of Homeric Greece or Viking Scandinavia. Just as the epic genre gives his story scope and grandeur, the echo of oral patterns from these ancient tales, this essay will suggest, contributes to the tale’s mythic power. The text, story and characters of The Lord of the Rings reflect respect for oral tradition, and references to living traditions within the world of Middle-earth are common. Sméagol’s grandmother, for example, is described as a matriarch learned in the lore of her people (FR, I, ii, 62).
Article
MFS Modern Fiction Studies 50.4 (2004) 949-979 Negative criticism of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has frequently centered on the charge of childishness—critics such as Edmund Wilson called it "juvenile trash" (55), and Edwin Muir complained that the heroes are in effect boys who have no understanding of women. Catharine Stimpson claims that "[w]hen Tolkien does sidle up to genuine romantic love, sensuality, or sexuality, his style becomes coy and infantile" (20). Found lacking in his representation of women and heterosexual relationships, Tolkien does not satisfy on other counts either. Stimpson declares, "[u]nlike many very good modern writers, he is no homosexual" (20). Although Stimpson recognizes that "the most delicate and tender feelings in Tolkien's writing exist between men, the members of holy fellowships and companies" (19-20), this fact seems to become part of the general resentment and criticism of his inadequate representation of sexuality. For Stimpson, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings—or Tolkien himself, apparently—was neither homosexual nor heterosexual enough, and other critics echo at least the latter of these sentiments, if not both. The questioning of sexuality in Tolkien's story has intensified now that reception of the text has become complicated by the intertexts of the Peter Jackson films, the extended DVD versions of the films along with their commentaries, and the enormous outpouring of fan fiction and fan art that has been posted on the Internet. Some entertainment reporters, who do not always distinguish between the characters in the film or the actors themselves, have enjoyed insinuating that the hobbits are gay. While the screenwriters and the actors explain that the films intend to show the deepest friendship between characters (and the DVD commentaries insist on the real-life fellowship among the actors), many fans have seized on the representation of that fellowship—in film, DVD commentary, book version, or a conflation of all of these—and have rewritten Tolkien's story as an explicitly sexual one through the genre of slash fiction. For a book that is supposed to be devoid of adult sexuality, The Lord of the Rings has always elicited strong reactions focusing on sex. The male intimacy that Tolkien describes, particularly the relationship between Frodo and Sam, often has an unsettling effect on readers whose reactions may range from dissatisfaction to erotic excitement. Neither of these extremes usually recognizes that the Frodo-Sam relationship reflects a historically contingent mode of British male friendship that belongs to the First World War. After examining the possibilities for male intimacy in that historical context, I will look at the contemporary (predominantly British and North American) reception of that friendship in film and fan fiction, where it is evident that the Frodo-Sam relationship continues to challenge categories of gender, sexuality, and male friendship. Part of the difficulty in understanding Tolkien's representation of male friendship may be caused by those readers who assume that Tolkien's medieval idiom marks his book as belonging to a childish or adolescent genre, a throwback to Victorian and Edwardian medievalized stories for young boys. In fact, this connection between medieval literature and young readers predates even the nineteenth century. Ever since the early modern period, when medieval literature had been perceived as falling short of the standards of classical elegance required in polite literature, medieval stories were deemed good enough for children, who were given drastically reduced medieval tales in chapbook form. By the late nineteenth century, however, in the midst of an unprecedented medieval revival, a flourishing children's publishing industry turned to medieval stories as a staple of children's reading and asserted their pedagogical value. Particularly influential was Andrew Lang's championing of the "survivals" theory that children represented a primitive stage in the development of civilized nations; by extension, then, the earliest, primitive literature of a nation, to be found in its medieval texts, was considered naturally suitable for children. By the late Victorian period, numerous school texts, anthologies, periodicals, and historical novels presented heroes of the Middle Ages to boys as role models. Medieval concepts of chivalry even provided the...
