License to Play: Women, Productivity, and Video Games

License to Play:
Women, Productivity, and Video Games
By
Shira Chess
A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate
Faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Major Subject: COMMUNICATION AND RHETORIC
Approved by the Examining Committee:
June Deery, Thesis Advisor
Nancy Campbell, Member
Nathan Freier, Member
Katherine Isbister, Member
James P. Zappen, Member
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York
December 2009
© 2009
By
Shira Chess
All Rights Reserved
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
………………………………………………………………….
List of Tables
…………………………………………………………………
List of Figures
Acknowledgements ….…………………………………………………………..
Forward ………...……………………………………………………………….
Abstract ………...……………………………………………………………….
Chapter 1
Gender, Productivity, and Play ..………………………………………………
Introduction
…………………………………………………………………….
Constructing the Feminine Player
………………………………………………
Literature Review
……………………………………………………………….
Leisure, Play, and Games
…………………………………………………
Productivity and Play
…………………………………………………
Gender, Sex, Culture, and Biology
...………………………………………
Gender and Video Games …………………………………………………
Gender and Technology
.....………………………………………………
New Media Studies
…..…………………………………………………
Literature Review and this Dissertation
…..………………………………
Data Selection
….……………………………………………………………….
Games Selection
…………………………………………………………
Advertising Selection
……………………………………………………
Methodology Review ……………………………………………………………
Semiotics
……………………………………………………………….
Content Analysis
…………………………………………………………
Video Game Analysis
……………………………………………………
Outline of Dissertation ...…………………………………………………………
Chapter 2
……………………
Hardcore and Oprah Gamers: Play and Masculinity
Introduction
…………………………………………………………………….
Video Games and Masculinity
….………………………………………………
Art Style and Anime
……………………………………………………………
Vide Game Magazine Advertising
……………………………………………
Methodology ……………..………………………………………………
Common Themes in Advertisements …….…………………………………
Analysis of Full Advertisements
……..……………………………………
Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings: Advertising Exceptions ….……………
Constructing the Masculine Playscape …………………………..………………
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Chapter 3
A 36-24-36 Cerebrum: Pragmatic Play ……………………………………….
Introduction
……………………….…………………………………………….
Gender and Self Help ……………………………………………………………
Brain Games
………………………...………………………………………….
Brain Age
……………………………………………………………….
My Word Coach
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Big Brain Academy
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Exercise and Fitness Games
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Wii Fit ……………………………………………………………………
My Weight Loss Coach …………….………………………………………
Instructional Games …………………..…………………………………………
Chapter 4
Do Something with your Nothing: Simulated Productive Play ……………..
Introduction
……………….…………………………………………………….
Simulated Productive Play ………………………………………………………
Production/Consumption
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Casual Gaming
………...……………………………………………………….
Advertising and Simulated Productive Play
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Domestic Play
………………….……………………………………………….
Diner Dash ……………………………………………………………….
Cooking Mama
..…………………………………………………………
Dream Day Wedding
…..…………………………………………………
Consumer Play ……….………………………………………………………….
Shopmania
……………………………………………………………….
The Sims
……...………………………………………………………….
Chapter 5
…………………..………
Play is Love: Emotional Play & Social Contexts
Introduction
………………………………………………………..……………
Women, Emotional Labor, and Motherhood
…………………...………………
Nintendo Wii: Gender and Family Play Time
……………………….…………
Wiis and Miis …………………………………………….………………
Wii Advertising
………………………………………..…………………
Nurturing and Simulated Love in Video Games …………………...……………
Online Gaming ………………………………………………..…………………
World of Warcraft
………………………………..……………………
Second Life
…………………………………...…………………………
MMOGs and Productive Play …………………...…………………………
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Chapter 6
Conclusion & Discussions
….…………………………………………………
Introduction
……….…………………………………………………………….
Women, Play, and Ideology
…….………………………………………………
Future Research
...……………………………………………………………….
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Appendix A: Tables …..………………………………………………………… 210
Appendix B: Figures ……..……………………………………………………… 211
Works Cited …………..…………………………………………………………. 246
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Game Informer and Play Magazine Advertising
….………………… 210
Table 2: Content Analysis of GI and Play Advertisements ……..……………… 210
Table 3: Video game ads in non-video game magazines
……………………… 210
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Frag Dolls Brooklyn Home Page (A)
………..…….…………………
Figure 2: Frag Dolls Brooklyn Home Page (B)
………………...………………
Figure 3: Tomb Raider Anniversary Advertisement ………….…………………
Figure 4: Dark Kingdom Advertisement
……………….…….…………………
Figure 5: Ar Tonelico Advertisement
…………………...….…………………
Figure 6: Mage Knight: Apocalypse Advertisement ………….…………………
Figure 7: Izuna Advertisement
………….…………………………….………
Figure 8: PSP Theatre Advertisement
………….…………………………….…
Figure 9: Final Fantasy Advertisement
………….…………………………….
Figure 10: Lord of the Rings Online Advertisement ………….…………………
Figure 11: Brain Age Screen Shot
………….…………………………….……
Figure 12: Brain Age Game Cover
………….…………………………….……
Figure 13: Brain Age Advertisement (A)
………….……………………………
Figure 14: Brain Age Advertisement (B)
………….……………………………
Figure 15: Alistair Archibald of My Word Coach ………….…………………...
Figure 16: Veronica Munroe of My Word Coach ………….…………………….
Figure 17: Penny of My Word Coach
………….……………………………….
Figure 18: My Word Coach Advertisement ………….………………………….
Figure 19: Big Brain Academy Screen Shot
………….………………………...
Figure 20: Big Brain Academy Advertisement ………….………………………
Figure 21: Wii Fit Balance Board ………….…………………………………….
Figure 22: Wii Fit Advertisement (A) ………….………………………………..
Figure 23: Wii Fit Advertisement (B) ………….………………………………..
Figure 24: My Weight Loss Coach Advertisement
………….…………………
Figure 25: Do Something with your Nothing Advertisement (A) ………….……
Figure 26: Do Something with your Nothing Advertisement (B) ………….……
Figure 28: Diner Dash Opening Story (A) ………….…………………………..
Figure 29: Diner Dash Opening Story (B)
………….…………………………..
Figure 30: Diner Dash Opening Story (C)
………….…………………………..
Figure 31: Diner Dash Screen Shot ………….…………………………………..
Figure 32: Cooking Mama Game Cover ………….……………………………..
Figure 33: Cooking Mama Screen Shot
………….……………………………..
Figure 34: Cooking Mama “Fail” Screen Shot
………….……………………
Figure 35: Shopmania Screen Shot ………….…………………………………..
Figure 36: Mii Creation Screen Shot ………….………………………………...
Figure 37: Mii Family Screen Shot
………….…………………………………
Figure 38: My Wii Story Advertisement (Linda Perry)
………….……………
………….…………
Figure 39: My Wii Story Advertisement (Janiene Allen)
………….………
Figure 40: My Wii Story Advertisement (Nancy Ponthier)
Figure 41: My Wii Story Advertisement (Tracey Clark) ………….…………….
Figure 42: World of Warcraft Screen Shot
………….……………………….…
Figure 43: World of Warcraft Advertisement
………….………………………
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing a dissertation is never a single player game. I would like to thank
those who have been players in this process. Special thanks to my committee chair,
June Deery, and the rest of my dissertation committee who have all been wonderful
mentors: Nancy Campbell, Nathan Freier, Katherine Isbister, and James Zappen. I
would like to thank several other faculty and staff members at RPI for their
encouragement and help throughout various points of this process: Kathy Colman,
Jan Darling, Marc Destefano, Ekaterina Haskins, Pat Marra, and Tracy Paul. I would
also like to thank Tobi Saulnier for giving me the opportunity to work at 1st Playable
Productions, where I was able to learn more about the inner-workings of the game
industry. I am forever indebted to several of my friends at RPI for brainstorms,
advice, ideas, and for reminding me to take breaks: Dave Bello, Paul Booth, Amber
Davisson, Eric Newsom, Elia Nelson, Casey O’Donnell, Amanda Rotondo, Debbie
Rowe, Lillian Spina-Caza, Marcy Szablewicz, and Jay Zalinger. Special thanks to
Melody Moening who has been there for me for more years than I can count. I would
like to thank my parents, Howard and Carol Chess, for making me someone who
understands the value of play and for putting up with my return to graduate school.
Particularly, I would like to thank my mother for enduring my never-ending questions
about her leisure time, and for finally agreeing to get a Nintendo DS.
Finally, with love, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my husband,
Jeffrey Wes Unruh. Thank you for the countless hours of editing and encouragement.
And thank you for reminding me that sometimes it’s okay to play even when it isn’t
being “productive.”
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FORWARD: OF BEING MY OWN DEMOGRAPHIC
I stand at a complicated space with respect to my research. At the time of this
writing, I am a 36-year-old woman, and inarguably part of the demographic I am
writing about. I play video games (and enjoy many of them) but I also often have
mixed emotions about them. My video game play is often deeply intertwined with
issues of guilt, a need for productivity, tension and frustration. At the same time,
video games have helped me to see the world differently, and helped me to take a step
back from these negative responses.
I wandered into this field about five years ago, through a combination of
coincidence and convergence. While working on my Master’s Thesis about gender,
technology, and television, the topic was suggested to me by an advisor, and I rather
innocently decided to write about a game that was very popular at that time, Grand
Theft Auto III. My assumptions about games and gaming initially grew from that
early experience: the games in the Grand Theft Auto series could not possibly
embody more stereotypes of masculine styles of gaming. Thus, my early
understanding of video game studies grew from this masculine and unbalanced
space—like many others I began with the assumption that video games were made for
men and boys. And, of course, many of them are.
But as my research expanded, I realized that this myth was unfair and
unwarranted. After playing several games that I did not like, my first truly immersive
video game experience was with the popular Massively Multiplayer Online Game
(MMOG) City of Heroes. I formed a network of people that I liked to play with
online (both men and women) and began to play regularly. One evening I looked at a
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clock and realized that I had just played for eight hours straight—I had been so
deeply immersed in City of Heroes that I had forgotten to eat, move, or use the
bathroom in this time. I realized that I had been hooked.
But, still, I was surprised at how many other people in my life (particularly
women) did not understand this newfound interest in video games. I began to expand
my research and ask the question, “What would it take to get more women to play
video games?” I began to pay particular attention to my mother, a baby boomer
kindergarten teacher who was particularly resistant to my area of research. One day in
my frustration with her total indifference, I finally blurted out, “What kind of video
game would make you want to play?”
She paused. “How about a nice shopping game?” she asked, earnestly.
I wanted to be surprised by this remark, but I wasn’t. In the three-plus decades
I had spent getting to know my mother, I realized, shopping was how we most often
spent time together. For instance, when I, or my cousins, or her sister, would come for
a visit, we would ritualistically scoop up my grandmother, so that three generations of
women could go wandering around the shopping mall, looking for bargains at
Macy’s, trying on lipsticks, and eating at the food court. This realization was
unsettling, and yet I knew that my experiences of shopping-as-play were in no way
unusual. Cultural assumptions of feminine shopping as play and sport are constant
and consistent in the American cultural landscape. This is not to say that I am
condemning consumerism or women for taking part in it. It would be hypocritical of
me to suggest that I am at all above sneaking away to Target for my play breaks from
hours of work.
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But the more I thought about this comment, the more uneasy I became.
Seeking another opinion, I mentioned this to a colleague. “A shopping game?
Wouldn’t that be eBay?” she pithily replied. Indeed, I realized that gendered digital
play, from video games to the Internet, often takes on this consumerist guise. I soon
became attuned to the word “play” and its uses in feminine spaces. I found it often in
cosmetics and skincare departments, and in advertisements promoting gigantic sales
where women could go on shopping sprees. Within assumptions of femininity and
generalizations about women, play is often inextricably linked to shopping and
consumerism. And while masculinity is certainly not excluded from the shopping-asplay paradigm, there is an overabundance of stereotypes involving femininity, leisure,
and shopping. On several occasions women have confessed to me a great distaste for
the shopping rituals of Western femininity, but then almost always quickly add that
they feel that not enjoying shopping makes them less feminine. Similarly, I know
many men who enjoy shopping, but who often confess embarrassment about taking
part in this supposedly feminine pastime.
At the same time, things started to change in my research area. In around
2005, when I began to ask my research question, “How do I get more women to play
video games” there were relatively few games on the market aimed at this
demographic. But by the summer of 2006, the Nintendo DS was released and soon
after so was the Nintendo Wii. These products, in their advertising and game designs,
both heavily targeted women audiences. Additionally, casual PC games became more
dime-a-dozen and by late 2006 several franchises such as Diner Dash and the
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Mystery Case Files series had slowly started to make headway. It seemed that the
market was changing.
And, so, my research focus began to change as well. Rather than asking the
question, “How do I get more women to play video games?” I began to look
specifically at the games that were being marketed to them and how these games
helped to perpetuate feminine stereotypes about caregiving, homemaking,
consumerism, and self-care. What I found was that the common thread among all of
these themes was “productivity.” Whether these games and their advertising were
attempting to garner audiences by suggesting that women exercise more or take better
care of families, there was an almost constant element of productivity in games aimed
at women audiences. At the same time, I began to notice what I refer to as Simulated
Productive Play (which I will discuss in Chapter Four): play that is not actually
productive, but that uses common feminine tropes to emulate real world productivity
within the game world. These patterns surprised me, and began to be the focus of my
dissertation.
To me, productivity was so interesting in these games because it seemed to be
the complete antithesis of play. As I did research in the already established leisure
studies area, I learned that this was no small coincidence—many women’s leisure
activities had productive undertones. Additionally, as I will discuss in Chapter One,
authors such as Rosemary Deem (1986) showed that many women felt they did not
have the right to leisure time of their own. The confluence between this and
productive video games seemed undeniable and worth further investigation.
xii
But what was equally surprising to me on this journey was a realization that
(being a part of the demographic that I was studying) I was in no way immune to this
phenomenon. As I spent hours researching games (i.e., playing and taking copious
notes), I found that I often felt guilty and anxious, and would have to justify my play
research to myself, repeatedly saying under breath, “It’s okay to play! It’s for
research!” I felt a need to justify my play to myself and remind myself that I was
being productive. This did not seem to be coincidental, and in many ways reflected
the trends I was discussing in this dissertation. In many ways, I became part of my
own research.
I similarly felt conflicted with many of the games I played. Several of the
games that I discuss in this dissertation I enjoyed a good deal, while other games
angered and frustrated me because of gendered stereotypes that were pervasive
throughout them. For example, the heteronormitive themes embedded in the game
Dream Day Wedding (Chapter Four) often infuriated me. Alternatively, World of
Warcraft (Chapter Five) is a wonderfully constructed game world and I have enjoyed
playing it both as a researcher and as a gamer. Other games, such as those in the
Diner Dash franchise (Chapter Four), I was more ambivalent and conflicted about—I
began playing them expecting to not enjoy them at all, but often found myself playing
far longer and more intensely than I ever had expected to. The games that I discuss in
this dissertation do not fit neatly into one package and are diverse and compelling. I
have attempted to articulate these complexities throughout this study.
A few final points are important before embarking on this topic. First and
foremost, this study is not about blame. While in this dissertation I discuss several
xiii
industries and demographics, I am not interested in blaming any group for the
phenomena I will be discussing. The patterns of play are not the fault of the
advertising industry, the video game industry, so-called “hardcore gamers,” women,
or any other group or demographic. My interest is in looking more closely at what I
consider to be a compelling situation, rather than casting blame on any of these
groups or institutions. Instead, I argue, that the phenomena I am speaking of is larger
than any group or individual.
To that end, I would also like to clarify that in this dissertation I am not
implying that there is a good or bad, right or wrong kind of play. While mixing play
with productivity might, to a large extent, seem counter-intuitive to traditional notions
of play, I recognize that different people and demographics might see play differently.
In this dissertation, I do not seek to dismiss productive play as a lesser form of play
(or not play at all), but rather, to look critically at femininity and play. I look forward
to the potential of newer forms of women’s leisure and play that do not reify feminine
stereotypes. At the same time, I feel that play is important in whatever package it
comes.
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ABSTRACT
Until only recently, video games were often understood to be created by, and
for, masculine audiences (Fron et al, 2007; Ray, 2004; Cassell & Jenkins, 1999).
Now, in the past few years, an influx of video games has been increasingly marketed
to a demographic previously ignored by the gaming industry: adult females. These
video games and their marketing help shed light on larger issues of gender, play, and
productivity. In this dissertation, I analyze a complicated relationship between play
and productivity in the design and advertising of video games aimed at women
audiences and show how gendered modes of play are constructed and ideologically
driven.
While the topic of ‘play’ may seem to be frivolous, I argue that play,
particularly play designed for women, is of the utmost importance. To illustrate this I
examine gendered divisions of play (and the construction of the player) in our culture.
These divisions help to form specific kinds of players and reinforce gendered
hierarchies, both in the video game industry (where femininity is often devalued) and
in the cultural constructions of what is considered acceptable play for women.
Through describing and analyzing the relationship between gender, play, and
productivity, I show how ideologically driven practices of productive play help to
reinforce traditional stereotypes of femininity, potentially affecting women’s leisure
and play practices.
In order to do this, I discuss three kinds of productive play that are prominent
in many women’s video games: pragamatic play, simulated productive play, and
socially productive play. Pragmatic play, as I show, is play that attempts to be
xv
productive for the player in the real world. For example, games such as Brain Age
and Wii Fit use themes of self-help and self-care (in both game design and
advertising) to attract feminine audiences. Simulated productive play is play that
emulates real-world productivity—often in very mundane and domestic ways—and
has the player re-enact these practices in the game world. Games such as Diner Dash
and Cooking Mama provide examples of this simulated everyday domesticity.
Finally, socially productive play refers to games that use stereotypes of family and
caregiving to specifically attract women audiences. Video game systems such as the
Nintendo Wii, in particular, use socially productive play to evoke guilt and
expectations that women’s play should center on taking care of the family. Productive
play, in general, can function as a kind of permission slip, constructing excuses for
why and when women are permitted to engage in specific forms of play. While none
of the categories of play I identify are mutually exclusive, they all help to draw a
clearer picture of how women’s video game play has become essentializing and often
encourages non-playful gender stereotypes.
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CHAPTER ONE
GENDER, PRODUCTIVITY, AND PLAY
Introduction
Play is vital. According to sociologist Johan Huizinga (1938/1974), it is an
essential part of human life. He writes in Homo Ludens “Play cannot be denied. You
can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind,
God. You can deny seriousness, but not play” (p. 3). If what Huizinga says is true, if
play is a significant, undeniable, and vital part of human life, then it is essential to
understand why and when certain groups of people might not be getting enough of it.
It is equally important to understand instances and trends when play activities for a
specific group become constantly conflated with non-playful practices.
In what follows, I explore a complicated relationship between women and
play: I illustrate how leisure activities are highly gendered and often essentialize1
what it means to be feminine and masculine. Further, I demonstrate how women’s
play tends to be productive in a decidedly unplayful way. Video game play, I show, is
a perfect example of how play is gendered. So while the overarching theme of my
dissertation is gender and play, I focus on video games as a microcosm of this larger
issue. Video games are only a small segment of this larger problem, but their growing
popularity and importance in our culture makes these issues even more pertinent and
timely. As I show in this dissertation, video games are rapidly changing, and are
increasingly being designed for, and marketed to, women audiences. These games,
1
By “essentialize” I am referring to cultural processes or practices that use simplifying stereotypes to
attempt to understand the tastes or interests of individuals, in this case women.
1
rather than opening women up to new kinds of play, reify traditional stereotypes of
femininity, prioritizing productivity over play.
I argue that play, digital or otherwise, is deeply affected by the cultural
construction of gender. This study considers how games are designed for and
marketed to women audiences, and how they help to sculpt the ways that women play
and understand leisure and play. While there is certainly a need for more studies that
take ethnographic approaches to this problem (specifically looking at women and
their play styles), I will not be looking at audience response so much as the larger
culture of how video games are designed and marketed by the gaming industry. It is
my goal to better illustrate how the larger gaming culture helps to reinforce a
complicated relationship between gender, play, and productivity.
Constructing the Feminine Player
In his extensive body of work, French cultural theorist Michel Foucault (1965,
1970, 1977, 1978, 1984, 1985) explored how subjects are formed and, in particular,
the relationship between subjects and institutions. For instance, in Discipline and
Punish (1977), he described how the prison system helped to construct modern
society as a “carceral state” and Madness and Civilization (1965) showed ways that
culture has constructed mental illness and insanity through the asylum. These works
also compared the ‘normal’ or ‘rational’ individual to the ‘abnormal’ and ‘irrational.’
Foucault’s work helped future theorists contextualize how institutions influence
culture, but also how they help to form individual subjects that align with the
categories and systems created by those institutions. While Foucault was not known
2
for including analysis of gender within his larger treatise, my research in this
dissertation examines the institution(s) of play and leisure from a gender perspectives.
My work is not nearly as topically expansive as Foucault’s extensive work on
insanity, delinquency, or sexuality; my ultimate goal in this dissertation is to show
how play is constructed and reinforced by a complex system of thought and practice.
While the topic of ‘play’ may seem to be frivolous, and not nearly so dire a topic as
madness, I argue that play, particularly play for women, is of the utmost importance.
To illustrate this I show gendered divisions of play (and the construction of the
player) in our culture. These divisions help to form specific kinds of players, and
reinforce gendered hierarchies, both in the video game industry (where femininity is
often devalued) and in the cultural constructions of what is considered acceptable
play for women. Play, in general, is ideologically driven by masculine ideologies, a
premise which is supported by both the video game industry and our culture at large.
A useful way of illustrating how players are constructed as subjects is by the
concept of interpellation. By “interpellation” I am referring to Louis Althusser’s
(1971) discussion of a distinct relationship between ideology and subject. The
ideology, he contends, is only made possible by the “subject” (you or I), through
transforming the individual into a subject of that ideology. Thus he explains that
ideology interpellates or “hails” individuals who are “always already” subjects of that
ideology (p. 84). At the center of this process of interpellation is the notion of
recognition: by recognizing an ideology as theirs, a person automatically becomes a
subject, rather than an individual. Althusser illustrates, “There are individuals
walking along. Somewhere (usually behind them) the hail rings out: ‘Hey, you there!’
3
One individual (nine times out of ten it is the right one) turns round,
believing/suspecting/knowing that in reality these things happen without any
succession. The existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals
as subjects are one and the same thing” (p. 86). In effect, Althusser is suggesting that
the interpellation process is thoughtless and immediate—the “Hey You” is
automatically interpellated and thus becomes part of how subjects understand
themselves.
Play, I will show in this dissertation, is ideologically driven and is
interpellated by (masculine and feminine) subjects who always already see
themselves as specific kinds of players in conformance with their masculine and
feminine identities. Within this matrix, masculinity is allowed a more free form
ideology of play: unrestrictive play for the sake of play which is embedded in a larger
cultural ideology. Alternatively, feminine play styles tend to be more productive,
centering on self-care, family care, and making use of all available (free) time. In this
dissertation, I use advertising and video game content to show how these themes are
constructed within the broader video game culture and industry.
In many ways, this recent flood of games aimed at feminine audiences can be
seen as prescriptive technologies encouraging women to play in very specific ways.
For this, it is useful to consider Norbert Elias (1939/1998) who wrote about civilizing
processes and technologies. In the essay “The Rise of the Fork,” Elias explains that
behaviors (such as the use of a fork) are often enculturated into a society through
shame, ritual, and institutions. He explains that these rituals which are initially
culturally mandated are later subsumed by individuals. According to Elias, “The
4
social standard to which the individual was first made to conform by external restraint
is finally reproduced less smoothly within him, through a self-restraint which may
operate even against his conscious wishes” (p. 54). In a similar way, I posit in this
dissertation that technologies of play have been gendered and culturally mandated.
These practices are incorporated by individuals and constituted through the social
process of interpellation forming subjects of play.
Literature Review
The above problem—the construction and interpellation of gendered modes of
play—is one that requires several disciplines and research areas to fully unpack.
Thus, the following literature review covers several areas. I begin by establishing
some definitions of play and leisure, as well as exploring leisure studies. Next, I look
at productivity and its place in understanding gaming technologies. After this, I tackle
gender studies (in general), gender and video games, and gender and technology.
Finally, I approach the issues from a new media studies perspective. This review
covers a good deal of theoretical territory in a small amount of space, in an effort to
situate my dissertation within several large fields of research.
Play, Leisure, and Games
Play and leisure (like their corollary, work) are embedded in all cultures, yet,
their very pervasiveness makes these topics easy to overlook. To begin, then, it is
essential to define terms. Throughout this dissertation, I use terms such as “play,”
“leisure,” and “game.” Each of these words is loaded with various kinds of social
5
baggage and implications, and it seems important to strip them of some of these in
order to get at their relevance. So, while play is most commonly a word used to
describe what children do, broadening how we look at play becomes pivotal to this
dissertation. Similarly, leisure comes packed with some classist undertones, primarily
through references to the “leisure class.” 2 Clearly, both play and leisure have class
implications that are inextricable from the subtext of this dissertation. The cultural
objects that I discuss in this dissertation are entrenched in white and middle-class
values of play. At the same time, examining class and play as a whole is larger than
the scope of this project.
The definition of play has been debated by sociologists such as Johan
Huizinga (1938/1974), John Callois (1958), and Brian Sutton-Smith (1997). The
definitions that they arrive at tend to be anything but playful, and instead are often
overburdened by words, categories, labels, and limitations. Callois, for instance,
suggests that play needs to be non-obligatory, separate from everyday life, uncertain,
unproductive, governed by rules, and make-believe (p. 9-10). The problem with this
definition (for both Callois and Huizinga) is a translational discrepancy between the
words “play” and “game”—while English makes a distinction between these words,
other languages do not. This means that, often, these authors are conflating very
different things within their definitions and explanations. In the book Rules of Play,
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004) suggest a very clean definition for the word
“play”: “Free movement within a more rigid structure” (p. 304). They contend that
this definition is useful because it can be applied to all uses of the word “play” from
2
The term “leisure class” was coined by Thorstein Veblen (1912). According to Veblen, the leisure
class is the economic ruling class, taking more part in consumption than production.
6
game play to musical play, and from word play to the play of a carburetor. This is the
definition of play that I will use through the rest of this dissertation. I began this
chapter with a quote by Johan Huizinga about the importance and value of play.
Several researchers and scholars, including Huizinga, have remarked upon play’s
importance in everyday life: as a teaching tool (Gee, 2003; Beck & Wade, 2006), for
medicinal purposes (Brooksby, 2008; Encarnação & Sawyer, 2008), and to engender
identification and community (Sutton-Smith, 1997). These efforts are certainly
compelling, but not central to the overall argument of this dissertation. My goal here
is not just to stress the value of play, but to look at women’s quality of play, to better
understand how it is influenced by gender.
Defining leisure is, in many ways, just as tricky as defining play. Leisure
studies, mostly housed in sociology, can focus on several different areas of inquiry,
although travel and sports studies are most common. Primarily, though, this research
tends to look at leisure either in comparison to work, or else in terms of “leisure
industries.” For my purposes, though, I define leisure in terms of a person’s free time
activities and a state of mind that goes with them, an understanding similar to Parr
and Lashua (2004).
Notions of leisure become even more complicated in light of Marxism.
Marxist theorists in the 1950s began to consider the concept of leisure more critically,
most notably Marxist Henri Lefebvre’s study “Work and Leisure in Everday Life”
(1958). In this essay, Lefebvre denies the notion that work is entirely separate from
leisure and the everyday, and suggests that work and leisure are constantly in
equilibrium, affecting and influencing lives equally. He explains:
7
We must therefore imagine a ‘work-leisure’ unity, for this unity exists,
and everyone tries to program the amount of time at his disposal according
to what his work is—and what it is not. Sociology should therefore study
the way the life of workers as such, their place in the division of labor and
in the social system, is ‘reflected’ in leisure activities, or at least in what
they demand of leisure” (p. 226-227).
To that end, Lefebvre explains that leisure activities don’t necessarily grant as much
freedom from the hegemonic ruling classes as they purport to, but rather are illusions
of freedom in response to a “real need for happiness” (p. 230). Thus, when looking at
leisure activities it is vital to not see them as being expressions of how people want to
spend their free time, but as things influenced by larger cultural institutions that are
both consumer and culturally driven.
Since the late 1980s, there has been a growing amount of research on gender
and leisure: primarily how leisure activities are deeply problematic for adult women
(Aitchison, 2003). Researchers have found that leisure—particularly leisure at
home—is a difficult thing to map, often because women have more responsibilities in
home-spaces than men do. While many men find the home a place for relaxation and
leisure separate from work, women are unable to have the same kinds of
unconditional leisure that men have in these spaces (Green et. al, 1990). Thus, there is
often a conflation of work activities and leisure activities: practices may have
embedded practicality that negates the importance of leisure and play (Green et. al,
1990).
8
Additionally these studies often show that time is a key factor for women’s
leisure activities. Rosemary Deem (1987) conducted a study showing that women did
not feel they had the right to leisure time given the overriding concerns of
maintaining households and work responsibilities. This ultimately affects the quality
and type of leisure practices that women engage in:
No wonder then that much of women's household leisure consists of
needlework, knitting, cooking, reading, TV watching, writing letters, day
dreaming and snatching quick naps. All of these activities can be fitted
into a fragmented time schedule, don't require large blocks of time, are
cheap or free, require little space or equipment and can quickly be
disposed of or stopped when work obligations intervene (p. 81)
Thus issues of women and play have been inextricably linked to issues of time: what
a woman considers play or leisure is not necessarily defined only by the activities she
enjoys, but also by the activities that fit neatly and cheaply into her fragmented
schedule. In Chapter Four I discuss similarities between this kind of leisure and the
casual games genre, a growing trend with women gamers.
For many women, it becomes difficult to see the home as a site for anything
but labor, making leisure unlikely, if not impossible, at home. In The Second Shift,
Arlie Russell Hochschild (1989) refers to this as a “leisure gap” (p. 4), and suggests
that this gap sets up longer term cycles of inequality. She explains:
It sets up a cycle that works like this: because men put more of their
“male” identity in work, their work time is worth more than female work
time—to the man and to the family. The greater worth of male work time
9
makes his leisure more valuable, because it is his leisure that enables him
to refuel his energy, strengthen his ambition, and move ahead at work. By
doing less at home, he can work longer hours, prove his loyalty to his
company, and get promoted faster. (p. 265-266).
While the focus in this passage is men’s work and leisure, Hochschild asserts that a
parallel cycle with less leisure occurs for women. Thus, the task of maintaining dual
roles leaves little time for leisure, and it is unsurprising that play is often non-existent
in the everyday lives of women. While these studies do not necessarily compare
women’s lifestyle choices (stay-at-home vs. working women), it would seem that, in
either case, leisure and play are lacking in many women’s lives. As productivity and
play become entangled through digital play, I ultimately show how this creates a
space for a potential third shift. In this third shift, leisure, too, is becoming a labor site
for many women.
In “One Size Doesn’t Fit All: The Meanings of Women’s Leisure”, Karla A.
Henderson (1996) warns of the dangers of ascribing singular meanings to various
patterns in women’s leisure practices. She explains, “The leisure research on
women’s leisure and gender in the past six years points to ‘different sizes’ related to
leisure and the imperative for social change including both structural and personal
changes” (p. 150). Henderson suggests several conclusions and implications of the
past research including (1) contextual rather than biological reasons for leisure
differences between men and women, (2) the conclusion that “the more roles
undertaken by a woman, the more likely that individual is to have less personal
leisure” (p. 151), (3) that definitions of leisure, itself, vary between women, (4) that
10
leisure constraints are more obvious for women in more marginalized race and class
groups, and (5) that leisure may serve as a space for resistance. By Henderson’s
account, it would seem there is no single cause or effect to the problematic
relationship between women and leisure.
In studies of gender and video games, women similarly often tell researchers
that they “don’t have time” to play video games or that it seems like a “waste of time”
(Royse et al, 2007). These ideas are worth considering: it seems unsurprising that the
video game industry and audiences are so decidedly male-dominated when many
women are so dismissive of this form of technological play, and often left unable to
find links between technology and leisure practices. The immersive quality of video
game play ultimately makes it the antithesis of the leisure and play styles described
by Deem, Green et al, and Aitchison.
Finally, the word “games” comes up commonly when referring to both leisure
and play practices. One of the difficulties is the aforementioned confusion in French
between the terms play and games. It is further complicated because while play is a
component of games, games are also a kind of play (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004).
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to look at games is through the lens of agonism, or
competitive play, which is commonly associated with game play. In Man, Play, and
Games, Callois (1958) defines Agôn as:
A whole group of games [that] would seem to be competitive, that is to
say, like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in
order that the adversaries should not confront each other under ideal
conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable value to the
11
winner’s triumph. It is therefore always a question of a rivalry which
hinges on a single quality exercised, within defined limits and without
outside assistance, in a certain category of exploits. (p. 14)
Agonistic play is thus associated with sports, competitions, and with playful combat.
Callois adds that the purpose of agonistic play is ultimately for the player to assert
(and have recognition for) his or her “superiority” (p. 15). The power of this kind of
play lies in its competitive nature; but while it is about dominating a foe it is also
about the friendliness of this competition. Agonism, from its Greek root (Agôn), is
counter to Antagonism: antagonism is competitive in an unfriendly and ultimately
counterproductive way (Hawhee, 2004). Thus, Agôn implies camaraderie between
competitors, an understanding of the usefulness of playing against one another.
According to Brian Sutton-Smith (2001) in The Ambiguity of Play, Agonistic play
almost entirely implies masculinity in many cultures, where a “deific masculine
resonance” (p. 86) is given to competitive players. He explains that, “Until recently in
Western society, and most other societies, women seldom had a place in these kinds
of play. They were condemned to the presumed frivolity of their own lesser play
forms” (p. 87). As implied by Sutton-Smith’s remark, this sentiment has begun to
shift, slightly, and women are often permitted in sports and competition. But there is
still a massive gender gap, and in large part, the justifications begin to sound
tautological: women do not play competitively because they have no desire to do so,
but cultural conditions do not facilitate such a desire. Masculine play is more freeform, permissive, and pervasive than feminine play.
12
Once again, perhaps, Salen and Zimmerman (2004) arrive at one of the
simpler and least problematic definitions of a game. They assert that, “A game is a
system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules that result in
a quantifiable outcome” (p. 80). Some of the notable aspects of this definition include
that there must be one or more players, some kind of imaginary conflict, rules, and a
quantifiable outcome.
In this study, I will be using the word “play” to refer to precise practices, such
as video game play or technological play. These practices will all be broadly
encompassed by Salen and Zimmerman’s “free movement in a more rigid structure”
(p. 304) definition. Alternatively, when I discuss “leisure,” I will be talking about a
larger range of practices that people (specifically women) undertake in their free time.
These leisure practices might include various kinds of play. Finally, when I discuss
“games,” I will be referring to specific game objects and texts most of which have the
attributes drawn out by Salen and Zimmerman’s definition of “game.” 3
Productivity and Play
While this dissertation is primarily about women’s digital play and leisure
practices, the underlying theme is productivity. On the surface, many of the games
that I discuss in chapters three, four, and five are presented to consumers as play and
leisure. Many of these games, though, have underlying themes of productivity. Only
recently have scholars begun to examine the role of productivity in video games. On
the surface, productivity seems like it would be the antithesis of play. In actuality,
3
This often becomes complicated when referring to play spaces without a quantifiable outcome or
imaginary conflict, such as the online world Second Life, or exergames such as Wii Fit. I will discuss
their status as games (or not games) in subsequent chapters.
13
though, productivity functions in several ways. For example, scholars such as Postigo
(2007) and Taylor (2008) have looked at the productivity inherent in game
modifications (mods)— software designed by players to enhance and improve game
play and interfaces in massively multiplayer online games. Taylor (2006) has also
looked at the productivity in what she refers to as “power gaming” or “instrumental
play.” Taylor explains that, with intense gaming experiences (which only certain
players are inclined towards), efficiency plays a much more important role than fun.
Similarly, Sotamma (2007) talks about the productivity in Machinema, or movies
made by using game interfaces. Finally, Wirman (2007) draws comparisons between
fan-related productivity and the productive nature of Taylor’s power gamers. In a
presentation at the Digital Games Research Association, Wirman also suggests that a
certain amount of productivity is an inherent part of all video game play. According
to Wirman:
Games serve as platforms for many kinds of productivity. Actually, they
even require and not only enable productivity because productivity is
compulsory already during the gameplay. Thus productivity is a
precondition for a game as a cultural text. Furthermore, some forms of
productivity relate directly to play and succeeding in a game, while some
grow from the expressive and artistic intentions of a player. (p. 379)
Wirman’s notion of productivity primarily focuses on in-game productivity as well as
the gaming community at large, whereas my focus is on extra-game productivity.
This is a key distinction, for while my focus does directly involve game play, the
14
productivity I will be discussing also has an influence on real-world productivity—in
other words, productivity outside of the gaming world.
In some ways, dictionary definitions of the word “productive” provide the
most clear-cut explanations of how I understand productive play. For example,
Merriam-Webster (2009) defines productive as, “yielding results, benefits, or profits”.
Alternately, Chamber’s Dictionary defines productive as, “having the power
to produce; generative; the produces (with of); producing richly; fertile; efficient” (p.
