Abstract
First-person shooters (FPS) are seen as the domain of male hard-core gaming enthusiasts but as half the population of gamers are women, more and more are starting to take up this genre of gaming. However, being dominated by male players, women have a difficult time shaking stereotypical roles and facing up to the more controlling masculine team mates. This paper investigates, gender roles, gendered communication and skill levels to show that women are finding it a tough battle to find their place as a gamer in the FPS community.
Fight like a Girl – Marginalising Women in First Person Shooter Video Game Communities
Women who play first person shooter (FPS) games are considered the atypical rather than the norm. They are not normally welcomed into a squad or considered a valuable player. For this reason, they find it difficult to fit in and find their identity within FPS communities which are traditionally dominated by men. According to (Brand, Todhunter, & Jervis, 2017)around 46% of gamers in Australia are women, this figure is also very similar to America (ESA, 2018) and other western cultures where video game and online access is available. Women make up nearly half the population of the gaming community. While the games they play vary, with a majority playing casual games online, around 20-25% play first-person shooter video games or hard-core video games (Paaßen, Morgenroth, & Stratemeyer, 2017).
For the purposes of this paper we will be mainly looking at games that involve player vs environment and are first-person shooters. Games which fit with these characteristics are Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, Counterstrike and Overwatch. These games can be played on a variety of devices and are all available to play in player vs environment mode and have online multiplayer modes which allow players to work in teams.
Women are subjected to marginalization in these communities for a variety of reasons. Forward we will look at three reasons that women find it hard to fit into these communities and what factors contribute to this. Those reasons include gender roles they are expected to maintain from the offline world, gendered communication issues and being viewed as less valuable team members due to perceived lower skill level and ability. To get a better idea of why gender matters we should first examine what an FPS game is.
First person shooter (FPS) games are categorized as being games where the action is viewed from the point of view of the player’s avatar/character whereas third person shooters are categorized by the action being viewed from behind the player’s avatar/character. While these are two styles of gameplay are distinctly different in terms of where the player views their avatar/character, some gameplay does cross over, and multiplayer modes are available for both styles. FPS games are typically violent in nature. They have an array of weapons and arsenal at the disposal of the player in order to meet their goals. The types of themes and gameplay of a FPS can be stereotypically attributed to boys play and are generally aimed at fulfilling young men’s fantasies (Hayes, 2005). It is interesting to point out here that most game developers are male, with only 21% of the worlds game developers being female (Statistica, 2019). Much of the gaming world is dominated by men developing games for men so this assumption could be why women who play FPS games are an abnormality.
Games of this nature can and do have different levels of participation. Players can play solo/story or multiplayer/squad modes as well as player vs player or player versus environment. Player vs environment is more likely to involve collaborative game play where players work to defeat their environment to achieve the common goal. Player vs player is less collaborative as players are pitted against one another in order to be the last player standing or the first to complete the prescribed goal. Typically, FPS have a military, apocalyptic or science fiction themes which involve meeting a target or completing a mission.
Moreover, the concepts of FPS games are against the stereotypical ideals we hold about women, especially societal views that women themselves observe and comply with in order to conform to in the offline world. There is a gender bias whereby male playable characters are more often suited to the game having better weaponry and armour as well as having bigger roles in the storylines. Hayes (2005) discusses a participant in her research who has trouble finding character to play and eventually chooses a healer over a combatant character only to discover that this was not to her liking and chosen due to her core ideals of women being nurturing healers. Healers are also traditionally a support role character rather than a character who will lead a team to victory such as a commander or knight.
Women in FPS games are generally seen by others as having a support role rather than that of a leadership role becoming a subservient player in the game rather than a teammate who can facilitate ideas and plans in order to take the team to victory. This is explained by Holz Ivory, Fox, Franklin Waddell, and Ivory (2014), “men are dominant and are concerned with agentic goals, women are submissive and are oriented toward communal goals”. This view then squarely puts women in the role of support character while men are dominant, and more goal focused and taking on lead characters. These ideals make it unlikely that women could be taken seriously or even as a contemporary when formulating a game plan as a team. It could make her ideas seem inconsequential and invaluable and eventually being dismissed. Cotes (2017) describes 5 coping strategies employed by women to not only avoid harassment but also to be included and part of the game. One such strategy is developing skills and experience in order to be taken seriously as a contemporary player.
