1) The document summarizes several readings and discussions from an online game studies book club, focusing on representations of gender and race in games. 2) It includes summaries and excerpts from papers on the construction of gamer identity, experiences of female players in online games, and empowering gender representations in game design. 3) It also provides context and a quote from a paper on Gamergate and how the movement has come to see opponents as part of a "Cultural Marxist" conspiracy seeking to control gaming media.

1. #Metagame Book Club
Game Studies Week 1: “The Gamer Identity +
Representations of Gender and Race in Games”
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
Fall 2014
@autnes
http://bit.ly/gamestudies6

2. Watch the Live Webcast To This Lecture!

3. Texts in Focus
The Gamer Identity
1. "On Not Becoming Gamers: Moving Beyond the Constructed
Audience" by Adrienne Shaw (2013)
2. "Attention Whore! Perception of Female Players Who Identify
Themselves as Women in the Communities of MMOs" by Ivelise
Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando (2013)
Representations of Gender and Race in Games
3. "We Are Two Strong Women: Designing Empowerment in a Pervasive
Game" by Jon Back and Annika Waern (2013)
Gamergate
4. "We Will Force Gaming to be Free: On Gamergate and the Licence to
Inflict Suffering" by Katherine Cross (2014)

4. Games about Gender
● "MAN UP" by Jay X Townsend
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/man-up/25343/
● "Obtain the Maidenhood" by declansupermega
http://gamejolt.com/games/platformer/obtain-the-
maidenanhood/25489/
● "Garry the Genderless" by Jani "JNyknn" Nykänen
http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/garry-the-genderless/25193/
● "Pure Again" by Kevin McGowan
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/167918054/pure%20again.html
● "Empathy Machine" by Merritt Kopas
http://mkopas.net/files/empathymachine.html
● "Dys4ia" by Anna Anthropy
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/591565

5. Guiding Questions
Q. How do the games assigned address (or not address) some of the
concerns mentioned by gender studies scholars?
Q. Can the games change one's perspective on gender issues? If yes, then
how so?
Q. Assuming that you are not limited to assign controversial literature in
your classes, would you assign these types of games to your students? Why
or why not?

6. A Close Reading of
"On Not Becoming Gamers: Moving Beyond the Constructed
Audience" by Adrienne Shaw (2013)

7. “We might relate the experience of gamer identity to the notion of
interpellation. In his canonical text, “The Ideological State Apparatus,” Louis
Althusser uses the metaphor of being hailed by a police officer and
asserts that it is in the turning that a person realizes she/he is the “you”
being called on, and thus becomes interpellated by, or a subject of, the
state apparatus (1998 [1971], p. 185)”
-- Adrienne Shaw
Louis Althusser’s Concept of Interpellation
and the Gamer Identity

8. Critical Theories on Identity
“Identity as a gamer, like all identities, exists as a conversation between
the individual and social, structural discourses. . . . Many contemporary
theorists have argued that identity exists between rather than within
individuals (see for example Appiah, 2005; Gilroy, 2004; Hall, 1996). There is
empirical evidence, moreover, that identities are experienced at the nexus of
the individual and the social (for two recent examples see Gray, 2009;
Valentine, 2007). We are not, as earlier structuralist theorists argued,
wholly shaped by external forces; that everything we do is inherently
social, does not mean that social structures determine our actions.”
-- Adrienne Shaw

9. Identification versus Identity
“Hall argues that a focus on identification is more politically useful than a
focus on identity, as it allows for the self-definition of the individual rather
than on defining them from the outside. In this article I focus on how people
identify as gamers, rather than gamers as a fan group or industry
construction. Identification does not entail audiences creating their own
“identities,” but rather working within a context in which particular
identities are being articulated. That is not to say that identity is wholly self-
defined, but rather researchers can look at how structures shape identities
through individuals’ reflexive articulations of their identities.”
-- Adrienne Shaw

10. Judith Butler on Performance of Gender
“People are not simply playing parts in different social contexts. Rather, for
Butler the performance of gender is like much more like a speech act (Austin,
1962). The performance of gender is what constitutes gender. . . . [W]e can
think of gamer identity to as something that is actively performed by
those that claim it.”
“Butler (2009) has proposed that precarity works hand in hand with
performativity. Precarity refers to the ways in which one must perform
identities in an intelligible way, in a way that can be read by others, in
order to be recognized.”
-- Adrienne Shaw