1312). In combining some of the common elements of these two definitions, I define
“productive” as the ability to yield results in a generative way. Specifically, in this
dissertation I am referring to productive play as play which yields results that exceed
the confines of the game world and leaks into the real world. In other words, while all
games are productive (as Wirman suggests), I am especially interested in functions of
games that influence real-world productivity.
The productive play addressed in this dissertation can help to re-contextualize
Lefebvre’s “work-leisure unity” (p. 226). Lefebvre’s aforementioned observations
suggest that individuals are not only oppressed in how they spend their work time, but
equally oppressed within their leisure time. This being the case, his theoretical
contributions have even more resonance when play becomes so deeply conflated with
productive activities. Lefebvre did not specifically address women or women’s
leisure in his work, but, as I will show in this dissertation, his theoretical
contributions might be of some importance to gender and women’s studies.
15
Gender, Sex, Culture, and Biology
Before discussing gendered play practices, I will need to sort out the
complicated relationship between gender and sex. This is a broad topic undertaken by
many commentators, philosophers, and scholars. Many gender studies scholars make
the distinction that while “sex” is biologically determined by chromosomes, “gender”
is based on social constructions. To give an example of current thinking, in her essay
“Axiomatic,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2005) explains that:
Gender, then, is the far more elaborated, more fully and rigidly
dichotomized social production and reproduction of male and female
identities and behaviors—of male and female persons—in a cultural
system for which ‘male/female’ functions as a primary and perhaps
model binarism affecting the structure and meaning of many, many
other binarisms whose apparent connection to chromosomal sex will
often be exiguous or non-existent. (p. 83-4)
Thus, according to Sedgwick and other gender studies scholars, while sex relates to a
male/female binary, gender is a cultural construction falling on a continuum of
masculine and feminine identities: which are often understood as masculinity and
femininity. As such, when discussing a person’s sex (male/female) for the remainder
of this dissertation, I am referring to a relatively fixed biology. Conversely, when I
discuss gender I am referring to the social and cultural constructions of masculinity
and femininity.
There is little question that one of the key influences on gender studies is
Simone de Beauvoir—the French feminist existentialist who was one of the mothers
16
of Second Wave Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. De Beauvoir’s (1952/1989)
famous book The Second Sex contributed to gender studies in several ways. First, she
posed the point that this has “always been a man’s world” which cast woman as
permanently in the role of the “other.” This otherness, according to de Beauvoir,
defines feminine existence and results in inferiority and narcissism. At the same time,
de Beauvoir is one of the first scholars to make a distinction between sex and gender
by writing this important passage:
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological,
psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human
female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this
creature intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as
feminine. (p. 267)
Gender, de Beauvoir contends, is socially constructed rather than biologically predetermined. Many of the feminists who were influenced by de Beauvoir followed her
by maintaining a distinction between sex and gender. While a good deal has changed
in terms of women’s rights in the past fifty years, many more recent scholars have
continued to use de Beauvoir’s work to understand the sex/gender distinction.
Judith Butler (1990) is a key contemporary humanities gender theorist: her
second book Gender Trouble attempts to better understand the gender/sex divide, as
well as feminist theory in general. Butler asserts at the beginning of Gender Trouble
that one of the primary problems with the feminist theory which had preceded her
was that it revolved around the category of “women.” This distinction, according to
Butler, feeds into a heteronormative ideology that helps to create a binary divide
17
within both gender and sex. In GenderTrouble, Butler (1990) repurposes Althusser’s
notion of interpellation for gender construction, which she insists is “always already”
a person’s sex, meaning that perhaps sex and gender are not necessarily culturally
distinct. In her subsequent book, Bodies that Matter (1993), she invokes Althusser’s
interpellation to relate this back to the moment of being born, replacing the “Hey, you
there!” with the phrase, “It’s a girl!” She explains:
Consider the medical interpellation which (the recent emergence of the
sonogram notwithstanding) shifts an infant from an ‘it’ to a ‘she’ or a ‘he,’
and in the naming, the girl is ‘girled,’ brought into the domain of language
and kinship through the interpellation of gender. But that ‘girling’ of the
girl does not end there; on the contrary, that founding interpellation is
reiterated by various authorities and throughout various intervals of time
to reenforce or contest this naturalized effect. The naming is at once the
setting of a boundary, and also the repeated inculcation of a norm. (p. 7-8)
Thus, according to Butler, the interpellation of ideologies in general is simultaneously
enfolded into the interpellation of gender ideologies in particular. Just as the “it’s a
girl!” moment helps the process of “girling,” mass media and popular culture
constantly reaffirm what it is to be a girl or a woman. To further expand on this
notion of gender interpellation, Butler uses the term performativity, explaining that
gender is “performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of
gender coherence” (p. 33). Essentially, despite the agency that sounds inherent in the
term “performativity,” it shows how little agency we have when it comes to gender:
while we might perform our genders, we are not able to choose them.
18
Alternatively, the social sciences often take different approaches to
reconciling sex and gender. In some ways similar to Butler, in their essay “Doing
Gender,” Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987) argue against gender binaries
and suggest a definition of gender based partially on the works of sociologist Erving
Goffman—a scholar not used in Butler’s gender theories. Unlike Butler, West and
Zimmerman suggest that rather than being merely enculturated, gender is a situated
accomplishment, and is done as part of interactions with others (in other words, a
non-conscious performance). In essence, they posit that this interaction is key to
gender construction and it would not occur in a vacuum. Ultimately, they explain that
gender is:
[…] a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We contend
that the ‘doing’ of gender is undertaken by women and men whose
competence as members of society is hostage to its production. Doing
gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional,
and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of
masculine and feminine ‘natures’ (p. 4).
Additionally, trying to move beyond traditional gender binaries, they add a new
category, expanding from sex/gender to sex/gender/sex category. By “sex category”
West and Zimmerman refer to the sex that one aligns themselves with that is not
necessarily based on biological sex or gender. Thus, while sex and gender might
create social pressure that guide what one believes is their “sex category,” it is not
entirely set by these distinctions. Instead, they explain that “sex category” is
19
important for transgender association, where a person can be seen as masculine or
feminine, even if their biological status does not necessarily align with it.
In Feminism and the Biological Body, Linda Birke (2000) attempts to
reconcile biology and feminism, suggesting that the two are not necessarily as much
at odds as previous feminist and gender scholars have inferred. According to Birke,
an acceptance of biology is not necessarily the same as biological determinism (which
is a common misconception for feminists, according to Birke). She explains:
Undoubtedly, biological arguments have all too often been made in ways
that buttress gender divisions. Politically, then, feminists have tended to
oppose biological arguments and to insist on some form of social
constructionism of gender, or of other social categories (such as sexuality).
But opposing biological determinism is one thing; throwing out discussion
of biology altogether is quite another. In the zeal to reject biologism, the
embodied subject and the biological body seem to be forgotten (p. 21).
Birke explains that by playing into sex/gender binaries, we are creating a system
where biological sex is an indisputable and unchanging fact. Ultimately, according to
Birke, notions of unchanging biology use masculine perspectives, and a more
feminine perspective on biology would allow for the biological changes that are more
inherent in feminine bodies. She explains, “[…] a theory which posits biology as
fixed/passive—even if implicitly—supports political practices which fail women” (p.
157). By this, Birke means that the problem is not that biology automatically
reinforces determinist philosophies. Instead, there is a larger (political) system of
institutions that reinforce masculine perspectives of biology.
20
As I have shown in this brief literature review, both biology and culture affect
how we understand and present our gender credentials to others. In this dissertation, I
do not attempt to resolve this enormous issue except to assert that biological and
cultural determinants are difficult, if not impossible, to separate and that both likely
contribute to what we understand as gender roles. That said, the emphasis of my
research will be on what I understand as culturally learned and enacted rather than
biologically determined behavior. Specifically, my focus is not on how men and
women play differently. I will not be looking at factors such as hand-eye
coordination or visual responses that can easily be attributed to biological factors.
Instead, my focus is on the cultural aspects of video game play: how play is
constructed differently for men and women.
Gender and Video Games
It seems relevant to ask: Why do we even care if women play video games?
One reason is certainly economic. In recent years several game developers have made
attempts to attract more feminine audiences (Ray, 2001; Laurel, 1999), but at the
same time they often simultaneously create gendered ghettos (Jenkins, 1999) of
gamers—advocating and predetermining the ways that women should play video
games—often pushing categories such as casual games, social games, and narrativeheavy games4 (Ray, 2004; Subrahmanyam and Greenfield, 2000). Academic
researchers often have less financially driven goals, and their research on gender and
video games has focused on many of the potentially positive and practical aspects of
4
I will describe these game categories in more detail, later in this chapter.
21
getting women (and girls) more interested in video games. For instance, studies have
shown that video game play might have cognitive benefits (Feng et al, 2007), while
others discuss how video games might make women more comfortable with
technology in the workplace (Cassell & Jenkins, 2000). This research has expanded
upon previous studies of gender and technology as well as cognitive research, and has
certainly shown some of the value in studying gender and video games.
In the following, I will show that while many of these studies have been
excellent starting points for research into gender and video games, more research
needs to be done to determine how video games often reflect different kinds of play
and leisure habits for men and for women. While some past studies on video games
discuss gender differences, they do not apply this to gender, play, and leisure in
general. Additionally, they do not factor in how productivity becomes an important
component of this gendered play. In this section I provide a brief overview of gender
and gaming. Later, in Chapter Two, I will discuss this topic in more depth, paying
specific attention to the masculine hegemony of the video game industry. For now,
my focus is on why it is important to get women in the game in the first place.
Much of the early research on video games and gender has been limited to the
question, “how do we get little girls to play video games?” Books such as, From
Barbie to Mortal Kombat (1999) helped to pave the way for discussions of the
gendered nature of the video game industry (Cassell & Jenkins, 1999), but focused on
girls, rather than women. This research suggested that girl’s lack of interest in video
games may be associated with lower interest levels in math, science, and technology.
Cassell & Jenkins explain:
22
It’s not just that girls seem to like today’s computer games less than boys
do, but that these differential preferences are associated with differential
access to technological fields as the children grow older, and this
differential access threatens to worsen as technological literacy
increasingly becomes a general precondition for employment. Thus,
approximately 75 percent to 85 percent of the sales and revenues
generated by the $10 billion game industry are derived from male
consumers. And men hold the more powerful jobs in the technologyrelated fields, both in companies that design computer games and in all
other digital technologies. (p. 11)
From this perspective, research on girls and gaming was in the best interest of game
companies hoping to open the market and both feminist academics and activists
attempting to gain a more substantial foothold for women in technology careers.
Thus began what was subsequently known as the “Pink Games Movement” of
the mid-90s, in which video games specifically aimed at young girls flooded the
market. Several video game companies attempted to analyze the success of the most
popular game for girls at the time: Barbie Fashion Designer. At the same time,
entrepreneurial feminist companies such as Brenda Laurel’s (2001) Purple Moon
games tried to introduce feminist theories into video game design, attempting to make
more empowering (and less material) designs and narratives centered around realworld things girls experience. Subsequent studies focused on these specific games,
attempting to determine how to recreate the few successes and learn from failures for
future “pink games”.
23
For instance, the success of the game Barbie Fashion Designer prompted
Kaveri Subhramanyam and Patricia Greenfield (1999) to conclude that the most
logical way to garner girl audiences would be to repurpose preferences from other
kinds of media, surmising that girls’ interests lie in areas such as “the drama of
human relationships” (p. 54), as well as the use of role-play. In their essay,
“Retooling Play: Dystopia, Dysphoria, and Difference” Suzanne de Castell and Mary
Bryson (1999) take a more critical and cultural approach, suggesting that most of the
supposed preferences of young girls for video games are primarily dictated by
culturally learned behavior, rather than biology. De Castell and Bryson also suggest
that perhaps gender expectations play a larger role in video game design than actual
desire. They explain, “[…] girls desires have far less to do with what girls want than
with what kind of girl adults, whether in education or in the marketplace, want to
produce” (p. 251).
But, as already noted, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat primarily focuses on
young girls—a distinction which is not a problem unto itself. More problematically,
though, subsequent research on girls was often inaccurately applied to women. As a
result, researchers often conflated age groups and made broad assumptions about
“female” tastes in video games. In her book on the Massively Multiplayer Online
game Everquest, T.L. Taylor remarks upon the problematic nature of this
phenomenon. According to Taylor:
While some work in the 1990s was notable for its nuanced approach in
understanding the relationship between gender and games, much of it
presented stereotypical formulations of girls’ relationships to technology.
24
In addition, little was done to disentangle the experience of play across
age and life cycle. Research on girls thus often was extrapolated to apply
to women. (p. 99)
This focus on girls rather than women often suggests more determinist models, as
there is a greater focus on “female” likes and dislikes, rather than specific tastes of
women and girls in different age groups. In turn, these earlier studies often resulted in
discussions and assumptions that that girls and women alike prefer casual games,
social games, or narrative heavy games (Ray, 2004; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield,
2000). In this study I will not be employing biological perspectives, and instead
focusing more on how culture helps shape gendered gaming preferences.
Additionally, I focus on women rather than girls. While my category of women is still
rather broad, eliminating girl games from my research give it a more specific focus.
One of the worst offenders when it comes to biological determinism is Sheri
Graner Ray’s (2004) book Gender Inclusive Game Design. Ray’s book, which is
meant as more of an industry guide than an academic text, suggests primarily
biological interpretations for sexual difference and video game play. For instance, she
posits that women do not have the same physiological reaction as men to a visual
stimulus and that it is essential to design games around emotional stimuli that are
more likely to be appealing to women. She concludes,
When you consider that emotional or tactile input generates the same
response in females as visual stimuli does in males, it is easy to understand
why females would watch Titanic numerous times over, or why some
women carry their favorite romance book along wherever they go. (p. 60)
25
Observations such as this are problematic for two reasons: first, Ray does not
generally allow a possibility that these traits are—at least in part—culturally enacted
rather than biologically determined; second, Ray’s use of “male” and “female”
throughout the text clearly conflate woman with girl. By attempting to articulate the
supposedly biological likes and dislikes of “females” rather than trying to fine tune
her observations to specific ages, races, and classes, Ray ultimately creates a rather
narrow and stereotyped image of how “females” play. Other researchers have
similarly used biology as the fulcrum point to determine gendered tastes in video
games. Neurobiology is often the focus of video game studies—both in industry and
academia. For instance, one recent Stanford study focused on the neurobiological
effects of rewards in terms of gender differences, concluding that men show more
activity in the “mesocorticolimbic center” of the brain, which they associate with
competition and addiction (Hoeft, et al, 2008). Ultimately, the neuro-imaging study
purports to show that men and boys have more “fun” playing video games than
women and girls.
Recent studies have begun to critique this kind of positivist research on gender
and gaming. Taylor (2008) suggests that future studies should move away from this
biological focus and take gender and culture more deeply into account. Similarly,
Royse et al (2007) divided its women participants into three categories: power
gamers, non-gamers, and moderate gamers. The Royse et al study is particularly
effective in its recognition of different kinds of attitudes towards gaming within the
category of “women.” Thus, while several researchers have begun to open new
avenues for ways to understand gender and video games, my study uniquely
26
examines themes of productivity in games aimed at women, which track back to
larger issues of gender and play.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not comment on studies that focus on
feminine game characters and the fulfillment of female stereotypes in gaming for
men. In video games, characters are often overly sexualized (such as Tomb Raider’s
Lara Croft) or meant to be saved (such as the Super Mario series’ Princess Peach). Of
this, Ray (2001) astutely explains:
As we look back through the history of games, we find that […] there
seems to be two ways game designers deal with female representation in
games. The first way is by depicting the female as a sexual object. The
female’s sexual characteristics are exaggerated and emphasized. […] The
second way designers approach feminine representation is to depict the
female as an object to be retrieved or rescued (p. 28-29).
Ray continues by remarking that this is obviously not distinct to the video game
industry: indeed Hollywood has long glorified these two archetypes of feminine
characters.
Others have looked more critically at the potential that some of these video
game characters have for different kinds of representations of women. For example,
in their article “Gaming with Grrls: Looking for Sheroes in Computer Games,” Birgit
Richard and Jutta Zaremba (2005) concludes:
Emancipatory offers are only possible in those games which depart from
contemporary design in setting and female figure, either into historical,
futuristic contexts, or into surreal worlds. Body samples, patchwork
27
identities from different times and aesthetic worlds, as well as the
openness to projections are the characteristics of the “sheroes” that enable
a successful identification. (p. 299)
Feminine video game characters typically embody sexist representations of women,
and only by moving beyond the video game industry fare can this imagery be
escaped. Despite the current glass ceiling of feminine avatars,5 there are possibilities
for using video games to break stereotypes, rather than reinforce them. In chapter two
I will look more closely at video game magazine advertisements, many of which
maintain sexist and problematic imagery.
Gender and Technology
The previously mentioned quote from Cassell and Jenkins (1999), suggests
that gaming can help interest more girls in science and technology careers. Obviously,
this argument implies that girls and women are not usually interested in these areas.
In this section I will look at how the relationship between gender and technology
plays a role in perceptions and constructions of women as gamers. In popular culture,
women often have the reputations of being particularly non-tech. Depictions of
women in relation to technology often result in simplistic stereotypes and tasteless
jokes about women’s supposed incompetence in driving or programming a VCR
(Millar, 1998; Gill & Grint 1995). In “The Gender-Technology Relation:
Contemporary Theory and Research,” Rosalind Gill and Keith Grint (1995) discuss
the implications of these problematic stereotypes:
5
Avatars are a player’s in-game representation.
28
The cultural association between masculinity and technology in Western
societies is hard to exaggerate. It operates not only with the popular
assumption—from which much sexist humor about women's 'technical
incompetence' has been generated—but also as an academic 'truth'. Some
analysts see it as biological in origin, others as social, but there are few
who speak explicitly to challenge the idea that technology and masculinity
go together. Even feminist writers, usually on the forefront of attacks on
assumptions about gender, have mostly accepted the association, and,
rather than challenging its existence, have sought to understand how and
why this state of affairs has come about—and how it might be disrupted.
(p. 3)
Gill and Grint suggest that the problem is deeper than just passing jokes; these are
assumptions made by both men and women in everyday practices. Breaking these
stereotypes is difficult, and often feeds into cultural understandings of who is
involved in digital play. Thus, along with assumptions about who is able to work with
technology, there are expectations about who plays with it.
Additionally, from a historical perspective, there is some suggestion that
technology might not always improve women’s lives. In More Work for Mother: The
Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, Ruth
Schwartz Cowan (1983) discuss how domestic technologies have served the interests
of men but not women, ultimately making “more work for mother” while relieving
men and children of their chores and tasks. She explains:
29
[…] the changes that occurred in household technology during the
twentieth century had two principal effects. The first was to separate the
work of men and children from the work of women, continuing a process
that had begun in the previous century; and the second was markedly to
increase the productivity of the average housewife. This conclusion can
be put more succinctly by saying that, in the second phase of
industrialization, American households and American housewives shifted
not from production to consumption but from the production of one type
of commodity to the production of another in even greater quantities. (p.
99)
Thus, according to Cowan, production in household technologies engendered more
production. The productivity of household labor has recently become a theme in
several video games aimed at feminine audiences (such as Cooking Mama, Diner
Dash, and Cake Mania) and in Chapter Four I will elaborate more on how gaming
technologies, too, can create potentially create a third shift for women—particularly
working mothers.
In recent years there have been several studies regarding the relationship
between gender and technology in general (Haraway, 1991; Wajcman 1991;
Wajcman 2004; Wosk, 2001). Often feminist researchers found an inherently
masculine undertone to science and technology, which often gave pause about the
nature of this technology. According to Judy Wajcman in Feminism Confronts
Technology (1991), “A key issue here is whether the problem lies in men’s
domination of technology, or whether the technology is in some sense inherently
30
patriarchal” (p. 13). Different feminist factions have subsequently approached this
question in various ways. Studies of gender and technology often focus on how
masculinity is embedded in technologies and technological practices, and how this
helps to give men more “expertise” as owners of technology. According to Wajcman
(1991):
It is not simply a question of acquiring skills, because these skills are
embedded in a culture of masculinity that is large coterminous with the
culture of technology. Both at school and in the workplace this culture is
incompatible with femininity. Therefore, to enter this world, to learn its
language, women have to forsake their femininity (p. 19).
One of the agendas of those who study gender and technology is to alleviate
patriarchal influences on technology and determine ways to create more opportunities
and remove stereotypes.
Achieving this reconciliation between women and technology is
problematized by the several different stances taken on the issue: Liberal feminists
have attempted to push women into what are traditionally understood as more
masculine roles regarding gender and technology (in order for them to get ahead in
the workplace and elsewhere), Eco-feminists tend towards more biological
determinist standpoints that treat technology as though it is masculine (suggesting
that women should not take part in emerging technologies and should embrace more
traditional notions of femininity), while Cyberfeminists tend to see technology as a
potential answer to gender empowerment (Haraway, 1991; Millar, 1996 Wajcman,
1991). Wajcman (2004) suggests that the first and second of these three standpoints
31
may ultimately be detrimental to feminisms by relying on more determinist models
which still regard technology as being masculine.
Cyberfeminist arguments are particularly useful for this study. Most
cyberfeminist theory comes from Haraway’s (1991) “Cyborg Manifesto” which
suggests that the cyborg (a combination of organism and machine) is the answer to
constructing a “monstrous world without gender.” In the end, Haraway rejects ecofeminist logic declaring “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (p. 181). This
viewpoint was later expanded by many into what is now known as “cyberfeminism”
which attempts to use technology to blur the boundaries of gender, suggesting that
there is potential to move beyond typical notions of masculinity and femininity
(Wajcman, 2004; Plant, 1996). Of particular interest to cyberfeminist theorists are
online technologies, where men and women alike are able to blur their gender roles
and experiment with new virtual bodies and personalities (Turkle, 1995; Wajcman,
2003).
In her book Technofeminism, Wajcman (2001) describes what she calls
technofeminist theory as a means to continue changing the relationship between
women and technology. She explains:
An emerging technofeminism conceives of a mutually shaping
relationship between gender and technology, in which technology is both a
source and a consequence of gender relations. In other words, gender
relations can be thought of as materialized in technology, and masculinity
and femininity in turn acquire their meaning and character through their
enrollment and embeddedness in working machines. (p. 107)
32
Wajcman’s technofeminism, similar to cyberfeminism, allows for the relationship
between women and technology to continue changing. This outlook towards
technology is overwhelmingly positive and forward-thinking: the idea is that
emerging technologies (while potentially threatening) can also serve to help push
women into more science and technology careers.
While the aforementioned studies often use theory to highlight how
technology can help or not help women in work places or domestic spaces, few have
discussed the benefits of technological play for the sake of play. This seems both
contradictory and problematic: if technology is used only for work and not for leisure,
it seems impossible for women to ever gain any real expertise. Playing with
technology would help women increase their comfort levels, potentially making them
more comfortable using it at home and work. Two somewhat recent studies use
ethnographic methodologies to explore these very issues. Eileen Green (2001)
suggests a greater focus on technology and leisure practices, but also warns that with
women there is often a “blurring of work and leisure activities” (p. 185). Similarly, in
At Home with Computers, Elaine Lally (2002) discusses ways that domestic
computing technologies often blur work/home lives, contributing to the complicated
relationship between women and technology. She explains, “Women do sometimes
buy computers just because they want one to ‘play’ with, although they might not
describe what they are doing by the use of that term” (p. 165). Thus, even as a play
space, computers are not necessarily parsed as playful technologies for many women.
Cyberfeminist (and technofeminist) theory is useful for understanding gender
and video games. Many games allow players to use avatars to subvert age, race, and
33
gender. At the same time, these games need to be understood as play spaces. Digital
play spaces are full of potential, not only because they might get women more
interested in technologies, but because the freedom of play makes it fertile ground for
experimentation and personal growth. At the same time, in this dissertation I discuss
several games that reinforce, rather than subvert, traditional stereotypes of women
and technology.
New Media Studies
Beyond being technology, video games are often also categorized as “new
media.” As such, most of the current research on video games is situated within a
larger area of inquiry known as new media studies. This is a large area encompassing
several different topics, such as web sites, social networking, mobile technologies,
and online dating. While diverse, this growing body of work has a good deal of
relevance to digital gaming. But because video games are in digital formats and
generally played on computers, console systems, or handheld devices, many of the
themes inherent in new media studies are applicable to this specialized field. Because
not every component of new media studies is relevant to video game studies, my
analysis will focus on topics and aspects that are of particular relevance to topics in
gender and video games.
Scholars often have differing definitions of what new media even is. For
instance, in The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich (2001) lists five factors that
ultimately define all new media objects: numerical representation (new media can
always be represented and parsed down to numerical code); modularity (new media
34
can be repurposed into various parts); automation (new media is able to be
automated); variability (new media can be understood in infinite iterations); and
transcoding (new media can be put in new formats). Alternatively, in Cyberliteracy
Laura Gurak (2001) lists four characteristics which she thinks are central to all new
media: anonymity, speed, reach, and interactivity. In this dissertation, I do not contest
any of these definitions of new media. Instead, I use a selection of topics in new
media studies to illustrate the importance and impact of video games.
New media studies tends to have several recurring topics: remediation,
interactivity, anonymity, narrativity, identity, privacy, piracy, and community among
them. Some of these topics are more applicable to my research on gender and video
games than others. Since it would be impossible to provide a completely
comprehensive survey of all recent work in new media studies, I am instead selecting
key topics in this area that are particularly relevant to my research: they are
interactivity, identity, and narrativity. These three topics pertain to my research the
most, while aligning with my methodological approaches (discussed later in this
chapter). Thus, I begin by considering some of the theoretical implications of
examining new media, and later in this chapter will focus more on methodological
concerns.
Interactivity in New Media
Interactivity is an important topic in new media studies, but what interactivity
is, its relevance, and even its existence are common topics of debate. In New Media:
The Key Concepts, Nicholas Gane and David Beer (2008) describe this dilemma:
35
Interactivity is one of the most frequently used concepts in new media
theory. It is often invoked as a benchmark for differentiating ‘new’ digital
media from ‘older’ analogue forms, and for this reason it is not unusual to
find new media referred to as interactive media. But herein lies the
problem: in spite of the almost ubiquitous presence of this concept in
commentaries on new media it is not always clear what makes media
interactive or what is meant exactly by the term interactivity. (p. 87)
As such, the “interactive” elements of new media are often up for scholarly debate.
Manovich (2001) purposefully omits the term “interactive” from his definition
of new media. According to Manovich, interactivity is mythological and what we
understand as interactive can be understood by Althusser’s notion of interpellation—
new media cannot truly be interactive when all of the “interactivity” is constructed by
someone else and is someone else’s notion of interactivity. Manovich suggests that
calling media “interactive” is firstly tautological but also that, “[…] we are asked to
follow pre-programmed objectively existing associations. […] we are asked to
mistake the structure of somebody else’s mind for our own” (p. 61). From
Manovich’s perspective, so-called interactivity in new media is made impossible as
the consumer is only following a small number of paths that the producer has already
established.
But those who study the shrinking distinction between producer and consumer
see interactivity differently. According to Henry Jenkins (2006), new media can be
seen as part of what he refers to as “convergence culture.” Convergence culture refers
to several technologies that involve consumers in new ways. Technologies such as
36
blogging, social software and Web 2.0, and fan-generated content are all examples of
how players can become both producers and consumers. In Convergence Culture:
Where Old and New Media Collide, Jenkins (2006) describes convergence culture as
being a complex set of practices that integrate both the interests of the consumer/fan
and the media/big business. Jenkins describes convergence culture as both top down
(centered by corporate interests) and bottom up (rewritten and defined by fan
interests) creating a constant tension inherent in many forms of new media. The
bottom-up perspective of convergence culture makes interactivity an essential
component. Convergence culture has given rise to things like fan-driven knowledge
cultures—“voluntary, temporary, and tactical affiliations, reaffirmed through
common intellectual enterprises and emotional investments” (p.27) These various
kinds of convergence culture allow consumers to get involved in the production of
new media objects to varying degrees—either corporate controlled or fan controlled.
In effect, while Manovich is looking at new media interactivity in terms of new media
objects, Jenkins perspective is looking more at the cultures, which can be seen as
more interactive.
In video game studies, interactivity is an undeniably important topic which
can be understood from several perspectives. On the one hand, what might be
considered an interactive video game is really only interactive within limits in the
sense that Manovich implies. In this sense, video games have a Manovitchian sense
of interactivity par excellence, constantly leading players down a narrow path where
they can make a handful of decisions that only nominally effects the outcome of a
game. On the other hand, as gaming technologies are constantly changing, so are
37
issues of player interaction. Video game modding6 and machinima7 are excellent
examples of how players can more actively get “into the game,” becoming both
producer and consumer. Online gaming, which I will discuss in greater depth in
Chapter Five, also creates more interactive potential in video games. In both of these
instances, the so-called “myth” of interactivity becomes less and less of a myth.
Furthermore, the potentially interactive aspects of video games create
methodological issues for academic research. The interactivity of video games means
that no gaming experience can ever be exactly duplicated. Instead, each user is
constantly having different experiences each time they play a game. Even when these
differences are only slight, they cannot help but influence potential interpretations of
a game. I will deal with the complexities of how interactivity affects my research
methodologies in more depth later in this chapter.
Narrative in New Media
In some senses, narrative in new media serves as a companion topic to
interactivity. It can be argued that the more pure narrative a digital object has, the less
interactivity—and vice versa. This is particularly true in video game research, where
the objects of study constantly create a tension between storytelling and action. Many
discussions of video games as narrative versus interactivity (beginning in the mid90s) fell into one of two camps: cyberdramatists (or narratologists) and ludologists
(Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan, 2004). The cyberdrama camp—those who focus on
narrative and dramaturgical elements to analyze video games—often repurpose more
6
Video game “modding” is the process of creating and using plugins that alter the game play
experience.
7
Machinima are fan-generated movies made out of video game screen captures.
38
traditional narrative and literary analysis techniques to understand the story elements
embedded in video games (Murray, 2004). In her essay “From Game-Story to
Cyberdrama,” Janet Murray (2004) discusses the importance of dramatic agency in
analyzing interactive game stories. She explains:
Agency is the term I use to distinguish the pleasure of interactivity, which
arises from the two properties of the procedural and the participatory.
When the world responds expressively and coherently to our engagement
with it, then we experience agency. […] In an interactive story world, the
experience of agency can be intensified by dramatic effect. If changing
what a character is wearing makes for a change in mood within the scene,
if navigating to a different point of view reveals a startling change in
physical or emotional perspective, then we experience dramatic agency.
(p. 10)
Others, such as Ken Perlin (2004), consider the constant struggle between linear
storytelling and action that occurs in video games. These researchers often focus on
the tensions between older forms of narrative (books, movies, plays) and more
interactive forms of narrative found in new media.
Alternatively, ludologists argue for new systems of analysis that focus on
procedural and operations-based gaming, often asserting that traditional media and
literary analysis techniques are ill-equipped to analyze interactive forms of media
such as video games. In First Person, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan explain
the inherent tension between the categories:
39
To a ludologist, cyberdramatic perspectives can seem exceedingly strange.
Ludlogists ask, why expend so much theoretical and technical effort on
subjects like neo-Aristotelian interactive drama? Why focus on things that
do not exist, are arguably impossible, and, should they be created, might
turn out to be of only marginal interest? Instead, they say, let’s focus on
computer games, which do exist, are clearly a vibrant aesthetic and
commercial force, and seem only likely to increase in importance. (p. 35)
Thus the ludologist’s primary argument against using narrative theory to analyze
video games can be summed up by Markku Eskelinen (2004) who remarks, “[…] if I
throw a ball at you, I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories”
(p. 36). In essence, Eskelinen (and others like him) insist that a game (video game or
otherwise) cannot be treated as a story, and cannot possibly be analyzed by the same
kinds of literary analysis techniques. In the methodology section of this chapter I will
discuss some alternatives to these two polarized perspectives on understanding video
games.
Identity in New Media
Identity is an equally important issue in new media studies in general, and
video game studies in particular. In essence, this is because embodiment can quickly
change notions of identity through screen interfaces: the user or player is constantly
reinterpreting themselves through the actions they take on the screen, regardless of
whether their avatar is a version of themselves or a curser arrow signifying their
selections and choices. At the same time, new media technologies often give
40
opportunities for users to construct new identities, morphing their sense of self
through blogging, profiles, and other accoutrements of Web 2.0. In An Introduction to
Cybercultures (2001) David Bell writes, “Marshalling the identity-marking resources
the web confers, personal homepages present the self through a number of devices:
biography, links, photographs, up-datable ‘news’ or ‘diary’ pages, and so on” (p.
118). In Digital Ego (2007), Jacob van Kokwijk refers to this as “virtual identity”
explaining, “A virtual identity is a persona that is implied when communicating
online. It is a perceived view of who you are when you are online. The online identity
changes due to the fact that it is a visual medium with relatively low levels of truth
being described” (p. 56). As such, these low levels of truth give anonymity to the
user—an oft remarked upon attribute of many new media objects. At the same time,
virtual identities give users or players flexibility and a means to play with their sense
of identity.
In this way, the online self is rarely a stable one. In Life on the Screen (1995)
Sherry Turkle discusses how technology and computer screens change one’s self of
self, so that the self is no longer singular but a “polyphony” of selves (referencing
Bakhtin’s notion of “polyphony”). 8 She explains, “Without any principle of
coherence, the self spins off in all directions. Multiplicity is not viable if it means
shifting among personalities that cannot communicate. Multiplicity is not acceptable
if it means being confused to a point of immobility” (p. 258). But at the same time
she asserts, “Virtuality need not be a prison. It can be the raft, the ladder, the
transitional space, the moratorium, that is discarded after reaching greater freedom.
8
M. M. Bakhtin defined the notion of literary “polyphony” in his discussion of Dostoyevsky. He
explains that polyphony in this context is, “A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and
consciousnesses […]” (p. 6).
41
We don’t have to reject life on the screen, but we don’t have to treat it as an
alternative life either” (p. 263). Turkle contends that online we are not reliant on a
singular sense of self but a cycling through of selves.
Video games are often seen as a means to further play with these digital
identities. In What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy
(2003), James Paul Gee suggests that video games construct three different kinds of
player identity: a virtual identity (the identity of the avatar on the screen), a real world
identity (the identity of the player in real life), and what he identifies as a “projective
identity.” The projective identity serves as the combination of the other two identities.
As such, he explains that “projective” invokes a double meaning as the player both
projects their personality into the avatar and, at the same time, the player is “seeing
the virtual character as one's own project in the making, a creature whom I imbue
with a certain trajectory through time defined by my aspirations for what I want that
character to be and become (within the limitations of her capacities, of course)” (p.
55). There is a complicated relationship here, and the fuzziness between real and
imagined identities creates a potential sense of identification between the real and the
imagined. In other words, it becomes difficult to disentangle where the player and
avatar begin and end. Gee suggests that this interplay can create powerful media. He
explains:
It transcends identification with characters in novels or movies, for
instance, because it is both active (the player actively does things) and
reflexive, in the sense that once the player has made some choices about
the virtual character, the virtual character is now developed in a way that
42
sets certain parameters about what the player can do. The virtual character
redounds back on the player and affects his or her future actions (p. 58).
The combination of activity and reflexivity is a strong attribute of video game play.
Essentially, this means that by performing within the video game, players are also
able to embody the multiple viewpoints of the multiple identities involved in the
game story. This level of enactment allows for a deeper sense of identification which,
in turn, feeds more into the player’s reflexivity. As a result, performing identity in a
game has interesting relationships to performing identities in real life.
Thus, identity plays a pivotal role in video games—even more so than with
many other new media artifacts. For example, Turkle suggests that the multiplicity of
identities—what Gee refers to as the projective identity—is further powerful because
of the ability to “play” with gender, race, and other markers which would be more
prominent in the real world than they are in online worlds. According to Turkle, the
ability to gender swap affords an understanding that people may not have in the real
world. At the same time, she suggests: “But once they are online as female, they soon
find that maintaining this fiction is difficult. To pass as a woman for any length of
time requires understanding how gender inflects speech, manner, the interpretation of
experience. Women attempting to pass as men face the same kind of challenge” (p.
212). While playing with sexual identity is challenging and difficult, it can elicit
understanding about sex and gender differences, allowing people to see things from
different perspectives and points of view.
43
Literature Review and this Dissertation
My literature review hopefully helped to provide some idea of the scope and
breadth of research that has already been done in gender and gaming, as well as
research that I plan to reference throughout the remainder of this dissertation. While
my coverage of a variety of topics—such as gender studies, leisure studies, new
media studies, and technology studies—may be diverse, they are weaved together
throughout these dissertation to explicate an equally diverse topic. By tapping into
these fields of research, this dissertation also expands on research in these areas.
Ultimately, I explore how video games affect (and are affected by) cultural
and ideological perceptions of gender and play. Obviously, gender studies is one of
the most essential components of this research, and I argue that it is through our
gendered lenses that notions of play are constructed. At the same time, it is through
research on gender as it relates to technology, leisure, and new media that I can show
a broader view of my complicated area of inquiry. Additionally, by using critical and
cultural research on ideological constructions of individuals as well as the
relationship between productivity and play, I am able to theoretically push at these
issues. Concepts such as Althusser’s “interpellation” or Lefebvre’s “work-play unity”
allow me to paint this dissertation with a broader stroke in a way that is crossdisciplinary and methodologically diverse. In the next two sections, I will discuss my
data selection and methodology, respectively, illustrating how I will tackle these
complicated issues throughout this dissertation.
