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Online Games and Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia
Abstract
Organized as a rough chronology, this entry covers the topics of racism, sexism, and homophobia within online games, starting with multi-user dungeons (MUDs) in the 1990s and moving through to the contemporaneous indie games movement with a predominant Western focus. This issue is framed as a political and discursive struggle between the dominant culture and the diversification of a medium designed, in many ways, as a bastion of normative White masculine heteronormativity in the face of eroding and indeterminate identity at the interface. Key topics include experimentation with and freedom from identity, stereotypes and intentional design, griefing (abusive game behavior) and trolling as discursive policing, and progressive game design.
... Although disinhibition does not always lead to adverse outcomes, there are many well-known problem behaviors online, such as abuse, stalking, and trolling (e.g., Kowert, 2020;Mantilla, 2015;Paananen & Reichl, 2019;Suler & Phillips, 1998). Higgin (2015) further argued that technological advances in gaming interactions, coinciding with gaming population diversification, have led to "an explosion of offensive behavior and language which had previously been relatively isolated, contained, or hidden" (p. 4). ...
... 248), and the impact of this hegemony extends to other marginalized groups and their intersections (e.g., Gray, 2018). Higgin (2015) characterized the "architecture of online gaming" as "vicious enforcement of White heterosexual and masculine normativity fueled by technologized anonymity" (p. 2). ...
Online video game communities can provide a sense of belonging and support for marginalized people, while at the same time, can be rife with prejudice and discrimination. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of both positive and negative comments about sexual orientation and gender identity during online gaming, and to test the hypothesis that LGBTQ+ people witness or experience more prejudice than do heterosexual and cisgender persons. An online survey, distributed on social media sites and a psychology subject pool, included rating scales and open-ended questions on game-related conversations. Respondents (N = 185) provided negative examples made by others more frequently than positive ones and attributed serious comments to themselves versus jokes and offhand comments to others. Across all respondent gender identities, the targets of the negative comments by others were almost always LGBTQ+ persons. These results bolster critiques of online gaming environments as hostile to members of marginalized groups.
... Geek masculinity describes a technologically-fused form of masculine subjectivity that requires, for its coherence, the maintenance of gendered stereotypes about male technological skill and female ineptitude (Murray, 1993). A need to protect the male exclusivity and control of technology has been evident in geek spaces and activities from the "machismo" of 1980s video arcades (Kaplan, 1983) to the male dominance of online communities of the 1990s (Kendall, 2002) and the "griefing" and insults that characterize the online gameplay in the new millennia (Higgin, 2015). While sometimes described as a subordinate or relatively powerless masculine formation (Connell, 1995), geek masculinity has come to play a major role in the design of new technologies, the formation of online communicative cultures and the perpetration of gendered online abuse The following section examines how the construction of masculine identities and relations grounded in technological control has drawn geek masculinity into close affinity with organized misogyny as a method for the perpetuation of gendered technological hegemony. ...
... geek-dominated spaces and subcultures. Geek efforts to preserve a sense of control over their preferred technological domains have included online threats and insults against women and other perceived "outsiders", including racially and sexually diverse groups (Higgin, 2015), sexual harassment in technology industries and fan cultures (Salter and Blodgett, 2012), and, as this paper will argue, the formation of alliances with other reactionary male identity movements, notably anti-feminist men's rights activists and white supremacists . These efforts to maintain gendered technological hegemony have been met with widespread condemnation but they are privileged, in significant ways, by the instantiation of norms and assumptions within a range of technologies which makes those technologies differentially available as instruments of gendered abuse and control. ...
In 2014, an orchestrated campaign of online abuse known as Gamergate overtook the global video game industry, calling unprecedented attention to the scope of gendered harassment on social media. Using Gamergate as an example, this paper argues that explanations of online abuse that focus on its cultural or technological dimensions fail to capture the mediating role of online platforms in rationalizing harassment and reputational damage. The concept of technological rationality pulls into focus the shared logics that shape platform design and administration as well as practices of online abuse. Proposed solutions to online abuse that fail to address technological rationality will ultimately leave in place the sociotechnical arrangements that make such abuse possible and impactful.