11. Gamer Identity and Consumerism
“Taylor argues, for instance, that “play is
situational and reliant not simply on
abstract rules but also on social
networks, attitudes, or events in one’s
non-game life, technological abilities or
limits, structural affordances or limits,
local cultures, and personal
understandings of leisure” (2006, p.
156). That is to say, if performance of
gamer identity is predicated on
material consumption and expertise,
those who do not have access to the
necessary resources cannot claim
gamer status.” -- Adrienne Shaw

12. Gamer Identity as Cultural Capital
“In addition to making sense of how gaming subcultural capital is deployed,
what performance allows for, as Butler describes it, is a way to conceive of
the self, individual, and identity as results of momentary, fraught and
complex intersections between the social and the individual. The relevance
of particular identities in particular social interactions helps make sense
of how people come to identify with categories like gamer. Gamer
identity, moreover, is highly contextual. In her ethnography of Everquest,
Taylor found that her identity as a player on one server became relevant
during a ‘real life’ Everquest convention (2006, p. 30). This shared space made
her identity as a specific kind of gamer relevant.”
-- Adrienne Shaw

13. Gamer Identity as Social Capital
“In addition to cultural capital, we can also think of gamer identity as a form
of social capital, both in a positive and negative sense. Positively speaking,
Devon said: “Whenever I make friends I’m always excited if somebody else
plays video games.” Having a social circle defined by gaming was part of
what defined the gamer identities of Zahriel and Ephram as well. . . . When
he stopped playing the game, Malcolm felt he had lost his gamer social
capital. When asked if he identifies as a gamer Malcolm said “I don’t really
have any gaming cred, as it were, anymore. So yeah, I would still check that
box, but that’s just because I would still sort of think of myself as that. But I
don’t think a gamer would consider me a gamer.”
-- Adrienne Shaw

14. Need for Representation in Games
“Cultural production studies argue that the lack of representation of
marginalized groups is attributable to the fact that the gamer market, at
least in Europe and the North America, is constructed as primarily young,
heterosexual, white and male (Kerr, 2006). Part of the limited construction
of gamer as an identity has often been tied to the way members of
marginalized groups are represented in games. This, in turn, is tied to the way
game makers have often been critiquing games assuming that their
audiences are “like” the game designers. In making games for people “like
them” AAA designers make games for a heterosexual, white, male
audience (following from industry statistics anyway).”
-- Adrienne Shaw

15. Problem of Categorizing Gamer Identity
“The construction of the video game audience may affect the representation
of groups in games. It also shapes, though it does not determine, who
identifies a gamer. Demands for representation cannot simply focus on
making the category of gamer more expansive, however; attempts thus
far have simply resulted in the further marginalization of marginalized
audiences. Female gamers, for example, have been appealed to as “girl
gamers.” Gay gamers are marketed to via advertisements placed in gay
magazines (Sliwinski, 2006). As I have discussed elsewhere, explored targeted
marketing defines marginalized groups as particular kinds of gamers who are
discursively distinct from an implied mainstream gaming audience (Shaw,
2012a).”
-- Adrienne Shaw

16. Conclusions
“I argue that the goal should be to change how audiences think about their
relationship with this medium, in part by rejecting “gamer” as the dominant
mode of understanding playing games. More than making games “for
everyone” as the casual revolution as done (Juul, 2009), in some ways I think
we need to work harder to make more people “for games” and in turn feel
invested in them as cultural texts.”
“I assert that critical perspectives, such as feminist and queer theory, offer
an approach to video games that can focus more attention on the lived
experiences of those who engage with these games outside the dominant
audience construction — indeed outside of identifying as gamers — and make
an argument for representation that takes seriously those perspectives.”
-- Adrienne Shaw

17. A Close Reading of
"Attention Whore! Perception of Female Players Who Identify
Themselves as Women in the Communities of MMOs" by Ivelise
Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando (2013)

18. Research on Female Players in MMOGs
“More women are playing MMOGs. Some authors indicate that women are
attracted by its affordances which allow women to hide or emphasize their
gender, and/or socialize and play without a defined goal. Taylor argued that
the increasing number of women playing MMOGs is because these games
provide a sense of community and social structure. Taylor also has claimed
that socialization tools such as chat and online forums are particularly favored
by women, giving them multiple sites of pleasure when playing MMOGs.”
-- Ivelise Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando

19. Hiding Gender Behind Avatars
“For female gamers, the anonymity of using an
avatar provides the opportunity to compete
against male opponents. The game allows [one]
to choose an avatar that can be male or female,
but people cannot be sure who is controlling it,
what can reduce stereotypical behavior towards
female gamers. Although women can hide their
gender, revealing to be a woman in an online
game community can be disheartening: female
players who choose to reveal their gender are
often doubted or belittled (Wiseheart, 2009).”
-- Ivelise Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando

20. Surprise at Presence of Female Players
“MMOGs are still perceived as a male environment, and the presence of female
players seems to cause surprise or even shock male players. Among common
reactions, there is the disbelief that there is actually a woman behind the
avatar, which may happen because there is gender swapping. Yee et al.
(2011) states that, among man, 55.3% had a character of the female gender,
and 29.3% had a female character as their primary character, while among
women 18.5% had at least one male character, and only 7.5% had a male
character as the primary one.”
-- Ivelise Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando

21. Aggression Toward Female Players
“Another possible reaction to the discovery that the person behind the avatar
in a game is female is verbal aggression, since many players seem to think that
the gaming community is no place for woman. “Attention whore!” is a
sentence many women hear when they claim to be woman. Many of them
have stories about being verbally abused, for example, “woman don’t know
how to play,” “go back to the kitchen,” “you shouldn’t be here,” and/or sexual
advances and threats.”
“This “trash-talking” may discourage many females from playing, although
some women have no problem embracing it. Many female players therefore
hide their gender, sometimes using male characters.”
-- Ivelise Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando

22. Myth of Female Players as “Fake Gamers”
“Another myth about female players of MMOGs is the belief that women
aren’t there to play, but to find a boyfriend. Many believe that girls cannot
enjoy playing these games, and they are “Fake Gamers”. Male players
assume that they only play to spend time with a male significant other
(Wiseheart, 2009). Schiano et al. (2011) found that, among Europe, Taiwan and
the United States of America the amount of female players in the MMORPG
World of Warcraft matches or exceeds 24% of the playing population. Most
identified themselves as casual or moderate players (7% at Europe and 9% at
the USA) and were more likely than [men] to play with a spouse or partner
(72% vs. 31% at the USA).”
-- Ivelise Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando

23. Norm of Female Players Being Courted
“Being courted is one of the ways women are treated differently than man as
Yee (2008) pointed out. Courting in gaming often includes giving items to
female players or offering help even when unrequested, a behavior some
authors call benevolent sexism, a counterpart to hostile sexism. Hall and
Canterberry show that many women believe that men who practice benevolent
sexism are not likely to also practice hostile sexism. But the quote of subject
109 [from research of Brazilian female players in MMOGs] may suggest this
idea wrong, for, when she denies them the attention they may feel entitled to,
all the free items and sweet approaches seem to be replaced by aggressive
behavior.”
-- Ivelise Fortim and Carolina de Moura Grando

24. A Close Reading of
"We Are Two Strong Women: Designing Empowerment in a Pervasive
Game" by Jon Back and Annika Waern (2013)

25. Problems of Male-Coded Game Design
“Let us start by the observation that the gaming community remains strongly
male-coded. Most recently, this has been visible in the discussion on
harassment against women online (such as the violent reaction to the ‘Tropes
vs Women in Video Games’ initiative). These structures lead to male-coded
games being the norm; games that are designed to attract women gamers
remain the exception. . . . This male-coded design norm is something that
every gender-aware designer must take into account, and both research-driven
and commercial games have struggled to find strategies to do so.”
-- Jon Back and Annika Waern

26. Problems of “Pink” and “Purple” Designs
“[Pink design] uses themes and graphically ‘cute’ designs deliberately aimed
towards girls. Examples are games about shopping or being a fashion model. . .
. Feminist researchers have criticised pink and purple game design on
similar grounds, in that they install a limited picture of what it means to be
a girl (Cassell 2002). Both genres originate in viewing being a girl as the
defining property of their players.” -- Jon Back and Annika Waern

27. Problems of “Gender Agnostic” Design
“[Gender Agnostic] are games where the player can choose to play a male
or female character, and non-player characters can be female or male in
any role irrespective of gender. The ‘gender agnostic’ approach is well
illustrated by World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004), in which story characters can
be male or female irrespective of their function or role in the fictional society.
The same goes for the player, who is free to select the gender of his or her
character completely independently of all other character functions and
abilities.”
“But the values ingrained in gender-agnostic games are still typically male-
coded. . . . Bergstrom et al (2012) show how the ’Warrior’ and ’Priest’ character
types in World of Warcraft are perceived as male and female-gendered, by
players and developers alike.”
-- Jon Back and Annika Waern

28. A Close Reading of
"We Will Force Gaming to be Free: On Gamergate and the Licence to
Inflict Suffering" by Katherine Cross (2014)