44
Data Selection
This dissertation examines the relationship between gendered play and
productivity. In order to do this, my analysis needed to span both video games and the
culture surrounding them. Accordingly, I chose to analyze video games and their
advertising. In the following section I explain how and why I chose specific media to
analyze.
Game Selection
Given the topic of this dissertation, researching actual video games would
seem to be a fairly obvious decision. Video games have become a popular medium in
recent years, and are certainly the most pervasive kind of digital play.
Game selection created some minor difficulties. While, on the one hand, I feel
it is necessary to analyze games that target feminine audiences (regardless of who is
playing the games), it is often difficult to determine what games are targeting these
audiences without reinforcing and engaging the gender-related stereotypes that they
often help to foster. While the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) does
yearly demographic polls, the statistics tend to be somewhat vague. For example,
their 2007 poll showed that 44% of online gamers were women, and that 38% of adult
gamers in general are women. Unfortunately, neither of these statistics gives specifics
about which games women played most frequently during this time period. Similarly,
past surveys and studies have insisted that women tend to play casual games or social
games, but often do not cite specific games (Ray, 2004; Fullerton et al, 2008). Game
companies tend to be secretive, and often keep their own statistical information
45
propriety, which makes it difficult to determine exactly who plays what, and how
often.
Thus, I have used a variety of criteria to select the games I will be analyzing.
Games in this chapter have been selected based on:
•
Whether they are advertised to feminine audiences
•
The cover images
•
Whether they are specifically mentioned in other studies as women’s
games
•
Company game player statistics (when they are made available)
By using these criteria I am, perhaps, not getting exact statistics about who is playing
which games. Instead, the goal is to illustrate many of the general assumptions by
creators, players, and audiences about who is playing certain games and the gender
stereotypes that are constructed in video game play.
Advertising Selection
While video games are an obvious data choice for this study, advertising
might seem less obvious. It would be easy to dismiss advertising as a vacuous or
shallow form of popular culture. However, advertising can be seen as a barometer of
larger issues and themes in a culture and an essential means of understanding
persuasion, markets and the economy. In Social Communication in Advertising Leiss
et al (1997) Leiss et al suggest the power and importance of advertising culture:
Its creations appropriate and transform a vast range of symbols and
ideas; its unsurpassed communicative powers recycle cultural models and
46
references back through the network of social interactions. This venture is
unified by the discourse through and about objects, which bonds together
images of persons, products, and well-being. (p. 5)
Similarly, in her unpublished manuscript, Consuming Reality: TV Advertising and
Public Relations in a New Media Economy, June Deery (2009) writes that advertising
has the power, not only to persuade, but to form larger discourses. She explains:
For generations, advertising has been setting the agenda, telling us what is
worth our attention, what is attractive or newsworthy: to this extent it
rivals art, which by framing or reassembling experience validates it as
worth regarding. But while advertising is often seen as getting in the way
of something, it can also make something happen.
Thus, by analyzing larger discourses constructed by advertising, I am able to
understand the bigger picture issues around gaming. In this dissertation I use
advertising to understand how games are socially and culturally constructed,
particularly through the lens of gender.
Gender is often surprisingly unrepresented in studies of advertising. Erving
Goffman’s Gender Advertisements (1976/1979) was one of the first texts to consider
how gender is portrayed in advertising, and how it complies with already understood
societal stereotypes about gender. Goffman is primarily concerned with ritual and
how it is used to create and reproduce gender expectations. He looks at how women’s
bodily positioning and facial expressions manifest their subordination and lower
social status. Since Goffman’s seminal book, a few others have expanded on some of
the typical constructions of gender in advertising. Diane Barthel’s Putting on
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Appearances: Gender and Advertising (1988) discusses how the “beauty role” is
constructed through advertising. Barthel goes significantly deeper than Goffman,
discussing more feminist implications of the gender constructions in advertisements.
For example, in advertisements aimed at women, she shows how the “voice of
authority” is used to put feminine audiences in the position of the child through
various authority figures (older women, scientists, or other experts). Thus, rather than
showing just how women are portrayed (such as Goffman), Barthel manages to draw
a fuller picture of how specific appeals are made to women to sell them both products
and specific images of themselves.
Primarily, I examine magazine advertising in this dissertation. An obvious
question might be: why focus on magazine advertising? At first glance this area might
appear to be a dead end, with a quickly changing magazine industry (Troland, 2005)
that is being overrun by other forms of media and advertising. But it is the very
wavering nature of the magazine industry that makes it a compelling space to study
new media, gender, and leisure. In his article, “Seeing ahead: Underpinnings for what
is next for magazine publishing” Thomas R. Troland (2005) writes, “We are a
Women’s Business. Women buy magazines more than men. Much more than men.
And women’s lives, roles, needs and expectations have changed immensely during
the past forty years” (p. 9). Thus, one reason for this study might be the video game
industry’s deft targeting of women audiences, despite the changing terrain. Because
there is already a gendered skew inherent in both of these forms of media—video
games as well as magazines—their combination seems well worth investigation.
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A handful of scholars have specifically examined video game advertising to
varying extents. In their essay , “The Hegemony of Play”, the Ludica Group9 (Fron, et
al, 2007b) briefly discusses some of the issues with video game advertising, many of
which I will be elaborating on later in this essay. The Ludica Group explains, “Many
videogame advertisements tend to disenfranchise and alienate women, further
contributing to the self-fulfilling prophecy that ‘women don’t play videogames’” (p.
316). In this essay, the Ludica Group also discusses Nintendo setting their sights on a
different kind of gamer (women) in more recent advertising campaigns, and that this
represents signs of “subtle but tectonic shifts” (p. 316). By comparing typical video
game advertising to advertising aimed at female audiences, I will examine whether
this claim is valid.
In an article “Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles:
Young People’s Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions,” in the journal Sex
Roles, Karen E. Dill and Kathryn P. Thill (2007) discuss advertisements in their study
of video game magazines. While the study looks at articles, in addition to advertising,
their conclusion is worth noting. The assert that in video game magazines:
Character images tell blatantly sexist stories about gender, and research is
just beginning to reveal and analyze those stories. The vision of
masculinity video game characters project is that men should be powerful,
dominant, and aggressive. The story video game characters tell about
femininity is that women should be extreme physical specimens, visions
of beauty, objects of men’s heterosexual fantasies, and less important than
9
The Ludica group is a collective of academic gender and video games researchers from several
universities.
49
men. An emerging trend, though, is that these sexy, curvaceously thin
beauties are also now typically violent. (p. 861)
While this study provides a useful survey for analyzing overall content in video game
magazines, they do not focus their research specifically on advertising, nor do they do
more in-depth semiotic analyses of these advertisements. Additionally, by only
looking at video game magazines (rather than magazines aimed at feminine
audiences), their studies only get half of the picture—they are limited to primarily
male players and do not consider alternative advertising tactics.
In essence, I ultimately argue that gender, advertising, and ideologies of play
are all part of an inseparable and symbiotic relationship, where advertising very often
reinforces and reaffirms gender roles and stereotypes already a part of dominant
ideologies. Advertisements help to reinforce normative gender roles already present
in the video game industry and culture. As such, in Chapter two, I examine typical
video game advertisements specifically because they are punctuated with gender
stereotypes. In later chapters I will explore more recent advertising campaigns for the
Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii, and some of the ways they have been specifically
marketed towards women. My methodologies vary slightly between each of these
forms of advertising (video game magazines, non-video game magazines, and
television commercials) because each of these forms of advertising has different
attributes affording different forms of analysis. As such, my sample of analyzing
advertising in Chapter Two (for typical video game advertising) encompasses a
smaller time period—for reasons I will explain shortly. Similarly television
advertisements are more complicated to track (specifically, their exact programming
50
placement), and thus my methodologies differ when looking at television from when I
look at magazines.
Methodology Review
As I have shown, this dissertation necessitates analyzing different kinds of
media. Because of this, it was also necessary to use several methodological
approaches. In “Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory Mapping after a Postmodern
Turn,” social scientist Adele Clarke (2003) discusses the difficulties and complexities
of postmodern research, where singular and simplistic approaches are becoming
impossible. Clarke explains of these changing methodologies:
If modernism emphasized universality, generalizations, simplification,
permanence, stability, wholeness, rationality, regularity, homogeneity, and
sufficiency, then postmodernism has shifted emphases to localities,
partialities, positionalities, complications, tenuousness, instabilities,
irregularities, contradictions, heterogeneities, situatedness, and
fragmentation—complexities. Postmodernism itself is not a unified system
of beliefs or assumptions but rather an ongoing array of possibilities” (p.
555).
The complexities of changing media and subjects within research has Clarke calling
for approaches that understand “the full situation of inquiry” (p. 556). In other words,
rather than approaching a problem from a singular and straightforward viewpoint,
Clarke suggests using situational analysis to guide a researcher through the
complexities and problematics of changing research. In her book length discussion on
51
the subject, Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn,
Clarke (2005) discusses how visual cultures, in particular, suggest a need for more
robust analyses. She explains:
In the past, it was assumed that an image ‘reflected’ the world in which it
was made in a mirrorlike more or less realistic fashion. In contrast, today
we tend to look at visual materials as ‘produced in and by’ particular
social domains for particular purposes. Visual images are then analyzed as
discursive cultural products of particular worlds or disciplines. No
mirroring, or realism, or authenticity is assumed, and a more than skeptical
stance may be taken toward the images. Thus today analyzing a visual is
predicated to some degree on understanding the world that produced it” (p.
219, her emphasis).
According to Clarke, visual cultures (such as the video games discussed in this
dissertation) are “discursive cultural products,” which acts as indicators of the larger
world that produce them. In the following I show how looking at two distinct visual
cultures dealing with the same topic—video games and advertising—help to better
understand the discursive nature of video game cultures.
In my research on video games, not only did my topic call for analyzing two
different kinds of media (video games and advertising) but within each of these
categories there were several subcategories of things I analyzed, each calling for
slightly different approaches. For example, while I use some form of semiotic
analysis for almost everything I examine in this dissertation, there are differing
components that I needed to bear in mind when looking at magazine advertisements
52
through a semiotic lens, than when I did so with video games. I supplement semiotic
analysis with content analysis when looking at magazines, because I believe it is
important to get more of a bird’s-eye-view regarding how often certain
advertisements appeared in different magazines, meant for different demographics.
Further, while I use some semiotics to analyze video games, the differing natures of
several different kinds of games (which varied from handheld games, to console
games, to massively multiplayer online games) required nuanced approaches which
took different things into account for different games.
In the end, no single methodology would have been sufficient for my research.
In the following section, I outline my three primary methodological approaches
(semiotics, content analysis, and video game analysis). I have tried to keep my
methodologies as broad as possible in order to understand several different kinds of
media, but at the same time allow these approaches to become narrower and more
specific to each thing that I analyze. During the course of this dissertation, as my
topics and approaches vary, I will continue to explain my methodological choices and
decisions on an ongoing basis.
Semiotic Analysis
My primary mode of analysis, in examining both advertisements and video
games, is semiotics. Semiotic analysis involves the study of signs in a cultural context
and it stems from de Saussure’s (1916/1986) basic insight into the distinction between
a word as a mark or “signifier,” usually arbitrarily formed, and this word’s larger
meanings and connotations, what he referred to as “the signified;” for example, the
53
letters and sounds in the words “freedom” or “flag” and their broader sociopolitical
associations. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes (1957/1972) saw this insight into
language as a way to address the larger significance of seemingly mundane cultural
practices, including advertising. As Barthes observed, ads often draw on a sign’s
capacity to summon larger connotations and by so doing often perform ideological
work, normalizing the stance of a dominant group (in his case, the French
bourgeoisie). Advertisers like the power of linguistic signs to connote larger
meanings since this is a way to tap into powerful beliefs and emotions in a condensed
(yet expensive) form of communication.
Ads can create a powerful cultural resonance because they draw on and even
amplify unstated but widely recognized meanings or cultural “myths” as Barthes
would describe them. Barthes discusses the value of using semiotics to better
understand cultural myths. Barthes describes a myth as a type of speech which is a
“mode of signification” (p. 109) for a culture. He focuses on how advertisements and
politics construct and mold popular belief systems through these cultural associations.
According to Barthes, mythologies, rather than hiding their meanings, put them at the
forefront. He explains:
Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about
them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a
natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of
an explanation but that of a statement of fact. (p. 143).
In order to identify possible connotations, the semiotician can examine image, text,
color, or any other element of design. In some instances the advertiser (or in this case
54
also game designer) might be deliberately and consciously drawing on certain
associations, while in other instances it may be much more a matter of audience
interpretation. In my study, I take the opportunity to interpret these cultural texts,
whether games or their advertising, without attempting to identify the creator’s
intentionality. Clearly, the myths or cultural associations that I will highlight are those
regarding gender and play. Throughout this dissertation, my analysis of games and
advertising help to demonstrate many of the gender mythologies circulating in our
culture.
Content Analysis
Throughout this dissertation, I use content analysis to analyze the frequency
and variety of video game advertisements that I found in both traditional video game
magazines and women’s special interest magazines. Between these kinds of
magazines, my methodologies varied slightly (specifically pertaining to the kind of
magazines I was looking it). For Chapter Two, I primarily study typical video game
magazine advertisements. For this, I conducted a survey of Play Magazine and Game
Informer Magazine—two popular video game magazines—from July 2006 through
June 2007 (See Tables 1 and 2). To study gender and advertising in these magazines I
examined how often women appeared in these advertisements, what their roles were,
and how they were positioned and presented to audiences. I will discuss this
methodology in more detail in Chapter Two. In Chapters Three, Four, and Five, I
discuss advertisements that appeared in women’s special interest magazines. While
time and resources limited the number of magazines I researched for video game
55
advertising, I tried to get a cross-section which included women’s and men’s general
interest magazine, as well as magazines that have more gender neutral audiences. I
recorded the number of video game advertisements in ten popular magazines10 for
each month during this time period (See Table 3). For these magazines, I recorded
both full page advertisements as well as small promotional ads that were on larger
pages with several featured items from that month. I did not include actual magazine
articles in this study, and also did not include advertisements for video game systems
that were specifically for children or babies (such as the V-Flash system) as I did not
feel this was relevant to my study. 11 While, unfortunately, my selection of magazines
does not provide a fully comprehensive tally of every time every advertisement
appeared in any magazine, I feel fairly confident that my cross-section covers all of
the major Nintendo advertising campaigns aimed at this demographic over this time
period, and that additional magazines would have been mostly redundant.
Additionally, when I felt it was relevant I also refer to television commercials or web
sites that refer back to these advertisements.
Video Game Analysis
Selecting and studying video games themselves proved to be a slightly trickier
proposition than studying advertising. Methodologically, video games are
complicated artifacts to analyze—in large part because of the aforementioned tension
regarding narrative and interactivity inherent in all video games. Thus, as I have
The magazines I reviewed were Real Simple Magazine, Oprah Magazine, People Magazine, Good
Housekeeping, Martha Stewart Living, Redbook, Esquire, Wired Magazine, Playboy, and Time
Magzine.
11
Because I am specifically studying women’s play and video games that are aimed at women,
educational games or game systems that are meant solely for children were tangential to my research.
10
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already noted, several scholars have debated whether to analyze video games in terms
of their narrative potential (and in similar ways to how one might analyze books, film,
television, or other media objects) or whether to treat them as something else entirely.
Several researchers have found a middle ground between these two
standpoints, using both older and newer forms of analysis to find ways to understand
video games. Jenkins (2004), for example, suggests understanding video games “less
as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility” (p. 119). Similarly, Celia
Pearce (2004) breaks down six potential ways that narrative can operate in video
games: experiential (game conflict experienced by players), performative (players
watching an emergent narrative), augmentary (background information that enhances
the overall narrative), descriptive (a retelling of game events by a third party),
metastory (an overall story that contextualizes the game’s framework), and story
system (a means of allowing the player to create their own narrative). This middleground approach is perhaps the most useful way of understanding and analyzing
video games. Particularly I feel that Pearce’s (2004) approach shows that both
interactivity and narrative are clearly important to understanding video games. For
instance, while little player interaction might have minor effects on the overall
metastory of a game, this metastory still seems important to analyze in order to get at
what is going on in these complex cultural artifacts.
Recently, Ian Bogost (2006, 2007) proposed that the most effective way to
understand video games is to focus on the game’s “unit operations” which are “modes
of meaning-making that privilege discrete, disconnected actions over deterministic,
progressive systems” (2006, p. 3). He argues for what he calls procedural methods for
57
understanding how video games are capable of making rhetorical arguments. In his
second book, Persuasive Games (2007), Bogost elaborates on the potentially
persuasive and rhetorical power of video games, explaining:
I call this new form procedural rhetoric, the art of persuasion through
rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word,
writing, images, or moving pictures. This type of persuasion is tied to the
core affordances of the computer: computers run processes, they execute
calculations and rule-based symbolic manipulations. But I want to suggest
that videogames, unlike some forms of computational persuasion, have
unique persuasive powers. […] Videogames are computational artifacts
that have cultural meaning as computational artifacts. (author’s emphasis,
p. ix)
Bogost discusses the rhetorical power of video games, focusing on topics including
political games, advergames, and exergames. This method of looking primarily at the
rule-based processes of videogames rather than treating them like traditional texts is a
compelling one. At the same time, I argue that older and newer forms of analysis can
be used together to better understand some of the larger issues at play in games.
Another recent methodology was proposed by Mia Consalvo and Nathan
Dutton (2006) who suggest a video games analysis methodology which highlights
object inventory, interface study, interaction map, and gameplay logs. They explain:
These areas represent the components of a game most relevant for play
and encompass static and dynamic, changeable and unchangeable aspects
of the game. Using these areas, researchers can develop research questions
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that look at ideological assumptions operating in a game, or determine if
certain theories can best help explain a game or series of games. The areas
also allow for comparison across games, to help researchers start to
identify larger patterns in games and/ or genres. (p. 1)
Consalvo and Dutton elaborate on this methodology and their four areas of study,
describing some of the key components scholars should look for when analyzing
games. Additionally, Consalvo and Dutton suggest that researchers make
spreadsheets to analyze the entire inventories, interfaces, maps, and logs of each
game (cataloguing everything).
Many of the aforementioned video game theorists rely on analysis of what is
referred to as “game mechanics” more than the game narrative. A game mechanic is
not the rules of the game, nor the story or genre of the game, but rather what happens
in the game. For example, some of the game mechanics for the board game Checkers
would include moving a piece, crowning a piece, and capturing a piece. In their essay
“Games and Design Patterns” (2006) Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen explain
that:
A typical game mechanic is “roll and move,” which simply states that dice
are rolled and that something else is moved based on the outcome of the
roll. The mechanic does not state how or why something should be
moved; this is determined by the rules for the particular game. (p. 413)
Thus a game might have several mechanics all linked together. In my research on
video games, I use game mechanics to understand game play elements.
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The lack of coherent, linear, and stable narrative means that alternative modes
are needed to understand all of the components of a video game text. While video
games are not narratives in the same sense that books, plays, film, or television are, I
still examine video games primarily as texts, paying specific attention to the discrete
units which imply productivity and ways that they attempt to be amenable to feminine
audiences. Specifically I will be examining:
•
Game interfaces
•
Game avatars
•
Game mechanics
•
Game Narratives (when applicable)
•
Extra-game materials (such as game covers and instructions)
•
Hints and tips given to players
This combination of elements provides a comprehensive picture of what is actually
going on in the video game—factoring in narrative, interactivity, game mechanics,
avatars, and other aspects that often relate to games but are not discussed in as much
details (such as the game instructions).
Outline of Disseration
My analysis breaks productive play down to three (non-exclusive) categories:
pragmatic play (play that directly impacts real world productive tasks), simulated
productive play (play that emulates or indirectly impacts real world productivity), and
socially productive play (play that uses themes of family, an in effect, promotes real
world social relationships). Topically, I have organized this dissertation to illustrate
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how these marketing campaigns and video games help to interpellate gender into
video games. In order to do this, I begin by discussing some traditional notions of
masculine gaming in Chapter Two. Subsequently, in Chapters Three, Four, and Five
my focus turns to games marketed to women audiences, and the different kinds of
play that are engendered by them.
To begin with, in Chapter Two, “Hardcore Gamers and Oprah Gamers: Play
and Masculinity,” I examine cultural assumptions about play, masculinity, and
femininity, drawing from previous studies on video games and also from research on
gender and sports. After establishing this perception of the “hardcore gamer” as
masculine, I use a combination of content and textual analysis of advertising in
traditional video game magazines (as previously mentioned) to show how femininity
is often marginalized, pushing women into the role of “outsider” in this culture. In
establishing this marginalization, I am better able to illustrate the alternative forms of
advertising aimed at feminine audiences in subsequent chapters.
In Chapter Three, “A 36-24-36 Cerebrum: Pragmatic Play,” I focus on games
aimed at feminine audiences that try to improve players’ real world lives. Through
textual analysis of both advertising campaigns and the games themselves, I illustrate
ways that these pragmatic forms of play are designed for and marketed to women
audiences. My focus in this chapter is on Brain Games (such as Brain Age and Big
Brain Academy), Exergames (such as Wii Fit and My Weight Loss Coach), and
special interest games (such as Personal Trainer: Cooking). These games are all
about self-improvement, and very few have game-like attributes. I argue that this kind
of ‘pragmatic play’ is a hallmark of video games designed for women.
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In Chapter Four, “Do Something with Your Nothing: Simulated Productive
Play,” I introduce the idea of “simulated productive play,” a companion category to
the pragmatic play discussed in Chapter Three. Simulated Productive Play, I argue, is
play that, rather than being actually productive, gives the illusion of productivity
through work-like play. Once again, I use both advertising campaigns and the video
games themselves to illustrate this phenomenon. I highlight three different kinds of
simulated productive play in this chapter: casual games, domestic-themed games, and
consumption/shopping games. The games in this category are designed with specific
appeals to feminine audiences, and often use simulated productive play to replicate
women’s everyday experiences in decidedly unplayful ways.
Finally, in Chapter Five, “Play is Love: Socially Productive Play,” I illustrate
the relevance of social play in the gendered construction of video games. Once again,
using a combination of analyzing advertising campaigns and video games as texts, I
look at two different kinds of social play: family play with the Nintendo Wii and play
in online worlds. First, looking at the Nintendo Wii, I discuss how advertising
campaigns and game design construct a kind of justification for play through family
time. Next, I look at online gaming worlds, and how social play figures into these
games. In online gaming worlds, what becomes most compelling is a combination of
all three kinds of play I discuss in other chapters: productive play, simulated
productive play, and social play. Thus, I will show how multiplayer online gaming
worlds are an ideal space to study gender and play.
One thing that I would like to stress is that, while I have divided chapters by
my categories of productive play—pragmatic play, simulated productive play, and
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socially productive play—these categories are in no way exclusive. Often, there are
overlaps between all three. The point is not that games are only in one category, in
each of these cases. Rather, I hope to show that these games all show evidence of a
similar phenomenon, which influences larger issues of gender, play, and productivity.
These categories are, therefore, meant to be fluid guides rather than hard guidelines.
Through describing and analyzing the relationship between gender, play, and
productivity, I hope to show how the feminine video game player is constructed and
reinforced by the video game industry. It is my goal in this dissertation to show how
ideologically driven practices of productive play help to reinforce traditional
stereotypes of femininity, and ultimately hinder women’s leisure and play practices.
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CHAPTER TWO
HARDCORE AND OPRAH GAMERS: PLAY AND MASCULINITY
Introduction
In April of 2008, video game industry analyst Michael Pachter was quoted
saying, “Wii Fit is just not aimed at hardcore gamers ... It's definitely aimed at the
Oprah crowd. I bet they sell a million units a week for every pound that Oprah says
she lost on it” (“Retailers Getting,” 2008, ¶ 4). Similarly, in the April 2007 issue of
the popular video game magazine Game Informer, Senior Associate Editor Michael
Kato writes, “You’ve probably been hearing about the casual gaming revolution for a
while now. You’ve read about how much money cell phone gaming rakes in, and how
middle aged women in the suburbs love playing games on their PCs when they aren’t
watching Oprah. We’ve even seen companies flat-out declare that it’s a priority to
capture as many of these non-traditional gamers as possible. But is this really what
the industry needs?” Kato continues to answer his rhetorical question by asserting,
“Call me selfish, but I do not want the industry to cater specifically to these segments
of the population at the expense of hardcore gamers” (p. 40). These are only two
examples of a recently growing stratification between what are traditionally known as
“hardcore gamers” and what I like to refer to as “Oprah Gamers.” This tension helps
to reinforce an image where masculinity rules in the video game industry, and also
points to a power struggle between the male and female gamer.
Regardless of the validity of Patcher and Kato’s claims—that the “Oprah
crowd” is indeed distinctly different from the usual “hardcore gamer” crowd—this
impression has recently enjoyed a significant amount of media attention, further
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reinforcing a division. In subsequent chapters of this dissertation I illustrate how
Nintendo advertising campaigns aimed at women have played a large role in this
construction of the woman gamer, and (in many ways) have created a very specific
kind of woman gamer. This construction of the feminine gamer often values
productivity over playfulness in a decidedly gendered way. In this chapter my focus
is on the traditional hardcore gamer. I illustrate examples of masculinity of the video
game industry, showing how it creates a feedback loop often affecting content.
Additionally, I examine some magazine advertisements aimed at the so-called
hardcore gamers to illustrate masculine exclusionary tactics. This will serve as
preparation for a comparison with feminine advertisements in subsequent chapters.
The binarism between Oprah and hardcore gamers is often supported by mass
media, the gaming industry, and gamers. At the same time, these binaries are highly
constructed and (in reality) not nearly as extreme as media, industry, and certain
gamers would like to make them out to be. As already discussed in Chapter One, it is
often difficult to disentangle biological and cultural constructions of gender/sex traits
and behaviors. The binarism of drawing a line between hardcore and casual gamers
has similarly problematic implications—obviously these dichotomies are constructed
along gender lines, and while there are clear exceptions (many women play
“hardcore” games and many men play “casual” games) they generally support
cultural expectations about who is expected to play. Admittedly, this chapter
reinforces some of this binarism, but with the hopes of (a) establishing a baseline of
masculinity as an undeniable component of the gaming industry and (b) as a point of
comparison for my discussions of femininity and play later in this dissertation.
65
In Chapter One, I showed a history of women being cast as other in
technological spaces. In this history, women are often shown as being technologically
incompetent. In this chapter, I show that masculinity is the dominant ideology of play
within the video game industry. Simultaneously, I show that feminine play is marked
by otherness. This otherness is characterized by either trivialization (as seen by the
offhand remarks made about Oprah and casual gamers) or sexualization (which I will
show examples of in several of the video game magazine advertisements later in this
chapter). In this framework, femininity that attempts to inhabit gamer space is
constantly being coded and, subsequently, neutralized. By being assigned an alterior
role, feminine play is marginalized and mocked by the mainstream gaming industry.
In comparison the masculine play shown in this chapter is more open, inclusive, and
authorized.
Video Games and Masculinity
Until only recently, video games were often understood to be created by and
for masculine audiences (Fron et al, 2007a; Ray, 2004; Cassell & Jenkins, 1999). But
in recent years an influx of video games (such as Wii Fit, Brain Age, and Diner Dash)
have been increasingly marketed to a demographic previously ignored by the gaming
industry: adult females. Despite this new and emerging phenomenon, one does not
have to look far to see a division and gendered hierarchy between traditional
(masculine) gamers and newer (feminine) gamers. In his book Die Tryin’: Video
Games, Masculinity, Culture, Derek A. Burrill (2008) discusses ways that video
66
games are playgrounds for the construction and performance of masculinity. He refers
to this phenomenon as “digital boyhood” and explains:
Boyhood can be theorized as the regressive nature of first-world, capitalist
masculinity, where the pressures of the external force the man back to a
type of always-accessible boyhood. Videogames in the 21st century serve
as the prime mode of regression, a technonostalgia machine allowing
escape, fantasy, extension, and utopia, a space away from feminism, class
imperatives, familial duties, as well as national and political
responsibilities. It is a space and experience where the digital boy can “die
tryin’,” tryin’ to win, tryin’ to beat the game, and tryin’ to prove his
manhood (and therefore his place within the patriarchy, the world of
capital, and the Law) (p. 2, author’s emphasis).
Burrill delineates the video game format as inherently a non-feminine space which
inescapably evokes themes of “digital boyhood”—meaning a technology of
masculinity par excellence. Burrill uses the term “boyhood” (as opposed to manhood
or masculinity), implying a state of perpetual childhood and a kind of forced
immaturity within the reinforcement of these masculine norms. So while there have
been recent, subtle shifts in the video game market, according to Burrill, for the most
part they are still created by and for men.
Along these lines, the Ludica Group have begun focusing on some of the
cultural logic surrounding the gaming industry (Fron, et al, 2007a), and have
discussed the hegemonies of masculine play (Fron, et al, 2007b). Their thoughts on
the issues are worth quoting at length:
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The power elite of the game industry is a predominately white, and
secondarily Asian, male-dominated corporate and creative elite that
represents a select group of large, global publishing companies in
conjunction with a handful of massive chain retail distributors. This
hegemonic elite determines which technologies will be deployed, and
which will not; which games will be made, and by which designers; which
players are important to design for, and which play styles will be
supported. The hegemony operates on both monetary and cultural levels. It
works in concert with game developers and self-selected hardcore
“gamers,” who have systematically developed a rhetoric of play that is
exclusionary, if not entirely alienating to “minority” players (who, in
numerical terms, actually constitute a majority) such as most women and
girls, males of many ages, and people of different racial and cultural
backgrounds. It is aided and abetted by a publication and advertising
infrastructure, characterized by game review magazines, television
programming and advertising that valorizes certain types of games, while
it marginalizes those that do not fit the “hardcore gamer” demographic (p.
1).
The Ludica Group’s research considers how deeply marginalized feminine play is
within the gaming industry, as well as how several layers of cultural influence
(industry, games, media) help to support this system. Thus, it is not simply gamers,
developers, or magazines that are complicit in this schema of exclusionary
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masculinity, but a larger culture that ultimately defines video game play as almost
inherently masculine.
This image of video game masculinity is heavily reinforced by industry
statistics about who makes games. A recent study by the International Game
Developers Association showed that only about 11% of the industry is made up of
women (IGDA, 2005). Although it is universally agreed that greater diversity would
improve the gaming industry, it is still primarily guided by a masculine workforce. In
“Crunched by Passion: Women Game Developers and Workplace Challenges,”
academic researcher Mia Consalvo (2008) writes that, in recent history, games with
women developers have been more popular with women audiences. Consalvo
explains, “Creating and maintaining a more diverse workforce, it seems, could result
in games that are more gender inclusive, and that better reflect game play styles and
content that would interest a broader population of gamers” (p. 177). Fullerton, et al
(2008) suggest that this can be cured with a “virtuous cycle,” that “draws more
women into game creation through more inclusive learning, play, and work
environments” (p. 161). Because being a video game fan is the most likely reason
designers and developers will wind up in the video game industry, the lack of game
appeal to many women directly affects who makes games. In turn, because there is a
shortage of women designers and developers making games gender inclusive, many
women continue not to play. In these ways, we can see the gaming industry as a
feedback loop: there are not enough feminine-centric games because there are not
enough women designers and developers, and there are not enough women designers
and developers because there are not enough feminine-centric games.
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Given this feedback loop, it seems unsurprising that, according to Henry
Jenkins (2000), video games are characterized by masculine play styles, and marked
specifically by “boy culture” (p. 270). He explains, speaking specifically of games
aimed at boys (as opposed to men), that characteristics such as independence, daring,
mastery, hierarchical structures, and aggressiveness, being inherent design
characteristics of many video games, might have specific appeal to masculine
audiences. Similarly, Burrill (2008) posits that video games presume that “the player
is always already male” (p. 138) and games become “a safe space to engage in violent
and aggressive play without the threat of real bodily injury found in sports and other
real-world activities and conflicts, and a theater of war where an enactment of the
terminal triumph of an anxious masculinity supported by the fast-changing nature of
technology can be repeated again and again” (p. 138).12 Given these guidelines,
typical hardcore and masculine games would include the games in the Halo or Grand
Theft Auto series. While these games might have a limited (primarily masculine)
audience, they are also some of the games most commented upon by the media and
the video game industry. This means that, oftentimes, discussions in the media about
video games automatically condemn all games as violent, without necessarily seeing
the full gambit of different games on the market. And while women do play these
games, that does not eradicate the masculine undertones that permeate throughout
them.
A perfect example of this feedback loop can be seen with professional gaming
teams. While there are professional women gamers, gender has become a key
12
The phrase “anxious masculinity” seems particularly compelling, here, as it seems to implying that
this space is potentially being threatened or invaded—and perhaps given the number of “Oprah
Gamers,” this might be the case.
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distinction in gaming competitions. Taylor (2008), explains, “we are seeing
increasing gender segregation of pro players and growing structural stratification
including single sex teams (where there used to be more coed groups), higher prize
winnings for male teams, and secondary status for women’s competitions” (p. 51).
For example, the Frag Dolls is a gaming team comprised entirely of women, which is
sponsored by the video game company Ubisoft. In some ways, women’s professional
gaming teams have opened some doors in this previously masculine space. For
example, in one interview Frag Doll Morgan Romine (2008) explained, “It’s this
cultural stereotype of gamers, that it’s twenty-four to thirty-four-year-old males who
are still living in their mother’s basement, that those are the type of people who play
video games because video games are not, of course, played by people who have
other things going on in their lives” (p. 317). At the same time, she also adds, “We
certainly have made a big impact at Ubisoft as far as acknowledging that girls do play
games, and that they should be considered as a demographic group with serious
potential” (p. 318). Groups such as the Frag Dolls, the PMS Clan, and the Girls of
Destruction (GOD)13 have entered a space that, in many ways, is stereotyped as
masculine, but at the same time they are not always, necessarily, altering this
masculine space. For example, while Ubisoft is sponsor to the Frag Dolls, they also
own Play Magazine which prints a yearly Girls of Gaming issue: comparable to the
swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated.14
13
In some ways, these names can be seen to be fairly powerful indicators of the kinds of women
involved in the organizations. Names such as “PMS Clan,” thus, makes some attempt to own gender
stereotypes in the same way that a term like “queer” turned a derogatory term into a matter of pride.
14
Similar to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, The Girls of Gaming does not focus on video game
players, but rather, features sexual art of game characters.
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In many ways, the depiction of Frag Dolls and other girl gamers runs parallel
to past depictions of women in technology, where women are often cast as other. In
the previous quote, the subtext of Romine’s remarks is that ordinarily women gamers
are underestimated, but that her team of Frag Dolls has proved to be beyond this
trivialization. At the same time, the Frag Dolls web site codes the players in an
excessively sexualized way, neutralizing any threat they might make towards the
masculine mainstream. The site details their preferences, hobbies, likes, and personal
stats not unlike a playboy centerfold. Pictures of the Frag Dolls on the site show them
fairly sexually positioned, and cartoon drawings of them overemphasize large breasts
and hips (see Figures 1 and 2). So while Frag Dolls might be breaking some
boundaries, they are also conforming to some feminine stereotypes in a traditionally
masculine space.
Additionally, one can argue that the mere existence of women’s gaming teams
in professional gaming is evidence of their alterity. A team of only women is
characterized by an otherness that makes them a novelty, rather than a standard part
of play. On the one hand, professional women players might be beginning to break
boundaries and show that women play too, but on the other hand one can see these
players as helping to fortify pre-existing boundaries through self-marginalization.
This disparity has parallels to many of the debates of women in sports and on sporting
teams. From the 1970s through the present, much of this discussion has centered on
Title IX, also known as the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Title IX is best
known as legislation to give equal funding to women’s sports, although it
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encompasses significantly larger territory than this.15 While obviously this is a large
issue (and extends beyond the scope of this dissertation), discussions often question
whether men and women play equally and require equal amounts of funding and
attention (Messner, 2007; Suggs, 2005). But because video game competitions and
leagues are not federally funded activities there is little likelihood of intervening
legislation for an equal right to play: for professional video game players, the onus is
all on women players to prove their equality.
Finally, I do not mean to imply that productivity does not play an important
and integral role in masculine styles of video game play. Specifically, when dealing
with professional gaming (as mentioned above), or what is known as “power
gaming,”16 masculine play styles are often highly productive and goal-oriented
(Taylor, 2006). As noted in Chapter One, all play is (to some extent) marked by
productivity. But the kind of productive play that I will be discussing in subsequent
chapters is different: I primarily discuss productivity that deals with self-help and
self-improvement, productivity that mimics gendered behaviors (such as domesticity
and shopping), and productivity that is social networking. The productivity of power
and hardcore gamers is more about goal achievement within the game spaces
themselves.17
15
Title IX states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education
program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (Ware 3). As such it included all federally
funded activities, but was most notorious for giving equal funding to women’s sports teams.
16
According to Taylor (2006), power gaming is characterized by, “a focus on efficiency and
instrumental orientation (particularly rational or goal-oriented), dynamic goal setting, a commitment to
understanding the underlying game systems/structures, and technical and skill proficiency” (p. 72).
17
As noted in Chapter 1, several recent studies have remarked upon video games as excellent teaching
tools (Gee, 2003) or affecting workplaces in positive ways (Beck & Wade, 1996). While these things
are, indeed, productive, they are different from the kind of productivity that I will be discussing at
length later in this dissertation.