Article
While the developments of the GLBT and the leather/BDSM communities have been some what parallel, the pansexual leather/BDSM community has in many ways become the cutting edge in its acceptance of bisexuals. This article traces the parallel development of the GLBT and leather communities from the pre-WWII erato todayand describes the widening of society's paradigm of sexual orientation from unipolar (heterosexuality only) to bipolar (either straight or gay) and the increasing acceptance of alternative sexualities such as BDSM and leathersex. The era following the onset of the AIDS crisis has brought to the leather/BDSM community a pansexual trend toward increasing inclusive-ness, changing it from a predominantlygay-male phenomenonto a community that also includes lesbians, transgendered people, heterosexuals, and bisexuals.
Article
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Article
The popular social networking site Facebook has become a part of millions of people\'s everyday lives. In order to help people navigate the friendships they form and maintain on Facebook there are many websites offering advice about etiquette. This advice, and responses to it, can help reveal how contemporary emotional expression is organised, especially as it relates to friendship. This paper critically adapts the approach of other sociologists such as Norbert Elias, and Cas Wouters who have used etiquette and advice books to explore social changes in emotionality. Using online advice about Facebook etiquette, it is argued that there is uncertainty about the degree of emotional closeness appropriate for friendships in contemporary life, especially where there are status differences. It is difficult to know how to feel and how to behave within the relational complexity of contemporary life. In particular, expanded definitions of friendship form part of this complexity which promotes and requires an \'emotionalization of reflexivity\'.
Conference Paper
Why computer games can be ethical, how players use their ethical values in gameplay, and the implications for game design. Despite the emergence of computer games as a dominant cultural industry (and the accompanying emergence of computer games as the subject of scholarly research), we know little or nothing about the ethics of computer games. Considerations of the morality of computer games seldom go beyond intermittent portrayals of them in the mass media as training devices for teenage serial killers. In this first scholarly exploration of the subject, Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties. Players should not be considered passive amoral creatures; they reflect, relate, and create with ethical minds. The games they play are ethical systems, with rules that create gameworlds with values at play. Drawing on concepts from philosophy and game studies, Sicart proposes a framework for analyzing the ethics of computer games as both designed objects and player experiences. After presenting his core theoretical arguments and offering a general theory for understanding computer game ethics, Sicart offers case studies examining single-player games (using Bioshock as an example), multiplayer games (illustrated by Defcon), and online gameworlds (illustrated by World of Warcraft) from an ethical perspective. He explores issues raised by unethical content in computer games and its possible effect on players and offers a synthesis of design theory and ethics that could be used as both analytical tool and inspiration in the creation of ethical gameplay.
Article
The study of social worlds built by people on computer networks challenges the classical dimensions of sociological research. CMC scholars are prompted to exploit the possibilities offered by new, powerful, and flexible analytic tools for inexpensively collecting, organizing, and exploring digital data. Such tools could be used within a Weberian perspective, to aid in systematic examination of logs and messages taken from the actual life of a virtual community. A proposal can then be made for a longitudinal strategy of research which systematically compares specific aspects of virtual communities over different periods of time and different socio-geographical contexts. The article summarizes a case study on an Italian computer conference, and concludes with a short outline of the new graphical CMC environments and their consequences for the rise of a multimedia cyber-anthropology.
Article
Online survey data were collected from 30,000 users of Massively Multi-User On- line Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) over a three year period to explore users' demographics, motivations, and derived experiences. Not only do MMORPGs ap- peal to a broad age range (Mage 26.57, range 11- 68), but the appeal is strong (on average 22 hours of usage per week) across users of all ages (r -.04). An exploratory factor analysis revealed a five factor model of user motivations— Achievement, Relationship, Immersion, Escapism, and Manipulation—illustrating the multifaceted appeal of these online environments. Male players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Achievement and Manipulation factors, while female players were significantly more likely to be driven by the Relationship factor. Also, the data indicated that users derived meaningful relationships and salient emotional experiences, as well as real-life leadership skills from these virtual environments. MMORPGs are not simply a pastime for teenagers, but a valuable research venue and platform where millions of users interact and collaborate using real-time 3D avatars on a daily basis.
Article
This classic study still provides one of the most acute descriptions available of an often misunderstood subculture: that of fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the patterns of interaction among players—as well as their reasons for playing.
Article
Obra que analiza las propiedades, ventajas, reacciones y significados que ofrece la narrativa interactiva frente a la narrativa lineal para entender cómo las historias median nuestra forma de pensar el mundo.