My Life As A Female Gamer

Each of the readings this week highlighted the impact that video games have. As illustrated by the articles, games can be a valuable tool for educational instruction, a social experiment, and a way to get revenge on your ex (while also unexpectedly waging a violent online war).

Now prepare yourself for my video game rant…

So while I did not own a console until I was 16 (my mom preferred that I read books instead), I used my time wisely as a child to play as many online games as possible (from Scooby Doo “Pirate Ship of Fools” to the Facebook game “Petville” and anything in between).

The “Good”

One series of video games I will always hold dear are my Nancy Drew video games (https://www.herinteractive.com/). They hold true to Gee’s principles and truly helped me with my problem solving. No longer was I reading about Nancy Drew solving crimes, but I became Nancy Drew and had to solve her mysteries. Though there are aids to assist you throughout the game, the games are pretty tough to crack (knowing the ending to all the books does not help you in the games).

According to Gee’s first principle, “identity,” gamers “will live, learn, and act through their commitment to their new identity” (34). This is crucial to Nancy Drew games; each day concludes with looking at the clock and “going to sleep” only to wake up the next morning. You are also allowed to contact her/your friends, Bess and George, to help when you get stuck. You literally become Nancy Drew in the game. When it comes to the fourth principle, “risk-taking”, you can find many instances of this while playing Nancy Drew games. For example, in Secrets Can Kill there is a moment towards the end of the game where you have to take the gun from the bad guy…while I would probably never attempt to do this in real life…I had to do it multiple times in the game and get over my fear of getting shot at. There are also tons of “Well Ordered Problems” in these games. I would often be stuck on a puzzle of some sort for hours and while the puzzles do not make sense to you at that moment, they end up being a key to solving another problem or links to other ideas throughout the game. “System thinking” is also really important. There are many ways to “die” in a Nancy Drew game and you will die if you make the “wrong” choices (ie. Going outside with raging wolves outside the door, climbing into a sinking boat, etc). So you are continuously forced to make decisions, not knowing if you might die – which I always found to be anxiety provoking.

I also feel the games fit in with the “Just in time” principal because you can save your spot and return to that saved session, or start a whole new session. You can also keep saving multiple sessions of gameplay without losing your spot. I would often play by myself and save my session, and then open another session with my brother, who was around 5 or 6 at the time, who would “assist” me in playing the game. According to the principle of “Explore, Think Laterally, Rethink Goals,” players are encouraged to “explore thoroughly before moving on; to think laterally, not just linearly; and to use such exploration and lateral thinking to reconceive one’s goals from time to time” (36). I think this principle is the core of the Nancy Drew games. Every time you play, you cannot just go through the game blindly; you MUST use problem solving skills in order to get through each puzzle. You cannot proceed to the next “day” of gameplay until you complete a certain task. This can be both infuriating to the player, but also teaches patience and critical thinking.

Side note: another similar set of games are the Agatha Christie video games (And Then There Were None is fantastic!)

Before I get into the next section, I would just like to say that it was actually quite refreshing to read Nardi’s My Life As A Night Elf because all the gamer terminology came flooding back to me – “guild,” “PVP,” “pwn”… Ah, those were the days!

And the “Bad”

This is a sample profile; this is NOT my profile.

The MMORPG FallenSword, and other similar games, kept me up until ungodly hours of the night for the entirety of high school. I think the game has gotten more advanced now (I haven’t played in years) – but from what I can tell, the graphics look way more updated. Looking back, I consider FallenSword a not so great game because women really are not portrayed in a positive way (most likely, if you come across a female opponent in FallenSword she is a witch or succubus…but I guess that is the nature of the game). Anyway, after reading Nardi’s work, it is clear that FallenSword is similar to WoW in many ways; especially that they both use guilds and focus on raids and PvP gameplay. Yet, I would argue that this game is not as advanced as WoW and I don’t have the statistics to prove it, but I don’t think the players are as diverse. [Unfortunately, I never had the chance to play WoW, because as we all know…academics come first!]

And because I am also an anime fanatic, my avatar was always one of my favorite female anime characters. This was a HUGE problem for other players. Any time I joined a guild or communicated with other players, I had to defend my gender (“why yes…I am female”). In a PvP match (and mostly when I won), I would receive an angry private message. Male players do not like losing to a girl! Sometimes I wondered if I should just play along and say that I was just pretending to a girl. To be honest, any game I had to play with another human being -most of the games I played were RPGs- my gender was contested (Nardi brings this up in her chapter on “Gender”). But I guess I cannot blame the virtual world for this problem because when I asked my male friends at school if they played MMORPGs, they would not believe that I actually played. But maybe there was disbelief on their part because I did not seem to fit the “lonely male nerd gamer” stereotype.

And…I don’t know if I was under a rock this whole time, but I did not realize Anita Sarkeesian (from my post last week) was one of the primary victims of GamerGate. I guess it makes sense that any hint of feminism would send GamerGate supporters into a frenzy. Sarkeesian has some video game recommendations listed on her site here. One of her recommendations is Portal (such a good game!)

So I apologize for the long post, but I’ve been so looking forward to talking about video games since I haven’t really had the chance to speak about them in an academic setting…ever.