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Art Style and Anime
It seems useful to briefly discuss the use of anime18 tropes and art style in
several of the advertisements that are discussed in the following section on video
game advertisements. In proceedings from the DiGRA (2007) conference, Mia
Consalvo writes about how Japanese culture plays an undeniable role in American
gaming culture. She explains that the gaming industry has “historical and cultural
roots” and “strong business interests” in Japanese culture. She elaborates, “That
influence and power extends to Japanese companies (such as Nintendo, Sega,
CapCom, and Square Enix), Japanese visual styles (such as super-deformed
characters and anime-like images), as well as an extensive list of games that have
influenced successive generations of game designers around the world” (p. 736).
Consalvo continues to approach these topics with critical frameworks such as
hybridity and Orientalism—discussing how game characters with both American and
Japanese influences become complicated by (and, yet, are still different from) these
topics. While Consalvo’s discussion of Japanese and American culture in video
games is compelling, it goes slightly beyond the scope of this dissertation—but it is
important to note that these elements actively help to define many game spaces.
At the same time, anime often portrays women, gender, and sexuality in ways
that are different from Western culture. While at first blush many women characters
in anime might seem overtly sexualized or sexist, in Anime from Akira to Howl’s
Moving Castle, Susan Napier (2005) describes women characters as far more
nuanced, and as being particularly empowered in many depictions. She explains,
18
Anime is the colloquial term for Japanese animation.
74
“Because Japanese women are still relatively disempowered, the overturning of the
stereotype of feminine submissiveness may create a particularly festive resonance. In
the animated space, female characters seem to glory in manifestations of power still
denied them in the real world” (p. 31). Thus, while anime films such as Wicked City
(1987) might offer women with vagina dentatas, and while the image of the Japanese
shōjo19 is prominent in that culture, Napier illustrates how many of these images
show nuanced fables of contested gender roles and expectations.
At the same time, Napier also remarks heavily on the use of metamorphosis,
transformation, and mutation in Japanese animation and manga (comic book graphic
novels). Themes of metamorphosis permeate both storylines as well as the chosen
medium (animation) itself. Napier explains, “In particular, animation, with its
emphasis on movement and transformation, can be liberating. It allows the viewer
vicariously to explore fluctuating identities that transcend any fixed subjectivity. It is
no accident that metamorphosis is a key trope in animation” (p. 121). Given the
importance Napier places on movement in animated media (particularly Japanese
anime and manga), it is essential to note that this is one of the primary distinctions
between other analysis of anime characters (as done by Napier and others), and the
advertisements that I specifically analyze in the next section of this chapter. These
advertisements are specifically still-frame advertisements, removed from the context
of films, television shows, games, and manga. While in their full context they may
represent some form of transformation, in this context they only represent the flat,
one-dimensional depiction which is presented to the consumer of the advertisement.
The shōjo is a young woman or girl that sexualizes herself in exchange for consumptive goods. In
anime culture, the shōjo is a common figure—generally a girl in her teens who is highly sexualized
(Napier, 2005).
19
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Thus, while perhaps transformation is essential to understanding larger topics in
Japanese animation culture, still-frame magazine advertisements of these games are
not always as nuanced.
Video Game Magazine Advertising
In Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising, Judith
Williamson (1978/2002) remarks that advertising creates false distinctions between
groups of people through products. She explains, “Advertisements obscure and avoid
the real issues of society, those relating to work: to jobs and wages and who works for
whom. They create systems of social differentiation which are a veneer on the basic
class structure of our society” (p. 47). Williamson, here, is referring a Marxist
ideological rift relating consumption to leisure and lifestyle. In other words,
consumption is guided by wages, which in turn reflects class systems. This
consumerism helps to maintain and reinforce class divisions that already exist.
Similarly, advertising for video games helps engender and fortify rifts between a
caste system of gamers through consumption. Thus, the so-called “casual” (Oprah)
and “hardcore” gamers consume different games, because different games are
actively advertised to each of these groups. In turn, these games help to reinforce
player stereotypes within the gaming industry. In this way, players are always already
constructed as masculine and feminine. By naturally equating video game play to
masculinity, the advertisements that I discuss in this chapter create a different status
for masculine and feminine players. Masculinity, thus, maintains a ruling status in the
gaming industry while femininity is necessarily marginalized.
76
In what follows, I provide some examples of exclusionary masculinity that
occurs in the video game industry. While subsequent chapters use both video games
and advertising to demonstrate how games are designed for and marketed to women
audiences, my examples in this chapter stick to magazine advertising. Because, as I
have already illustrated, the majority of the gaming industry is masculine-focused
(aimed at a male 18-35 demographic) (Ray, 2004) it is useful to look at how
distinctions and dichotomies are constructed in these advertisements, regarding
demographics. As noted in Chapter One, others have looked at video game magazine
advertising to a lesser extent, but these studies tend to consider shorter spans of time
and focus on content analysis, as opposed to my combination of content analysis and
semiotic analysis. I am primarily interested in exclusionary tactics that suggest that
women are not equal to men in digital play spaces. Additionally, I am interested in
how sexualization and fetishization occurs in many of these advertisements. These
portrayals may be alienating to women players and create a sense that traditional
video game spaces are not meant for them.
Methodology
As already explained in Chapter One, I conducted a survey from June 2006
through May 2007 of two popular gaming magazines, Game Informer and Play
Magazine. In this survey, Game Informer had a total of 395 advertisements and Play
had a total of 274 advertisements throughout the course of the year (See Table 1). Of
the advertisements for video games (59% of the total ads in Game Informer and 64%
of the total ads in Play), 32% of the video game advertisements in Game Informer
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had any images of women, while 57% of the advertisements in Play did. Many of
these advertisements ran several times (and between magazines) and ultimately there
were a total of 93 distinct advertisements over the course of the year that have any
women in them (in major or minor roles). Because this included characters in
advertisements that were in minor roles (such as part of small screen shots, characters
that were significantly smaller, less lighted, or more abstractly drawn than the male
characters, or were not the overall visual focus of the page) it was necessary to
determine how many of these advertisements had women or girl characters in major
roles, to fairly determine how women were depicted in these advertisements. By
ruling out women and girls in screen shots, or those who were significantly smaller or
more abstractly drawn, I determined that there were a total of 47 distinct
advertisements over the course of the year, in both magazines, that featured female
characters in major roles.
In analyzing advertising I primarily used Goffman’s (1976/1979) criteria in
Gender Advertisements, previously discussed in Chapter 1. It is striking how little
has changed in advertising since when Goffman wrote about these things in the mid70s. I studied advertisement to determine several factors in how feminine characters
were depicted: their facial expressions, eye positioning, “feminine touch,” and the
potential of powerfulness depicted through size, stance, relative positioning, function
ranking, and “licensed withdrawal,”20 as well as my own factors which include
looking at age, clothing, and the anchoring text. While several of the advertisements
had more than one female character (making some of these things more difficult to
20
I will explain the Goffman categories in detail, later in the chapter.
78
assess), I attempted to factor all of these things into my findings. In what follows, I
will give a brief description of some of my findings over the year’s worth of
magazines, and then use semiotic analysis to analyze some specific advertisements
more carefully. It is also important to note here that my analysis is not of the games
themselves—what interests me is not how women are depicted in the actual games,
but rather how they are presented to readers. By understanding this, it becomes easier
to understand how women might be marginalized by the advertisements in typical
video game advertising, and how this might affect purchase and play of these video
games. As a point of comparison, this marginalization is remarkably different from
the advertisements that I will be discussing in Chapters Three, Four, and Five. Thus,
by analyzing advertisements that present a baseline of the video game industry and
comparing them to video game advertisements that are aimed at alternative audiences,
I am able to better establish differences in attitude, form, and portrayal of women.
Many of the advertisements in this chapter are explicit in their themes, and often use
crass stereotypes in overt ways. Other advertisements are more implicit, but still
depict gendered themes.
Common Themes in Advertisements
Two factors that play a large role in Goffman’s analysis of gender in
advertising are facial expressions and eye positions (where the subject is looking).
These, he contends, play a role in how women and femininity are depicted. Women
are often are seen smiling and wearing non-threatening facial expressions: “Smiles, it
can be argued, often function as ritualistic mollifiers, signaling that nothing agonistic
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is intended or invited, that the meaning of the other’s act has been understood and
found acceptable, that, indeed, the other is approved and appreciated” (p. 48). This is
the case with 28% of the women depicted in the video game advertisements that were
smiling or smirking in some way (see Table 2). Thus, often even the more powerful
figures in these advertisements have their potential powerfulness downplayed by
these more mollifying facial expressions. For example, in Figure 3, the image of
Tomb Raider: Anniversary shows the game’s protagonist, Lara Croft, with a slightly
coy smile. Much has been written about Lara Croft (Schleiner, 2001; Mikula, 2003;
Richard & Zaremba, 2005) in previous studies of gender and games and this study
does not seek to belabor the topic. What seems particularly compelling in this image
is how her slight (but unmistakable) smile balances out the potential power from
wielding a gun. The image of Lara Croft is unthreatening, in part, because of the
inviting smile in advertisements such as this one. Her smile, which runs perpendicular
to her gun, creates a contradictory image somewhere between threatening and
sexualized. The smile seems to cut directly into any potential threat that she poses.
Regarding the position and eye line of the subject, Goffman explains: “The
lowering of the head presumably withdraws attention from the scene at hand,
dependency entailed and indicated thereby. The gain is that one’s feelings will be
momentarily concealed—although, of course, not the fact that one is attempting such
concealment […] Mere aversion of the eyes can apparently serve similarly” (p. 63).
It’s striking that 66% of the advertisements that featured feminine characters in Play
and Game Informer had women or girls with averted eyes or were not looking
directly ahead—most either lowered or off to the side (See Table 2). Thus, images
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such as Figure 4, an advertisement for the game Dark Kingdom, creates another
ambivalent construction of power and femininity. Like the Tomb Raider
advertisement, the woman featured here has the potential for power by holding a
sword and clearly being in attack mode. Her averted eyes, though, are looking off in
the distance, and she shows dependence on the game player, ultimately controlling
the avatar’s actions. Her slightly open mouth reaffirms this ambiguity. On first
glance, her open mouth might be an angry call of rage or battle cry. But because of
the aversion of her eyes, it also might appear to be a sexual expression—almost
orgasmic. The sexuality of her expression is highlighted by her armored yet revealing
breastplate. Clearly, the star of this advertisement is being portrayed as a sex object,
albeit an ambiguous one with both violent and orgasmic potential. Thus, like the
Tomb Raider advertisement, this ad for Dark Kingdom leaves ambiguous messages
about how femininity is constructed in this game in particular and in video games in
general.
In both of these advertisements, the women engage in what Goffman refers to
as “licensed withdrawal.” He explains, “Women more than men, it seems, are
pictured engaged in involvements which remove them psychologically from the
social situation at large, leaving them unoriented in it and to it, and presumably
therefore, dependent on the protectiveness and goodwill of others who (or might
come to be) present” (p. 57). It is notable that licensed withdrawal would not
generally be combined with aggressiveness, but in advertisements such as Tomb
Raider or Dark Kingdom aggressiveness (via weaponry) is combined with the
licensed withdrawal to create a kind of sexual ambiguity. This kind of dependence is
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similar to the Dark Kingdom advertisement (Figure 4). In addition to the
aforementioned coy smiles and off-screen glances, licensed withdrawal often is
portrayed through placing a hand on or near the mouth or body to indicate an
emotional response. At the same time, as Goffman noted, licensed withdrawal
connotes dependence. Figure 5, an advertisement for the game Ar Tonelico: Melody
of Elemia, features another example of licensed withdrawal. In this advertisement, the
main focus of the page is a woman, hands close to her face, who might be singing, but
once again also might be orgasmic. The combination of her withdrawal (and
dependence) and sexualization suggests that the audience—and specifically the game
player—are controlling her sexually. Her eyes are closed, which continues to
reinforce the position of being “withdrawn” from the rest of the page. The headline of
the advertisement, “You never forget your first…” reinforces this sexual
interpretation of her position. Thus, the character is both withdrawn and dependent,
and at the same time highly sexualized. Both of the other two characters on the page
(another female and a male, both somewhat androgynous) are also smiling. None are
portrayed particularly powerfully, though the masculine character is garbed in
fighting and armored clothing, while the feminine characters are in cloth (the younger
one is more scantily clad). Thus, while the advertisement suggests sexuality over
agonistic empowerment, the feminine main character—and main focus of the page—
is the most dependent and most withdrawn, allowing the player to assume control
over her actions.
The characters in this advertisement are clearly based on an anime artistic
style, although slightly androgynous. As already noted, anime is culturally nuanced,
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and it is difficult to get a full perspective of sex and gender in the game only from the
advertisement. At the same time, this advertisement stabilizes a moment from the
game, and the reader is only able to glean the moments that are presented to them by
the advertisement. While a game has narrative, levels, and overall story progression,
the still advertisement has a single moment which forces a specific gaze. Thus, while
nuance might be a major part of the game, and while girls and women may have
powerful roles in the actual game, the advertisement leaves an ambiguous impression
regarding power and femininity. This ambiguity reinforces overarching themes of the
masculine gaming industry.
Goffman also discusses how positioning on the page, relative size, and
function ranking (or the sense that men have higher social function in the
advertisement than the women do) all play a large role in how gender is constructed
in advertisements. According to Goffman, women are generally depicted as smaller
than men, both in terms of height and width, and in ways that make their function
ranking physically visible. Thus, while in the Ar Tonelico advertisement the woman’s
face is larger than the man below her, she is also in profile, and thus partially hidden.
Conversely, the man below her is shown with three-fourths of his body (below his
torso) and the viewer sees him full on (not in profile). The younger girl (much like the
older one) is engaged in a kind of licensed withdrawal as well, by hiding, in part,
behind her shoulder with her head bowed coyly. The male character is facing front
with his armor showing his function—that of the fighter. This kind of function
ranking is equally visible in Figure 6, an advertisement for the game Mage Knight:
Apocalypse. Here, the male figure is clearly seen as the main character, with a female
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warrior, lower, smaller and to his side. While the woman is obviously depicted as a
fighter, by being smaller and slightly in front of the male figure, he overshadows her
in an apparently protective way. While she is wielding the sword, he is overseeing the
situation. Also she is not holding the sword in a particularly menacing way, but
upwards, hands grasping it in a phallic position. Thus, Mage Knight might seem to
offer empowering images of women in video games, but these images are
simultaneously being marginalized by how they are portrayed or the masculine
figures which accompany them.
It is also useful to note that all of the above mentioned advertisements have,
thus far, had feminine characters which have in some way used or displayed their
hands. Goffman explains that, “Women, more than men, are pictured using their
fingers and hands to trace the outlines of an object or to cradle it or to caress its
surface (the latter sometimes under the guise of guiding it), or to effect a ‘just barely
touch’ of the kind that might be significant between two electrically charged bodies”
(p. 29). While on one hand there is a utilitarian purpose to holding weapons in a
game where there is fighting, the use of hands, and the specificity of seeing ungloved
fingers in each of these ads is telling. The feminine character in these advertisements
are not so much fighting as they are displaying a weapon in a way that sexualizes
them. 57% percent of the advertisements that had women in them were either
touching themselves, displaying their hands, touching weapons, or touching others
(See Table 2).
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Analysis of Full Advertisements
These advertisements help to construct a feminine marginalization in the
typical video game world. This marginalization, I argue, reflects who is being
authorized to play these games. In the following, I analyze two specific
advertisements that highlight this feminine marginalization. It is my contention that
not only do the following advertisements help to marginalize potential feminine
players, but they also create an image that women and girls do not belong in this
overall playscape—an image which is ultimately being conveyed to masculine
players. While not all games are aimed solely at masculine audiences, the fact that the
two magazines I reviewed have so many advertisements that essentialize or ignore
femininity shows how overwhelmingly marginalized women and girls are in the
video game industry. In subsequent chapters, I will be discussing games that are
specifically targeted at more feminine audiences—although none of those
advertisements appeared in Play or Game Informer.
The first advertisement is for the game Izuna (Figure 7). The ad, which
appeared in several months of Play Magazine in 2007, features the title character,
alone, holding a sword over her shoulder. Like the advertisement for Ar Tornelico
(Figure 5), this advertisement features an anime-heavy visual style. But also like
Figure 5, as a still-frame advertisement, nuances that may exist in traditional anime
(or in the actual game) are not necessarily conveyed. The advertisement’s text brags,
“Finally, a Dungeon RPG strong enough for a man… but played as a hot CHICK.”
This headline is telling enough: as a play on the popular anti-deodorant advertisement
(“Strong enough for a man but made for a woman”). The difference between the
85
original deodorant advertisement and the advertisement for Izuna is the distinction
between “made for” and “played as”: in no way does this advertisement infer that
anyone but a man is meant to “play” this “hot CHICK.” The image of the woman to
the left of the text illustrates the notion of “hot CHICK.” Izuna’s is presented as
sexually attractive, with her face partially hidden by hair, and profiled in the
aforementioned sense of licensed withdrawal. One of her eyes cannot be seen, and the
other one is looking slightly downward.21 Her smile is slightly distracted, again a
sign of licensed withdrawal. Izuna’s pose is potentially stripper-like or prostitute-like:
most of her body is visible and her hip, pointed outward, displays her curves and bare
leg. She holds a very long (phallic) sword over one shoulder (her arm, in part, hiding
her face), her fingers only lightly grazing the sword handle. Her arms reaching
upwards also manage to display a profile of her (clothed) breasts for the audience.
Despite being more clothed than the character for the Dark Kingdom advertisement,
she wears fishnet sleeves—again an inference of prostitution or striptease. Izuna has a
slight smile on her face, and her eye is focused off in the distance—typical for a facial
expression of licensed withdrawal—once again, per Goffman, showing her as
ultimately powerless. For a character that is “strong enough for a man,” Izuna is
hardly menacing.
The text below the headline, though, is even more telling of how this
advertisement might marginalize feminine video game players. It explains, “You have
the privilege of controlling the cutest ninja ever, lzuna (that’s me!), through all these
21
I have had some debate about whether or not Izuna is looking at the reader of this advertisement, or
off to the side (in licensed withdrawal). I feel strongly that it is the latter. Her pupil is slightly lower
than the green iris in her eye. The large amount of white cornea to the left suggests that Izuna’s vision
is not focused forward, but is focused slightly down and to the left. Additionally, her slightly lowered
lid conveys a sleepiness or dreaminess that seems unfocused on the audience.
86
different dungeons. Customize my weapons and unleash devastating ninja spells to
destroy monsters and score major treasure. Let’s face it, I need the cash” (emphasis,
mine). The word “controlling” is key here. The potential player is not being told they
can role-play as a feminine character, but rather as advertised in the headline, that
they can control a “hot chick,” a decidedly masculine phrase for woman. Because it
has already been established that the game is “strong enough for a man” it is clear that
this “controlling” is not to be done by a female player, but is expected to be done by a
male. Further, the final line (“Let’s face it, I need the cash”) reinforces this control
theme with the hint of prostitution: by spending money on the game the player is able
to control the actions of “the cutest ninja ever.” Additionally, one might even suggest
that this implied prostitution and exchange of material goods is a reference to the
previously mentioned shōjo culture, prominent in Japan. Thus, this advertisement
reinforces a notion that feminine players have no place in the gaming world. Instead
of being active players, women can only be seen as controllable and commodified
avatars.
The second advertisement (Figure 8) is not for a specific game, but for the
Playstation Portable (PSP) system, which appeared in September 2006 of Game
Informer Magazine. This advertisement, somewhat similarly to Izuna, allows game
play to provide a substitute for desire and sexuality. In this advertisement a small
diorama stage sets the “PSP Theater” wherein two finger puppets are playing the
roles of Romeo and Juliet. The Juliet character, on a makeshift balcony, declares the
expected, “Romeo, Romeo, where art thou Romeo?” But rather than the obligatory
rejoinder, Romeo scoffs, “I am busy playing PSP Greatest Hits for $19.99, so call
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someone else’s name like Frank or something.” This advertisement is compelling for
several reasons—first because of the way the feminine figure (finger) is marginalized
from video game play both physically and psychologically. The Juliet character is
pleading for romance in an entirely essentializing way—wearing all white and
claiming a somewhat chaste desire. The male character not only dismisses her by
verbally professing his love for PSP games (over her love), but by physically showing
desire towards the games rather than the heteronormative scenario that has been
presented to him. As can be seen in the advertisement, because the Romeo finger is
being played with a Thumb, half of a pointer finger juts out below him, arguably
showing a simulated erection—not towards Juliet, but rather, towards the images of
the games. These games, on puppet-like popsicle sticks (continuing the makeshift
theater theme) embody a third character—technological play. Given the masculine
finger’s simulated erection, romantic and heterosexual desire is thus being replaced
by video game play and technological desire. While the feminine character does not
necessarily embody all of the previously mentioned Goffman themes (we are unable
to glean her facial expression, and “feminine touch” is a useless concept for a finger
puppet), her physical separation from both the masculine finger puppet and the games
is indicative of both function ranking (she is apart from the play, on a balcony) as
well as licensed withdrawal. The reader/viewer is being shown that femininity has a
specific role within video game play.
These two advertisements are particularly useful, because they embody typical
ways that femininity is coded within the gaming. The Izuna advertisement clearly
uses sexualization to neutralize the power of femininity, while the PSP advertisement
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trivializes feminine play, coding it as overly-romanticized and characterized by
otherness. These advertisements do not just marginalize femininity, but actively
neutralize it.
Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings: Advertising Exceptions
In addition to the advertisements that I have discussed above, I feel it is also
necessary to note two exceptions that I encountered in my survey. Both of these
advertisements were strikingly similar in how femininity is treated more equally. The
two advertisements are for Final Fantasy III and Lord of the Rings Online (Figures 9
and 10). Both of theses advertisements have headlines with numbers at the top. While
Final Fantasy advertises, “4 characters, 23 job classes, 279,841 possible party
configurations” the Lord of the Rings ad says “Millions of Players. One game to rule
them all.” Both advertisements, then, follow up their claims by showing countless
examples. Final Fantasy shows an infinite number of possible characters and Lord of
the Rings shows an infinite number of players. Both of these advertisements show
both male and female players/characters, although in both cases slightly more male
than female. In these advertisements, men and women are dressed similarly, and are
almost indistinguishable until the reader takes a closer look at the infinite crowd
shown.
These advertisements are excellent examples of less marginalizing and
essentializing feminine play—they treat femininity as part of the play force and
diversity that is necessary to the games. Both of these advertisements are notable for
their egalitarian notions of who is authorized to play. As such, the advertisements for
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Lord of the Rings Online and Final Fantasy III might show the beginning of an
important shift where femininity might eventually be approached differently in
traditional venues of video game advertising.
Constructing the Masculine Playscape
In the proceedings from the Forth International Conference on the
Foundations of Digital Games, Mia Consalvo (2009) compares (feminine) casual
gamers to masculine (hardcore) gamers in terms of community and industry
perception. According to Consalvo, much can be learned from disentangling and
comparing these communities. She explains, “Clearly, many players of casual games
are not at all casual in how they play or think about such games” and continues that
“perhaps it is time to rethink those labels entirely” (p. 4). Because women gamers
(whether labeled “casual” or “Oprah”) represent an alterity to the mainstream gaming
industry, it becomes essential to understand how and why their play styles vary so
dramatically from the gaming industry’s narrower, primary focus. In part, as I have
illustrated, this disparity is due to exclusionary tactics within the gaming industry:
women are clearly presented as “other” when it comes to hardcore gaming. This can
be seen in advertising, in professional gaming leagues, and also in the dearth of
women game developers. Femininity is constantly being coded and neutralized within
the larger gaming industry culture. In trivializing or sexualizing feminine players a
rift is constantly maintained in the gaming industry, where it remains difficult for
women to fully get in the game.
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At the same time, there may be something bigger at play, here, which will be
the focus of the remainder of this dissertation. While popular media portrayals (such
as those in the advertisements shown, above) might suggest that women are less
interested in video games, clearly this isn’t the case. Instead, what I will illustrate is
that women’s play tends to be primarily productive. Regardless of whether this
affinity is biological or cultural, the need for productivity in play has helped to
maintain the already established rift between women and the gaming industry. While,
often, masculine play does result in some kind of productivity, in the following
chapters I illustrate productive play styles that are primarily feminine.
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CHAPTER THREE
A 36-24-36 CEREBRUM: PRAGMATIC PLAY
Introduction
In recent years, several video games have emerged that promise pragmatic
productivity or self-help. These games make various claims, such as the ability to
make players smarter, grow their vocabularies, improve their vision, teach them to
cook, and help them get more physically fit. Several games in this category have been
specifically targeted at feminine audiences. While men, too, are occasionally the
target audience for these games, my primary focus in this chapter is on video games
that use productive play to target women audiences. Primarily, this is done through
gendered stereotypes involving self-help and fitness. I refer to this phenomenon as
pragmatic play.
In what follows, I will be addressing both video games and video game
advertising. While, obviously, the same people are not generally charged with both
the design of a game and its advertising, they collectively help shed light on the larger
issue of gender, productivity, and video game play. By looking at both games and
advertising, I will illustrate in-game components as well as how these games might be
perceived through marketing. I begin each section by discussing the productive
aspects of the games themselves, and elaborate on their advertising. While these
things are obviously not always created in tandem, they nevertheless work together to
create an overall image of a game and the culture around it.
It is important to note that many of the “games” in this category are not games
in the traditional sense as defined in Chapter One. To reiterate, I adopted the Salen &
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Zimmerman (2004) definition, which is: “A game is a system in which players
engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules that result in a quantifiable outcome”
(p. 80). According to this definition, some of the brain games that I discuss later
might be considered games. Alternatively, other “games” that I discuss in this chapter
such as Personal Trainer: Cooking or My Weight Loss Coach (both of which are
primarily instructional) have neither artificial conflict nor rules. And while both might
have some kind of quantifiable outcome, (i.e., cooking skills or fitness) these are
outcomes in the real world space as opposed to a game world space. In some games,
this productivity can become a blurred line and game progress can affect productivity
both inside and outside of the game world. However, for this chapter I will be
primarily focusing on games and real world productivity.
In other ways, these products can be considered games simply by popular
categorization. The use of a Nintendo gaming Platform means that these products are
available in video game specialty stores, are grouped with video games in larger retail
stores, are designed by game companies, and are packaged and rated like video
games. Thus, while these are not games in the Salen & Zimmerman sense, their use of
gaming platforms automatically constructs them as game spaces. Obviously, this
complicates Salen & Zimmerman’s definition of “games” significantly. The use of
gaming platforms creates an often complex relationship with the reality of how they
are portrayed, in terms of both marketing and mechanics, to their audiences. By
positioning themselves as games they might automatically appear frivolous or nonproductive, but the self-help offered by this software is far from frivolous, potentially
luring players in with promises of productivity over promises of play. To avoid
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confusion, I will be referring to all of the software in this chapter as games, even
when they do not meet my previous definitions.
Many of these games share similar structures and game mechanics: the
training games in particular often ask players to play once a day (or as often as
possible), are guided by an in-game expert (most commonly a masculine one, but
occasionally feminine or gender-neutral), and new challenges and puzzles are
unlocked the more the player participates. Additionally, several of the games begin
with an initial test to monitor the player’s status before the first time they play the
game, and use that status as a baseline for future judgment of the player.
While more traditional games promise some degree of fun, in many of the
games studied in this chapter fun takes a backseat to productivity and self-help. I
argue that it is a promise of productivity that helps attract a feminine audience. At the
same time, the pragmatic play discussed in this chapter creates hazier boundaries
between what is play and what is productive. In reproducing problematic gender
stereotypes, pragmatic play helps to reinforce a connection between women,
productivity, and leisure.
Gender and Self-Help
One of the primary examples of productivity in the video games discussed in
this chapter involves some form of self-help. Research on self-help has a significant
history, the scope of which is greater than that of this dissertation. What is clear,
though, is that self-help is often highly gendered and helps to form and reinforce
gender roles. This includes famous relationship-themed books such as Women who
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Love too Much, as well as popular talk shows such as Oprah Winfrey, Montel
Williams, and Dr. Phil: all of which primarily target women audiences. There are also
several links between the women’s self-help industry and the feminist movement,
which according to some can be traced back to Betty Friedan’s famous book The
Feminine Mystique (Simonds, 1992; Taylor, 1996). More recent feminists have been
critical of the self-help industry, often referring to it as a feminist backlash (Faludi,
1991) and so-called “victim feminism” (Wolf, 1993).
Regardless of whether activists and researchers see self-help as being
productive or destructive, few dispute its gendered themes and targeting of feminine
audiences. In Women and Self-Help Culture: Reading Between the Lines (1992)
Wendy Simonds explains that self-help allows women the opportunity to “try on”
new concepts of self. She elaborates:
A process that aptly characterizes self-help ideology is the makeover,
which has special salience for women in this culture. If you don’t like it,
change it; dress up your assets and hide the ugly parts. The message being
conveyed by media that tell women how to make ourselves over is not
covert: self-help books, magazines, television, and advertisements all
encourage women to see ourselves as mutable, correctable, a product of
various influences in constant flux. […] In self help literature (as well as
other media), men, in contrast, are rarely variable—no matter how much
women might wish they were. (p. 224)
In other words, self-help literature aimed at women creates a sense that women can
(and should) constantly change. At the same time, it reinforces messages that men
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will never change. The mutability of women is a gendered signal which is at the root
of self-help literature. In a similar way, the games and advertisements discussed in
this chapter suggest that women change, alter, or improve themselves in areas such as
beauty, health, and fitness. The goal of these games is not play, 22 but rather,
productivity and self-improvement. Thus, in games and advertisements that I will be
discussing shortly both the body and the mind are constantly game for improvement.
According to Verta Taylor in Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and
Postpartum Depression, self-help is primarily characterized by “experiential
knowledge” or, “common-sense wisdom of people’s problems as an alternative or
supplement to professional knowledge” (p. 19). In what follows, I argue that the
experiential knowledge found in self-help literature is mimicked in the pragmatic play
found in many video games. In these spaces, the player is guiding by a singular
author-figure (perhaps not the game creator, but an “expert”) who uses knowledge
and experiences the player is already familiar with. In these ways, the games use selfhelp paradigms to better target feminine audiences. While most researchers focus on
self-help as it applies to personal mental health (focusing on topics such as
relationships and postpartum depression), my focus in the following is primarily on
self-help as it applies in two spaces: education and body image.
For some time now, women have been considered “passionate consumers” of
continuing education (Deem, 1986, p. 55). Often, these adult education experiences
function as an alternative to compulsory K-12 education. At the same time, in the
examples that I will illustrate below (Brain Age, My Word Coach, and Big Brain
22
As explained in Chapter One, Salen & Zimmerman (204) define play as “free movement in a more
rigid structure” (p. 304).
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Academy) other stereotypes of gendered self-help (involving body image and personal
advice) seep into brain games, influencing both the game designs and advertising. For
instance, I will illustrate how Brain Age advertising equates mental beauty with
physical appearance in a way that downplays one kind of productivity in favor of
another kind.
In a similar vein, the second kind of self-help productivity which I focus deals
with body image and weight control—a particularly hot-button issue for many
women. In Femininity and Domination (1990), Sandra Lee Bartky writes of the
difficulties that many women have between self and body-image, explaining that,
while on one hand women are taught narcissism, on the other hand they have little
control over the body image they are being encouraged to produce. According to
Bartky, “women experience a twofold alienation in the production of our own
persons: The beings we are to be are mere bodily beings; nor can we control the shape
and nature these bodies are to take” (p. 42). Similar claims have been made by Naomi
Wolf in The Beauty Myth (1991) and Jean Kilbourne in Can’t Buy My Love (1999),
both of whom discuss how media images of overly thin women have helped to
produce eating disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia. Susan Bordo writes
in Unbearable Weight (1993) that the slender body is always gendered and “never
neutral” (p. 204) and is a “contemporary ideal of specifically female attractiveness”
(p. 205, author’s emphasis). Thus, given the gendered nature of images about weight
loss and slenderness, it seems unsurprising that recent video games targeting feminine
audiences have taken on themes of fitness.
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In Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (1994),
Susan Douglas writes about how the mass media has sold narcissism in place of
empowerment to women. She explains that often advertising in recent years have
twisted notions of women’s liberation into excuses for narcissism and a focus on self
appearance. She explains:
Women’s liberation became equated with women’s ability to do whatever
they wanted for themselves, whenever they wanted, no matter what the
expense. These ads were geared to the women who had made it in the
world, or who hoped she would, and the message was Reward yourself,
you deserve it. (p. 246)
Thus, according to Douglas, corporations and advertisements have used women’s
liberation to suggest that spending money on oneself is equal to freedom. At the same
time, the ads suggest that money be spent narcissistically—women should use
consumerism to improve themselves. The self-help and pragmatic themes of the
games ultimately foster contradictory messages about work and play within game
spaces for women.
Brain Games
Brain games are video games that specifically and overtly aim to improve the
player’s intelligence, knowledge, or other cerebral function. Popular current games in
this category include the two games in the Brain Age series, and in many ways Brain
Age defined the genre in the handheld market. The Brain Age games specifically
promise to improve the player’s memory and thinking skills. Other games in the
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genre have made similar claims about improving a player’s vocabulary (My Word
Coach), teaching players a new language (My Spanish Coach, My French Coach)23,
or improving a player’s vision (Flash Focus). However, A clear distinction should be
made between brain games and educational games. Educational games are more
geared towards pedagogical tactics, most often meant to teach skills or ideas to
school-aged children (Bruckman, 2003). Alternatively, while brain games are
similarly focused on learning, they are generally geared towards adult audiences. The
primary distinction that I make between brain games and educational games is
whether the player is learning new things, or focusing on speed exercises to engage in
self-help. The games that I outline in what follows (Brain Age, My Word Coach, and
Big Brain Academy) each involve simple math, memory, and word skills, primarily
reinforcing older information rather than teaching new skills for the first time. Thus,
these games focus on self-help and are meant for adult audiences more than children.
Brain Age
Brain Age (Nintendo of America, 2006) and Brain Age 2 (Nintendo of
America, 2007) are two of the most popular brain games currently on the market for
the Nintendo DS system; many other games in the genre have been modeled after
them, using similar structures and game mechanics. Distinctive when compared to
most other Nintendo DS games, both of the Brain Age games have the player hold the
gaming system lengthwise, rather than widthwise (more like how one holds a book).
23
While language games, on one hand, may seem to be educational games this particular series uses
themes and structure that is similar to other brain games.
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The games are both led by a cartoon version of a Japanese neuroscientist, Dr. Ryuta
Kawashima, the games’ creator (See Figure 11).
Unlike typical video game software, the packaging for the Brain Age games
has more “quiz”-like tropes than game-like ones. The cover of the original Brain Age
game has an outline of a human head, divided into fore quadrants in its center. Each
of these quadrants has variations of number quizzes on them—despite the fact that the
actual game features word quizzes as well, these are not present on the game’s cover
(See Figure 12). At the bottom of the game cover, the player is asked, “Is your brain
young or old?” The game insert features an introduction by Dr. Kawashima:
Hello! I’m Dr. R Yuta Kawashima! Did you know that just like
how you lose muscle mass with age, your brain function begins
to decrease when you reach maturity? This happens even if you
lead a normal, healthy life. Everyone knows you can prevent
muscle loss with exercise, and use such activities to improve
your body over time. But we now know that the same is true of
your brain. If you proactively reinforce daily habits of brain
training, you can help to prevent a decrease in brain function.
(p. 6)
This introduction, the game cover, and the other extra-game matter all serve a
common purpose—to make Brain Age appear to be less of a game, and more of a
training exercise. Importantly, nothing in the game description infers fun, leisure, or
play. Instead, the game is pitching self-help and self-improvement.
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When the player begins playing one of the Brain Age games for the first time,
they are immediately asked to take a test to determine their “brain age” (or the
relative age the player’s brain is supposedly functioning at). According to the game, a
score of twenty is optimal and eighty is the worst possible score. Regardless of the
player’s initial score, they are urged to engage in the daily training exercises from a
single starting point. A player can recheck their brain age at any time, and their new
score will save over their older score—regardless of whether or not it is higher.
In actual daily play, the software is composed of several mini-games—most of
which are unlocked after a specific amount of play time. In these games, the player
does math, word scrambles, and memory exercises that purportedly strengthen their
overall brainpower, allowing them to ultimately achieve a higher brain age score.
When games unlock they do so regardless of the scores the player achieves: they are
set to unlock after a certain number of times the person engages in daily “training”.
Exercises vary, and include simple math, word jumbles, and several memory drills.
For each of these training exercises, the player is judged by their speed (given ratings
such as walking speed, train speed, airplane speed, etc.). One key to the Brain Age
series is that it is not referred to as play, and always referred to as training. Thus,
despite being on a gaming system, Brain Age never pitches itself as a game and
players are always aware that what they are doing is for self help, rather than fun and
leisure. The player is constantly being kept aware that they are being productive.
Dr. Kawashima offers tips and jokes throughout the play, sometimes chiding
and sometimes encouraging the player. Many of these tips are telling about the
overall tone of the game. For instance, one tip in Brain Age 2 is “When you enjoy
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yourself, your brain may experience positive effects. But if you do things out of
obligation, your brain could see negative effects. Remember to keep a positive
attitude in everything you do.” Along a similar vein, a later tip insists, “Do you find
yourself getting angry at the drop of a hat? This can be a warning sign of decreasing
brain function. Try to stay cool and rational when anger strikes.” This kind of
statement neatly aligns with that found in self-help literature, using experiential
knowledge relayed through a personal, advice-giving mentor.