In many of the FPS games the characters themselves are undesirable options for women to pick. Many female characters are scantily clad with exaggerated features and often with much less clothing than their male counterpart characters. They can be very sexualized, thereby again having been developed for the core base of players, young men. In story lines they are often portrayed as victims and are in need of saving. This may in turn force women to choose a male character to represent her over a female character, even though she may not wish to. This can allow for anonymity and a feeling of being just like the other players. However, in multiplayer FPS games there is generally a requirement to talk in order to collaborate and make plans so invariably a female player will eventually give herself up as being female as soon as she enters conversation with others.
Communication is another area which is particularly problematic for female players. Due to gendered communication, it is often mistaken or taken the incorrect way. Holz Ivory et al. (2014), explain that communication through online chat in the FPS will revert to offline stereotypical views we hold of men and women. Men being more dominant are more prone to aggressive and negative comments in order to get others to comply where as women are more encouraging and use positive comments in order to comply. While Cote (2017) observed some women change their communication and play styles to aggressive behaviours which was a coping mechanism employed by female gamers.
In an investigation by Holz Ivory et al. (2014) it was found that women received more friend request and acceptances than their male counterparts. This was attributed to the possibility that “male players seeking self-enhancement and flaunting their sexual prowess, particularly in the company of other male players”. Women may feel uncomfortable with accepting friend requests because it can open them up to harassment and abuse on a personal level rather than in full view of the gaming community.
Easpaig (2018), discusses gender-based harassment of women, during communication, in video game communities. Flaming of female players included, sexual and derogatory comments made about them, there is even websites dedicated to sharing the abusive comments female gamers receive online. Women often will use strategies such as not communicating through voice chat or pretending their chat equipment is faulty, which can hinder collaboration with other players to reach their teams goals. This can severely limit their inclusion into the game as a team. Due to the quick nature of FPS games it is unlikely that players communicate through text chat so not being able to communicate verbally can be problematic to being a valuable player to the team. This is also backed up by Cote (2017) who also discusses that leaving, avoiding and blocking are all coping strategies employed by women gamers in order to combat abusive comments and harassment.
Many teams are reliant on the skills their players have in their team. Some FPS will organise players randomly while other times you may have the option to choose your friends. Regardless of the set up of your team, in order to succeed in FPS a certain level of skill is required which requires many replays of the game itself in order to practice and women play for less time than men. It has been suggested that women have less time than men to spend on video games due to other practicalities of their lives. In other words they do not choose not to invest their time but rather are forced not to because of circumstance (Paaßen et al., 2017). In a three-year study conducted by Jenson and Castell (2011) they found that many young girls had little exposure to video game consoles unless they had and father, uncle, brother or other male figure who had exposed them to these. At the beginning of the study many girls were unable to even set up a console to play games and stated that other members of the family such as their brothers dominated the console usage. By the end of the study the girls were much more confident in using the video game consoles and even enjoyed playing games with other players.
FPS games are in general a game in which hard-core gamers are associated with and players have a lot of experience playing. In their paper Hopp and Fisher (2017) found that as FPS games require substantial skill in order to win, men are more likely to not let lack of skill deter them from the game. On the other hand, women are much more likely to see this as a problem to their advancement and enjoyment of the game. This could be possibly because, according to Holz Ivory et al. (2014) women are more likely to be seen as weaker players regardless of their skill level by other players in the game. This is partly due to the assumption that men spend more time playing video games and are more likely to be hard core gamers. Obviously, more time playing video games equates to more skill. So, women who are playing for less time and being associated as “casual gamers” are seen as having limited skill regardless if this is untrue or not.
The implications of this perceived lack of skill and less frequent playing time can mean that women are again perceived as not being valuable to the team and are avoided or even abused or harassed. Or worse still the team could completely ostracise her and complete the game without her involvement at all. Bad experiences with teams could lead to women slipping out of playing this genre entirely which Cote (2017) also discusses as a coping strategy.
In conclusion, we have identified three issues which make women feel marginalised in the FPS environment and community. Firstly, women are less likely to be seen as dominant players capable of leading their teams to victory. This is due in part to the stereotypical gender roles that are prevailing from the offline world and being observed to in the online world. They are seen as having more support roles rather than being valuable equal members of the team, as well as being portrayed that way in the form of avatars and characters. Secondly, women find it difficult to communicate due to communication gender differences and being the victims of harassment, such as flaming which are also stereotypical norms from the offline world. Lastly, because women are seen as having less skill due to being associated with casual gaming rather than hard core gaming they are often considered as not an asset to their team. Women are marginalised in this type of gaming community due to factors mainly relating to stereotypical views of what a gamer of this genre should look and act like. By not conforming women are more often than not harassed and pushed out of this gaming environment or it forces them to incorporate elaborate strategies to try to conform to what society perceives as the norm just to try and fit in. This makes for a very uncomfortable experience within this gaming genre but until stereotypical norms change, and more women are perceived as hard-core gamers with definite skill it is unlikely that women will identify as part of this genre’s gamers.
