Intersecting Vulnerabilities in Game Culture: The Effects of Inequities and Stereotype Threat on Player Confidence, Identification and Persistence Across Gender and Race Gabriela T. Richard University of Pennsylvania 3700 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA 215-573-7823
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ABSTRACT Recent high profile events have brought issues of diversity and gaming into the fore, though not necessarily in the ways that those most likely to be underrepresented or vulnerable (namely, women, ethnic minority and LGBTQI-identified players) may have hoped. Most notably, in the summer of 2014, the hashtag #GamerGate made waves throughout Twitter and gained national media attention and critique. Markedly, #GamerGate focused on a sense of gamer identity, as tied to the way games are currently designed around White, male, heterosexual and cis-gendered norms (Pearl, 2014; Ringo, 2014; Wingfield, 2014). Sargon of Akkad (2014), a prominent social media blogger and #GamerGate activist, has proposed that “the video game press has become infested with social justice warriors [SJWs] on an ideological crusade to manipulate the video game industry to suit their agenda… and like all propagandists, they lie.” The movement proclaimed that there was a need to reform gaming journalism that had gone too far in its “SJW” attempts to demonize gamers, and that somehow the goal to expand diversity and female representation was an insincere one put forth by out of touch “feminists” and activists that most game players, across gender, ethnicity and sexuality, did not want (Ringo, 2014). However, at the same time this was happening, the players, developers and journalists most likely to be targeted and threatened by #GamerGate were women, ethnic minorities or queer. While #GamerGate garnered national news headlines and media attention, it was one part of a growing trend that started in 2012: as gaming activities (through publicly broadcasted tournaments1) and game criticism increasingly became part of public consumption (O’Leary, 2012), so too did the visibility of its gatekeeping, which marginalized players had experienced for years, albeit within the previously obscured boundaries of game culture (Richard, 2014; Richard, forthcoming). Recent work that looks at gender and ethnic minority experiences in online play Proceedings of DiGRA 2015: Diversity of play: Games – Cultures – Identities © 2015 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.
environments has found that females and ethnic minorities are often victims of harassment (Gray, 2012; Richard, 2013) and females are three times more likely to experience harassment when using voice-based chat online, regardless of what was stated or skill level (Kuznekoff & Rose, 2013). As a result of this harassment, females and other non-dominant groups are often marginalized (Richard, 2014). Researchers have found that marginalized gamers are more likely to not identify with gaming, and efforts for targeted representation do not rectify this issue (Shaw, 2012). For most marginalized gamers, the exclusivity of game culture seems to be a greater barrier to their participation and identification (Richard, 2014; Shaw, 2012). However, little is systematically understood about how representational issues relate to short and long-term identification and persistence in play. According to Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Tajfel and Turner, 1986) social identities are largely affected by group affiliation, and social context plays a large role in individuals’ goal orientations. “Implicit biases against women in science may prevent girls and women from pursuing science from the beginning, play a role in evaluations of girls’ and women’s course work in [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] subjects, influence parents’ decisions to encourage or discourage their daughters from pursuing science and engineering careers, and influence employers’ hiring decisions and evaluations of female employees” (Hill, et. al., 2010, 78). Research has shown that environmental bias can have measurable and significant effects on how individuals learn (Hill, et. al., 2010; Picho, 2011; Picho and Stevens, 2012). This effect is often termed “stereotype threat” (Steele and Aronson, 1995), which occurs when negative stereotypes of a gender or ethnic groups’ ability in a field or domain is elicited, explicitly or ambiguously, and causes stress, which undermines the stereotyped groups’ performance, regardless of actual skill. In the short term, stereotype threat can impact and inhibit performance on a specific task, but, in the long term, it can have domain-distancing effects, where individuals start to disengage with the subject area or activity (Hill, et. al., 2010; Steele, 1997; Steele, et. al., 2002). These effects have been traditionally seen in fields that are highly gender or racially stereotyped, such as math and science (Hill, et. al., 2010), and have even been replicated in sports and leisure activities (Stone, et. al., 1999). This paper documents findings from a three year study of game culture (Richard, 2014), where experiences across gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality were documented qualitatively and quantitatively, but will focus specifically on findings of stereotype threat vulnerability utilizing a previously validated scale that measures social identities, domain identification and domain self-concept (or confidence). Results from several analyses of over 140 game players from all over the world but mainly North America indicated that women and ethnic minorities were statistically significantly more vulnerable to stereotype threat. Furthermore, results from a hierarchical linear regression demonstrate that stereotype threat vulnerability is significantly related to lowered gaming self-concept (or, confidence in play). In other words, statistical results help confirm that inequity in play has a significant effect on confidence and persistence in gaming (and related areas, such as computing), which disproportionately affects women and ethnic minorities. I will discuss these findings in light of current trends in game culture, and its implications for inclusive play, and pursuit of careers in gaming and related tech industries. Gaming industry jobs have similarly had longstanding issues around diversity, with the latest numbers demonstrating that about 22% of developers are women, less than 1% are transgendered, and African Americans and Latinos make up 2.5% and 8.2% of the -- 2 --
industry, an underrepresentation based on their real-world populations (IGDA, 2014). Based on available data, these figures closely mirror the representation of women and other underrepresented groups in digital games (Williams, et. al., 2009). Using study data and findings from related computing and science fields, I argue that representation affects cultural perceptions, diversity and persistence, and that inequity in play has ramifications within and beyond game culture.
Keywords Game culture, stereotype threat, social identity theory, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gaming identification, gaming self-concept, online gaming, GamerGate, game industry ENDNOTES And now, increasingly, Twitch.tv, where players can broadcast their gameplay and,
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