Equally interesting are advertising campaigns for Brain Age. These
advertisements better illustrate the gender expectations coming out of traditional selfhelp, and woven into the games. My analysis of Brain Age advertising focuses on two
ads which appeared (in different magazines) in May and June of 2006. The first
advertisement (Figure 13) appeared in magazines including Real Simple, Oprah
Magazine, and People Magazine. The second advertisement (Figure 14) appeared in
magazines including Wired Magazine and Time Magazine. The two advertisements
(clearly aimed at very different audiences) are compelling, both for their similarities
and for their vast differences.
Both advertisements are structured like an advertorial (giving the impression
of being more of an informational magazine article than an advertisement). Both have
a person (one a woman and one a man) playing the game in the left hand corner of the
ad. The advertising copy is structured similarly on both pages, and in some places is
exactly the same. Yet these advertisements highlight some specific ways that video
games are marketed differently to men and women and the role that productivity and
self-help plays in this marketing.
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Both advertisements are composed of almost equal amounts of image and text.
In each, the text is essential to understanding how gendered play is constructed. The
title of the masculine advertisement (in all caps) reads, “CAN YOU USE A VIDEO
GAME TO REWIRE YOUR BRAIN?” which suggests a highly technologically
focused message. Written in all-caps, the text is yelling at the audience. Conversely,
the feminine headline uses a subtler and softer statement (not a question): “What the
Japanese have discovered about the fountain of youth.” While both headlines suggest
self-help to some extent, the headline for the advertisement with the woman
immediately infers beauty, self care, and health, while the masculine advertisement
discusses video games, technology, and the brain. It is significant to note that the
phrase “video game” is never used at all in the feminine version of the advertisement.
In effect, the feminine ad goes on to suggest that taking care of one’s brain is
part of the daily beauty regimen that all women should be involved in. At one point it
concludes that “A 36-24-36 cerebrum is just a few exercises away”—clearly equating
the necessity of mental exercises to maintaining physical beauty. The masculine
advertisement, conversely, suggests that playing this game might help one become
more competitive with their co-workers. Both advertisements preach a kind of
productivity, but the gendered nature of health and beauty suggests more about selfmaintenance while the masculine advertisement suggests a playful form of agonism—
clearly more of a counterpart to typical video game advertising (as seen in Chapter
Two).
It is notable how this switch to focusing on the body rather than the mind
follows traditional gender stereotypes of Cartesian logic: women signify body, while
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men signify mind. Of this duality, Susan Bordo writes in Unbearable Weight (1993),
“For if, whatever the specific historical content of the duality, the body is the negative
term, and if woman is the body, then women are that negativity, whatever it may be:
distraction from knowledge, seduction away from God, capitulation to sexual desire,
violence or aggression, failure of will, even death” (p. 5). In a similar vein, the two
comparable advertisements show a division in how women and men are expected to
interpret this software. Despite being clearly a brain game, women are encouraged to
use it in order enhance physical self-help. This kind of advertisement reinforces
negative images about women, vanity, and physical self-help over a much nobler
mental self-help pitched in the masculine advertisement. Visually, these
advertisements reinforce what their text says outright: play and technology is a
masculine domain that can only be entered into by women under the guise of beauty
and self-care.
Lighting is a key factor in how these advertisements are constructed. Both the
masculine and feminine advertisements feature the heads of the models with light
attached to them—the man’s head is lit up like it is wired with circuitry, while the
woman’s head produces a haloed effect. The baldness of the man infers futurism,
while the woman’s hair is tied neatly in a bun—a display of self-control. There is a
harder light against the darker page in the masculine ad, making it appear more
serious. At the same time, visually, the color and lighting contrast is somewhat
similar to some of the advertisements discussed in Chapter Two, where “serious” can
be seen as equivalent to “hardcore” (as opposed to the casual gamer). Conversely, the
softness of the feminine ad (in purple tones) allows it to appear non-threatening—it is
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the head and face, rather than the brain that is being stressed in this advertisement.
This use of light and darkness in both ads helps to reinforce the messages each of the
advertisements are attempting to convey: in the case of the masculine ad, that the
technology is serious and will make a dramatic change to one’s mind, while in the
feminine advertisement, that it will improve the mind (and body) but in a nonthreatening way. While both suggest productivity, there is a clearly gendered
distinction in what kind of productivity is acceptable and expected.
How the models are positioned in the advertisements also helps to reinforce
their messages. While both models are featured in profile, the woman’s head is
looking slightly downward at the DS, while the man’s head and eyes are looking up at
the technology, and he’s reaching for it with his arm. The positioning of each model’s
head evokes Goffman’s (1978) discussion of “the ritual of subordination” as
previously discussed in Chapters One and Two. Goffman explains, “A classic
stereotype of deference is that of lowering oneself physically in some form or other of
prostration. Correspondingly, holding the body erect and the head high is
stereotypically a mark of unashamedness, superiority, and disdain” (p. 40). While the
advertisements each only feature one person, the relative positioning of each is telling
with implications. In the ads, the man’s body implies the “unashamedness and
superiority” suggested by Goffman, while the woman’s is lowered implying
deference. The woman is cradling the Nintendo DS in her hand, which evokes
Goffman’s previous discussion of the “feminine touch.” She appears to be holding
the DS almost like a beauty compact. Conversely, the placement of the man’s hand
relative to the Nintendo DS emphasizes the technology more than the human. In this
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version of the ad, the technology is suspended in midair, with the man’s hand (and
stylus) reaching up to it. The man does not appear to be threatened by the mid-air
technology; although by looking up at it he is shown as potentially dominated by the
Nintendo DS. The floating Nintendo ultimately gives the masculine ad a futuristic
tone: he is looking upward at the technology of the future, and the technology is
suspended in air in an impossible way. While this positioning could suggest that he is
dominated by the DS, and the woman is the dominant figure in her advertisement, this
is not necessarily straightforward. The implication may also be that the man is
allowed to be challenged by a superior technology, while the woman is shown to be
more comfortable embracing something resembling an older technology (a book).
My Word Coach
My Word Coach (Ubisoft, 2007) is structured somewhat similarly to the Brain
Age games. This vocabulary-enhancing game requires daily play and uses word
exercises to improve the player’s vocabulary. In this game, rather than improve a
“brain age” the player strives to advance their “expression potential”: a score
representing the player’s “command of the English language.” This number is shown
as a percentage, out of 100%. As the number raises, new exercises, difficulty levels,
and games unlock for the player. Different “expression potentials” match up to
different labels, progress, and status. For example, a 10% expression potential is
equal to a smart toddler, according to the game, while 40% is a university graduate,
75% is a teacher, and 95% is a poet/literary writer.
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The phrase “expression potential” is compelling, compared to the far more
scientific sounding “brain age” label. On one hand, “expression” feeds into far more
emotional implications about the player, as the term can imply the ability to express
oneself both in terms of articulation and emotion. On the other hand, this term is
balanced by the word “potential,” which implies mutability and the ability to fix
oneself. Unlike “brain age” which sounds like a more fixed and constant status,
“expression potential” is a phrase that implies self-help, and the ability to fix one’s
communication skills. While, obviously, this is not the only interpretation of this
phrase, it is telling in its similarities to the self-help mantras and goals referenced
previously in this chapter.
Additionally, rather than having one possible coach (as with Dr. Kawashima),
the game has four potential coaches to choose from, two feminine and two masculine
characters. Thus, while the primary coach (Alistair Archibald) is a man, the player
has the option of choosing another coach that they feel fits their personality or needs
more precisely. These include Veronica Munroe (a somewhat severe looking
schoolteacher), Lucius King (a young African-American man), and Penny (a young
girl who is a poet). While these coach characters give players the opportunity to be
led by an in-game personality that they best relate to, this choice does not
significantly affect the game play. Additionally, often the chosen coach will be
substituted by another coach, giving excuses such as that their usual coach is not
feeling well or couldn’t make their session. Thus choosing one’s coach is almost
insignificant to the actual game. At the same time, there is a psychological
significance to being able to customize one’s primary coach—it creates a sense of
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greater control that the player has over the game. The ability to select Penny or
Veronica Monroe gives the illusion that the game is more gender-neutral than many
other games.
Subtle messages about gender occasionally seep into the game. Despite the
aforementioned ability to select a coach, Alistair Archibald is the primary face of the
game (he is the one shown on the game cover and in the instructions), and thus has an
air of expertise that the other coaches do not. A white, balding, middle-aged male
with his arms crossed defiantly (See Figure 15), Alistair Archibald is the epitome of a
patriarchal figure. The two female selections are equally telling: Veronica Munroe is
depicted as unfriendly and cold24 while the other female alternative, Penny, is an
androgynous little girl (see figures 16 and 17). Thus, the choice of coaches comes
down to two extreme stereotypes of femininity: severity or infantilizing.
Other aspects of the game are equally troubling in terms of gender. For
example, the game’s definition of the word “flighty” is: “Flighty: (especially a
woman) not responsible and likely to change activities, jobs, lovers, etc. frequently.”
This seems particularly gendered when compared to other dictionary definitions of
the word. For example, the Chambers Dictionary defines flighty as, “fanciful;
changeable; giddy-minded, irresponsible; flirtatious” (p. 614) and the MerriamWebster definition is, “lacking stability or steadiness: a: easily upset : volatile <a
flighty temper> b: easily excited : skittish <a flighty horse> c: capricious, silly”. In
specifying that “flighty” is a feminine characteristic, there is a biased message to this
24
Several different feminine stereotypes are encoded into the image of Veronica Munroe. In addition
to appearing somewhat frigid, she also seems to be drawn to a schoolboy fantasy of the ‘school marm.’
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definition.25 While these aspects do not overwhelm the game My Word Coach, they
are certainly embedded subtext. Just as with Brain Age, the feminine player would
find herself primarily guided by a patriarchal figure fostering gender stereotypes.
Advertising for My Word Coach continues similar themes of productivity and
gender, but also mixed with consumerism. An advertisement for My Word Coach
(Figure 18) ran in Real Simple magazine in November 2007. This advertisement
opens with a fill-in-the-blank statement: “Carrie’s mom told her that a larger
vocabulary equals a larger paycheck. Well, Carrie thought, that information will
certainly ________ well for my shoe collection.” The three multiple choice options
below this statement are “mean”, “bode,” and a third (covered over by a Nintendo
DS) answering the question says, “portend.” The third choice is clearly meant to be
the correct choice, here.26 This fill-in-the-blank sentence is reinforced by the
collection of three shoes that sit above each of the multiple choice questions. Above
“mean” is a picture of a plain looking flat shoe; above “bode” is a high-heeled shoe;
above “portend” is a high-heeled and fashionable looking strapped sandal. Thus, the
audience is meant to equate getting the game with (apparently) improving one’s shoe
collection through improving one’s vocabulary. Rather than illustrating a better
vocabulary with a diploma, the advertisers have chosen, instead, to use gendered
stereotypes about women, shopping, and excessive consumption. Self-help, in this
25
The gendered definition for flighty appears to be an isolated case , but is compelling enough that it
seemed worth noting.
26
Visually, “portend” is clearly meant to be the correct choice, but portend is probably not the best
choice for this sentence. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary portend means “to give an
omen or anticipatory sign of,” thus implying something negative. Thus, in the case of the
advertisement’s question, “bode” would probably be the best possible answer.
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case, is about being able to consume the most number of shoes, evoking images of
figures such as Imelda Marcos.
Below this main message is a smaller message that explains, “My Word
Coach is the fun new game that improves your vocabulary. And when you have a
larger vocabulary, you have a better chance of getting what you want. Knowing the
right word makes all the difference.” Thus, the consumer is being sold two things
here: she is being sold a video game that will improve her productivity and ability to
“get what she wants” career-wise, and at the same time, she is being sold a
fashionable lifestyle. Once again, gendered stereotypes permeate this advertisement.
The “get what she wants” message hints at feminine empowerment, although solely
through consumerism. This bridge between productivity and consumption, which I
discussed at length in the introduction, becomes the primary means of selling the
game: through buying and playing the game, the player is being told that she will be
able to consume more. The advertisement does not directly advertise actual play, or
video game play. The message promoted by this My Word Coach advertisement is not
to suggest that women play a game, but rather, that women be more productive in
order to help their gender-related and consumer-driven lifestyle.
Big Brain Academy
One exception to these less playful brain games is a game called Big Brain
Academy (Nintendo of America, 2006). Big Brain Academy is significantly more
whimsical and playful than Brain Age and similar games in this genre. Rather than
being led by a “famous neuroscientist,” Big Brain Academy is guided by the fictional
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“Dr. Lobe”: a nebulous, shapeless character with a diploma hat (See Figure 19). Like
the other games, Big Brain Academy begins with an overall status test and is then
suggests practice exercises. For this test, the player is assigned a temporary grade (A,
A-, B+, etc.) and an analysis of whose brain the player most resembles (for example,
with certain grades and configurations, Dr. Lobe might insist that a player has the
brain of “a fashion designer”, “an accountant”, or “Leonardo Da Vinci”). These
grades are meant whimsically, though, and are ephemeral: when a player beats their
previous high score, the old analysis is erased. Additionally, unlike Brain Age, it can
be played at whim and does not require any specific number of daily exercises. Thus,
while it still is a game somewhat focused on the productivity of the player, it is also
far more playful and takes its tasks less seriously than Brain Age, My Word Coach, or
other games in this genre.
The difference between Big Brain Academy and the other aforementioned
brain games can also be seen as reflected in an advertisement for the Nintendo Wii
version of the game, as it appeared in Good Housekeeping in July 2007 (See Figure
20). As opposed to the advertisements for Brain Age and My Word Coach which
specifically suggest self-help and mental fitness, the Big Brain Academy
advertisement pitches a “family night” and claims of cross-generational appeal. The
advertisement shows parents playing with their daughter, all aiming their Wii remotes
and engaged with the television set (and presumably, the game). This advertisement,
ultimately, is more like the other Wii family-centric advertising that I will discuss in
depth in Chapter Five. While this, too, is a form of productive play, it qualifies as
what I will refer to later as “socially productive play.” Thus, while technically Big
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Brain Academy has some attributes similar to brain games, it bears more resemblance
to other family style games advertised for the Nintendo Wii. Compared to other brain
games, both the advertising and the game itself are far less concerned with self-help.
Exercise and Fitness Games
In recent years, fitness has begun to play an increasingly important role in
video games. Early exercise games (or exergames) such as Dance Dance Revolution
(a game which involves a colorful floor mat which players must use to emulate onscreen patterns) and Yourself! Fitness (a game where the player designs a traditional
exercise routine, but has no off-screen and on-screen interactivity) were the first
forays into this unlikely territory of mixing video game play with exercise and fitness.
In Persuasive Games (2007), Ian Bogost discusses the varying rhetorics of these
different kinds of play. He explains:
Exergames with rhetorics of training like [Dance Dance Revolution] tend
to recontextualize the idea of exercise by creating repeating incentives to
continue physical exertion. Nevertheless, Yourself! Fitness may offer a
much more consistent, formal kind of aerobic exercise; it does use wellestablished exercise routines, after all. But the physiological value of
exergames should not be maximized blindly; rather, more long-term gain
may come from consistent physical activity at a lower level of
professional fitness. The strength of games like DDR lies precisely in their
ability to engender physical activity through play without demanding the
player to adopt a complex understanding of fitness. These more
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sophisticated procedural rhetorics of training operationalize the core
properties of the trainer—an agent impelling a chain of continuous, highquality physical movements—rather than the trainer’s physical form. (p.
313-314)
Here, Bogost argues that the less traditional gaming format—one that concentrates
more on movement than on proper exercise regimens—has a higher rhetorical value
than those that just emulate the form of “personal trainer.” It would thus seem that
newer exergames such as Wii Fit are ideal for finding the sweet spot between these
rhetorical standpoints; as I will describe below, Wii Fit uses the motif of personal
trainer but also tries to integrate game-like qualities in some ways that are similar to
Dance Dance Revolution.
At the same time, Bogost’s argument ignores the rhetorics of gender within
the space of exergames. While he astutely acknowledges that class issues inform the
structural and spatial issues embedded in exergames by reminding readers that only
those who can afford larger living spaces are equipped to properly play them, he does
not acknowledge that issues of weight, aerobics, and exercise are inherently imbued
with themes that are thematically intended to attract feminine audiences.
Both Wii Fit and My Weight Loss Coach suggest overall healthy lifestyle
choices—combinations of sensible diets and varying kinds of exercise. At the same
time, though, their game mechanics and the accompanying advertising can often
broach the topics of body image and self-help as discussed earlier in this chapter.
Because body image can be seen as such a trigger-issue for many women’s
insecurities, it seems no coincidence that an influx of recent games has been using
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this theme to garner more feminine audiences. Unlike Bogost, my focus is not merely
on the game mechanics of fitness, but how these games are meant to appeal to
feminine audiences.
Wii Fit
Much like the Brain Age games, Wii Fit (Nintendo of America, 2008) is
structured with an initial test to ascertain the players’ start level (assigning them a Wii
Fit age), and then a series of daily exercises. Unlike the brain games, though, players
are asked during the initial diagnostic test to set specific personal goals. Thus, where
Brain Age suggests an overall ideal (age 20); Wii Fit is slightly more fluid in its goals,
depending on the player’s actual age, height, weight, and personal preferences. While
the game still judges what the player’s fitness age is (compared to the player’s actual
age) there is a wider breadth of what is acceptable.
The majority of the game is performed on a specific piece of hardware created
for Wii Fit: the Balance Board. The Balance Board is a white step stool (only slightly
raised off of the ground) that players use for the exercises (See Figure 21). This board
connects back to the Wii hardware, judging whether a player is doing exercises
properly, or checking their overall weight or balance. A cartoon version of the
balance board is also the narrator/guide of Wii Fit—much like how Dr. Kawashima
functions in the Brain Age games.
The daily exercises are broken into four categories: yoga, strength training,
aerobic, and balance games. Balance games include simulations of hitting soccer balls
by the head, walking tightropes, ski jumps, and snowboarding. This, from the start,
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serves as an indicator of the value of productivity versus the value of play in Wii
Fit—only 25% of the overall software is dedicated to being a game, and the
remaining 75% is entirely dedicated to fitness. Just as Bogost suggested in his
discussion of Yourself! Fitness versus Dance Dance Revolution, Wii Fit has divided
the game by rhetorics that focus on traditional fitness models, versus play that
encourages the player into fitness in less traditional ways. It is this 75% stress on
productivity over play that makes Wii Fit compelling from rhetorical and gender
perspectives.
The name Wii Fit is telling unto itself: while “fit” relates to “fitness” it also
can be interpreted as the “fit” of one’s clothing, or a desire to “fit in” to what is
considered the social norm of weight. Anne Becker remarks that for women in the
Western world, “[…] the anxiety of misrecognition (‘I don’t fit in’) faced by the
majority of spectators is more often translated into identification (‘I want to be like
that’)” (Becker & Burwell, quoted in Kilbourne, 1999). As such, Wii Fit might be
just as much about fitting in to a desired body image as it is about physical fitness.
Like Brain Age and My Word Coach, Wii Fit advertisements were featured in
magazines such as Oprah Magazine and Good Housekeeping beginning in
approximately June of 2008 (when the game was released). The first Wii Fit
magazine advertisement (Figure 22) creates themes of accessibility and neutrality,
showing that the game can be played by anyone regardless of age, race, or sex. The
advertisement headline asks at the top of the page, “How will it move you?” Below
this question are twenty separate bodies: the ad shows twenty different people, of
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different ages, races, and sexes, in different positions on the Wii balance board.27 All
of the players are wearing a homogenizing white (though different articles of
clothing), and each shows movement: none appear to be standing still. Similar to the
women’s advertisement for Brain Age (Figure 13), the advertisement for Wii Fit
never uses the phrase “video game”: it almost entirely focuses its pitch on fitness and
movement. The text at the bottom of the advertisement explains:
Step on to the Wii Balance Board and into a new kind of play. Use it with
your Wii system to enjoy fun family activities like Hula Hoop, skijumping, and heading soccer balls, just to name a few. With over 40
different kinetic challenges, it will move you silly. And you can set goals
and track your progress as you master the arts of yoga, aerobic activities,
strength training, and balance games. Fitness has a fun side, but if you
want to play, you gotta move.
In many ways, this advertisement is suggesting little more than diversity, and is far
less gendered than the majority of advertisements that I have already discussed in this
chapter. The cross-section of ages and sexes, as well as the separate bodies, shows
that the game is accessible to different demographics. While the advertisement is still
more suggestive of productivity than of play, it also shows all players as being equal:
men and women, children and adults alike.
A second advertisement for the Wii Fit (Figure 23) employs far more
gendered stereotypes about women, play, and productivity. This advertisement
27
It is difficult to tell from the picture, but it appears that some of these bodies are repeated in multiple
poses.
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appeared in the April 2009 issue of Real Simple Magazine.28 The first page of the
advertisement shows a list of potential chores and ways to use everyday tasks to be
productive and stay in shape. Specifically, the ad encourages active date nights, ways
to “make your household chores work for you,” and to “create family memories.”
Again, this kind of advertising has a similar format to self-help literature, combining
issues of family, domesticity, relationships, and body image. Additionally, the
advertisement suggests a complicated relationship between work and play. The
phrase, “Working out shouldn’t feel like work” suggests that the game is work, but
doesn’t feel like it. In effect, the statement is not suggesting that the workout isn’t
work, just that it doesn’t feel like work. In this way, the Wii Fit advertisement very
deftly plays into issues of women and fitness, while at the same time playing on
issues of gender and self-help.
The second page of the advertisement continues similar themes, opening with
the line, “The Gym. Now in convenient living room size.” It continues by suggesting
that this game (like other Wii games) can help engender cross-generational
communication and more family time. While the image on this page shows a woman
playing the game alone, the advertising copy also focuses on encouraging family
relationships and other self help themes. While the focus of the previous advertising
page is more about personal self-help, the subsequent page is more about social
productivity, a topic I will discuss in more depth in Chapter Five, under the category
of “socially productive play.”
28
Although this advertisement exceeded the time-span of my magazine survey, its relevance to the
topic made it essential to include in this study.
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The visual arrangements of these advertisements help to reinforce the text
message. On the first page, the player (a woman) is once again wearing all white
against the green background. Rather than in an exercise pose, she appears on top of
the balance board, with her arms in the air and hips moving, in more of a dance pose
than a workout pose. She is smiling, and does not appear to be sweating from her
workout. In contrast, the bottom images on the page seem to show a woman who is
not in balance—her feet are at the top of the screen, while her upper body reaches to
the left on the bottom of the screen. In many ways, these images on the second page
do not quite appear to be connected: the bare feet seem to be in a somewhat stable
stance, while the body is off center and pushing off screen. In effect, this creates a
curious and mixed message—while the product promotes “balance” the
advertisement suggests that the player is somewhat unbalanced in her stance. Like the
first page of the advertisement, the woman is smiling and does not appear to be
sweating. In Chapter Two, I discussed Goffman’s “feminine touch”—the use of
hands or fingers to display a product or visual theme in an advertisement. This
advertisement seems to use a feminine touch, but through bear feet. Unlike the hand
examples in Chapter Two, her feet do not excessively sexualize the balance board
but, rather, show it as accessible and easy—something that can be done by all, even
bare-footed.
In many ways, the self-help subtext of the message of Wii Fit lies in its
headline, “How will it move you?” While, obviously, this is referring in part to
physical movement—evidenced by the moving bodies plastered over the
advertisement—there is also an emotional movement that can be inferred here. In
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effect, it is suggesting that when one’s family spends more time playing together,
how it might emotionally “move you.” This is gendered because (as previously
discussed) conventional associations of women are that they are particularly
emotional. Movement thus becomes a dual-edged mode of play. The Wii Fit player is
engaged in the constant movement, in effect suggesting that, more important than the
activity itself, is keeping one’s body busy (and slender). At the same time, the player
is also being wrapped into the “movement” of emotional family bonding. In playing
Wii Fit, women seem almost automatically bound to these gendered modes of play.
My Weight Loss Coach
While in many ways similar to Wii Fit, My Weight Loss Coach (Ubisoft,
2008), a game for the Nintendo DS, focuses more on general fitness and balanced
lifestyles than on specific body images. The player enters daily fitness information
and eating habits, while also being given quizzes and “challenges”. Additionally, the
software comes with a pedometer which hooks into the Nintendo DS to record how
many steps the player has taken in a day.
In no way can My Weight Loss Coach be interpreted as a game—it is purely
self-help software that is played on a gaming system. Its status as a non-game
becomes abundantly clear during its introduction, when the narrator instructs the
audience, “Count your steps for a day, then try to beat that number. (It’s like turning
it into a game or something.)” This is a very telling remark that indicates to the player
that they are in no way playing a game—what is being done is purely productive.
Like Wii Fit, My Weight Loss Coach is entirely about fitness, but in the case of My
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Weight Loss Coach it has even less pretense of being a game. The most game-like
qualities are found in nutrition quizzes that the player can take.
Once again, themes of consumption are closely linked to themes of
productivity in this fitness software. For the most part, the goals set forth by Wii Fit
and My Weight Loss Coach are primarily productive: despite hints of play in both
games, there is little game-like about them beyond their platforms. At the same time,
they are deeply engrossed in the process of consumption—in this case the
consumption of calories and fat. As already mentioned, these themes of body image
are often almost automatically gendered. Bordo (1993) writes that issues of
controlling the body create a gendered hierarchy which implies masculine control and
feminine excessiveness. She explains, “The axis of consumption/production is
gender-overlaid … by the hierarchical dualism that constructs a dangerous, appetitive,
bodily ‘female principle’ in opposition to a masculine ‘male’ will” (p. 211-212). In
this way, the slender and fit body becomes an issue of feminine control.
The My Weight Loss Coach advertisement (Figure 24) appeared in a July issue
of Lucky Magazine.29 The ad shows a slender woman who is much more successful at
the game than her slightly overweight partner who is literally caught with his pants
down. This can be read in two possible ways. The first is that the man is less
successful at weight loss, and his attempts can be read as humorous. In this scenario
he has potentially removed his pants to achieve a lower weight. This reading is
emphasized by his comical boxer shorts, where he appears to be literally caught with
his pants down. Alternatively, the fallen pants can also be read as a sign of successful
This advertisement, like the second Wii Fit advertisement was outside of the scope of my survey, but
has proved to be a useful means of better understanding My Weight Loss Coach. Thus, I felt it was
necessary to include in this study.
29
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weight loss, where his pants have fallen because he has lost so much weight. Both the
man and the woman are holding the Nintendo DS in one hand and laughing, although
the man appears to be laughing at the game screen while the woman appears to be
laughing at the man. There is an implication that while ordinarily video games might
be masculine territory, the more successful woman in this picture shows that a weight
loss game, is her territory to be a success. This is reinforced by the slogan headline
for the copy: “Play to Lose.” At the same time, the woman’s position can also be seen
as slightly submissive. She stands with her arms close to her side in a somewhat
girlish posture. The pink shirt and long blonde hair emphasize her youth. The man
stands with his legs further apart, dominating the page both physically (he is further
to the front and takes up more space than the woman) and in terms of coloring (his
bright yellow boxer shorts stand out more than anything else on the page. Ultimately,
the advertisement sends conflicting messages about who is dominating in this weight
loss game.
As with the advertisements for Brain Age, this advertisement suggests that
weight loss and self-care are women’s CONCERNS. Once again, this reflects the
logic of self-help literature, where women are expected to be mutable and concerned
with self-appearance. While both a man and a woman are playing this game, its self
help theme is shown as being more apt for a feminine audience. Unlike the Brain Age
copy, this advertisement does refer to My Weight Loss Coach as a “game” (which is
slightly ironic, since Brain Age has more game-like qualities than My Weight Loss
Coach). Primarily, the advertising copy explains that the game preaches overall
healthy lifestyle choices, giving a few examples. It concludes, “My Weight Loss
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Coach. It’s an easy, almost too easy, path to a healthier you.” Again, this kind of
mutability suggests that which is found in self-help literature, and is not generally part
of the advertising campaigns aimed at masculine audiences (as seen in Chapter 2).
Instructional Games
The portability of the Nintendo DS has made it a relatively inexpensive and
mobile means of other kinds of instructional products. At the time of this writing,
there are very few programs for the Nintendo DS that would fit in an instructional
game category, but currently the most popular is Personal Trainer: Cooking
(Nintendo of America, 2008). This product for the Nintendo DS has limited
searchable recipes, gives voice cooking instructions, and can operate using voicecommands (for instance, moving on to the next part of a recipe when a person says,
“continue”).
Once again, while Personal Trainer: Cooking is on the Nintendo DS system,
it has absolutely no gaming elements to it. There is no quantifiable outcome or
artificial conflict in the software. And while, perhaps, as with any cooking there are
rules, these rules are not monitored or judged by the software. Unlike the brain games
or exergames previously discussed, Personal Trainer: Cooking also does not employ
any kind of minigame or casual gaming elements to supplant its productive nature. It
is, in essence, an interactive manual. That said, Personal Trainer: Cooking warrants
mentioning. Despite not being a game, it is still marketed and sold with other video
games but has no elements of play or game. Personal Trainer: Cooking is a highly
domestic, pragmatic game. Because it does not have a good deal of content (beyond
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recipes), it is difficult to detail the game in the ways way that I have discussed games
like Brain Age and Wii Fit. At the same time, its presence on the market is, in itself,
telling of expectation about gender, play, and productivity.
While I found no magazine advertisements for Personal Trainer: Cooking,
Nintendo did launch a brief television commercial campaign featuring actress Lisa
Kudrow. 30 In this commercial, Kudrow uses Personal Trainer: Cooking to make
Kung Pow chicken with her niece. As she responds to cooking instructions she makes
remarks such as, “See, I’m not cutting myself at all” and “Are you proud of
yourself… me too!” The goal of this commercial is obviously to illustrate the ease of
cooking with the software, though because she is talking to a young girl (and,
simultaneously, the audience) Kudrow’s tone is slightly patronizing and childish.
Additionally, just as the young girl is taking cooking directions from Kudrow,
Kudrow is similarly obeying verbal directions from the software. This, to a certain
extent, puts Kudrow in the role of a child. Once again, a white male character is
guiding players through productive and gendered themes on a gaming platform.
At the time of this writing there has only been one other game for the
Nintendo DS that would fit into the category of special interest games, My Stop
Smoking Coach (2009). Despite the product list, I predict that as women are more
drawn into the gaming world, the appeal of this category is bound to expand. The
potential for the Nintendo DS as a special interest and productive tool is likely to
continue increasing. As this unfolds, we will need to expand our definitions of
“game” or create new genres of what can be performed on gaming systems.
30
Personal Trainer Cooking Television Advertisiment downloaded via web (last Accessed December
14, 2009)
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CHAPTER FOUR
DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR NOTHING: SIMULATED PRODUCTIVE PLAY
Introduction
In Chapter Three, my focus was on play and productivity: video games that
aim to improve the lives of players by increasing their brain power, helping them get
fit, or teaching them other specific skills. But what about games that are not
productive in the real world, yet mimic real world productivity? Similarly, what of
games that do not claim to improve the player, but are designed to fill all available
time and allow players to be constantly doing something, even if that something is not
inherently productive? In this chapter I characterize what I call simulated productive
play, by breaking it into two subcategories: 1] games that simulate productivity
through the consumption of all available free time, and 2] games that use simulation
to mimic real world (and often mundane) productive practices. While these
subcategories may seem to be pointing to different things, I will show how they are
ultimately part of similar phenomena through their relationships to productivity and
consumption.
Simulated Productive Play
I have previously defined productive play as, “play which yields results that
exceed the confines of the game world leaking into the real world.” Like productive
play, simulated productive play has elements of productivity embedded in it, but
rather than yielding results in the real world, it mimics real world productivity and
consumes free time. For example, in the previous chapter I discussed the game
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Personal Trainer: Cooking, which taught players to cook—a domestic chore in the
real world that has little influence on the game world. Alternatively, one of the games
that I discuss in this chapter is Cooking Mama, a game that mimics cooking as part of
its game structure, narrative, and mechanics. The productivity found in Personal
Trainer: Cooking is in making actual meals. In Cooking Mama, the productivity is
entirely within the game narrative; it involves making meals that only exist in the
game and only feed the game’s fictional characters. Both games feature a kind of
productive play, which generates consumption (through eating) and domesticity
(through cooking). Cooking Mama’s productivity, however, is purely simulation. In
this chapter I do not outline every game that simulates productivity, but rather, focus
on those that use particularly compelling themes of femininity. As already noted, I
have broken this phenomenon into two primary subcategories. The first subcategory
is casual gaming—a form of play that attempts to make use of all available free time.
Casual games are not actually productive, but simulate productivity as time
consumption products. The second category that I look at involves games that mimic
real-world (often mundane) practices. I further break down these games to what I
have termed as domestic-themed games and consumer-themed games.
Any discussion of simulation obviously evokes Jean Baudrillard’s
(1981/1994) Simulacra and Simulation. Baudrillard refers to simulation as a map
without a territory or a copy without an original, and he suggests that we are living in
an “era of simulation” (p. 2). Our era is marked by a “liquidation of referentials”
which is “a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (p. 2). It seems
important to note, though, that this notion of simulated reality is neither positive nor
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negative, and is more about performativity (Lane, 2000) and semiotics (Merrin,
2005). In simulating productivity, the games that I discuss in this chapter become
symbolic caricatures of productivity, rather than actually productive.
On a code and structural level, all video games are, in some way,
simulations—they are representative of some kind of on-screen reality. But, in this
dissertation, I refer to game simulation somewhat differently: the simulation is not
only in the games, but more precisely, in their representations of reality. Thus, it is
not only games that are the simulation here, but the productivity itself, constructing a
second level of simulation for many of these video games. Simulation, in video game
studies, refers to games that are often complete models of real world things, such as
cities, technology, or life forms. Other scholars have noted the relevance of
simulation in all video games. For example, in his essay “Videogames of the
Oppressed: Critical Thinking, Education, Tolerance, and Other Trivial Issues,”
Gonazlo Frasca (2004) explains that in video games, “Simulation is an ideal medium
for exposing rules rather than particular events” (p. 87). From this perspective,
simulation is always already present in video games. However, my use of the term
simulation is more about replicating processes than exposing a symbolic order. While
this is a perspective worth mentioning, it is not necessarily applicable to the video
games I discuss in this chapter.
According to Nicholas Gane and David Beer (2008), video games are
increasingly becoming examples of Baudrillard’s theories of simulation. Gane and
Beer suggest that to the extent that, for example, Guitar Hero and Wii games replicate
real hobbies and real-world movements they provide insight into simulation. They
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explain that these games, “provide a focal point for developing understandings of the
interconnections between the real and the simulation, the material and the virtual, the
body and information” (p. 113). My own understanding of simulated productive play
builds on some of Baudrillard’s notions. But the simulated productive play that I
discuss in this chapter is not necessarily a “copy without an original.” The games use
visual symbolism to connote things such as domesticity. These simulations create
spaces that are both comforting (in their domestic familiarity) and yet oppressive (in
how they reenact gender stereotypes).
But what does it mean to simulate productivity in play? Are there certain
implications when this kind of simulated productivity has gendered attributes and is
often marketed towards women? What I show in the following is the gendered nature
of this category of gaming. Both thematically and in terms of game mechanics, the
games I discuss simulate real-world productivity in terms of time management,
domesticity, and gender stereotypes. In many ways, simulated productive play is
characterized by a complex relationship between production and consumption.
Production/Consumption
The interplay between production and consumption is pivotal to my argument
in this chapter. Consumption in video games occurs on several levels: obviously the
initial purchase of video games is a consumptive activity, but in addition several
game narratives hinge on consumption. Consumption is often a topic or narrative
theme in games that are aimed at women, or games that are reputedly popular with
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feminine audiences (such as The Sims, Diner Dash, or Cooking Mama). 31 At the
same time, games are often marketed to women as time fillers and, in these cases, it is
time that is ultimately being consumed as a form of productivity. Thus, themes of
productivity and consumption often reinforce and support one another.
Philosophers and scholars have often considered the relationship between
production and consumption, showing connections between the two. Most notably, in
Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx (1859/1999) deftly explains the symbiotic
relationship of production/consumption:
Production is simultaneously consumption as well. It is consumption
in a dual form—subjective and objective consumption. [Firstly,] the
individual, who develops his abilities while producing, expends them
as well, using them up in the act of production, just as in natural
procreation vital energy is consumed. Secondly, it is consumption of
the means of production, which are used and used up and in part (as
for instance fuel) are broken down into simpler components. It
similarly involves consumption of raw material which is absorbed
and does not retain its original shape and quality. The act of
production itself is thus in all its phases also an act of consumption.
The economists concede this. They call productive consumption both
production that is simultaneously identical with consumption, and
consumption which is directly concurrent with production. (p. 195,
author’s emphasis)
31
Several scholars and game industry analyst have noted that these games are popular with feminine
audiences (Ray, 2004; Isbister, 2006; Fron, et. al, 2007a; Fullerton, et. al, 2008; Lazzaro, 2008). I will
discuss these games in more detail later in this chapter.
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This notion of “productive consumption” allows me to illustrate the nuanced
relationship between the two. Productive consumption, as I will show, is not always
economically-based, but can also be part of complex gendered activities.