References
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Great topic choice! Love the title too! While I was reading it I was thinking about some of what Maria Frostling-Henningsson writes in her paper ‘First-Person Shooter Games as a Way of Connecting to People: ‘‘Brothers in Blood’’’ (her title certainly reinforces your point, even though she interviews women gamers she still names it’s Brothers in Blood). Frostling-Henningsson talks a lot about reputation in game and the face that such traits as generosity, cooperation and the ability to share are valued and help improve a characters reputation. These ‘softer’ traits are often associated with women so it’s interesting that despite often having these characteristics, women, by sole fact that they are women, are discriminated against and marginalised within these FPS communities. From the perspective of gamers valuing cooperation, on the surface it would appear that they should then value the support roles more as this is the essence of cooperation. It really talks to societal gender stereotypes that women are often drawn to these roles and they are continually undervalued.
The other thing it had me wondering was what women get out of being a part of these communities since they have to deal with so much discrimination, marginalisation and trolling. Frostling-Henningsson talks about the games being a place of refuge, an escape from the real world. IT would be interesting to see if this was true for women gamers too and if so, it’s distressing to think that these online communities which can be very toxic to women are better than the alternative for some women!
PS Healers FTW!
Hi Emily,
Thanks for your reply. Interesting thought on what women get out of playing these games if they have to endure discrimination. Because if playing games is meant to be fun then that is certainly not a fun environment to be a part of.
I myself am not a huge fan of FPS games but I have played them and games like them over my many years as a gamer. I think I have been mostly turned away from them because I find them hard to master (I can’t remember all the buttons!) and I think it is a put off because I wasn’t able to master it immediately and felt I would be ridiculed for it rather than supported. Many other games I play are able to increase in difficulty, however many FPS games I think require a fair amount of skill to play, which comes with lots of practice and possibly lots of stinging remarks. Neither of which I think I have time for.
However, my Sister-in-law is a fantastic COD player and plays all the time. She prefers to play with strangers in random battles and has realised that sometimes remaining silent isn’t the best way to foster team work. But definitely my brother and sister-in-law are sometimes treated differently in game. My sister-in-law admits that sometimes she can be cast as the damsel in distress with other players helping her whereas my brother doesn’t get the same treatment.
My sister-in-law also admits to sometimes becoming aggressive (like the strategy mentioned in my paper) in some instances but says this is because she can get caught up in the game. She says she keeps playing because she is chasing a win and it doesn’t matter too much what other players are doing or saying she plays for the love of the game and the high of the win.
That comment about women being cast as a damsel in distress is something I’ve also seen quite a lot of while playing online.
This is a great topic of choice.
I have, unfortunately, had personal dealings within communities that choose not to take female gamers seriously. I remember sitting next to an ex-girlfriend who was playing online when I was in highschool. She wasn’t using the microphone to communicate and I asked why, she replied, “I’ll show you why” . She put on the microphone and spoke in the game lobby before the match was launched and was instantly met with jeers, harassment, insults and misogynistic remarks.
I was pretty taken aback by this as I’d never experienced it myself in any games I’d played. The example may be anecdotal but I fear plenty more woman will know this experience all too well.
I was wondering if you have any thoughts regarding the gamer gate controversy from 2014?
Wow David. That’s a powerful story. What is the gamer gate controversy of 2014?
Hi Lisa,
If you read that article I posted in my reply to David it discusses Gamergate. But simply it was a harassment campaign of some female game developers. The first developer targeted was Zoë Quinn and her ex boyfriend posted a very long post basically suggesting that a positive reviews for her game Depression Quest were because she was sleeping with the journalist Nathan Grayson. It later was revealed that Zoë Quinn was never in a relationship with Nathan Grayson at the time her game was released and that Nathan Grayson never reviewed the game either. By the time her ex boyfriend retracted the statements and corrected the post Zoë Quinn had already been subject in all sorts of harrasment and abuse which lead her to having to move out of her home due to doxing. The other two women associated with Gamergate are Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian. Between them the women have also documented hundreds of threats and harassment directed to them. Gamergate has become a symbol of misogyny and sexism within gaming culture hiding behind the cause of keeping journalists ethical in the gaming industry while protecting the notion of the “gamer” identity.
