Electronic Video Gaming

Video gaming is a popular activity in contemporary society. Over 25 million gaming devices and more than 335 million computer and video games have been sold in the United Kingdom in the last ten years. The combined video and computer game sales in the United States was over $10.5 billion in 2009, and 67 percent of American households own some form of video game entertainment hardware. Gaming involves a variety of technologies, spaces, and practices of consumption that are increasingly social. Early research on gaming was driven by concerns about the consequences of exposure to violent game content and the encouragement of aggressive behavior. This focus has expanded in recent years, and gaming has been increasingly researched from a number of different theoretical and thematic perspectives by academics from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., psychology, sociology, film and cultural studies, computing). Despite the broadening of academic interest in this area, there has been a lack of research on the meanings and motivations associated with gaming, its place within everyday practices of consumption, and its relation to identity. This is consistent with research on media consumption and ethnographies of technology that highlights the importance of understanding technologies through the value and meaning associated with their consumption within everyday communities and practices. Recent research has begun to examine the situated aspects of playing video games within everyday contexts, their facilitation of social cohesion between peer groups, and its relationship with other leisure practices.

An important focus of such research has been the gendered consumption and social practices associated with video gaming. Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter claim that the lack of female participation and representation in gaming is consistent with broader gender dynamics of leisure and consumption, and the reinforcement and reproduction of established gender roles. Researchers such as Marsha Kinder have identified female representations within game content as sexualized and stereotypical, contributing to the perception that gaming embodies masculine activities and culture, and excluding females through the promotion of the idea of female technological inferiority and the gendering of technological artifacts.

[Page 512]However, Bryce and Rutter have criticized such approaches for taking a passive view of the meanings constructed around representations of masculinity and femininity in games, assuming a direct causal relationship between female (and male) representations and their consumption. This contrasts with research examining gender differences in the productive consumption of texts and computer games that demonstrates possibilities for a variety of gendered readings.

Research has also examined the gender dynamics of gaming in public and private, as well as domestic and online, spaces. Constraints and possibilities for female participation in these contexts have been examined by Angela McRobbie and by Bryce and Rutter, who suggest that they are highly gendered. Domestic gaming spaces and technologies, for example, show evidence of males assuming the role of “expert,” undermining female skills and controlling access. Online gaming environments provide opportunities to reduce constraints on female participation consistent with female participation in other leisure activities previously perceived to be “male” (e.g., football/soccer). This can be understood within a context of resistance to the constraints placed on female leisure in contemporary society and can potentially alter the gender dynamics of gaming.

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