The majority of theoretical work on consumption and consumer practices
focuses on “things”: much of it takes Marxist or postmodern standpoints to
understand how desire for material goods is constructed and facilitated. Celia Lury
(1996) illustrates that a parallel between women and consuming cultures creates
negative perceptions of women. Stereotypes of women as shoppers help to situate
women as the ultimate consumer, rather than producer of goods. According to A. Fuat
Firat (1994), this correspond to perception of women as consumer and, more
importantly, as “shopper.” Firat explains:
The female—specifically, in visual culture, the female body—
became the representation of the feminine, which was the ideal
consumer in Western culture. She “went shopping” while he
worked. She spent his money or earnings. Her frivolity in
buying and consuming became a major topic of jokes in the
culture. She was such a consumer that he had always to restrain
her appetite for consumables. (p. 210)
Thus, women play a particularly complex role in consumer culture: essentializations
of women automatically map them as the primary consumer in the
consumption/production relationship. At the same time, though, women’s shifting
roles in society (moving them out of the household and into work domains), also
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creates more responsibilities: in the last 30 years women have increasingly become
both producers and consumers.
One of the things that I illustrate in this chapter involves a complex
relationship between gender, consumption, and production, within simulated
productive play. In some ways, this is reminiscent of Karl Marx’s definition of
“productive consumption.” But the productivity which I discuss in this chapter is not
the production of the games, but production that occurs within the game narratives or
around game play styles. While I discuss different kinds of simulated productive play
in this chapter—casual gaming, domestic-themed play, and consumer-themed play—
they all relate back to the productive consumption relationship. In essence, players are
simulating productivity through consumptive practices.
Casual Gaming
Several of the games I have already discussed (and will be discussing later) in
this dissertation are considered casual games. For instance, Brain Age and Big Brain
Academy both use casual gaming mechanics to engage their players. Additionally,
other games I discuss later in this chapter such as Diner Dash and Dream Day
Wedding are considered casual games.32 But the category is important enough and
compelling enough when it comes to topics of women and gaming that I felt it also
deserved a separate discussion. My aim is to show how casual gaming mechanics and
game play ultimately feed into the narrative themes of many of their games: themes
of constant movement and motion. Many so-called “casual games” overlap with other
32
This label has been given to these games by production and distribution companies such as Playfirst
and Big Fish Games.
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kinds of simulated productive play. While I do not analyze specific casual games in
this portion of the chapter (as I have described several of them elsewhere in this
study), I do analyze how this category more generally relates productivity to
consumption through time. In casual games, the player is ultimately consuming time
in the real world. Through this they are often simulating productivity. Furthermore, I
illustrate how this specific kind of time consumption contributes to the problematic
relationship between gender and play.
So what exactly are casual games? According to the Game Developer’s
Conference Summit on casual games in 2004, 33 casual games:
•
Are able to be learned in less than a minute
•
Are forgiving of mistakes and lead the player in the right direction
when they do make mistakes
•
Have a short play time but are highly replayable
•
Are both convenient and quick starting
•
Are inexpensive or free
Additionally, casual games are often characterized by low-resolution graphics and
fairly simple game mechanics. Thus, we can understand casual video games as those
which are simple to learn and play, addictive34 enough that one can play them in short
periods of time or for as long as time allows, and are cheap or free. In effect, a casual
game can be understood as products to consume time. Casual games are often games
played on computers, or mobile devices such as phones, palm pilots, or portable
33
(“Casual Video Games Are Serious Business”, 2004)
It is unlikely that these games are actually clinically addictive. None-the-less, they are often
characterized by addiction metaphors.
34
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gaming systems, such as the Nintendo DS system or the Playstation Portable (PSP).
Thus, these games can be started and stopped quickly, and can be played in places
that are not necessarily meant to be play-spaces.
To a large extent, casual gaming leisure practices have much to do with the
necessarily distracted nature of women’s leisure practices in a more general sense.
In Loving With a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women, Tania
Modleski (1984) discusses the interruptible nature of one of the more popular forms
of feminine television of the late twentieth century: the soap opera. Modleski
remarks that the soap opera format is particularly built around how women’s leisure
is fragmented. Thus, a woman watching a soap opera will find:
Revelations, confrontations, and reunions are constantly being interrupted
and postponed by telephone calls, unexpected visitors,
counterrevelations, catastrophes, and switches from one plot to another.
These interruptions are both annoying and pleasurable: if we are torn
away from one exciting story, we at least have the relief of picking up the
thread of an unfinished one. Like the (ideal) mother in the home, we are
kept interested in a number of events at once and are denied the luxury of
a total and prolonged absorption. (p. 101)
According to Modleski, then, the soap opera and similar feminine television styles
cater to a specific demographic of women through interruptible plotlines. Thus, I
will later argue, when interruptability becomes a necessary part of play it can never
be entirely immersive—a potentially important aspect of play activities. While this
kind of leisure might be necessitated by women’s busy lives, it also seems
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important to analyze leisure practices. While, obviously, not all leisure and play can
be immersive, ephemeral forms of leisure never fully engage players.
There is a similarity between these kinds leisure practices and the popularity
of casual gaming with women audiences. They are completely interruptible forms of
leisure, which allow the player to do other things and yet remain productive. Thus,
while casual games may not be productive per se, they often simulate productivity by
making use of all available time. This need to make use of time is reminiscent of the
disciplinary processes discussed by Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1977).
Foucault explains that “exhaustive use” of time is one of the means of disciplining
subjects:
The principle that underlay the time-table in its traditional form was
essentially negative; it was the principle of non-idleness: it was forbidden
to waste time, which was counted by God and paid for by men; the timetable was to eliminate the danger of wasting it—a moral offence and
economic dishonesty. Discipline, on the other hand, arranges a positive
economy; it poses the principle of a theoretically ever-growing use of
time: exhaustion rather than use; it is a question of extracting, from time,
ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful
forces” (p. 154).
Thus, Foucault asserts that time economy is an important element for controlling
subjects in the disciplining process. While, clearly, video game play does not carry
the weight of the discipline that Foucault speaks of—he is primarily referring to
prisoners and the military—there is an undeniable parallel to the processes. The
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constant consumption of time in casual gaming suggests all time should be used
productively—if not in work then in play. In these circumstances, productivity is not
in the proper use of time but through constant movement—an “idle hands are the
devil’s tool” kind of productivity. This becomes even more conflicted when the play
itself mimics work. This is the case with the domestic work that I discuss later in this
chapter with domestic-themed games like Diner Dash, Dream Day Wedding, and
Cooking Mama.
Because women are considered the largest audience of casual gamers
(Shields, 2008), this becomes a essential topic in women and gaming. According to
the Consumer Electronics Association, “65 percent of women ages 25 to 34 report
playing video games, compared to just 35 percent of men. It cites casual gaming as
the reason why the numbers for women are so large” (Shields, 2008). According to
the Casual Games Associations’ Market Report (CasualConnect, 2007) about equal
numbers of men and women play casual games (51% and 49%, respectively) and, for
both men and women, these games are more popular with a slightly older
demographic (62% are over 35 and 38% are under 35). However, when it comes to
paying to play casual games (those who purchase them in stores or subscribe to online
services) the numbers skew particularly to women over the age of 35—74% of paying
casual gamers are women, and 72% are over 35. Thus, to a large extent, casual
gaming is known as women’s territory by the video game industry, since they are the
primary paying audience.
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That women are considered the largest demographic of casual gamers is
wrought with implications. Because, as mentioned in Chapter One, time is such an
integral factor in women’s leisure activities, casual gaming is reminiscent of other
kinds of leisure that have been popular with women in the past. Deem (1987)
conducted a study showing how women did not feel they had the right to leisure time
given the overriding concerns of maintaining households and work responsibilities.
Instead, she explains, women’s leisure generally involves things that can be done in
quick snippets of time and are easily interruptible, such as reading, knitting, and
television watching. Similarly, in her discussions of soap operas, Modleski (1988)
discusses the necessity of interruptability in viewing daytime television. These
interruptible, short-lived leisure activities are meant to—like casual games—fill
snippets of time. Thus, there is a built-in expectation that women are not interested in
fully engaging in leisure, and instead seek leisure to keep them on task, busily
attending to home and work duties. It can be argued that casual games, which engage
the player in the moments when they are not working, are meant to keep the player
alert and ready for their next productive task, outside of the video game world.
Advertising and Simulated Productive Play
In the last chapter I explored several examples of how advertising to women
audiences helped to encourage different kinds of productive play, with games such as
Brain Age, My Word Coach, and Wii Fit. While casual games are very rarely
advertised through traditional venues, the Nintendo DS has been currently heavily
advertised to female demographics. The Nintendo DS (standing for Dual Screen) was
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unusually positioned to enter a more feminized video game market from its inception.
The DS Lite, released in June of 2006, is a handheld game system with two screens:
the upper screen has visual output, while the lower has a touch screen which can be
manipulated with a built-in stylus. The small system was quickly positioned by
Nintendo as a potential “accessory” and one Nintendo executive was quoted in a
news article saying, “It definitely should be part of every purse […] you have your
cellphone, your iPod, and your DS Lite” (Harris p. F15). Early on, marketers of the
DS Lite began to target feminine audiences. The DS Lite entered the market with the
slogan, “Lighter, Brighter” and was immediately advertised in a variety of fashion
magazines, on commuter zones, and in television commercial spots: each showing
women playing with the handheld game system (Harris, p. F15). What is particularly
compelling about these advertising campaigns is that, for the most part, they did not
particularly attempt to sell “play” to these new feminine consumers. Instead, a theme
of productivity within leisure has been a constant theme throughout many of the
Nintendo DS Lite advertisements: either through self improvement or keeping oneself
busy.
One of the more persuasive examples of the latter kind of productivity was the
“Do Something with Your Nothing” Nintendo DS advertisement slogan that appeared
in several women’s magazines. One such advertisement (Figure 25), which appeared
in the September 2006 issue of Oprah Magazine, shows three people—two women
and one man—in a waiting room. One of the women is playing with a Nintendo DS
(and smiling) while the other man and the woman are slumped over in their seats,
clearly bored while waiting to be called. The advertisement’s main text suggests,
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“The average wait in a doctor’s office is 23.4 minutes. Do something with your
nothing.” The advertisement is clearly targeting a feminine readership, and suggesting
a proper time and place for video game play. The advertisement features one woman,
in red, primly and happily playing her DS, with her legs crossed and a large smile on
her face. Another woman sits diagonally from the playing woman, glaring and clearly
displeased with the other woman’s play-time. The second woman, dressed in more
drab colors, sits less femininely, legs splayed and hunched over on her chair. It is she
(the non-player) that the advertisement appears to be making an appeal to—she is the
one who is being told to “do something with [her] nothing.” While a man sits in the
corner of the room, he does not appear to be a player in this scenario—which seems
to be a conflict between the two women. Above the three patients, a clock is a
reminder of passing time.
Similarly, another advertisement in this campaign (Figure 26) shows three
people standing at a bus stop, two men and a woman. This time it is the man who is
happily playing with his Nintendo DS while the other two are slumped over the sides
of the bus stop. This advertisement, similarly, tells that, “The average wait for a city
bus is 12.8 minutes. Do something with your nothing.” The game player, in blue,
once again stands out as the happy one. The standing woman provides another
primary character, though, and arguably it is she who the advertisement is making the
appeal to—similar to the previous Nintendo DS advertisement. This woman is lit
differently than the other characters in the advertisement and is the only person
standing—creating a visual focal point.
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Both of the advertisements reveal the kind of play that had begun to be
marketed to women during the summer of 2006. These advertisements are targeting
women who do not ordinarily play video games. Each of the women in the
advertisements (and those who are reading them) are being chastised to “do
something with [their] nothing.” Lacanian35 interpretations aside, these
advertisements are not necessarily highlighting the value of play, but rather, insisting
on the value of productivity: all time must be spent in some way. Thus, these
advertisements are some of the first to set an important trend where video games are
not advertised to women for their play-potential but for their value in using up any
excess time in a woman’s busy schedule. Just as I have previously suggested with
casual gaming, these advertisements suggest an exhaustive use of all available time.
More recently, in spring of 2008, an advertising campaign continued
Nintendo’s attempts to garner a more feminine audience by using three celebrity
spokeswomen to pitch the portable gaming system under the campaign headline, “I
play for me.” The “I play for me” campaign is compelling, in part, because the
implication of this slogan is a more playful, less productive kind of video game
play—a strategy that would (on its surface) seem to be very different than previous
Nintendo DS campaigns aimed at women. But below the celebrity surface of the “I
play for me” theme there is often, also, a strong theme of productivity that is an
undercurrent of each of the advertisement’s pitches. This campaign is also
reminiscent of Susan Douglas’ (previously mentioned) discussions of advertising
35
Jacques Lacan theorizes that women and girls are defined by their “lack” of symbolic phallus, and
can never move beyond this lack (Homer, 2005). Thus, using Lacan one might creatively assert that
the advertisement is suggesting that “doing something” with their “nothing” might indirectly imply an
inescapable femininity.
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turning feminism into narcissism. The “I play for me” theme seems to imply a certain
amount of empowerment through consumerism and consumption.
The three celebrity spokeswomen for this advertising campaign are television
actress America Ferrara, pop singer Carrie Underwood, and actress Liv Tyler. Each
of these women are shown playing the DS and talking about playing the handheld
gaming system while explaining why they play. The entire video clip of each
spokesperson is displayed on the Nintendo web site “I Play for Me,” though
shortened versions of some of the clips have also been made into television
commercials.
The use of celebrity spokespersons is not an unfamiliar tactic in marketing
towards women, and one that has some compelling implications. According to Diane
Barthel (1988) this tactic is most commonly used with beauty products, as the
audience is likely to feel that the model or celebrity has an exceptional amount of
expertise in this area. Barthel explains that an increasing number of celebrities are
used to pitch products, and, “[…] celebrities do hold consumer’s attention and sell the
product. This is especially true for adolescents. The young women seeing an
endorsement from female superstars does sit up and take notice; these are women
who have made it, they are women who are beautiful” (p. 50). But because the
Nintendo DS Lite is not a beauty product, something else is being sold by these
young, successful celebrities—not necessarily beauty, but rather, productivity. The
success of the spokespersons is not only testament to their looks, here, but their
productivity and time management. This, in part, is what is being pitched to the
feminine consumer—a message far different from the “I play for me” slogan.
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On the I Play for Me web site, each of the celebrities has two videos: one
video shows the woman actually playing the game (with little-to-no narration) while a
second video has them talking about the Nintendo DS and the game they have
chosen. Additionally, below the videos is the celebrity’s game “pick,” as well as
behind the scene photos of the celebrity playing the Nintendo DS. Also listed below
are “games for me”—an additional list of other Nintendo DS games that are
presumably popular with (or commonly marketed to) feminine audiences, and another
list of “more games.” In the following, I will discuss each of the celebrity commercial
videos, and how in addition to pitching the slogan “I play for me” they are also
showing how they play to be productive.
In her “I play for me” commercial, television actress America Ferrara
primarily discusses her hectic schedule while playing her game of choice—Super
Mario Brothers. Ferrara’s play style indirectly hints at casual gaming. During her
commercial video, she is mostly seen playing Super Mario Brothers on a
personalized Nintendo DS (with rhinestoned letters spelling “AMERICA” on it). In a
final voice over for the commercial, Ferrara says, “After 12 hours in front of the
camera… sometimes I play for me.” According to Ferrara, play must be earned. Thus,
Ferrara initiates her pitch for play by talking about work and productivity.
This theme, balancing work with personal time by using snippets of play is
highlighted more in the longer interview video. In this video, Ferrara is seen playing
on the set of her television show, Ugly Betty. She explains:
I play the DS on set, mostly, because that’s where I spend a lot of my
time. On set of my TV show or on a film set during the hiatus. So I play
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in the trailer or in my dressing room. On set in little corners where I can
hide away and where I can just… you know I’m barely in one place long
enough that I can turn on a TV and sit and start a game, so I’m really glad
that there’s something, you know, as big as a cell phone that you can just
put in your pocket. You know my days allow for five minute breaks at a
time. And that’s the perfect amount of time to, you know, relax and play.
Ferrara is using her busyness and time management in order to explain how and why
she plays with her Nintendo DS. The final two lines of this monologue are the most
telling. Ferrara insists, here, that she only has five minute breaks of time which she
suggests is the “perfect amount of time” for play and relaxation. Like the “Do
something with your nothing” campaign, “I play for me” suggests more subtly
perhaps that all available time should be spent doing something.
The kind of productive play promoted by American Idol winner Carrie
Underwood is slightly different from Ferrara’s. In these videos, Underwood is shown
playing the game Nintendogs. During the commercial version of the video,
Underwood is playing with her Nintendog and petting it—laughing and saying,
“cool.” As the commercial ends, her real dog, a spitting image of the Nintendog she
has created, jumps up on her lap while she plays the video game. In her extended
interview, Underwood talks about the similarities between her dog and the dog she
has made in the game: “My first experience with Nintendogs was, of course, a lot of
fun. I got to pick out and name my dog and start working on things like that. So it’s a
lot of fun. A lot like working with my dog, Ace. It was a lot of fun to even make my
dog look like Ace.” In Chapter Five, I will discuss Nintendogs in more depth, but it is
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important to note the similarities between Underwood’s real dog and her Nintendog
and how that might make the game seem more like work and less like play. In effect,
her play life is mimicking her non-play life.
In this second clip, Underwood also outwardly acknowledges her “partnership
with Nintendo” saying that it is a “good thing.” By acknowledging that her Nintendo
play is—at least in part—a job for a paid endorsement, she is also justifying her video
game play in a very practical way. Like Ferrara, Underwood also references time
management in her interview. She explains, “I don’t know there are a lot of crazy
things that happen in my life and from day to day it’s just nice to find a few minutes
for myself and it can keep me entertained without stressing me out. So it’s … .I guess
it’s a stress reliever in a way.” Ultimately Underwood, like Ferrara, plays her
Nintendo DS for practical reasons—whether they are stress release or time-killers—
thus automatically deflating the slogan, “I play for me.” While on the surface “I play
for me” may seem to be a different kind of tactic than “Do something with their
nothing,” their underlying pitch is the same: play should be used primarily for
practical purposes. While Nintendo might be changing the market by advertising
games for women, they are staying consistent with older paradigms of feminine play.
Liv Tyler’s set of “I play for me” commercials are slightly more equivocal. In
her commercials, actress Liv Tyler plays the game Brain Age 2, and discusses the
hectic nature of her lifestyle. In the first video (the one aired as a television
commercial) she is seen lying on her bed, playing a musical game (somewhat
comically badly, considering that she is the daughter of famous musician Steven
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Tyler). This commercial mostly has her lightly humming along with the music, and
laughing while she plays the brain games.
In the second video, where she is being interviewed about the Nintendo DS,
Tyler explains that she is particularly drawn to these kinds of brain games. She
explains, “I like all of the educational games a lot. I like that it challenges your mind
in that way. That I like about it. I have so much time where I’m on airplanes for long
stretches of time or waiting around on set.” As a start-point for the Nintendo
commercial, these statements are compelling. To begin with, Tyler is touting her
“recommended game” not for its fun and playful qualities but because of how they
“challenge” and improve her mentally—in other words she is promoting productive
play. Additionally, Tyler is once again referencing the previously mentioned theme of
the Nintendo DS: she is “do[ing] something with [her] nothing” and making use of all
available time—on planes and on sets—time, that she feels, would otherwise be
wasted.
In the second part of the interview, Tyler suggests more of an interest in play
and pleasure, but still references the intensity and busyness of her everyday life. She
explains, “In the world today we’re all working all the time, now that we have
internet there’s no such thing as downtime. Even on the weekends or when you’re in
the bathroom. Everything you’re doing you’re checking your email. So it’s really
great to go back to something that’s just for pleasure.” Unlike Ferrara and
Underwood’s interviews, these remarks make a significantly more compelling
argument for play without the pretense of productivity. In Tyler’s commercial spots
are more equivocal and promote play to some extent, they still bear some similarities
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to Ferrara and Underwood’s videos. While selling the Nintendo DS for leisure, she
also has suggested its value for productivity and self-improvement.
Domestic Play
Several video games specifically construct simulated productive play within
their narratives and mechanics. One kind of game aimed at feminine audiences, in
recent years, is the domestic game—games with cooking, cleaning, and serving as
their primary theme. While many of the games in this category also fit into the
previously discussed “casual games” genre, the games I will be describing
specifically target feminine audiences through their domestic themes. Because, as I
illustrate, domesticity is often stereotyped as a women’s domain, domestic play
pushes anxieties of everyday women’s experiences into leisure practices.
Domesticity as a form of play is problematic because of its inherent links to
both femininity and women’s oppression. According to Ruth Schwartz Cowan (1983)
in More Work for Mother:
The allocation of housework to women is […] a social convention which
developed during the nineteenth century because of a specific set of
material and cultural conditions. It is a convention so deeply embedded in
our individual and collective unconsciousnesses that even the profound
changes wrought by the twentieth century have not yet shaken it. (p. 150)
Thus, while many women have found careers out of the household in the past fifty
years, domestic work is still a point of cultural tension for many women. For many
women domesticity comes with implications of guilt and anxiety. As a form of play,
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these games become somewhat problematic as their simulation of productive tasks is
intricately linked with domesticity.
One important consideration when looking at these games is what Salen &
Zimmerman (2004) refer to as the “magic circle” of play, an idea loosely adopted
from Huizinga’s (1938/1974) Homo Ludens. They explain that the magic circle is the
separate space wherein play occurs:
The fact that the magic circle is just that—a circle—is an important feature
of this concept. As a closed circle, the space it circumscribes is enclosed
and separate from the real world. As a marker of time, the magic circle is
like a clock: it simultaneously represents a path with a beginning and end,
but one without beginning and end. The magic circle inscribes a space that
is repeatable, a space both limited and limitless. In short, a finite space
with infinite possibility (p. 95).
Thus, the magic circle inscribes the space of play wherein different rules apply. When
this space replicates real-world domesticity though, one might begin to question how
anxieties and tensions about this domestic life might filter through the magic circle,
causing these boundaries to get muddied and ultimately affecting the participants’
play. In what follows, I suggest that domestic-themed video games have the potential
to foster real world anxieties in play spaces that are specifically considered feminine
video games.
In this section I will be specifically focusing on three games: Diner Dash,
Cooking Mama, and Dream Day Wedding. While two out of three of the games
(Diner Dash and Dream Day Wedding) take place outside of the domestic, household
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sphere, they both have aspects that, in many ways, replicate domesticity. For
example, I will later discuss how both Flo (the protagonist of Diner Dash) is a
business proprietor, but is also fully engaged in cleaning, cooking, and serving others
in a very domestic fashion.
In the paper “A Game of One’s Own,” the Ludica Group (2007) suggests that
domestic spaces are often absent in video games. But the authors also warn that,
“Although domestic space can be a site of play and pleasure […] it can also connote
stifling captivity for women […]” (Fron, et al, p. 5). Thus while the domestic settings
of these games may be a more comfortable environment for some women than the
Grand Theft Auto games, at the same time I argue that the replication of domesticity
makes them ambivalent spaces. By simulating this kind of productivity, and
repackaging it as play, feminine players may feel all too at home. Just as themes of
self-help use experiential knowledge to create gendered themes for the games that I
discussed in Chapter Three, a simulation of oft-too-familiar domestic spaces creates
potentially stressful (and gendered) play spaces here.
Because of the domestic themes of the games, food often plays a prominent
role in their play. This embeds another layer of the theme of productive consumption:
this time the consumption of food. Despite this, the player/avatar is not generally
engaged in eating in these games. Instead, the consumption ends up being the
consumptive practices of others, with the player/avatar often playing the role of
server or food maker. Thus, while the player is consuming time, they are promoting
culinary consumption for the fictional people they are serving and waiting on. It
seems even more compelling that several of the aforementioned productive games
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(such as My Weight Coach and Wii Fit) are concerned with the consumption of the
player’s calories, while the simulated productive games that I will be discussing in
this section are more concerned with others’ consumption of food. Weight loss does
not become a primary theme in Cooking Mama or Diner Dash.
Additionally, several of the games in this category have peculiar naming
patterns that are worth noting. Two trends seem to be coming out of these titles. First,
there are those that imply quickness (with games such as Diner Dash, Wedding Dash,
Turbo Subs, Dairy Dash, Dress Shop Hop, and Roller Rush). The speediness implied
in the titles of these games reaffirms themes discussed earlier in this chapter. In
essence, they imply that both the avatar and player will “do something with [their]
nothing” as the Nintendo campaign slogan suggests, through the constant movement
referenced in the game titles. Secondly, several games use the term “mania” or
“craze” in their titles, such as Cake Mania, Nanny Mania, Shopmania, Babysitting
Mania, and Fashion Craze. While on one hand, these games might imply similar
themes as the “dash” titled games (mania in terms of quick movement and speed)
they simultaneously imply fanaticism and hysteria.
For hundreds of years, hysteria was primarily defined via femininity, and only
since 1952 has the term lost credibility in the psychological community (Chesler,
2005; Maines, 1999; Friedan, 1963/2001). Despite this, “hysteria” is still used as a
descriptor to suggest extreme and irrational femininity. Hysteria was marked by a
potpourri of potential symptoms including (but not limited to) fainting, shortness of
breath, loss of appetite, muscle spasms, and nervousness (Maines, 1999). In
Technology of the Orgasm, Rachel Maines (1999) points out that, “The panting and
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shortness of breath associated with the hysterical paroxysm, and eventually the
disease itself, came to be called the ‘suffocation of the uterus’ or the ‘suffocation of
the mother’” (p. 24). In fact, the term itself is derived from the Greek word for
Uterus. Of the gendered nature of hysteria, Maines astutely remarks that, “there is no
analogous word ‘testecical’ to describe, for example, male sports fans’ behavior
during the Super Bowl” (p. 20). In other words, masculinity is far more permitted to
lose control, in ways that with women might be considered “hysterical.” This point is
particularly poignant when applied to games and play, suggesting that in women’s
play there is a loss of control, while men’s play is normal and expected. I would like
to suggest that this use of the term ‘mania’ as a title descriptor in video games aimed
at women audiences is similarly derisive.
According to Elizabeth Lunbeck (1995), one of the main problems with
women and mental health has been the masculinity of the psychiatric profession. As I
illustrated in Chapter Two, video games are similarly a masculine industry. By using
titles for games aimed at feminine audiences that imply fanaticism and mania there is,
ultimately, an implication of hysteria. The underlying expectation is that hysteria,
mania, and craziness are embedded in feminine play; so while play might be
allowable in certain circumstances, if overplayed women players might bring harm
upon themselves.
Another compelling factor to these games—and similarly relevant to the
“dash”-centric titles—is the notion of time management. Many of the games that I
will be discussing are referred to as “time management games” by the games’
publishers. The descriptions of games under the label “time management” often
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suggest few playful attributes. For example, Big Fish Games advertises a large
selection of time management games on their web site and encourages the player by
suggesting, “Manage time, customers, and money in games for the serious goal
setter” (Big Fish Games, 2009). The lack of playfulness in this definition is notable,
but also notable is the use of time management as a marketing tool. Previously, I have
discussed Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (1989) The Second Shift (1989), which marks
time management as often a pivotal women’s issue: particularly for working women
with families. Hochschild returns to the topic in a later book, The Time Bind: When
Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, where she discusses similar issues of
time management for many families. Hochschild (1997) asserts that many products
for time management are specifically marketed at women. She explains:
Like men, women absorb the work-family speedup far more than they
resist it; but unlike men, women are the ones who shoulder most of the
workload at home. Naturally, then, they are more starved for time than
men. It is women who feel more acutely the need to save time and women
who are more tempted by the goods and services of the growing “time
industry.” They are the ones who shop for time. What the speedup takes
away, the new time industry sells back in time-saving good and services,
many of which are geared to appeal to eager working women, especially
of the urban middle and upper classes. (p. 229-230)
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It seems likely that so-called Time Management Games are targeting these busy,
working women audiences. While the games themselves are not time-savers, the
“time management” label might have particular appeal to this demographic.
Diner Dash
The Diner Dash games tell the adventures of Flo, 36 a hard working
waitress/restaurateur who serves as the player’s avatar. Diner Dash was initially a
computer game, but has now become a complex network of games, and is also
available in portable gaming versions for cellular phones, the Nintendo DS, and the
PSP. Several of the computer versions have been networked via the game publisher.
Of the computer versions games, there is currently Diner Dash (Playfirst, 2004),
Diner Dash 2 (Playfirst, 2006), Diner Dash: Flo on the Go (Playfirst, 2006), and
Diner Dash: Hometown Hero (Playfirst, 2007). For the most recent version,
Hometown Hero, there are several plugin restaurants that can be added to the base
game, which places the main character in a variety of surreal situations. For instance,
Diner Dash: Flo Through Time (Playfirst, 2008) uses time travel predicaments to
spice up the play. Other restaurant adventures place Flo as a protagonist in fairy tales,
or use various seasonal themes. The game Cooking Dash (Playfirst, 2009) features
Flo trying to take over a kitchen while her cook is away. Additionally, there are
several other “Dash” games, where Flo makes cameos as either a participant (in the
Wedding Dash games she serves as an occasional waitress), or a customer. The other
Dash games include Wedding Dash (Playfirst, 2007), Dairy Dash (Playfirst, 2008),
36
The name “Flo” has several possible interpretations. One might see her name as connoting the
“flow” of menstruation. Alternately, her name might also infer the constant movement embedded in
the Dash games.
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Fitness Dash (Playfirst, 2008), Parking Dash (Playfirst, 2008), and Fashion Dash
(Playfirst, 2008). All of these games have women protagonist avatars, and all feature
Flo in some form. The mechanics of the game are fairly simple. The customers
request specific things (seats, menus, food, drinks, service, cleaning) and the player
must click on the customer and serve their needs before they get ruffled, angry, or
decide to leave the restaurant altogether. If the player serves customers speedily
enough, she makes more money and—with enough money—is able to move on to the
next level, which generally increases in difficulty.
While the series of Dash games are clearly a complex network of
intertextuality and character spinoffs, Flo is one of the few stabilizing forces
throughout all of them. The Dash stories all take place in Dinertown, where Flo’s
restaurant is located. According to the Playfirst web site:
Flo is a spunky, sassy, no-nonsense small town girl who packed up and
moved to the big city to try and make her way in life. After an initial foray
into the high flying business world, Flo rejected the boring, cubicle filled
life before her and decided to make a sudden, spirited change! Taking
matters into her own hands, Flo quit her job, rolled up her sleeves, donned
an apron and opened up her very own greasy spoon restaurant. Strongwilled and practical, with an unflagging work ethic, Flo likes to bring
order to chaos and see a job well done.37
This narrative is supported by the opening story in the first Diner Dash game. In
comic book format, Flo is shown as a business executive who is being constantly
37
Playfirst web site (last accessed September 10, 2009).
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harangued by bosses and coworkers (See Figures 27-29). In this opening scene,
several coworkers ask Flo for various reports, and repeatedly chant her name. In
frustration, Flo runs out of the office exclaiming, “Man there’s got to be something
better than this!” As she attempts to escape her co-workers, she happens upon a
restaurant for sale and exclaims, “Of course! My own restaurant!” This setup is very
telling of the construction of Flo’s situation. Flo literally travels from one job where
she is being harassed and harangued for things to another job where the same thing
occurs—but this time with more domestic style service (even if in a restaurant
situation). Furthermore, Flo’s story can be seen as suggesting that women growing
frustrated in the workplace might be better served, serving others (while perhaps not
in the home in this case, certainly in a domestic fashion).
But the subtext of several of Flo’s stories is of a woman constantly being
convinced to forego any fun in order to serve others. Several of the narratives begin
with her leaving her restaurant to go on vacation, but she becomes convinced or
decides that her vacation is best spent working as a waitress. For example, in Flo on
the Go, Flo loses her luggage (on several occasions) and decides that the most
convenient way to get new clothing would be to work as a waitress and earn the
clothing. Similarly, in Hometown Hero, when Flo visits her grandmother, Florence,
she learns that her hometown has gone downhill, and decides to take it on herself to
improve the restaurants at all of the in-town attractions (the local zoo, museum, etc.).
Even in other Dash games where Flo is not the protagonist, she chooses to spend her
free time as a waitress rather than relaxing. For example, in Wedding Dash, Quinn
(the game’s protagonist) constantly invites Flo to join her at exotic wedding locations.
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Flo occasionally visits (playing the role of waitress) and shows little interest in
relaxation or romance with men (a prominent theme of the Wedding Dash narratives).
Despite being pitched as an entrepreneur, Flo’s work is anything but business
oriented: her tasks primarily involve serving, cleaning, greeting, and spatial
management. The only entrepreneurial aspects of the game involve the player
selecting upgrades for Flo. In more recent games, some of these upgrades improve the
restaurant (a faster oven, faster shoes, benches for customers) but the majority of
choices (such as countertops, tables, and doors) have no actual impact on game play.
Similarly, players are able to change Flo’s wardrobe, slightly, but this has no impact
on the actual game, and essentially turns Flo into a paper doll.
Flo’s relationship to customers gives hints that she is far more interested in
others than her own needs. In the game, customers are cantankerous, quick to anger,
and often impatient. To illustrate a table of customers’ degree of happiness, each table
has a series of hearts. As the player works harder to please the customers, the hearts
fill up (see Figure 30). Alternatively, as the customers get increasingly angry, their
heart level goes down. Thus, in many respects, the player is serving and cleaning for
others in order to figuratively win their love. Hearts are a fairly common measure of
health in games, and on one hand their use to show player status in Diner Dash might
seem unsurprising. On the other hand, though, while hearts ordinarily depict the
health of the avatar, in this game they illustrate the happiness and status of the
customers. While this distinction might seem slight, it is telling. In most video games
the player is concerned with their own well-being, but the hearts in the Dash games
signify the well being of others.
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In some ways, this gendered treatment of hearts in video games evokes Lynda
Birke’s (2000) discussion of hearts in Feminism and the Biological Body. Here, Birke
notes that while discussions of heart disease and the mechanics of the heart have
masculine connotations, emotional associations with the heart are almost entirely
feminine:
The heart is gendered, not least through its symbolic association with
emotionality. Even in the discourses of biomedicine, its apparently neutral
status as ‘merely a pump’ carries connotations of gender … Not only is
heart disease so often portrayed as though it were a disease uniquely
affecting men (and captured in advertising campaigns urging housewives
to ‘look after your husband’s heart’ by avoiding butter), but even
representations of that hearty pump in scientific texts can be read as
gendered (p. 113).
It seems unsurprising that these gendered interpretations of the heart are so neatly
enfolded into video games. Just as Birke suggests occurs in medical metaphors, the
diseased heart losing life belongs to games with more masculine avatars, while the
more feminine Flo is concerned with others and their emotionality. Her life is directly
connected to the well-being of others.
Similarly, the desires of the customers are shown as thought bubbles, not
speech bubbles---implying that Flo must anticipate the needs of customers rather than
respond to things that they have asked for. In essence, the game play of all of the
Dash games is about serving, feeding, and caring for others, rather than oneself. In
“Hunger as Ideology,” Susan Bordo (1993) discusses women and self-denial.
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According to Bordo, this is directly linked with ideologies where women are expected
to be part of the private sphere, while men rule the public sphere. She explains, “In
the necessity to make such a division of labor appear natural we find another
powerful ideological underpinning (perhaps the most important in the context of
industrialized society) for the cultural containment of female appetite: the notion that
women are most gratified by feeding and nourishing others, not themselves” (p. 118).
Along these lines, Flo is never nourishing herself in the game, rarely concerned with
herself, and constantly interested in the wellbeing of others.
In Diner Dash, the player is constantly balancing the structure of work versus
play—because work is play in the game, the player is constantly negotiating the
boundaries of magic circle. In-game play so closely resembles real-life work that it is
difficult to discern where work ends and play begins. This is even potentially more of
an issue for women playing Diner Dash, who might recognize the in-game service as
being similar to their domestic situations outside of the game. While, at this time, my
research does not involve any ethnographic studies of players, I suspect that this
could create some conflicting messages for many working women. The work of Flo
is, in many ways, a reenactment of the experiences of woman and mother as
caretaker.
Cooking Mama
Cooking Mama (Majesco Entertainment, 2004) is a fairly simple game in its
premise and construction—the player is guided by “Mama” who helps complete an
ever-growing menu of recipes through chopping, slicing, stirring, mixing, and other
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cooking-related tasks. Upon successfully completing recipes, the player is given new
recipes that they may then virtually cook. At the time of this writing there are
currently four American versions of the Cooking Mama franchise: two for the
Nintendo DS (Cooking Mama and Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends) and two
for the Nintendo Wii (Cooking Mama: Cook Off and Cooking Mama World Kitchen).
These games vary only slightly in their play—each has different recipes and slightly
different ways of cooking (the Wii version uses the Wii remote to chop, slice, and stir
rather than a stylus for the Nintendo DS version). Additionally, Cooking Mama 2:
Dinner with Friends (Majesco Entertainment, 2007) allows for networked play so that
players can compete on their cooking skills (this game does not allow players to cook
together cooperatively, but allows them to compete on tasks and recipes
competitively). Cooking Mama 2 also introduces new “friends” to cook for—
characters other than the game’s matriarch, Mama.