Thanks for the summary MsPettit. I’ll give the article a read. Given there are so few female game developers in that industry is so awful to learn that they are targeted for threats and harassment. I feel like this happens a lot when women enter a mostly male dominated industry, like the defence force or construction. Thanks for sharing.
It was quite a shock to myself as i’d been playing games online for year and had never heard that before. even when in the games lobby and woman were present.
I think the biggest difference though is gaming with strangers vs gaming with friends. Most of the woman i encountered while playing seemed as though they were playing with friends and knew some of the others in the lobby with us. My partner at the time used to often play by herself, which produced the result that I saw.
Hi David,
Thanks for your comment and sharing your experience.
I did read an interesting paper on #GamerGate in my research for this paper but chose not to include it as while it did re-enforce some of my points I felt it was more directed at female game developers rather than female gamers and it is now used as a symbol of the fight against unethical journalism in gaming. But it does then raise a few important questions:
-If women game developers are able to be treated this way will they eventually leave the field and it be dominated by male developers? Therefore they are under-represented even though statistically women make up half the video game playing population.
-If there are very few women game developers, then will there still be games women can play and feel safe doing so?
The interesting thing about Gamergate like a lot of things on the internet once something is out there it is very hard to change what people think even if it is removed from the internet. In all forms of media once it is published it is very hard to retract it and have people forget about it.
Does the internet and indeed gaming on the internet give people a place where they feel they don’t need to be censored and can engage in antisocial, sexist, racist and abhorrent behaviour because of a level of anonymity? Then does this eventually spill out into the real world as it did with Gamergate?
Gray. K., Buyukozturk. B. & Hill Z. (2017) Blurring the boundaries: Using Gamergate to examine “real” and symbolic violence against women in contemporary gaming culture. Sociology Compass. 11(3), https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12458
The two points you have made here are quite interesting, especially given the lack of representation. According to Deloitte (2017) the few women who are in ICT make up 28% of all ICT occupations in Australia, with a large number being in logistics or sales, and not managerial roles.
With regards to your first point I do think we’re at a tipping point. Given the access to Web 2.0 technologies to publicise issues such as sexism in ICT, challenging outdated ideas such as women not being able be successful in ICT fields has become easier, especially when finding solidarity with other women. To give one example, a friend of mine runs an indie game company and uses Facebook to organise promotional material and interact with testers. On one post a random troll told her that her company was doomed to fail due to her leadership potential as a woman and because (essentially), business and ICT is a man’s world. The very public nature of Facebook led to him being publicly denounced and her reputation bolstered, as well as a positive outlook for other aspiring female game designers and artists who were inspired by the support shown on the post. While not every outcome will be positive, I believe that we’re seeing enough support in the industry now that change will follow.
With regards to your second point I hope that enough people (women and men) feel the need to challenge the idea of women being limited in ICT, especially in game development, so that games are the safe space they’re intended to be. To give one example of growth in a limited area (disclaimer to lecturers who may be reading, these incidents didn’t happen at Curtin or RMIT), some friends of mine were developing a platformer which required mixed voice talent for the two main characters. In order to record the necessary dialogue actors were asked to meet up in one of the labs which were often frequented by other students. The male actor had no worries, but the female actor was the subject of many lewd jokes which almost led to the actor leaving the process altogether, while the offenders weren’t punished.
By comparison, two years later at the same university, a male lecturer made some comments to female students about their lack of ability due to them being women, and with some emailing back and forth he was the subject of formal proceedings. This time around students were a lot more supportive (men and women), which is a good sign of progress when people develop enough to change their behaviours.
With regards to anonymity, I examined this in my paper and how it promotes toxicity online. While I didn’t focus on sexism, I did look at why people choose behaviours online they wouldn’t otherwise. Lapidot-Lefler & Barak found that given the option of anonymity, participants choose antisocial behaviour as they feel disinhibited by the lack of accountability. In relation to GamerGate, it is unlikely that any of the men who made horrendous comments to Zoë Quinn or Anita Sarkeesian on Twitter etc. would do so in person due to the social and legal ramifications, and yet given the freedom online felt comfortable in doing so. Given enough time it’s possible that online behaviour can influence offline behaviour.
O’Dea, S., & Richter, F. (n.d.). Infographic: Women make up less than 1/3 of Australian ICT workforce. Retrieved May 9, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/chart/15261/women-in-australian-ict-workforce/
Lapidot-Lefler, N., & Barak, A. (2012). Effects of anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eyecontact on toxic online disinhibition. Computers in human behaviour, 28(2), 434-443.