... Eine weitere Studie konnte neben diskriminierenden Dimensionen auch sexistische und homophobe Stereotype über die gesamte Zeit, in der Onlinespiele (seit den 1990ern) existieren, dokumentieren. Derartige Spiele werden dabei geradezu als Bastion weißer männlicher Heteronormativität bezeichnet (Higgin 2015). In einer etwas älteren quantitativen Untersuchung von Repräsentationen von Geschlecht und Ethnizität bzw. ...
... (Zenn 2018;Osborn 2017.) And more specifically for the whi-te, heterosexual, 20-30-year-old men who find guns and being a hero appealing (Higgin 2015)? If there is no understanding of why and how a selected target group choose the games they want to play, are we truly able to create games that audiences find appealing? ...
The Baltic Sea Food research project aims at researching, analyzing and creating business solutions for coordinating local food production to regional food distributors and ultimately to regional consumers. The purpose of the project is to identify and pilot new business models that are appropriate in 10 target countries surrounding the Baltic Sea Region. The process involves multiple surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups, and pilot spaces to identify the current state and the potential for regional development of new supplier networks and local coordination. We aim to create new business models which are systematically piloted and evaluated over the three-year project. The goal is to create an electronic platform to coordinate and disseminate market information in a way to aggregate local activities into a more sustainable business ecosystem.
We are just completing phase one of the project of gathering the various perspectives of the critical stakeholders. This paper focuses on the initial findings of the first phase of the project. The Baltic Sea Food project is co-financed by Interreg Baltic Sea Region Program and the EU.
... (Zenn 2018;Osborn 2017.) And more specifically for the whi-te, heterosexual, 20-30-year-old men who find guns and being a hero appealing (Higgin 2015)? If there is no understanding of why and how a selected target group choose the games they want to play, are we truly able to create games that audiences find appealing? ...
The Baltic Sea Food research project aims at researching, analyzing and creating business solutions for coordinating local food production to regional food distributors and ultimately to regional consumers. The purpose of the project is to identify and pilot new business models that are appropriate in 10 target countries surrounding the Baltic Sea Region. The process involves multiple surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups, and pilot spaces to identify the current state and the potential for regional development of new supplier networks and local coordination. We aim to create new business models which are systematically piloted and evaluated over the three-year project. The goal is to create an electronic platform to coordinate and disseminate market information in a way to aggregate local activities into a more sustainable business ecosystem.
We are just completing phase one of the project of gathering the various perspectives of the critical stakeholders. This paper focuses on the initial findings of the first phase of the project. The Baltic Sea Food project is co-financed by Interreg Baltic Sea Region Program and the EU.
... The violated woman embodies the fears of globalization and shifting gender relations, and consequently, it unites different Islamophobic and White supremacist ideologies transnationally. However, this hate of feminism and the feminine is not only the currency of the Islamophobic bloggers but is a feature in online cultures more widely (see, for example, Higgin, 2015). ...
This article addresses the digital culture of Islamophobic bloggers, focusing on the online circulation of a forensic photograph of a Swedish woman who was assaulted. The analysis shows how through appropriating this image, the bloggers created a unifying, imagined whiteness in the transnational Islamophobic network. The empirical analysis clarifies how this one image migrated and transformed in the blogosphere and legitimated the recurrent discursive trope of “Muslim rape.” This image became a subcultural “memory freeze frame” crystallizing the contemporary Islamophobic ideologies articulated in connection to race, ethnicity, nation, gender, and sexuality. The viral circulation of this image constructed a cultural, gendered, and racial Swedish whiteness, imagined to have become victimized by both Islam and liberal feminism, and therefore requiring global protection.
Sweden, migrants, hate, race, whiteness, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, post truth
The purpose of this article is to illustrate how minority gamers, particularly African-American males, are subject to the label of deviant within the virtual gaming community of Xbox Live. They are labeled deviant based on the stigma of their physical identity – blackness, through a process of linguistic profiling. By employing virtual ethnography, the author identifies a process that leads to racism based on how the black gamer sounds within the space. The act of racism emerges through a process involving questioning, provoking, instigating, and ultimately racism. Many black gamers have normalized these racist experiences and have accepted the label of deviant placed upon their bodies.
A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. This innovation enabled the results to be analyzed in proportion to the games that were actually played by the public, and thus allowed the first statements able to be generalized about the content of popular video games. The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly. Overall, the results are similar to those found in television research. The implications for identity, cognitive models, cultivation and game research are discussed.