From the initial packaging and orientation of the game, Cooking Mama
immediately uses feminine tropes in its game representations (see Figure 31). Mama
is usually depicted from the chest upwards with a round, cherubic face, a blue apron
and a scarf in her hair (either pink or yellow, depending on the version of the game).
Most notable is Mama’s facial expression—her smile is a large semi-circle and eyes
are shown with large diamond-shaped sparkles in them. In many ways, Mama
embodies the myth of perfect femininity. Completely consumed with domestic affairs
and designed with a surplus of pink, she is a feminine caricature. The interface is
littered with hearts and flowers, and like the hearts in Diner Dash these are not meant
to connote life, but instead represent love (Figure 32). In Food is Love: Advertising
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and Gender Roles in Modern America, Parkin (2006) explains how advertising food
has been long used to suggest a “food is love” theme in the domestic sphere.
Similarly, the interface of Cooking Mama suggests that virtual food, too, is love.
The game itself is mostly without narrative structure, and the player is given
food after food to prepare using a variety of movements such as chopping, mixing,
using a blender, and frying. Mama stands at a point of judgment with all these
actions—she functions as both the game’s coach and—to some extent—the game’s
avatar, so that the player is both the cook and the judge of the in-game cooking they
are partaking in. At the same time, Cooking Mama: Cooking with Friends allows the
player the option to cook for Mama or for one of Mama’s friends. In this version, the
game characters function more as audience than as helper—and an easily disgruntled
audience at that. When practicing or cooking with Mama, players are encouraged by
her and the cooking process does not end if a meal is imperfect. Instead, the so-called
“friends” patiently wait to be served each kind of food (each game character has their
own preferences). If the food is not to their liking, the “friends” reject the player’s
food—not unlike real-life picky family members. Thus, cooking in Cooking Mama, in
many ways resembles a domestic experience that many women have at home—
endless work and only mild appreciation. Mama’s experience is similar to many other
women’s experiences, and the never-ending set of menus and tasks shows a
routinizing of women’s lives.
More important is Mama’s remarks. A player in Cooking Mama has three
possible outcomes for their cooking efforts. When a player succeeds, Mama exclaims,
“Perfect! Just as skilled as Mama.” If a player does average, she applauds the player
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and remarks, “Good job. Keep going!” Finally if a player fails a task they are told,
“Don’t worry, Mama will fix it” (see Figure 33). For this final answer, Mama’s
sparkling eyes and big smile are replaced by burning eyes and a frown. These
responses are indicative of the larger theme of productivity in domestic play—the
player is being judged by, and against, Mama. Thus, her approval is suggesting
further productivity with “keep going” or comparison of her cooking perfection,
against the player. But when a task is failed, a female player is being reminded,
“Don’t worry, Mama will fix it.” Judging verbally alone, this might seem to be a
soothing remark that a mother might say to a child. But the menacing and angry look
on Mama’s face in this response implies a threat—more like “Don’t make Mama
come fix that!” She appears almost to be a frustrated authority figure. With her fists
raised in the air, Mama’s previous caricature of femininity is now consumed with
menace.As both the player and avatar, Mama reiterates issues of women’s
productivity—she is automatically the fixer of domestic problems. Thus, assurances
from Mama that she will “fix it” are, in effect, the player being reminded of her own
tasks and responsibilities.
Ultimately, Cooking Mama is a perfect example of domestically themed
simulated productive play, wherein the player is engaged in a play space but, at the
same time, working through productive tasks. Because these domestic cooking tasks
replicate many of the situations women commonly have to deal with, the play space
becomes full of ambiguities, and play is being minimized to everyday, mundane
responsibilities. Likewise, the game maintains the themes of self-denial that can be
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seen also in Diner Dash, because the player never actually eats the food they are
cooking. Instead, they are constantly catering to, feeding, and caring for others.
Dream Day Wedding
In many ways the Dream Day series of games—Dream Day Wedding (I-play,
2007), Dream Day Honeymoon (I-play, 2007), Dream Day First Home (I-play, 2008),
and Dream Day: Married in Manhattan (I-play, 2008)—engage in the most
stereotypical depictions of how women play, and what kind of narrative themes in
which they are most interested. Unsurprisingly (given the game title), all four of the
video games in this series are romantically themed, three out of four dealing with the
same characters beginning their lives together. In the Dream Day games, the player is
put in the role of the role of the maid of honor and is tasked with doing favors for the
bride, Jenny. 38 The Dream Day games belong to a category of casual games known
as “seek and find”: games where the player is meant to find hidden objects in a larger
picture.39 In Dream Day, players are given a list of objects to find in a cluttered
room. This game is very similar to books and games meant for children (such as the
Where’s Waldo series), and the primary feature in this digital form is that objects are
able to disappear once they are found. In addition to the seek-and-find mechanics, the
games feature a few mini-games (primarily memory and matching games) and
The exception to this is in Married in Manhattan, where the player becomes a wedding planner, per
Jenny’s recommendations, and performs these services for two other couples.
39
Seek and find or hidden object games are in no way limited to the romance topic. Mystery is another
popular theme for seek and find games, with publishers such as Mystery Case Files leading this
initiative. That said, most of these mystery games have similar mechanics to the Dream Day series.
Other mystery games which have been popular with feminine audiences such as the Nintendo DS
game Professor Layton and the Curious Village fall more into the “brain game” category (as discussed
in Chapter Three) because of their use of logic puzzles and brainteasers.
38
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players can select the stories of the main couple, Jenny and Robert, through their
meeting, engagement, honeymoon, and first home through a choose-your-ownadventure interactivity.
These games tend to be more slow-paced than the typical time-management
games such as Diner Dash or Cooking Mama. While the player is given a time limit
for finding objects in each round, the play style is more meditative and slow. For the
most part, the game mechanic does not go far beyond the player looking, and the
player clicking on an object. The sedate classical music in the background of these
games helps to construct the atmosphere for this slow-paced form of play. Previously
discussed games such as Cooking Mama and Diner Dash tend to have more cartoonlike and faster paced theme songs, not based on any kind of traditional classical
music. So while other games use music to facilitate speed and rhythm in play, Dream
Day Wedding uses music to relax and sedate players.
The objects that the player is supposed to find vary from everyday items (such
as pencils, glasses, and notepads) to matrimonial-themed items (such as cakes, rings,
and bouquets). Thus, once found, the items disappear. This mechanic is essential to
the game’s simulated productive play. Because the items disappear (continually
clearing out of the background image), the player is being tasked with little more than
cleaning. Seek-and-Find games simulate productivity as the player is running errands
for a bride and, in particular, is simulating tidying up—a very domestic style of play.
The minigames and interactive storytelling continue to reinforce gendered
themes. Similar to seek-and-find mechanics, matching games involve finding pairs
until all of the cards disappear—once again a gaming mechanic that involves cleaning
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and organizing. While the choose-your-own adventure wedding storytelling does not
involve cleaning and organizing, it continues to maintain gendered and
heteronormitive themes that justify the cleaning and organizing mechanics that occur
in the game play.
Consumer Play
Another category of video games that often become conflated with femininity
are what I label consumer-driven games. Games such as The Sims are often noted as
being popular with feminine audiences (Hafner, 2004; Winter, 2000). Other games
such as Shopmania take on consumer themes, but are structured more similarly to
Diner Dash or other Time Management games. In this section of the chapter, I will
discuss how these are games of consumption, and will address the problematic nature
of consumerism as a leisure activity. This becomes even more complicated by gender,
as often sexist generalizations of women wanting to “shop til they drop” already
permeate our society (Scanlon, 2000). These themes often become prominent in
video games aimed at feminine audiences, reinforcing stereotypes that women should
play (both virtually and in real life) through shopping and consumerism.
At the same time, games that thematize consumerism help to showcase
productive consumption in gaming. The two games that I will be discussing,
Shopmania and The Sims, simulate productivity and consumption in different ways.
Both games have turned the consumerist nature of society into a kind of play where
purchasing (or, in the case of Shopmania, forcing others to purchase) is the ultimate
goal for playing successfully. At the same time, both games emulate real-world
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consumption in a way that implies that consuming is the only possible form of
productivity. If, as previously noted, shopping and consumption are already entangled
with gender, then these games are perfect examples of how productive consumption
injects gender into video game play.
Shopmania
Shopmania (Brighter Minds Media, 2008) is one of the only games that I will
be discussing that does not have a female protagonist-avatar, nor the option to create
a female avatar. Despite this, the game follows several other themes that I have
already discussed—its casual gaming format and conflation of productivity, play, and
consumption are undeniable. The narrative of the game follows Lewis, who we are
told in the beginning, is deeply obsessed with the fictional superstore “Spendmore.”
At the game’s beginning, we learn that Lewis has spent all of his money, and is
unable to buy medication for his pet hamster, Gerry. In order to make enough money
to save Gerry, Lewis accepts a job at Spendmore, working his way up the ranks (and
departments) under the supervision of his unforgiving Boss, Mr. Willy.
In many ways, Shopmania functions as a cross between Diner Dash and
Tetris. 40 The player is given a series of customers whose shopping carts must be
filled (see Figure 34). Products of different shapes come out of a conveyer belt, and
the player must quickly fit the products into the grid of the shopping cart, quickly
enough to avoid angering customers. The player gets bonus points for meeting
40
Tetris is a very simple casual game that involves fitting falling block shapes (of various dimensions)
into a landscape to create a flat surface.
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specific product or color requests made by customers, filling the cart entirely, or
filling the cart entirely with matching colors.
Because of the implications of gender and shopping, it does not matter that the
avatar, Lewis, is male. The game is not about shopping for oneself, but in negotiating
consumption for others. Superficial shopping choices (such as color matching) are
rewarded, and the goal is to make customers happy by making them consume as
much as their carts will allow. The rhetoric of the game mechanic is ultimately to
satisfy as many customers as possible by forcing them to consume products.
At the same time, Shopmania follows many of the previously mentioned
patterns of Simulated Productive Play. As already discussed, “mania” creates some
conflicting and gendered themes in video games aimed at women audiences. While
the protagonist of the game is male, the point of the game—serving others and
keeping them happy—is also similar to how games such as Diner Dash replicate
metaphors for the experiences of many women. Lewis’ feminine attributes go further,
as his ultimate task is to serve customers in order to take care of another—his sick
pet, Gerry. While certainly this does not make Lewis a female character, it does help
engender its appeal to more feminine audiences. Additionally, this game plays with
issues of consumption in a more overt way than several of the other games that I have
discussed. Lewis, as well as all of his customers, are consumers of random and
useless goods which are constantly being forced upon them, but are the only things
that will keep them from angrily leaving Spendmore. As a worker, Lewis is
constantly aiming to be productive through the peddling of these goods. He is
engaged in a constant process of productive consumption.
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The Sims
The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts, 2004)41 is nothing if not a complicated game—
and by many accounts it is not even a game. Like Shopmania, The Sims’ rhetoric is
based around consumerism, though in a slightly subtler way. Players build avatars
and then conduct the mundane aspects of their everyday lives: working, socializing,
shopping, sleeping, showering, and even going to the bathroom. As the player
continues to build their characters, taking care of them by commanding them to do
each of these functions, the software slowly builds the avatar’s characteristics in
response to the choices that have been made. In particular, the more the player has
the Sims character work, the more money they earn. The more money the character
earns, the more things they are able to buy, which directly affects their lifestyle.
According to Frasca (2004), “[…] the consumerist ideology that drives the simulation
is nothing short of disturbing: the amount of friends that you have literally depends on
the number of goods that you own and the size of your house” (p. 91).
To be clear, The Sims stands as more of a “simulation” in the sense that Frasca
defined earlier. Like some of the games discussed in Chapter Three, it also does not
follow the clear-cut definition of game (as defined in Chapter One). As such, there is
no clear cut quantifiable outcome, nor are precise goals set for the player: it simply
moves them forward in their fictional lives. Nevertheless, if there were to be an endgame to The Sims, consumerism would definitely be part of that goal. In The Sims,
The Sims has several versions out, at this time, including versions 1-3, a no longer active online
version, and several expansion packs. For the sake of simplicity this dissertation primarily will be
discussing the second major release of the game, The Sims 2. The mechanics and style of each of the
games, though, is similar enough that I refer to the game simply as The Sims throughout this chapter.
41
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consumption becomes an achievement unto itself. At the same time, according to
Katherine Isbister (2006) in Better Game Characters by Design, it is the open-ended,
non-game style (as well as domestic themes) that may be what makes it particularly
attractive to feminine audiences. Isbister explains:
The Sims, a game that has been popular with female gamers. […] It is not
a highly goal-directed game—players can determine their own subgoals
and can move from one to another freely. A player can devote time to
building her Sims characters’ careers, their social lives, or their houses, in
any order, at any time. Destruction and violence are not primary game
activities. The Sims metaphor—families with careers and children—is
quite close to everyday suburban life (with some entertaining twists, of
course). (p. 113)
Thus, the two major themes of The Sims are consumerism and family, both of which
can be seen as part of a larger theme of productive consumption and domestic play.
These two themes are constantly related to one another in the game space and both
reference feminine identity. The productivity returns to themes of domesticity—of
minding the lives of ones family, and of the production of daily tasks. This is a topic I
discuss, at length, in Chapter Five, in my analysis of the Nintendo Wii gaming system
as a family game system, and games such as Nintendogs that specifically use themes
love and caring within their game narratives and mechanics.
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CHAPTER FIVE
PLAY IS LOVE: EMOTIONAL PLAY AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS
Introduction
In Chapters Three and Four I discussed two kinds of productivity that are
often found in video games designed for and marketed to women: productive and
simulated productive play. In this chapter, I discuss a different kind of playful
productivity which often overlaps with them: socially productive play. For the
purpose of this dissertation, I define socially productive play as play which has a
primary goal of engaging its participants in social situations42 through video games.
As I illustrate in this chapter, women are often charged with performing social
functions and caregiving in households. More specifically, women often take on
“emotional labor”—a concept I will describe in detail later in this chapter. Within the
context of video games, this emotional labor can become a counterpart to emotional
play. Because of this, these themes become particularly relevant to women gaming
audiences.
While this topic has several similarities to the previous topics, it is also
distinct. Flo in Diner Dash and the title character in Cooking “Mama” both engage in
what might be referred to as a form of emotional play in their service and domesticity.
But the social play and emotional play in this chapter, while having some similarity to
games discussed in other chapters, relies more specifically on real-world social
42
While, obviously, many games involve social situations (e.g. war games), in “socially productive
play” I am primarily referring to social situations that resemble real-world interactions of casual or
domestic social spaces.
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situations and caregiving, particularly on stereotypes of motherhood and nurturing.
Specifically, the examples from previous chapters were far more abstract in their
portrayals of motherhood and caregiving, while in this chapter games are more
directly using these themes as a means of garnering women audiences. Many games
discussed in previous chapters played on this theme too—notably games such as
Diner Dash, The Sims, Dream Day Wedding, and Cooking Mama are certainly about
taking care of others. The games and advertising that I discuss in this chapter are
distinct because they draw on emotional labor, specifically within the context of
caretaking and motherhood.
Game designs and advertising have recently used these social expectations to
tap into the emerging women gamer market. Primarily, my focus on in this chapter is
on:
•
The Nintendo Wii
•
Nurturing Games
•
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)
While MMOGs do not generally rely on the motherhood/nurturing stereotypes, they
do involve real-world social interactions. I end with MMOGs because they both
embody and exceed the topic of socially productive play in several ways, which I will
characterize later in this chapter. MMOGs often comprise all three topics: pragmatic
play, simulated productive play, and socially productive play. Because MMOGs are
popular with both men and women, they can begin to shed light on possible tactics for
more gender-inclusive game designs. While social play does not necessarily always
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engender emotional labor, it does create complexities where gender and socially
productive play is concerned, which I will explore at length in this chapter.
Women, Emotional Labor, and Motherhood
This chapter rests on the premise that, because emotional labor is often
considered women’s work, when women’s play overlaps with caring, caregiving, and
expectations of family play, a tension arises between play and productivity. In
essence, advertising and game design often construct women as being social or carecentric players—a stereotype that ultimately displaces the subject of play, while
focusing on features that construct the feminine player as the facilitator of family play
time. The advertising and game designs discussed in this chapter often construct a
complex situation where many women players are expected to play primarily in
instances where caregiving is the primary motive. This often turns the video game
play into productivity.
In part, this is based around social expectations about how care is constructed
in our society. In her essay, “Women and Caring: What Can Feminists Learn about
Morality from Caring,” Joan C. Tronto (1992) writes about the sexual politics of who
is permitted to care about what in our society. She explains, “The script runs
something like this: Men care about money, career, ideas, and advancements; men
show they care by the work they do, the values they hold and the provisions they
make for their families. Women care for their families, neighbors, and friends;
women care for their families by doing the direct work of caring. Furthermore, the
script continues, men care about more important things, whereas women care about
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less important” (p. 172). Tronto further makes a distinction between caring “for” and
caring “about.” She explains, “Caring is engendered in both market and private life.
Women’s occupations are the caring occupations, and women do the disproportionate
amount of caregiving in the private household. To put the point simply, traditional
gender roles in our society imply that men care about but women care for” (p. 174,
my emphasis). In the essay “Caring: A Labour of Love,” Hillary Graham (1983)
suggests that this is linked to socially constructed gender expectations in Western
culture. She explains:
Men negotiate their social position through something recognized as
‘doing’, doing things based on ‘knowledge’ which enables them to
‘think’ and to engage in ‘skilled work’. Women’s social position is
negotiated through a different kind of activity called ‘caring’, a caring
informed not by knowledge but by ‘intuition’ through which women find
their way into ‘unskilled’ jobs. Thus, caring is not something on the
periphery of our social order; it marks the point at which the relations of
capital and gender intersect (p. 30).
In this way, notions of “caring” being designated as inherently feminine helps to
structure what women’s work—and, in turn, women’s play—ought to be. Examples
from previous chapters help to reinforce this theme. For example, the Brain Age
advertisements (Chapter Three) sold competition and intelligence to men and selfcare to women, and the design of Diner Dash (Chapter Four) showed customer
requests as thought bubbles, inferring that Flo’s intuition will get them their desired
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meals. Caring and representations of women caring helps to reinforce gendered
hierarchies.
Caregiving can also be understood as a form of labor. In The Managed Heart:
Commercialization of Human Feeling, Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983/2003) refers to
caregiving jobs as being “emotional labor.” She explains, “This labor requires one to
induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces
the proper state of mind in others” (p. 7). Further, Hochschild suggests, “As
traditionally more accomplished managers of feeling in private life, women more than
men have put emotional labor on the market, and they know more about its personal
costs” (p. 11). In many ways, what Hochschild is talking about is the
professionalization of domestic and private labor into the public sphere. Given the
large number of women who partake in these careers (such as waitressing, nursing, or
working as a nanny), emotional labor involves turning stereotypes about women and
caregiving into jobs. I argue in what follows that just as careers of emotional labor are
often labeled as women’s jobs, leisure activities involving emotional labor are often
labeled as women’s play. In the same way that emotional labor complicates women’s
work, so does emotional play. Similar to emotional labor, these play and leisure
activities often involve suppressing personal needs and elevating the needs of the
family. In video games that involve emotional play, there is a risk that women players
might not be able to disentangle play activities from the emotional engagement of
others. Players who are particularly attuned to caregiving or emotional labor careers
are at risk of conflating work and play activities.
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Motherhood can be seen as a subset of caregiving—one that most often maps
to femininity. In many games designed for and marketed to women, playing in the
role of “mother” helps to justify that play as productive—either in the game narrative
or (as I show later in this chapter) as a facilitator of family time, as depicted in
advertisements. In Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution,
Adrienne Rich (1976/1995) explains that rather than being a natural “human
condition,” motherhood “has an ideology” which is “more fundamental than tribalism
or nationalism” and ruled with patriarchal overtones (p. 33). She explains:
Throughout patriarchal mythology, dream-symbolism, theology,
language, two ideas flow side by side: one, that the female body is
impure, corrupt, the site of discharges, bleedings, dangerous to
masculinity, a source of moral and physical contamination, “the devil’s
gateway.” On the other hand, as mother the woman is beneficent, sacred,
pure, asexual, nourishing; and the physical potential for motherhood—
that same body with its bleedings and mysteries—is her single destiny
and justification in life. These two ideas have become deeply internalized
in women, even in the most independent of us, those who seem to lead
the freest lives. (p. 34)
Thus, according to Rich, motherhood sits at one far end of a stereotype of how
women are perceived—as the sacred mother, caregiving would be one of the primary
attributes. The idea that motherhood is the “single destiny and justification in life”
reinforces that motherhood is one of the primary justifications for play. Playing with
one’s children becomes a justifiable mode of play aligned with the asexual image of
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motherhood. This image of woman as nourishing mother problematizes much of the
play that is designed for and marketed to women. Instead of play being sold as purely
fun, many advertisements that I will discuss in this chapter feature claims that
women’s play should be part of family play, and portrayed as part of a mother’s
work. In contrast to some of the bawdy and overtly sexual ways that play is
advertised to masculine audiences (as shown in Chapter Two), this play is centered on
a notion of a family-oriented activity. The previously discussed masculine free-form
ideology of play that is accessible to masculinity is often only available to women
through motherhood—through playing with one’s family.
In this chapter I illustrate how portrayals of women as caregiver and
emotional laborer featured in how games are designed for and marketed to women.
Additionally, these caring games help make video games a form of productive play.
Because caring is often understood as women’s work, games that use caring activities
as central mechanics and overall themes help to maintain a distinction between
masculine and feminine video game play styles. By suggesting that women’s play
should occur in specific situations which involve emotional labor, women’s play
becomes essentialized and ghettoized.
Nintendo Wii: Gender and Family Play Time
Wiis and Miis
In previous chapters I have briefly discussed Nintendo Wii games, but here I
am referencing the system as a whole. The Nintendo Wii was released in November
2006 as a completely different kind of gaming system. From its inception, Wii was
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treated like a community-centric gaming system with the name “Wii” being a play on
“we.” According to Nintendo, the “ii” in the name was also meant to visually
represent an image of two people standing next to one another and playing (Carless,
2006). In addition to focusing on community play, the system uses a Wii remote and
motion sensors (instead of traditional joysticks and controllers) so that the player’s
movements are directly mimicked by on-screen play. Thus, when playing a tennis
game, a player can swing the Wii remote like a racket, and the effect is the same—
making it more realistic than most video game systems. By changing the interface of
the typical console video game system, many felt that Nintendo was trying to appeal
to a larger, non-gamer market, including a more feminine audience (Schiesel, 2006).
Some Wii games are more family and group-oriented than others, and the gaming
system’s central avatars—the Miis—help to define the system as being highly social.
The Mii is, very simply, a cartoon-like game avatar that players create when
they first begin using the Wii system. (See Figure 35) The Miis offer only a handful
of choices for attributes (basic hair colors, styles, facial expressions, sizes, and
clothing) but this lack of detail may make them easier for players to relate to. In
Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud (1993) discusses how less detailed faces help
people identify themselves with comic book characters. McCloud explains, “The
cartoon is a vacuum into which our identity and awareness are pulled… an empty
shell that we inhabit which enables us to travel in another realm. We don’t just
observe the cartoon, we become it!” (p. 36). Similar to comics, the undetailed faces
and bodies might help to facilitate player identification.
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At the same time, Miis help to define the Wii as a social gaming system. The
player is encouraged to not only make one Mii per Wii, but several Miis based on all
friends and family that play games on that particular system. Thus, a Mii is not
generally considered a singular entity, but part of a larger group of networked Miis
(See Figure 36). Additionally, players can connect to another player’s Wii over the
internet, sharing Miis between them. This means that people living in disparate
locations can still be visited by one another’s Miis. According to Matt Lombard and
Theresa Dutton (1997), many scholars struggle with the category of presence, and
focus on how it can create a kind of social richness. They explain, “presence is the
extent to which a medium is perceived as sociable, warm, sensitive, personal or
intimate when it is used to interact with other people” (para 10). In many ways, this is
the same kind of presence as is offered by the Wii; it is a space which uses facsimiles
of friends and family members to engender a stronger comfort level. By constructing
a sense of presence in games, Nintendo is turning a virtual space into something more
home-like, but also something with embedded emotional labor.
In Wii Sports (Nintendo of America, 2006), players use their Mii as their ingame avatar. Regardless of whether friends and family (from their system and on
other people’s systems) are physically “present” during the time of game play, other
people’s Miis attend the Wii Sports games cheering on the players. Thus,
representations of family members and friends are constantly “present” in-game,
reminding players of their “absence”. Similarly, in Wii Fit, other people’s Miis show
up for various workouts and games, creating an environment where friends and
family are constantly present. While not all Wii games utilize Miis, many of the core
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Nintendo Wii games do. This constant reminder of other people in the player’s
lives—regardless of whether or not they are “there”—helps to construct the Nintendo
Wii as a social gaming system. By making this system about family and friends, the
Wii Nintendo is constructing a play space ripe for emotional labor.
One compelling way to understand the relationship between players and their
Miis is through Kenneth Burke’s (1950) theories of consubstantiality. The theory
suggests that in order to persuade someone a rhetor must relate to, or be
“consubstantial” (or identify) with the audience (Burke, 1950). In a conference paper
for the Rhetoric Society of America entitled “Mii, Miiself, and ii”, Amber Davisson
(2008) remarked on the similarities between Burkean notions of consubstantiality and
the relationship between the player and the Wii gaming system. She explains that a
combination of elements (including the Miis) helps to foster identification between
the player and the gaming system. According to Davisson:
Identification in the Wii can be thought of as a three-step process. First,
when individuals first get the system they create a Mii to use when
playing the games. This Mii shares enough substance with the players
that they can see themselves reflected in the digital space. Second, the
player creates more Miis to represent friends and family. The
representation of similar relationships in both spaces means the players
can define themselves in the same way in both worlds. Finally, the
process of playing the Wii is what Burke would call an acting-together.
This is the key element for consubstantiality. (p. 19)
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My analysis focuses on the second step Davisson refers to—the creation of Miis as a
part of a gaming family. These family-and-friend Miis help to remind the player that
even when playing alone, the Wii is part of a larger social network. The Wii platform
has several functions that constantly reinforce the importance of group play and the
Mii family. In addition to Miis attending sporting events in Wii Sports and Wii Fit,
players can use WiiWare43 such as “Everybody Votes” as a means of reminding
players that the Wii is not meant for one person, but rather for the entire family. In
“Everybody Votes” each player votes on a multiple choice opinion question by
picking up their Mii and placing them over their chosen answer. Players can then
anticipate what the majority of people have voted for by selecting their character a
second time and choosing what they think will be the most popular answer. By
selecting one’s Mii to answer a question, the gaming system is reinforcing the
consubstantiality between the player and the Mii. At the same time, by encouraging
as many people to vote as have Miis, the console is also suggesting that this should be
a group and social activity.
Ultimately, the Wii is pitching itself not as a gaming system but as a family
system. In doing this, it situates itself as a means to network the family (both in real
life and virtually with Miis). While this design does not necessitate a gendered
audience, I will show in the next section how advertising is used to pitch these very
things to women audiences. The game design establishes a space where the Wii is
about community and family, and the advertising reinforces these themes and
43
Games embedded onto the Wii gaming system.
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suggests that women players should use this design to reconnect with their friends
and families.
Wii Advertising
While the Nintendo DS advertising often focuses on self-care (“I play for me”
and “Do something with your nothing”) to convince feminine audiences to play more,
advertising campaigns for the Nintendo Wii use an entirely different tactic. While not
all Wii campaigns are aimed at women, I will show how those targeted at feminine
audiences all use a specific theme: the use of play to bring the family together. These
advertisements suggest that playing the Wii with one’s family is productive, fun, and
will garner love from all family members. While, often, video games have gained a
popular culture reputation as separating and alienating people from their
communities, these advertisements suggest that the Wii will instigate crossgenerational togetherness. Rather than promoting play as singular “me” time (or Mii
time) or as time fillers, as the advertisements for the Nintendo DS did, these
advertisements suggest family Wii-time as a means of closing generational and
gender gaps.
In many ways, this campaign resembles some of the methods that have been
used to market food to women. Again, in Food is Love: Advertising and Gender
Roles in Modern America, Katherine Parkin (2007) argues that the advertising of food
was used to infer family values and often to create bonds between family members.
She writes:
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Advertisers wanted consumers to believe that their food products had the
ability to create connections and continuity between the perceived
constancy of the past and the chaos of the present. Moreover, they wanted
women to assume responsibility for creating traditions in their family’s
history. (p. 44)
Thus, while there are several distinctions between food advertising and advertising
for the Wii gaming system, both use similar tactics to suggest that the use of the
product will create memories, love, and conservative depictions of family values.
These Nintendo Wii campaigns have attempted to suggest that play is love.
According to Margaret Hofer (2003) in The Games We Played, the suggestion
that game play reinforces family values began with game manufacturers in the late
1800s. She explains that a catalogue for McLoughlin Brothers in 1895 suggests:
Games are a necessity in every family, and parents should see to it that
their children are well supplied with them. They not only amuse, but
serve to instruct and educate them. They tend to make happy firesides,
and keep children at home instead of compelling them to seek amusement
away from the family circle. (p. 53)
In their attempts to market their game system to women, Nintendo uses similar
advertising tactics to suggest that the perfect family can be created through
community play, as well as sheltered from potentially dangerous influences outside of
the family. This kind of advertising reduces feminine play to productive play and
legitimizes it by suggesting that playing with one’s family is one of the only
acceptable forms of feminine play. While, previously, I illustrated that Wii design
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constructs a virtual family “presence,” the advertisements I discuss in the following
infer that it is a woman’s job to maintain an actual family presence through play
activities. By being tasked with keeping the family unit together, the mother-figure in
these advertisements are often put in ambivalent places within the family hierarchy,
entirely centering on being the family social administrator.
An excellent example of this kind of advertising occurred in the “My Wii
story” advertising campaign which launched in summer of 2007. Through the
Nintendo web site My Wii Story,44 people were invited to write in stories about the
transformative powers of the Nintendo Wii and how it has helped their lives and
families. While both sexes wrote in to My Wii Story, the majority of the webpublished submissions were made by women. Several selected stories were turned
into magazine advertisements—often appearing in women’s special interest
magazines and all written by women players. These advertisements promote play as a
means of connecting with their families and as a way of showing that they care. At
the same time, the advertisements make little mention of play as a means of relaxing
or enjoying themselves. Instead, the women are shown taking part of caregiving
activities.
In what follows I highlight how several advertisements reduce video game
play to emotional labor by invoking the theme of play is love. Additionally, I will
44
Mywiistory.com is no longer active and is currently listed as “under construction.” Because I am no
longer able to access the original web site, some of my methodologies and analysis of the actual site
are based on a relatively small number of screen shots, as well as personal memory. Because of my
minimal information about the site, I primarily focus my analysis on the advertising campaigns that
were launched off of the web site. There is no ability to verify that the submissions on the My Wii
Story web site are made by actual participants (rather than advertising professionals), although I
suspect they were primarily legitimate (primarily based on a large number of spelling and grammatical
errors). Still, I have no way to verify that the advertisements in these campaigns were written by actual
consumers of the Nintendo Wii gaming system.
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discuss how these advertisements construct play and family in a way that legitimizes
play for feminine audiences. Similar to the web site, the My Wii Story magazine
advertisements use personal experiences and emotional overtones to convince women
readers that playing with one’s family is an acceptable form of leisure. Figures 37-40
show four of the My Wii Story posts that became magazine advertisements. These
advertisements ran in magazines such as Real Simple, Oprah Magazine, and Good
Housekeeping. Each of these stories were written by women (although both men and
women contributed on the web site), and each starts off with a testimonial quote
about what they like about the Wii gaming system. Below each of these testimonial
quotes is a woman’s signature—a personal advocacy of the product. It is also worth
noting that all of these advertisements show photographs of actual women playing.
Unlike the masculine game advertisements discussed in Chapter Two, part of the
rhetorical strategy of the Wii ads involves showing women playing—primarily with
their families.
Only Figure 37 shows a woman playing the Wii system by herself (except in
some of the smaller photos at the bottom)—the others (Figures 38-40) are all
witnesses to family play, and their anecdotes reflect this. This first, slightly
anomalous advertisement does not focus on family—it focuses almost entirely on
activity and movement. In the headline, Linda Perry testifies, “Wii makes you feel
more alive.” Her story primarily focuses on movement—that the Wii system means
that, “You’re up, you are moving and your pulse is thumping.” This testimonial is
accentuated by the use of her main picture where she is shown video game boxing
with friends. It is also notable that while some of the pictures show younger children,
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for the most part this advertisement does not illustrates how the Wii promotes family
values. At the same time, Linda Perry confesses that she plays boxing a lot with her
friends and that “it can get pretty competitive.” While this competitiveness shows
more traditional agonism, it also suggests that Linda Perry is still using the Wii to
create a community—while not with her family, she is playing socially with friends.
What is notable, though, is the distinction that Linda Perry makes in the
advertisements between the Wii gaming system and video games. Much of this
attitude is reminiscent of earlier discussions about women and technology: Perry
spends a large portion of the advertisement trying to convince potential players that
the Wii is not complicated like other gaming systems. She explains in the ad, “Wii is
totally different from any other video game because you are not just zoning out on the
couch in front of the TV.” She also explains that “you don’t have to learn any
commands.” Since the speaker is a woman, it is worth noting this remark’s slightly
condescending tone—“you don’t have to learn any commands” infers that technology
in general (and video games in particular) might be too difficult for some women to
learn.
The other My Wii Story examples that have made it to magazine
advertisements are far more family-oriented. In Figure 38, the Wii advertisement
starts off with a testimonial from Janiene Allen who insists, “The Wii system gets you
off the couch and into the game.” While this is similar to Linda Perry’s insistence that
the Wii gets players moving, the picture itself sends a different message—one of
family play time. The main picture in the advertisement shows a woman (presumably
Janiene Allen) playing with an older woman. In this advertisement, it is the husband
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and children who look on, watching the feminine figures in their house play the Wii
system. The on-screen picture below the photograph shows that they are playing a
boxing game—but this time it is less athletic looking and more family-oriented
because of the family in the background.
In this advertisement, the copy does not use quoted text, but instead uses more
generic advertising copy to describe the entire family. The main text of the
advertisement, instead, is not a quote and says:
Meet the Allen family. They recently discovered that the Wii is the
ultimate family experience. Something that parents, kids, aunts, uncles,
cousins, and even grandparents can bond over. Where kids usually
complain about having family time—nobody ever argues over family Wii
night. In fact, many families have a standing date to pick up wherever the
competition left off. And if you know how to swing a tennis racket or a
golf club, you already know how the Wii works. Wii brings every member
of the family together—each one vying to be the champion of the living
room. Which night of the week is your Wii night?
While this corporatized (less-personal) testimonial might be less effective than the
personal quote from the My Wii Story tellers, it also picks up on many of the
previously discussed themes that Nintendo has attempted to work into their Wii
advertising—the Wii creates “family time” and is a means for different generations to
“bond” and have common ground. A selection on creation of the Mii reiterates this
message: “Everyone will have fun creating Miis of the entire family.” Thus, like the
previous advertisement, this one uses the testimonial to suggest activity and ease-of182
use, but also adds a family theme into the mix. As previously noted, the underlying
message of many of these Wii advertisements is Play is Love, and embedded in this
message is a form of emotional labor. The player depicted is not playing for herself,
but playing for the enjoyment and caretaking of others.
The advertisement in Figure 39 more directly focuses on the Play is Love
theme—this time directly within the testimonial of the My Wii Story author, Nancy
Ponthier. In this testimonial, Wii play is even more directly associated with family
togetherness—the main picture shows a mother playfully dominating her son through
a hug, while negotiating the Wii remote. Her headline quote says, “It’s the first video
game I’ve really enjoyed playing” implying that she had played other video games
but did not enjoy them. Additionally, this implies that Ponthier is permitted to enjoy
her play, but primarily when this enjoyment is meant to please her children. This
advertisement, like the others, draws a sharp distinction between “typical” video
games and the Nintendo Wii system. Nancy Ponthier’s testimonial continues:
I’ve never been a fan of video games. But Wii is so interactive and gets
everyone involved. We really like playing together as a family, so we
quickly moved it from my son’s room to the living room. We even like
making Mii characters together. They’re funny and we get a kick out of
describing each other. I took a crack at making my own Mii. Then my
kids told me it wasn’t “pretty enough” and made it better. I thought that
was sweet. They were just so happy I was interested in a video game.
The children recreating Nancy Ponthier’s Mii to make it “prettier” reinforces the
theme that a Nintendo Wii will bring the family closer—the statement, “I thought that
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was sweet. They were just so happy I was interested in a video game” implies that her
children might love her just a bit more for playing video games. Additionally, while
the other advertisements depict white families, this one depicts an Asian family,
suggesting an even greater diversity with the Wii. While this diversity does not,
perhaps, directly relate to gender it creates a message that the gaming system is for
everyone.45
The final Wii Story advertisement (Figure 40) once again is heavily
entrenched in themes of family values. This advertisement shows a man and woman
playing Wii Tennis together, with their daughter looking surprised in the background.
The main headline quote for this advertisement is, “It’s the perfect way to bring all of
the ages together.” This Wii Story is told by Janiene Allen, who concentrates her tale
on family togetherness and bonding between generations. She explains:
The great thing about Wii is how fun it is for anyone to play. At one
family gathering, my husband and I, our girls, his parents—even my 80year-old Grandmother were all playing. Four generations! Everyone was
having a great time, laughing and playing. It was very physical, really
funny and entertaining. And the fact that it’s as interesting for us adults to
play as it is for the kids is really a feat.