Hi David, I remember the exact same comment from my partner when I asked her about why she doesn’t use her microphone – the fear of a bad experience. Between that, various comments aimed at women I’ve played with as well as the doxxing of one particular woman, one can see why the idea of a level playing field mentioned by Oldenburg can be easily challenged given the level of toxicity directed at women.
Hi Melissa,
This paper is fantastic! A lot of points you’ve raised resonate with elements I found within my own paper as well as personal experiences.
Firstly is the overarching theme of women being able to perform expressions of themselves via online gaming. Your point about inclusion and game developers being female highlights the rather misogynistic problems that plague not only online gaming but computing as a profession. Technology fields in general are, for some reason, considered to be something that only men should be interested in, but as a recent ABC article found from a study at UNSW, women are just as good at STEM fields as men, but many are apparently discouraged by male peers or comments about them being in the wrong place, a theme which is highlighted in the FPS genre.
There’s also the point you made about the outdated notion that women can’t enjoy FPS titles due to the views that they don’t have the time or are too nurturing to be competitive, something that I have witnessed first hand with Rainbow Six Siege. One of my friends that I have played with avoided using her microphone like the plague, but at one point decided to communicate during a particularly close match. In the next match we were paired up with members of the team we had just versed, who, knowing that we had a woman on the team, verbally accused her of hacking or being lucky when she proceeded to get an ace against the enemy team. In another match with a random female team mate who was brave enough to use her microphone initially, strategies suggested by her were ignored for more brazen (and ultimately stupid) tactics, while her choice of a more appropriate character for the level and team-based decisions led to her being told to “stay behind everyone else and watch a door”; simply act as support rather than a driving force. Funnily enough there is less ego when team working with a mixed team than an all male team, which generally provides for a more interesting game.
In terms of something that I identified within my own paper, Oldenburg suggests that online play is characterised by a level playing field. While I found that to not be the case in general regarding competitive play, your paper highlights that women in general are faced with an even more unbalanced field from the beginning, which doesn’t help in welcoming the 46% of the potential population you mentioned.
In terms of communications, your points about avoiding talking to team mates or changing the way women are included in discussions is spot on. My partner refuses to use her microphone out of fear of a bad experience, while other women I have played with have had to adopt an aggressive stance to get a word in. In one particular Counter-Strike Source server an admin revealed that she was a woman, and was immediately followed about and made the subject of many derogatory remarks, not to mention countless distasteful wall sprays. Buzzfeed interviewed a number of women in 2016 about their experiences of online gaming, which agrees with many of your points about toxic communications, ranging from violently deranged, bizarrely sexual or just downright derogatory, and issues like Gamer Gate didn’t exactly include women either.
Once again, awesome paper!
Am. (2018, September 26). Girls just as good at STEM subjects as boys, study shows. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-26/girls-just-as-good-at-stem-subjects-unsw-study-shows/10307266
Crisell, H. (2016, February 17). What Female Gamers Want You To Know About Being Abused Online. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/hattiecrisell/what-female-gamers-want-you-to-know-about-online-abuse
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Hi Joel,
Thanks so much for your comments and interesting points you brought up.
I have been involved in CoderDojo WA and often run coding clubs for both boys and girls but one of the main reasons why I think I continue to do so is to show young girls that it is ok to like playing video games and even more alright if you can make your own!
I am a Librarian and found it interesting when another Librarian brought up the idea to me that boys can and do read but as adults do we encourage them to do so? The idea was that with all the other things we encourage boys to do like sport, ride bikes, build cubbies, play outside, we don’t give them enough time to just be still and sit and read, it is expected that they go outside and be physical not sit and do nothing.
I think this is similar to girls and video games. We expect them to be lesser skilled and and men needing to help them with the cords and to make the game work, when they are very capable but they are encouraged not to do so. They shouldn’t be playing video games they should be reading or learning to cook or play hairdresser.
Unfortunately, I think we have a long way to go to remove ingrained ideas and stereotypes that society places on boys and girls and we need role models for these kids to show them they can like and do things outside of their gender norms and they can definitely succeed and enjoy it.
There is also a small percentage of women playing FPS which is also problematic, in that it makes them the abnormal rather than the normal which often leads to othering rather than inclusivity. There also may be intrinsic differences to the way men and women play and what they seek to get out of a FPS game which is something I didn’t really explore in my paper. I think that would be interesting to look at also. Hopefully as more women take up weapons we may see a victory with everyone playing together, respecting each other and escaping the real world, having fun enjoying a game together.