In this paper, we introduce the concept of a "Hegemony of Play," to critique the way in which a complex layering of technological, commercial and cultural power structures have dominated the development of the digital game industry over the past 35 years, creating an entrenched status quo which ignores the needs and desires of "minority" players such as women and "non-gamers," Who in fact represent the majority of the population. Drawing from the history of pre-digital games, we demonstrate that these practices have "narrowed the playing field," and contrary to conventional wisdom, have actually hindered, rather than boosted, its commercial success. We reject the inevitability of these power structures, and urge those in game studies to "step up to the plate" and take a more pro-active stance in questioning and critiquing the status of the Hegemony of Play.
The violent video game literature has previously not extended to the domain of violence against women. The current investigation tested the effects of exposure to sex-typed video game characters versus images of professional men and women on judgments and attitudes supporting aggression against women. Results showed experimental effects of short-term exposure to stereotypical media content on sexual harassment judgments but not on rape myth acceptance. A significant interaction indicated that men exposed to stereotypical content made judgments that were more tolerant of a real-life instance of sexual harassment compared to controls. Long-term exposure to video game violence was correlated with greater tolerance of sexual harassment and greater rape myth acceptance. This data contributes to our understanding of mass media’s role in socialization that supports violence against women.
Discusses the history of the zinester videogame scene and advises the reader on how best to make their own videogames.
In 2008, ten million people were playing the massive multiplayer role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW); a fantasy-based virtual landscape where players bridge real-life personas with digital identity. However, the construction of sexuality within this gaming environment has created an oppressive atmosphere for individuals who do not adhere to a heteronormative lifestyle. In this essay, I undress the bottom-up and top-down structures that are regulating an environment that has no use for a constructed sexual binary and yet has one strictly imbedded in it. This analysis utilizes discourse analysis to analyze 400 messages posted to a WoW discussion board regarding the topic of “LGBTQ players and the WOW Community” in order to queer the sexuality presented in this space. This essay is further supplemented with my own experience playing the game and with an analysis of the games structural elements.
This article explores the issue of gender and computer games by looking at the growing population of women in massive multiplayer online role-playing environments (MMORPGs). It explores what are traditionally seen as masculine spaces and seeks to understand the variety of reasons women might participate. Through ethnographic and interview data, the themes of social interaction, mastery and status, team participation, and exploration are considered as compelling activities female gamers are engaging in online. Given that these online games often include a component of fighting, the issue of violence is discussed. Rather than seeing this group of players as an anomaly, this article explores how focusing on the pleasures women derive from gaming might lend a more complex understanding of both gender and computer games. Finally, a consideration of how design is affecting this emerging genre is explored.
From introduction: "Daddy is saying `Holy moly!' to his computer again!" "Those words have become a family code for the way my virtual community has infiltrated our real world. My seven-year-old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather in his computer. Sometimes he talks to them, even if nobody else can see them. And she knows that these invisible friends sometimes show up in the flesh, materializing from the next block or the other side of the planet. "Since the summer of 1985, for an average of two hours a day, seven days a week, I've been plugging my personal computer into my telephone and making contact with the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link)--a computer conferencing system that enables people around the world to carry on public conversations and exchange private electronic mail (e-mail). The idea of a community accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold to me at first, but I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them. I care about these people I met through my computer, and I care deeply about the future of the medium that enables us to assemble. "I'm not alone in this emotional attachment to an apparently bloodless technological ritual. Millions of people on every continent also participate in the computer-mediated social groups known as virtual communities, and this population is growing fast. Finding the WELL was like discovering a cozy little world that had been flourishing without me, hidden within the walls of my house; an entire cast of characters welcomed me to the troupe with great merriment as soon as I found the secret door. Like others who fell into the WELL, I soon discovered that I was audience, performer, and scriptwriter, along with my companions, in an ongoing improvisation. A full-scale subculture was growing on the other side of my telephone jack, and they invited me to help create something new."
Immersed in technology
- C. Bailey
Gaming globally: Production, play, and place
- N. Huntemann
- B. Aslinger
High tech blackface – race, sports video games and becoming the other
- D. J. Leonard