29. Katherine Cross’ Perspective on GamerGate
“In their quest to obliterate ideological foes a paranoid tendency quickly
emerged: the movement increasingly confounded “corruption” with “social
justice warrior” and the two concepts have now all but fully merged in their
eyes. Big Sister was watching them, after all. Many now openly tar anyone who
disagrees with them as the mouthpiece of a vast “Cultural Marxist” conspiracy
and believe the only way to the paradise of “ethical journalism” is through
expelling such people from the ranks of the gaming press and, indeed, from
any and all media that comments on gaming.”
-- Katherine Cross

30. Origin of the Term, Social Justice Warriors
(SJW)
“The phrase ‘social justice warrior’ was originally coined on Tumblr to describe
a dangerous tendency among some leftist activists to aggressively and
angrily pursue political goals according to strict ideological codes, often to
the detriment of others, with no clear collective gain, but significant
personal aggrandizement. It is a tendency that I and many others have been
critiquing and thinking about long before GamerGate.”
-- Katherine Cross

31. Origin of GamerGate
“This, indeed, was GamerGate’s true origin: the false accusation against
developer Zoe Quinn that she had slept with a Kotaku journalist for favorable
coverage. Though that accusation fell apart, Quinn is still likened to no less
than Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as the spark to GamerGate’s tinder.”
“[A]s a feminist academic and writer, I was quickly targeted as well—were all,
as a class, deemed guilty by association: guilty until proven innocent, with no
proof ever seeming to satisfy the braying mobs. Suddenly our names began to
appear in spider charts, sinful stars in senseless constellations of conspiracy.”
-- Katherine Cross

32. GamerGate: Ethics are for Paradise?
“It becomes hollow rhetoric that ultimately bows before the terrible logic of
revolutionary thinking: ethics are for paradise, in the here and now we must
fight til our final breath with everything we have, no matter the wreckage
we may leave behind us. What Hannah Arendt called “the coercive force of
logicality” takes hold, proceeding from bad premises to terrible
conclusions to worse actions.”
-- Katherine Cross

33. Hannah Arendt on Revolution
“‘The search for motives,’ writes Hannah Arendt in On Revolution, ‘the demand
that everybody display in public his innermost motivation… transforms all
actors into hypocrites; the moment the display of motives begins, hypocrisy
begins to poison all human relations.’ What she means by this is that the
inquisitorial impulse to unmask motives and hypocrisy will see a liar behind
every perceived mask; humans are imperfect and self-contradictory, but
under the klieg lights of paranoid suspicion, such human frailty and
normality is tantamount to a confession.”
-- Katherine Cross

34. Politics of Gamergate 1
“All such movements committed to the rule of the mob, whether rightist or
leftist, are always self-consciously political. GamerGate’s dogma, by
contrast, held that it was both apolitical and committed to purging politics
from game reviews. This terrible delusion made it even harder for them to
examine their own ethics. GamerGate is neoliberalism’s distorted reflection of
leftist terror: the lust for revolution, to be the Rough Rider “good guys” saving
the world by force if necessary, but with none of the obligations or thought
inherent to political reasoning.”
-- Katherine Cross

35. Politics of Gamergate 2
“GamerGate has set itself up as a gaggle of angry “consumers” who have been
insufficiently catered to by game journalism. Again and again, they return to an
angry refrain about a clutch of articles about the slow death of the “gamer”
identity that were written in the wake of Zoe Quinn’s recent harassment (the
first wave of the GamerGate assault, though by no means her first experience
with hate mobs). Those articles, they say, were the final straw from a gaming
press that “disrespected” them and stereotyped them as sexists and
harassers.”
-- Katherine Cross

36. Politics of Gamergate 3
“The ideology-of-no-ideology inherent to “consumer revolts” acts as an
additional layer of insulation against self-reflection, making it even easier to
avoid conducting moral inventories of one’s behaviour.”
“Like the very “SJWs” they claim to despise, GamerGaters simply wagered that
the noble goal of their cause was worth the price of any and all suffering they
might cause.”
-- Katherine Cross

37. Conclusion
“A self-organising movement for “ethics” was the answer, and all sacrifices—
including purging the industry of dissenting voices—would be worth it. Even if
their own outrage was commodified, canned by the richest precincts of the
gaming industry and then sold back to them in the form of the same old
gunmetal grey games and prepackaged sense of identity ad nauseam, it was
better than reading feminist writers. A war against them had to be fought and
won.
On the doorway to paradise appeared the words: Agendas Are Unethical.”
-- Katherine Cross

38. Lecture By:
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
Philosophy, Rhetoric, Game Studies
@autnes
Writings & Webinars
Access Slides: http://bit.ly/gamestudies6