I like the sound of CoderDojo, given the success of introducing kids (especially girls) to ICT at a young age (as shown in places in South Korea where something like 96% of the population, men and women, are ICT literate).
The encouragement angle is definitely something worth challenging! Odd that girls and boys are still forced to fit some gender narrative, even if they show an interest in something else. By comparison whenever something relating to AV comes up with the TV or speakers I automatically hand the cords over to my partner, as I simply have no idea, which I think was due to her being encouraged growing up to fiddle around with AV equipment, while I spent most of my time reading. There is definitely still a way to go though with changing the situation, education being key.
Exactly! That abnormality issue. It’s odd how there’s still two worlds: “Cool, you’re a guy gamer” vs. “Oh, you’re a girl gamer?”, and how that presents issues.
* Really interesting article, and personal to me as I enjoyed FPS’s as a child but never had the internet speeds (dial-up only!) to participate. Plus I hated losing, but that was my problem, not the other players. On that note, did you come across any gamers that were under 18 playing online? (I realise that there are guards against this online, but I am sure there are plenty out there anyway!)?
*
With the popularity of platforms like Twitch, do you think more women will be encouraged to display their talents online openly? For example, a quick look in Twitch showed several female players that choose to cast games or their own games on a fairly regular basis:
https://www.twitch.tv/slinkmeister/videos, https://www.twitch.tv/stellarmeesh, https://www.twitch.tv/odetted, https://www.twitch.tv/hosu0904/videos, https://www.twitch.tv/riley/videos (casting AOE2 or Overwatch)
What is your opinion on the success/shortcomings of Twitch in terms of female successes online?
Hi Ineke,
Thanks for your comments and glad to hear you were a FPS gamer.
One of the references in my paper is a study conducted in Canada of children and gendering of video games but it was not FPS and I think the ratings on many of these games might preclude them from this type of study (even though like you, I know they are out there). But interesting you should bring that up as I have children who sometimes come up against trolling and generally bad behaviour of other players. I think there could be another paper just on them and their experiences of cyber bullying in games.
Yes there are lots more women gamers streaming now, however I think many of the top rated video game streamers are male with a few female. I did check out some of the Twitch streamers you listed and I did notice a couple had some interesting comments in their feeds, which they addressed and called out. Also one streamer in particular I noticed was sort of making sure her make up was right and her hair was right etc. I don’t find this same preening going on as much with male channels. So as someone asked me…what do you think people are following when they watch a female Twitch channel. It would be interesting to see if then it elicits more unwanted attention from male players or do they respect her more as a player? This would definitely be something that would be great to look into with more detail. Especially to also find out about their female audience and their influence on them.
The preening you noted points back to the gendered stereotype where women are expected to present themselves on their looks rather than their ability. I too would be interested in hearing why viewers are watching her channel, as well as why she feels the need to conform to the stereotype.
Hi Tracey,
Great point I think it would be interesting for this to be investigated further and it is a shame that women are judged on their looks rather than their ability sometimes. However, I think this is true of many groups of people in society who aren’t given a fair go because of the bias and stereotypes we are exposed to.
I agree, and I think many of the challenges that women face in the gaming sphere are the same across all social media. There’s a long way to go before we are a truely unified society.
I feel your pain Ineke, I had awful Internet growing up and so anything remotely fast-paced was out of the question.
In terms of women being able to display their talents openly, I think the Internet hasn’t quite matured yet as a medium. From my own personal experiences (especially in FPS games), there is very much a “girls can’t play games except Angry Birds” mentality in a lot of communities, and this is something that gets carried over to platforms such as Twitch. As Tracey and Melissa point out, women are often judged based on their looks rather than on their gameplay.
Nakandala et al. actually examines this in quite a lot of detail. They found that popular female channels attract a lot of comments that objectify women, while popular male channels attract comments related to the game at hand. Interestingly, heavily moderated female channels tended to be less popular . This suggests that in order for a female channel to be successful, some allowance of objectification is expected.
More generally, I have found in my personal experiences that the Internet is, in some ways, still very much a man’s world. Women who enter various gaming communities fall under the male gaze, and, once revealing that they are female, are subjected to the excruciating process of “What are you doing here, you don’t belong here”, and are made the subjects of suspicion and derision, as gaming has been seen for a long time as a “boy’s activity”. Going further, I suspect that this may have something to do with STEM fields being traditionally unwelcoming towards women, even today. Thankfully we’re starting to see successful challenges to objectification, and female personalities on YouTube and Twitch that are actually about gaming content, and not about how women present themselves.
