Creating More Inclusive Gaming Communities Through Play and Participatory Culture
Hillary Kolos
Wed., June 09, 5:00–7:00, Great Hall
While it has been shown that the number of girls and women playing digital games is increasing, there still remain issues of gender inequity in gaming culture that invite further research. (Kafai, Heeter, Denner, & Sun, 2009) For example, women are much less likely to play console games than men (Pew, 2008) — raising questions about the factors that lead to this discrepancy in participation.
Much of the current research on gender and games has focused exclusively on how their design and content influences player demographics. A smaller number of studies, including those by Kerr (2003), Thornham (2007) and Lin (2008), have looked instead to the socio-cultural contexts of gaming to account for the lower rates of female participation.
Building on the work of Kerr, Thornham, and Lin, this paper uses the socio-cultural approach to researching participation in games. The focus of this study is a particular community of undergraduate students who play offline games — digital and non-digital — together in an MIT dorm lounge . Their community was chosen because — unlike the larger US population — with respect to console gaming it is characterized by almost equal participation rates among male and female students, as well as a range of experience and skill levels. The research findings are based on interviews conducted with 11 MIT undergraduates as well as participant observations of activities that took place in and around the lounge over a six month period.
This paper concludes that the anomalous gender and skill-level inclusiveness of this group of students is influenced by the community's participatory culture. Participatory culture — a concept advanced by Jenkins et al. in 2006 — is a culture in which there are low barriers to entry, creating and sharing of creations is supported, members feel their contributions matter, there is an informal mentoring system, and members feel a degree of social connection with each other (Jenkins et al., 2006).
Another factor that contributes to the inclusiveness of the community is that the lounge is socially negotiated as a play space as opposed to a gaming space. Digital and non-digital gaming are favored activities, but are not central to the identity of the group as a whole or the individual members. This disassociation with traditional digital gaming culture allows for the gaming that occurs in the lounge to be lower stakes and more accessible to a wide range of participants.
These findings broaden our understanding of how socio-cultural factors — specifically play and participatory culture — can influence the inclusiveness of offline, co-located gaming communities, including classrooms and other learning contexts.
References
Jenkins et al., (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur Foundation.
Kafai, Y. et al. (2008). Beyond Barbie & Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kerr, A. (2003) Girls Women Just Want to Have Fun. Proceedings from Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht.
Lin, H. (2008). Body, Space, and Gendered Gaming Experiences: A Cultural Geography of Homes, Cybercafes, and Dormitories. Kafai, Y. et al, (Eds). Beyond Barbie & Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Thornham, H. (2008). It's A Boy Thing. Feminist Media Studies, 8(2), 127-142.