Citations:

Questions:

  1. While technology is primarily associated with the male, Anischchenkova writes, “Cyberspace can operate as a tool of empowerment and a space of liberation where one can overcome the restricting boundaries of one’s sociocultural and domestic environment by crossing over into virtual reality” (183). Though she is referring to autoblography, are there ways that video games can be a tool of empowerment?
  2. While I loved Gee’s principles, I feel that many of the principles can apply to games like FallenSword. How can we modify or add to Gee’s principles to account for respecting others and wading through toxic masculinity?
  3. A bit unrelated to my post, but Jason’s article describes Gjoni as “cerebral.” This type of description made me think of Crake in the Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Why are “cerebral” men celebrated even when they cause mayhem and destruction in others’ lives?
  4. In this article, Parkin writes “Strong criticism is neither an act of betrayal toward a work nor the first step toward censorship; it leads to illumination and improvement.” Parkin argues that many supporters of GamerGate believe that Sarkeesian and others are going to help censor the internet. I am anti-censorship, but that does not mean we should use the internet to violate other people’s lives (especially when the claims are untrue). Do you think there are other ways we can use technology to educate gamers without making them feel that feminists are trying to destroy games? Is it even possible to find mutual ground with misogynistic gamers?

5 Responses

  1. Cynthia.Davidson@stonybrook.edu March 5, 2018 at 4:01 pm |

    Caterina, those are all great questions, and we will probably spend a lot of time discussing them in class! Gee never does address ethical issues of bad behaviors or issues of sexism, etc. in games–not because he doesn’t care about them (I think he does) but because he wanted to step over that quagmire while determining the educational values of a typical “good” or high-level game (ie, one that fosters the principles he determined–which is a bit circular, although I think we can see his point). In part, I think that this is because even before he wrote his landmark text about game learning in 2007, writers were focusing on the downside of gaming addiction and he wanted to demonstrate the richness to be had in that particular system of activities, and to point out how schools were failing to engage in the same way. That’s probably pretty obvious, but he does not engage very much with the issues that lead to Gamergate and so on.

    For similar reason, perhaps, Nardi focuses on the positive aspects of her experiences or maybe she just got in with a really great group of people. The social aspects of a game like WoW are pretty complex, given the millions who play, and sometimes even baffling. My experience now is fairly predictable, due to changes in my experience level (I started playing in 2010), into how quick I am with sniffing out toxicity and pressing the ignore button (yeah, I’m one of those people–I block the toxic), and with the emotional boundaries I set up for myself while playing; also, guild stability and a stable relationship with my guild. Nardi seems to have been writing at a stage where she was very drawn into the social world of her guild, which befits her role as an ethnographer too. That was what I was attempting to emulate a bit when I started playing, and it was rewarding but also I got burned (something that I described in the presentation I shared with you on “cyborg friendship”) by a “catfishing” guildmate who absolutely fit the description of toxic in some very creative ways. I think it’s also worth mentioning that, like Gee points out, gamers are all different ages, all different types of people from adolescents to retired folks, and while I am still sensitive to some kinds of harassment online, I think that younger people–and younger women in particular–are more vulnerable to bs like people shouting “girls don’t play wow” or dirty words in trade chat. Also, I always play with an authenticator! That being said, a lot of what people say and do online in WoW is terribly funny to me, even some of the politically incorrect stuff. And the pro-Trump banter has died off a lot in the last few months, I’ve noticed. Interesting….? At least on my server.

    Gjoni strikes me as “cerebral” in a certain way–I wouldn’t presume to analyze him in any “professional” way as I am not a psychoanalyst, but he certainly is a complicated type of personality. There’s a type of intellect that tends to paint itself into a corner of the cosmos with only one escape route, one that does the most damage. He is certainly hurting and he hurts in return. Those who celebrate him are like him as I can’t imagine anyone else celebrating what he has done. There have always been men who feel that love is a battlefield and that women need to be conquered and tamed–or disposed of if that isn’t possible–and this seems no different to me.

    I work with Not Your Mama’s Gamer (on their editorial board) and I think that they play a great role in using a combination of design, informal blogging, memes, streaming, and more formal essays to promote education about women and games and women who game. They encourage dialogue and humor, but call out sexism in games on a regular basis. To answer your question about talking with misogynistic gamers, in public, perhaps they won’t be reached and/or one can’t know their motives in speaking up, but public answers are not always only for the asker. I think you keep in mind that online audiences are wide and you never know who will hear you. So it is always good to respond with respect and precision when you can, even if it is hard…and no one is perfect.

    Reply
  2. Jon Heggestad March 6, 2018 at 5:07 am |

    I was *also* living under a rock if it makes you feel any better. I knew of GamerGate peripherally, but “Game of Fear” article for this week was very enlightening (and upsetting).

    I appreciate this gamer narrative you’ve constructed. It’s made me rethink my claims about never having been much of a gamer. When I think about gaming, I tend to think of the games that Nardi mentions and not the kinds that you’ve mentioned above (that are clearly aimed for a more juvenile audience, at least with your first examples of your early experiences with computer games). Even Gee mentions Pajama Sam, I suppose, and I was a true devotee to those games at one point in a past life.

    Reply
  3. Caitlin Duffy March 6, 2018 at 6:18 pm |

    Hi, Caterina!

    I’ll try answering your third question, because it’s something I think about a lot (especially as I’m currently researching American Psycho… I think Bateman fits this description well). I also loved your connection to Oryx and Crake (I’m starting to notice an Atwood trend here… 🙂 ).

    I hate to keep bringing Kill All Normies up (it’s really not great), but in it, Nagle describes the rise of the psychotic yet smart male character in our pop culture. We can see this rise through the popularity of characters like the Joker, Tyler Durden, and Negan. Nagle connects their popularity to the male gamer/alt-right desire for non-PC culture, which they view as being possible only through their liberation from women. These psychotic characters are free from any domestic ties, allowing them complete masculine freedom. Maybe this has something to do with the admiration of “cerebral” yet destructive personalities? I also thought the way Gjoni was described was oddly celebratory.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Skip to toolbar