Nakandala, S. C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Su, N. M., & Ahn, Y. Y. (2017, May). Gendered conversation in a social game-streaming platform. In Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.
I haven’t event read this whole essay yet and already I am enraged that women gamers have come up with COPING STRATEGIES to deal with the discrimination they face when playing online games in teams with men! My husband plays online games and I’ve NEVER heard him talk about any sort of discrimination he has felt. No wonder…he is a male. Just wanted to pop my outrage here first before I read the rest of your essay. Which is brilliant so far by the way! Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for your comments and it is quite outrageous I think also.
I do know a few women gamers who don’t always have bad experiences and also don’t let the bad experiences turn them off of playing. Women are but one group that are marginalised but as they make up a large part of the gaming population then the gaming industry needs to look at ways to include them and make the gaming environments free from negative behaviours. But how can we achieve this? I don’t know the answer to that but I do think game developers are realising this and are looking at ways to include and stamp out negative behaviour. But much more needs to be done to keep women in the game.
Very true. I also think essays like yours bring this issue to people who otherwise don’t know about what goes on in this space. Thanks for your work!
Definitely outrageous, given that most men need not fear online multiplayer inherently, and yet women are encouraged to be cautious given the number of potentially bad experiences that could occur.
Hi Melissa,
Very interesting read! I haven’t ever played any FPS games myself, however my partner is right in amongst the C.O.D craze. He’s discussed with me a few times the ways in which he thinks the newer games have taken both a step forward and a step backward with their new female character choices. Although they may not be as basic and sexualised as women in older games, they’ve now instead been portrayed on the opposite end of the scale as quite masculine, perhaps to fit in with the “combat” nature of the game.
He and I both feel that this creates a number of new issues; firstly by making assumptions about the type of women that would be interested in playing the game but also by limiting the options available in a way that makes it almost easier for girls to just play under the face of a male character. Moving forward what do you think would better change attitudes towards women playing online FPS games? Perhaps more diverse representations of women within the games themselves?
Hi Jayden,
Thanks for your comments and interesting insights.
Lara Croft is a great example of how women characters in video games have changed over the years and yes I totally agree that they have possibly pushed too far and find some characters very masculine. I think in a game like Rainbow Six Siege I really like some of the combatant female characters as they look like women soldiers just like the men only with less muscle. I mean surely if Barbie can change her iconic unrealistic female stereotypical look then video games should have no problem.
Maybe the solution is to be able to build your characters (it works for The Sims) that was everyone could choose what they would like to look like however it would need to stay within the parameters of the game. I doubt I would want an elf running around in a COD game when I prefer it be realistic. This is already happening with Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite (while not technically a FPS) and others where they allow players to make mirco transactions in exchange for skins and cosmetic items to change your characters looks. However this adds up to a very expensive game just to reflect your identity in the skins you buy.
Maybe the answer is allowing the gaming communities more say in what items are made available. Listening to the gaming community when games are being developed and allowing mods of their games by players (it works for Minecraft). This gives you a much better idea of what the community want. This has to include minority voices as well to ensure that everyone feels included and a part of the community.
I do like the Lara Croft example. The earlier titles (and the movies starring Angelina Jolie) were widely unrealistic, as who could believe that someone who runs and guns their way through tombs would dress like that? In the later games Lara is wearing clothes relevant to the situation, lending more to the design of the characters in terms of realism.
Siege is another good example of good character design, as everyone wears roughly what you’d expect in combat situations, save for Frost’s bathing cap. I do agree though that developers need to be more inclusive with character designs and voices on the whole though, as some games are still quite limited.
Yes I definitely agree about the costumes or skins of characters in games showing exactly who the game is intended player base would be. I also think Siege is fantastic in it’s skin range for women characters most really do look the part and I don’t feel too many are overly masculinised. Hopefully trailblazers like that can set the industry standards and help to create more diversity in game.
Hi Jayden,
Your point about pushing women to not be sexualised is quite interesting, especially given games like Gears of War, which felt like they made women so masculine in a lot of aspects that they felt very much the same as the male characters, which was a little disappointing given strong female voice talent like Jennifer Hale. Mortal Kombat 11 made some better decisions with female character design by comparison, opting to desexualise characters such as Sonya Blade and Jade without making them too masculine.
What a great easy, and subsequently a great discussion. The sexual harassment and discrimination in the gaming industry as a whole is quite horrible. Prior to starting a family I worked as a store manager in a nation wide video game store (you can guess, I won’t name them). As one of only three female store managers in the whole country, I often found myself fighting against the feeling of a boys club. I eventually left when the harassment in my store and the management team got the better of me. So I’m not at all surprised to hear that this same behaviour actually goes on inside the games themselves. The design of the characters has a lot to answer to I think, and I think your comments earlier about potentially allowing players to choose their character attributes in the same manner as in The Sims is a good suggestion. Not playing games myself, do they allow for different skin tones as well? I imagine that there are a range of different minority groups feeling equally as excluded from the gaming community, and its an area that developers need to pay more attention to as more people become involved in the gaming community and it no longer looks like a white boys club!
Hi Tracey,
Thanks for your comments and so sorry to hear of your experience, but it isn’t the only time I have heard similar stories.
Many games do allow for different skin tones and gender unless in story mode where you may have a central character. It is a little frustrating though that many of these games have found a way to make money from this need to change your identity in game by making cosmetic parts (eg different costumes, items and skins) cost real world money. Meaning if you want to look a certain way it will cost you extra real work money to do so unless you are happy with only the base game cosmetic parts which are very general and not reflective of minority groups. I am sure the video game industry does research into the best ways to make money from people who play their games so forcing you to pay to create identity is one way to do it.
Hi MS
I am not a gamer, though, to be fair I have played a few FPS games in the past. It was a bonding tactic with my now 22-year-old son. I was quite wary of the type of games he played in his teen years and with good reason. I was unable to dedicate the time and effort it would take to get to a similar skill level as my son. At one point in time, he loved FPS games such as Halo, a military science-fiction genre that apparently had good storylines. We had to set special boundaries with him due to the many hours that he would spend playing in order to improve his skills. Today, he rarely plays FPS games, and instead chooses to watch t.v. series and movies based on his much-loved sci-fi theme.
In your paper, you addressed coping strategies that female players would use in an effort to avoid being marginalised. Much like Lisa, I was outraged! Game developers, I believe, are the root cause of much of this harassment and misogynistic behaviour in gaming culture because of the sexualised and overall demeaning female characters/roles created in FPS games. Whilst I am happy to hear and read that there have been improvements in this area of game development, inclusivity should have been very much a part of the process from the outset.
A great conversation evolving from an insightful paper, MS!
Hi KBips,
Thanks for reading my paper.
When the majority of game developers are male, the games they won’t have a strong female voice and therefore they have to imagine what women might want in a game. Hopefully more women will starting moving into STEM fields and start tipping the scales to make it a much more even playing field (pardon the pun).
Hi great topic choice. Being a gamer and female at that, I have never actually tried a first person shooter game as they don’t appeal to me and nor do sports games, however I know many females would probably be interested in playing these games without feeling like they will be attacked for being female.
I shared this link on another post but I thought I would share it here too. In your paper you said 20-25 per cent of FPS players are female. From Jan 2019, Statistica have a more recent result in their graph that was showing what platforms people played on whether they were male or female. The result there was 7% were women and 93% were male who played FPS games.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/694381/gamer-share-world-genre-and-gender/
Sorry just re read that statistic, 20-20 percent made up FPS players – Well that statistca result shows that men are dominating with their 93% being FPS. Hopefully in the future, FPS may attract more female players and they will feel comfortable to join in and play. 🙂
Yes statistics in general of women in gaming are reflective of a male dominated industry creating the games that are played by almost as many women as men. But of course if the industry that creates the games is dominated by men then will they develop games that incorporate women gamers in that genre? In the case of FPS this is possibly not the case. I think more women in the industry of game creation and development will help to incorporate more playability and inclusion for women in not just this but other genre’s as well.
Great topic, and a great read also.
I have not thought about the gender differences in gaming, and i would like to thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have enjoyed all genres of games, and i agree that i have witnessed female players suffer harassment in all genres. Personally, i have noticed that in FPS games it does seem to be worse than other games, this could be from the different age groups associated to that game.
In my research of eSports and Streaming services, i did take notice that female eSports professionals earn significantly less than male professionals. As eSports is growing, the amount of female professional teams and players is increasing rapidly. I am excited to see how these statistics will change for all genres of games in the future.
https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/female-players has some great eSports earning statistics i found intriguing.
Hi Mathew,
Thanks for reading my paper.
I think you are correct in thinking FPS seem to have more abuse and harassment toward female players. This is possibly because of the nature of the game and the competitiveness, and also the demographic it is aimed at.
Those earning statistics are still quite good (for a profession) but would be better if there was some equality in gaming in general. Hopefully as more women take up gaming it will get better.