Just as with the previous two My Wii Stories, this advertisement reduces women’s
play by turning it into play about family and caregiving. It is worth noting though
that even though Janiene Allen mentions the cross-generational aspects involving her
80-year-old grandmother, the grandmother is not depicted in the advertisement. By
45
It is important to note that this diversity is somewhat limited. None of the My Wii Story
advertisements showed African American families, although there was far more racial diversity in the
Wii Fit advertisement (Figure 22) discussed earlier.
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mentioning the grandmother but not showing her, Allen’s testimonial sends a mixed
message about older generations and video game play.
All of these My Wii Stories carry very similar themes that define feminine
play as family play, creating a permission slip for women to play on the Wii. With the
exception of the My Wii Story in Figure 37, all allow for feminine play only when it
is part of family play. Women’s play, thus, becomes translated into caregiving and
emotional labor. Wii advertisements are not suggesting playing simply for personal
enjoyment, but in order to gain the love of families and create a common language
between family members. In short, they suggest playing for others rather than playing
for oneself.
Nurturing and Simulated Love in Video Games
To carry over some ideas from Chapter Four on play and simulated
productivity, another form of social play aimed at women audiences simulates love
and caregiving in the game mechanics. These games are not actually social, but have
social mechanics built into them that involve nurturing and caregiving of virtual
characters. The most popular and well known of these games is Nintendogs, though
several other games (such as Hamsterz, Baby Pals, Horsez, Purr Pals, and GoPets:
Vacation Island) use the same mechanic. Additionally, The Sims (mentioned in the
previous chapter) could also be considered a caregiving game to some extent. The
idea of most cargiving games is that the player must visit, tend to, care for, and show
love for a dependent creature. Thus there is no real “winning” to these games, or
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ultimate goal. Instead, the point of caregiving games is more about gradual
relationships and simulating love.
As discussed earlier in this chapter, caregiving is considered, in large part, to
be women’s work. Just as emotional labor is integral to many women’s careers,
emotional play is an example of how many games are designed for and marketed to
women. Caregiving play was not invented in video games, and 1990s trends such as
Tamagatchi (a key chain sized creature that must be fed, cleaned, and loved on a
near-constant basis to keep it alive) and Furby (a stuffed animal version of the
Tamagatchi) were very popular. The popularity of these earlier games helped to foster
video game versions. Sherry Turkle’s (2004) research on children and Furbies found,
“that children describe these new toys as ‘sort of alive’ because of the quality of their
emotional attachments to the objects and because of the idea that the Furby might be
emotionally attached to them” (p. 26). A similar kind of response might be found in a
game such as Nintendogs where a player is teaching, playing with, and spending time
nurturing a virtual dog.
While many of the caregiving games are geared towards child audiences,
Nintendogs (Nintendo, 2005), in particular, became well-known for its popularity
with an adult female audience. This was best witnessed by the newspaper comic strip
Fox Trot, which in 2005 had a story line where a mother kept stealing her son’s
Nintendo DS to play Nintendogs. This six comic run shows a son begging his mother
to get his Nintendo DS back, while she is shown neglecting her domestic caregiving
duties (such as making dinner). In the final cartoon, the son asks his mother about
dinner and she responds that she just fed “Cutie Paws” (her Nintendog) 200 biscuits.
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Her son angrily yells back, “I meant OUR dinner!” Thus, the cartoon shows an
example of a woman not only playing the game, but playing the game to the
detriment of other domestic chores. The popularity of Nintendogs with feminine
audiences is also reinforced in the aforementioned “I play for me” Nintendo
advertising campaign, where pop star Carrie Underwood is shown playing the game.
Thus, Nintendogs is a game whose popularity is often credited to adult female
audiences.
What is most striking about the game, though, is how its primary goal is the
simulation of love and affection. There are several different versions of Nintendogs—
each associated with various breeds of dogs, allowing players to have a more personal
and specific relationship with the exact dog of their choosing. The player then names
the dog, uses voice commands to train the dog, must feed the dog and take him or her
for walks, play with, and groom the dog. Ultimately, if a dog is poorly cared for it
will grow up untrained and unruly. Alternatively, if the player cares well for the dog
they are rewarded with love and affection—the game’s goal. The caregiving elements
of tasks are necessitated by the upkeep of virtual pets. Further, because “emotional
labor” is so often understood to be women’s work, the corollary is that emotional
play, too, becomes a kind of women’s work.
Online Gaming
In recent years, online games (often referred to as Massively Multiplayer
Online Games or MMOGs) have become increasingly popular. These games have
features that are quite distinct from typical video games in that they involve online
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persistent worlds (worlds that exist before and after the player’s avatar enters and
leaves), and a variety of kinds of communities, involving a more social form of play.
While often players live in geographically remote locations they are able to log on to
the game and play simultaneously in the same space. In Synthetic Worlds: The
Business and Culture of Online Games Edward Castronova (2005) refers to these
spaces as “synthetic worlds” which he explains are, “expansive, world-like, largegroup environment made by humans, for humans, and which is maintained, recorded,
and rendered by a computer” (p. 11). At the time of this writing, there are several
popular MMOGs on the market, but I will primarily be discussing two games: World
of Warcraft (WoW) and Second Life (SL). These games are vastly different: while
WoW is structured more around quests, leveling, and precise in-game goals, SL is
marked by its complete lack of any kind of structured goals and is primarily a virtual
world for socializing.
MMOGs are the most complex form of video game discussed in this
dissertation with respect to gender, productivity, and play. First, MMOGs engender
several styles of gameplay—the variety of mechanics and functionality in the games
often make very personal and tailored gaming experiences for every gamer. Second,
MMOGs are often popular with women players, and although these experiences are
often essentialized as “social gaming,” I will discuss how they exceed this label.
Third, while many MMOGs do have women players, they also have many men
players—unlike many of the other games that I have discussed in this dissertation,
MMOGs have very broad popularity with both men and women. To make matters
more complicated, often these games are not actually advertised to women audiences,
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but get women players primarily through word-of-mouth recommendations. Finally,
my analysis of MMOGs in what follows is complicated because, as I will argue, their
varied gameplay styles often touch upon all three kinds of play that I have discussed
in this dissertation: pragmatic, simulated productive, and socially productive play. I
begin by describing WoW and SL in detail, citing some of the discussions about
women and gender in these games, discussing ways that they both challenge and
reinforce gender roles and expectations. Additionally, I discuss both games in the
context of pragmatic play, simulated productive play, and socially productive play.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) is arguably one of the most
popular online games in the world. The game’s own world, Azeroth, has “as many
players as Sweden or Bolivia has inhabitants” and players spend an average of twenty
hours per week in the game world (Corneliussen & Rettburg, 2008). The game world
not only costs money to purchase, but also charges a monthly fee for inhabitants.
Primarily, the world is based off a Tolkeinian paradigm,46 where players are able to
be human, but also are able to play mythical avatars such as dwarves, gnomes, elves,
orcs, and trolls. Additionally, the player is able to choose a specific class (or skill set)
that defines their methods of game play (warriors, healers, spell casters, etc.). Players
can also select sex, 47 though this does not significantly affect game play. While the
46
Additionally, most online role playing games have roots in pen-and-paper role-playing games such
as Dungeons and Dragons (Corneliussen & Rettburg, 2008). In-game avatar categories such as “race”
and “class”, as well as systems of talent points were, in large part, drawn from these games.
47
Players are only given male/female options. Gender, in games such as WoW, is able to be enacted
through character role-play or player personality. It is not directly linked to the physical design of the
character.
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goal of the game might seem to be to achieve the highest level (at the time of writing,
the current highest level is 80), this goal is somewhat ephemeral: level caps change
every few years, and many players build several characters, each with unique play
experiences. Players follow strings of quests (some generic, but some determined by
their avatar’s race or class), and gain experience points (and levels) through defeating
enemies, exploring new locations, and completing quests. Game play can be done
either solo or in groups.
The game interface itself is rather complex and detailed (see figure 41), but
allows players to view status and statistics of several facets of game play and it allows
for some degree of personalization. Additionally, the interface promotes chatting with
other players in real time, making World of Warcraft a game with a good deal of
social potential. Many fans also continue this socializing outside of the game, making
game mods (coded additions to the game interface that that are made by fans and
given or sold to other fans), machinema (fan videos made out of game play), or
writing game walkthroughs48 and commentaries on the Internet.
Statistics on who plays World of Warcraft vary, but by several accounts there
is at least a respectable base of women players. While a recent study of MMOGs by
Nick Yee (2008) found that the majority of players are men (85.4%), he was actually
surveying six different games (over a six year period).49 These statistics do not seem
entirely representative, though, in terms of actual numbers of women players. For
instance, a December 2008 Nielsen study estimated that WoW had 428,621 unique
48
Game walkthroughs are typically written by fans, who give advice, tips, and tricks for getting
through specific game areas or levels. Generally, they are very detailed and there are many web sites
dedicated to World of Warcraft walkthroughs.
49
Additionally, I recently sent an email to Blizzard entertainment asking for more current statistics, but
never got a reply.
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female players in the United States, compared with 675,713 male players. 50 This
number is far from paltry and is reinforced by a wealth of popular culture references
suggesting that WoW is, indeed, popular with at least some women audiences. For
instance, the web series sitcom The Guild, is about a small Los Angeles group of
online gamers. 51 The star of the show is a woman, and of the fictional guild’s six
members, half are women. Similarly, in the essay, “I Play Like a Girl: Yes that Level
60 Night Elf Warrior is Mine,” Nancy Berman (2006) discusses the influx of women
players into the game. Berman remarks, “Are women playing MMORPGs? Yes. Are
they playing WoW? Definitely yes! Are they having fun playing WoW? Absolutely
yes. In terms of female players, WoW appears to have raised a bar that its successors
will need to respect (and imitate) if they were to achieve the same kind of player
loyalty and appreciation” (p. 174). The outspokenness of many women MMOG
players helps to affirm game popularity with women audiences, potentially attracting
even more women players.
Furthermore, many feel that both the influx of women audiences as well as the
game’s design helps to reinforce more even-handed and gender inclusive designs
(Ray, 2004; Taylor, 2006). In the essay “World of Warcraft as a playground for
Feminism,” Hilde G. Corneliussen (2008) discusses WoW’s potential by comparing
aspects of it to French feminism. She remarks that in WoW, female characters are
generally equal or interchangeable to male characters, as well as equal in terms of ingame distribution of non-player characters. She concludes, “Gender is present in
World of Warcraft in many ways, but it is not necessarily insistent or obvious, and
50
Approximately a 2:3 ratio of women to men.
While The Guild does not reference World of Warcraft by name, several references in the show infer
that the show is based loosely on WoW.
51
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some times it is not even meaningful—or at least, it is not given meaning through the
game design itself” (p. 81). It seems undeniable that World of Warcraft has attracted
women audiences to online gaming.
Despite this, and unlike the Nintendo games discussed previously in this
dissertation, World of Warcraft has not actively pursued women audiences in their
advertising. While the game does advertise heavily (both with television commercials
and magazine advertisements), many of these ads have more similarity to those
discussed in Chapter Two. For example, advertisements for WoW in Game Informer
Magazine (Figure 42) often feature female elves, one of the more overtly sexualized
characters in the game. Alternatively, television commercials in the past have been
narrated by masculine icons such as William Shatner and Mr. T. While none of these
advertisements overtly exclude women players, they also seem to suggest that women
WoW players probably come from sources other than mainstream advertising. This
means that the fan base is not necessarily being told how to play (as with the Do
Something with your Nothing and My Wii Story ad campaigns) but are coming to this
form of play more naturally, out of their own interest or the insistence of others. For
example, in Taylor’s (2006) work on the MMO Everquest, she illustrated that many
women players start to play through word of mouth by others (such as family
members). While other games such as the previously mentioned Lord of the Rings
Online advertisement (see Figure 10, and discussed in more detail in Chapter 2),
WoW has so far relied more on word-of-mouth recommendations than topical ad
campaigns.
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Second Life
Like World of Warcraft, Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003) has gotten some
attention for attracting diverse audiences, including women (Hayes, 2008). Second
Life is vastly different from World of Warcraft in several ways. As Wagner James Au
described it in The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World, “Second Life is
an immersive, user-created online world” (p. x). Run by the company Linden Labs,
SL does not have pre-defined game-goals, character levels, or any kind of defined
structure. Residents of SL socialize, advertise, educate, play together, and create
objects that can be used by other SL residents. Of this last aspect (the ability to create
in SL), Au writes:
The physical world of Second Life […] is a kind of 3-D palette for the
avatars within it. Standing on a hill like a demiurge, a Resident can wave
her hand and cause the ground to swell, expand, or even collapse into the
sea. Moving her palm above the ground, she can make wooden shapes
emerge from thin air (there is a deep rumble as these objects take on
substance), and once there, her hands can mold and transmute their shape,
even their substance—stretching a cube into a flat sheet, twirling a sphere
into a torus made of shimmering silver, and so on. (p. xii)
More practically speaking, residents in SL are able to create almost anything
imaginable in the world, from terrains, to building structures, to clothing, to bodily
modifications. These things are bought and sold in SL using the game’s monetary
system, the Linden. Lindens can be used to purchase things in-game, and can also be
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converted into U.S. Dollars52 (Lindex), creating potential for real-world productive
work.
Additionally, SL residents are given practically an open palette with which to
define their in-game avatars. Unlike the pre-defined avatar-making systems of most
game-oriented MMOGs (including WoW), SL avatars are given the freedom to make
second selves that are highly individual and expressive. On the SL web site, Linden
Labs specifically suggests that “avatar” in their game means something somewhat
different than it does in other games. They explain: “[…]what exactly is an avatar in
Second Life? In a virtual world, an avatar is a digital persona that you can create and
customize. It's you — only in 3D. You can create an avatar that resembles your real
life or create an alternate identity. The only limit is your imagination. Who do you
want to be?” (“What is an Avatar?”, ¶1). Thus, unlike WoW’s system which locks
players into making avatars within specific racial builds (the aforementioned elves,
etc.), residents of SL are asked to use their imaginations to be “who [they] want to
be.” In addition to being able to play with race and sex, SL residents often also alter
their appearance in even more creative ways. According to Au:
By anecdotal estimate, some 70 to 80 percent of the Resident population
stay within the human register [in Second Life]. A selective list of those
outside that spectrum would include robots of all sizes, shapes, and
functionality; angels; vampires; elves; anime characters; walking
sunshine and storm clouds; six foot phalluses; famous sculptures and
paintings (including Van Gogh’s self-portrait and Duchamp’s Nude
52
The LindeX Market Data system shows daily conversion rates between Lindens and USD.
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Descending a Staircase); aliens, political caricatures; penguins and
ponies; and a pile of talking feces. For most of them, the embodiement is
a surface novelty, but for others, it’s a deeper transformation. (p. 74)
This avatar freedom, as well as object creation, suggests that Second Life is far more
of a large online sandbox play-space than an actual game.
This freedom to change avatar appearances is one of the more substantial
draws of the game world, and presumably one of the factors that is often assumed to
make it more accessible to women audiences. Several researchers, though, have
remarked that this freedom and liberalism is, in large part, illusory. In Coming of Age
in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, Tom Boellstorff
(2008) remarks, “Like many virtual worlds, the Second Life platform worked in
various ways, large and small, to reinforce gender norms. For instance, the default
animations for sitting differed for women and men; men sat with their legs spread
apart slightly, while women’s legs were closer together” (p. 141). Similarly, in their
article “Sex Lives in Second Life,” Robert Alan Brookley and Kristopher L. Cannon
(2009) illustrate how “male sexual dominance and female sexual passivity are
propagated as the ‘natural’ state of sexual difference” (p. 155). They elaborate,
“When people in SL are given the opportunity to produce their own sexual images
and experiences, some reproduce the norms that they have learned about women and
men’s sexual differences. Therefore, in spite of the agency of sexual expression in SL,
these users function as docile bodies enacting these norms through the virtual bodies
that they create and manipulate” (p. 155-156). In terms of clothing, poses, and player
behaviors Brookley & Cannon assert that conventional gender norms are rarely
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challenged in the game. So it would seem that despite the open-ended potential of the
space to disrupt expectations of gender roles, in actuality these things often maintain a
sense of status quo. Sex and gender certainly play an important role in how bodies
(virtual and otherwise) are understood within this space. Virtual worlds and avatar
creation gives players a chance to deconstruct (and reconstruct) how they specifically
understand their own gender identification. At the same time, productivity also plays
an important part in both SL and WoW. In the following, I will break down how these
two MMOGs relate to my already established categories of pragmatic play, simulated
productive play, and socially productive play.
MMOGs and Productive Play
In many ways, the two MMOGs, World of Warcraft and Second Life,
reference all three kinds of productive play that I have discussed. Games in this
category have so much internal diversity that, rather than collapsing the three
categories, they tend to interweave them. Each kind of productive play remains a
distinct category within these games, and yet they are all at play. For this reason, it
might be useful to end this dissertation by examining how the three kinds of
productivity interact in each game, and how this might have larger implications for
women audiences. Thus, in what follows I will look at pragmatic play, simulated
productive play, and socially productive play in these MMOGs
On the surface, one might be hard-pressed to find the productive aspects of
expansive, mythical, and virtual worlds. Once again, just as I explained in Chapter
Three, the pragmatic play that I discuss in this dissertation is play that occurs in a
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game world but is considered productive in the real world. A perfect example of
productive play is when players of virtual worlds use the game spaces to make money
in the real world. This has occurred increasingly over the years in both more gamecentric worlds (such as World of Warcraft) where small industries have come out of
the often exploitative practice of gold farming, 53 and also in worlds such as Second
Life where many players make and sell things in game, and then exchange them for
real money.
The community aspects of MMOs have allowed, as a by-product, complex
economic systems where players can buy and sell virtual goods. According to
Castronova (2005), “By my own estimates, the collective volume of annual trade in
synthetic worlds is, at this writing, almost certainly above $1 billion. In other words,
it already exceeds the total sales of a few real countries. What is true of sales is also
true of total synthetic world production, as well as production per capita. Indeed,
GDP per capita inside synthetic worlds is far higher than in the real world’s poorer
economies, such as those in India and China” (p. 13). Thus, as Castronova explains,
the production occurring in virtual economies is not only very real, but something to
take very seriously.
In his book Play Money, or, How I Quit my Day Job and Made Millions
Trading Virtual Loot, Julian Dibbell (2006) writes about his foray into making an
income through virtual endeavors. Dibbell explains, “ in the strange new world of
53
Gold farming is the practice of hiring cheap labor to make money in-game, and then reselling it
outside of the game for real world money. In her essay, “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game,”
(2009) Lisa Nakamura describes gold farmers as “virtual capital laborers” (p. 132). Often, these
players are Chinese, which has fostered a good deal of in-game racism, particularly in World of
Warcraft where Westerners are often automatically vocally derisive of Chinese players (Nakamura,
2009).
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immateriality toward which the engines of production have long been driving us, we
can now at last make out the contours of a more familiar realm of the insubstantial—
the realm of games and make-believe. In short, I’m saying that Marx had it almost
right: Solidity is not melting into air. Production is melting into play” (p. 24-25). If
Dibbell is right, if production is, indeed “melting into play,” then this is in large part
due to the monetary exchanges occurring in virtual spaces. Both men and women are
involved in gold farming and making money in online worlds, helping to make
MMOGs more gender-inclusive.
Simulated productive play also has an important role in these games. As
discussed at length in Chapter Four, I define simulated productive play as “play that
is not productive in the real world, but emulates productivity in the real world.”
MMOs such as World of Warcraft and Second Life often use Simulated Productive
Play in ways that are similar to several of the games that I spoke of earlier.
In World of Warcraft, avatar professions are examples of simulated productive
play. Each avatar is given several options, including several gathering professions
(such as fishing or mining) and several crafting professions (such as cooking,
tailoring, or leatherworking). 54 While a few of these professions (such as alchemy or
enchantment) are not modeled on real world everyday productive practices, the
majority in some way emulate things that can (and are) done in the real world. Most
obviously, cooking in World of Warcraft involves putting the correct ingredients
together over a stove. While cooking in WoW does not have the level of detail that it
does in a game such as Cooking Mama, there is a similarity in how it emulates real54
While, in the real world, these things can be understood as more of trades or occupations, in the
game they are specifically referred to as “professions.”
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world cooking practices. But unlike Cooking Mama, the player’s avatar is able to eat
their own food and thus reap the benefits of their simulated productive labors. Since
food raises a player’s health level and often gives extra bonuses, cooking (and eating)
has in-game benefits that bear some similarity to real-world cooking. While players
are able to give or sell food to other players, generally the primary goal of cooking is
self-nourishment. In other words, unlike Cooking Mama, the player is less concerned
with the care of others and more concerned with the care of themselves.
Similarly, in Second Life, players are able to make things that their avatars (or
other people’s avatars) are able to use, consume, or wear. As already discussed, the
ability to create content is one of the central elements of SL. Larger endeavors are
often collaborative projects performed by several residents. Au explains of one of
these groups, “While their work may seem inconsequential fun, their free-form
collaboration actually resembles the activity that makes the Internet itself possible”
(p. 44). This kind of work, whether solo or collaborative, is a kind of simulated
productive play. Players are engaged in productive activities that often mimic realworld activities, but are not actually productive in the real world.
Finally, the most obvious kind of productive play in MMOs would seem to be
socially productive play—the primary topic of this chapter. Socially productive play
becomes particularly tricky when dealing with MMOs because they are so naturally
social, and it is easy to essentialize them as being just that—particularly when
discussing women audiences. In Play Between Worlds, T.L. Taylor (2006) warns
researchers to not rely on this when analyzing women MMO players.
Taylor
explains, “Chatting, connecting with other people, forming relationships and
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maintaining them are all aspects of the interpersonal pleasure MMOGs afford […]”
(p. 94), but then later continues, “Talking about how women simply like the ‘social’
component of games, or how they like to ‘chat’ can flatten a fairly rich play landscape
and trivialize the work involved in sustaining social life within a game” (p. 95). It is
impossible to deny that social productivity is likely a factor that might draw in some
women audiences, but at the same time it is a very nuanced and multilayered form of
social behavior that occurs in MMOs such as WoW and SL.
Social behavior in both of these virtual game worlds is comprised of several
aspects—including chat—but also including groupings, in-game sales, goal-setting
(such as quests in WoW or events in SL) and extra-game discussions (on blogs or
online bulletin boards). In effect, every aspect of an MMO is influenced by some
manner of social behavior, but this social behavior is also often quite varied. In their
study of WoW guilds, “From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in
World of Warcraft,” Dmitri Williams et al (2006) use ethnographic research to
discuss how team play varies in the game. They explain:
Player behaviors and group behaviors varied due to game goals, personal
preferences, and player awareness, even in the relatively formal barrackslike raiding guilds. But the governing computer codes were ultimately
foundational rather than entirely imposing. By analogy, we find that
playing WoW is as social as a team sport, which has its own rules, literal
boundaries, and social norms. Within those, there are still self-initiated
tactics, team strategies, styles, and goals that make the play space a stage
for socialization, organization, and networks that often have little to do
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with the original game. Roles can and must be flexible as conditions and
goals change (p. 357).
This ability to play World of Warcraft in varied and personal ways (yet, almost
always influenced by social interactions) is one of the aspects that allows it to
potentially be more gender-inclusive. It is these kinds of expansive possibilities of
different modes of play that have, perhaps, given MMOs a broader, more genderinclusive audience (even without always directly advertising to these audiences). The
ability to play in many different ways and with many different goals has made these
games ideal for being open to new kinds of gamer audiences in ways that do not
essentialize the player.
While Second Life is slightly more limited in terms of play styles (its lack of
quests and absolute game-goals make it significantly less agonistic than WoW), it still
manages to encourage different play styles through social interaction. Just as players
of World of Warcraft can focus in-game time and energy on guilds, auctioning,
professions, solo-play, or playing against other players (PVP), residents of Second
Life are able to go to different events, classes, in-world games, socialize amongst
large or small groups of their choosing, or engage in sandbox creation of objects.
Large, inclusive, free styles of play encourage new gamers in a way that many other
video games have yet to do. By encouraging players to meet new people, games such
as Second Life help to engender virtual communities and the sharing of cultures.
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CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION & DISCUSSIONS
Introduction
The popular television show Malcolm in the Middle (M. Bandur & J. Melman,
2000) was a sitcom about a relatively average, middle-class family.55 In one episode,
the generally harried and overworked mother (Lois) is at the supermarket and has the
following conversation with the cashier:
Lois: Oh my God. Is that right? What time do you have?
Cashier: I have 5:45
Lois: 5:45? That’s not possible. I … Dropped off Malcolm. Picked up
Reece. Dinner’s in the oven. [pause] Huh.
Cashier: What is it?
Lois: I have the next 25 minutes free.
Cashier: How did you manage that? Did you leave a kid somewhere?
Lois: No… No they’re all accounted for.
Cashier: What are you gonna do?
Lois: I don’t know… I don’t know… [Lois starts pacing in store]56
In Lois’ next scene, the viewer sees her wandering around the supermarket aimlessly
with a shopping cart, unable to parse what to do with her small fragment of
unexpected free time. What makes this moment even more poignant is that, in the
same episode, her husband (Hal) is spending inordinate amounts of time and money
on building a Lego-like utopia.
55
56
Malcolm in the Middle aired from 2000-2006 on the Fox Television Network.
I transcribed this episode from broadcast on September 20, 2009.
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The episode is a perfect illustration of many of the phenomena that I discuss
in this dissertation regarding women and play. While, in this episode, Lois did not
encounter any digital games, her confusion and mystification regarding free time is
similar to many of the advertisements and games discussed in previous chapters. It
does not seem far-fetched to suggest that Lois would probably be amenable to playing
many of the games that I have talked about. At the same time, Hal follows a more
free-form ideology of play, where (guilt free) he is able to pull free time out of thin
air and spend copious amounts of money on an authorized form of play. Together,
Lois and Hal re-enact the kinds of gendered play on which this dissertation is
focused. Like other popular culture depictions, this one helps to frame a broader
picture about how subjects reinforce play styles.
Women, Play, and Ideology
As discussed by the Ludica Group (in Chapter Two), the gaming industry
helps to support a masculine hegemony of play. But, as would be expected, I show
that this hegemony exceeds the gaming industry, and is a reflection of larger cultural
attitudes about play. Much of the play that is constructed for feminine audiences—
particularly adult women—is primarily productive. In this dissertation I categorized
three kinds of video games that capture how play is ideologically driven by gender
expectations. Pragmatic play, as I describe it in Chapter Three, is play that attempts to
solve real-world goals, particularly in terms of self-help, beauty, or fitness (such as
Brain Age, Wii Fit, and Personal Trainer: Cooking). In Chapter Four, I discuss
simulated productive play, or play that emulates or stands in place of real-world
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productivity but is not actually productive. Within this category are two
subcategories: games (such as casual games) that are meant to fill up all available
time as a guise for productivity, and games (such as Diner Dash and Shopmania) that
emulate real world practices within their narratives and game mechanics. Finally, in
Chapter Five I discuss socially productive play: play that encourages social relations
for women, generally involving family and caring within their game play. I also
discuss Massively Multiplayer Online Games as play that potentially touches on all
three kinds of productive play, but also as a more gender-inclusive gaming style.
While these categories are by no means exclusive or definitive, they offer clearer
guidelines about how productive play often reflects larger social norms and practices
about femininity and play.
Productive play in games and advertising aimed at women audiences helps to
reinforce anxieties about play, femininity, domesticity, and technology. The games
and advertising reify traditional feminine stereotypes such as beauty and self-care,
weight loss and body image, family caretaking, and self-help. Rather than expanding
audiences by facilitating free play, these games help women interpellate gendernormative ideologies, reinforcing that play should occur in specific times, places, and
circumstances. This productive play, to borrow a concept from Elias (1939/1998),
reinforces “civilizing technologies,” where the technologies themselves help to mold,
form, maintain, and reproduce practices. Play, in this circumstance, becomes a
civilizing practice that helps to reaffirm conservative stereotypes about women,
games, and technology. Productive gaming can function as a kind of permission slip,
constructing excuses for why and when women are permitted to engage in specific
204
forms of play. Further, by segregating, excluding, and sexualizing women audiences
that attempt to enter the traditional masculine play spaces, the video game industry
helps to reaffirm that women can only be permitted to partake in the play-spaces
designated for them.
As was seen in the example from Malcolm in the Middle, these problems are
larger than video games or the video game industry. Research in leisure studies also
suggests that many women do not feel fully entitled to the same kind of free leisure
that many men do (Deem, 1987; Modeleski, 1984; Aitchison, 2003). Rosemary
Deem (1987), in particular, used ethnographic research to argue that many women
felt they did not deserve or have the right to leisure time. As previously noted, Deem
suggests that there are larger issues of guilt when leisure does not specifically involve
domesticity. While this study was done over twenty years ago, it seems striking that
my research on women and video games to some extent corroborated this—the games
that are primarily designed for and marketed to women audiences are primarily
productive (in a variety of ways) and suggest that women audiences still do not feel
they have a license to free play. Thus, even now with the passing of the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009,57 where women are guaranteed a right to equal pay,
they are still not necessarily guaranteed a right to equal play.
Productive play is fraught with implications about women’s lifestyles.
Previously, I discussed Arlie Russell Hochschild’s concept of “the second shift”:
women who work two full-time jobs by being primary caregiver and being employed
full time. In essence, women engaged in productive play are taking on a third shift.
57
On January 29, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which
approved equal pay legislation for women. The Act says that women cannot be paid less for doing the
same job as men (Stolber, 2009).
205
Whether playing as Flo in Diner Dash or improving their minds and bodies with
Brain Age and Wii Fit, many women are working in these games rather than playing
them. While Hochschild references a “third shift” in her subsequent book The Time
Bind (2001), she discusses it as a potential suggestion for busy families, explaining
that it might be used for, “noticing, understanding, and coping with the emotional
consequences of the compressed second shift” (p. 215). The third shift, according to
Hochschild, should be built around the idea of family-centric leisure and group
activities. But, in reality, Hochschild’s notion of a third shift for leisure is probably
overly idealistic. I would argue that play and leisure as a proxy for work might, too,
be considered the potential third shift. In this third shift play, work, and domestic
chores become intrinsically entangled.
While my current research is not ethnographic and does not deal with
audience response, it does not take an enormous leap to imagine a woman who works
all day, takes care of her family in the evening, and subsequently ends her day with a
third (or fourth) shift of working/playing in Diner Dash. The mundane, everyday, and
domestic nature of many of the games with embedded productive play outlined in this
dissertation are potential sites of labor and anxiety. With the previously discussed
Salen & Zimmerman (2004) definition of play as “Free movement in a more rigid
structure” (p. 304), it becomes pertinent to ask about the quality and substance of play
being aimed at women audiences. There is little freedom involved in the tasks of
replicating stereotypes of femininity and domesticity in play styles. The free form
ideology of play is not as available to women as it is to men. As explained in chapter
one, by this I mean “unrestrictive play for the sake of play which is embedded in a
206
larger cultural ideology.” So, although my research does not directly remark on
audiences, it tries to understand how media artifacts might ultimately change the
quality of play made available to women.
Future Research
More research needs to be done in the areas I investigate in this dissertation.
The market is changing and growing nearly exponentially at this point, and as it does,
it will be increasingly important to understand how new games might continue to
reify or break stereotypes of traditional femininity.
Just as there has been hegemony in the video game industry, we must be wary
of other conventional stances among academics studying video games. Many games
aimed at women audiences have simply not been examined closely by academia. In
some ways, the lack of discussion is reminiscent of what Tania Modleski (1984)
describes in her study of women-centric media, Loving with a Vengeance. According
to Modleski, women’s media (novels, films, and television) are rarely taken as
seriously by critics and scholars as are works by and about men. She explains, “Thus
women’s criticism of popular feminine narratives has generally adopted one of three
attitudes: dismissiveness; hostility—tending unfortunately to be aimed at the
consumers of the narratives; or, most frequently, a flippant kind of mockery” (p. 14).
As with romance novels and soap operas, it is of great importance that we begin to
look at popular software and games specifically aimed at women audiences with a
non-mocking, serious tone. As I illustrate, many of these games and their
accompanying advertising warrant academic inquiry. Gendered issues of work, play,
207
leisure, and domesticity all resonate throughout these popular games, and are a vital
way to understand larger issues in gender and culture. While it might seem frivolous
on the surface, the politics and ideologies of play can be a matter of great seriousness.
My research in this dissertation almost entirely focuses on cultural artifacts—I
primarily discuss games and advertising as being reflective of larger cultural trends.
In this, I recognize that there may be a gap between how I understood video games
aimed at women and how these games are actually perceived and played by their core
audiences. My current methodological approach was useful for the scope of this
dissertation, as advertising and games are both relatively easy to track and parse. But
in studying the construction of the “subject” in terms of play, it would be important to
get audience responses. For example, in my discussion of the Third Shift, it would be
useful to not only speculate about how women might play these games, but also to get
a clearer picture of how they are actually understood and played by these audiences.
Future audience-specific research using ethnographic approaches might help to hone
in on these issues more accurately.
One possible method would be to work more closely with casual game
communities such as the Diner Dash Community. As discussed in Chapter Four,
Diner Dash is a game that provides an excellent example of simulated productive
play. In the game, the player takes on the role of a waitress (Flo) and tries to build up
a clientele base and make money by keeping customers happy. While earlier versions
of the Diner Dash games were all single player, the most recent version of the game
(Diner Dash: Hometown Hero Gourmet Version) has the capabilities of also being a
multiplayer online game. While this game community is not as large as World of
208
Warcraft, it has a 95% female player base58 and a particular attunement to women’s
issues that makes it an ideal space for study.
Another possible method might involve creating women’s gaming circles. The
gaming circles would be structured much like book clubs, constructing a space where
women can talk about video games and their leisure activities comfortably. Recently,
researchers have discussed the use of book clubs as social venues for exploring tastes,
group identities, and personal identities (Long, 2003; Rooney, 2005; Radway, 1999).
The book club tends to be a gendered format that many women are already
comfortable with, and might be worth emulating in video game-related leisure
studies. Women’s gaming circles, as I have imagined them, might be an ideal way to
understand leisure habits and gaming styles of non-gamer women. In these groups,
six or seven women would meet bi-weekly. Players could take gaming systems home
with them, play games on their own time, and then come back to play and discuss the
games with the group. Ultimately, the goal of this research would be to help engender
a better comfort level with the games. This might help the women involved in the
study construct a better vocabulary and understanding about what they do and do not
like about video games. Regardless of methodological approaches, research should
continue looking at how video games continues to illustrate larger issues of gender,
leisure, and technology.
58
This statistic is from a phone conversation with Playfirst employee Anne Marie Edwards on April
14, 2009.
209
APPENDIX A: TABLES
Table 1: Game Informer and Play Magazine Advertising
from July 2006 – June 2007 (12 Months)
Total ads
GI
395
Play 274
Video Game Ads
232
174
Video Game Ads w/ Females
99
74
Table 2: Content Analysis of GI and Play Advertisements with women
Distinct Ads with Females in a Major Role: 47
Ads where women display “licensed withdrawal”
Ads with women in revealing clothing
Ads with one or more female smiling
Ads with one or more female smaller than males
Ads with one or more female below or behind males
Ads where women use “feminine touch”
Ads where women were looking down or to the side
Ads where women shown as the player
% of ads
64%
66%
28%
21%
34%
57%
66%
1%
Table 3: Video Game Ads in non-video game magazines
from May 2006- August 2008 (28 Months)
Magazine
VG ads
DS ads Wii
promo
0
0
0
0
DS promo
Other
0
7
Wii
ads
0
7
Esquire
Good
Housekeeping
Martha Stewart
Oprah
People
Real Simple
Redbook
Time
Wired
0
0
0
0
2
11
9
9
3
1
24
2
5
3
2
3
0
0
0
3
2
4
0
1
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
4
1
0
0
23
0
2
0
1
0
0
0
210
APPENDIX B: FIGURES
Figure 1: Frag Dolls Web Site (A) (Last accessed December 14, 2009)
211
Figure 2: Frag Dolls Web Site (B) (Last accessed December 14, 2009)
212
Figure 3: Tomb Raider Anniversary (Play Magazine, May 2007)
213
Figure 4: Dark Kingdom (Play Magazine, December 2006)
214
Figure 5: Ar Tonelico (Play Magazine, March 2007)
215
Figure 6: Mage Knight: Apocalypse (Play Magazine, October 2006)
216
Figure 7: Izuna (Play Magazine, January 2007)
217
Figure 8: PSP Theater (Game Informer Magazine, September 2006)
218
Figure 9: Final Fantasy (Game Informer, November 2006)
Figure 10: Lord of the Rings Online (Game Informer, April 2007)
219
Figure 11: Animated Depiction of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima (Brain Age, Nintendo
of America, 2006)
Figure 12: Brain Age game cover (Brain Age, Nintendo of America, 2006)
220
Figure 13: Brain Age Advertisement (Real Simple Magazine, June 2006)
221
Figure 14: Brain Age Advertisement (Wired Magazine, May 2006)
222
Figure 15: Alistair Archibald, narrator of My Word Coach (Ubisoft, 2007)
Figure 16: Veronica Munro of My Word Coach (Ubisoft, 2007)
Figure 17: Penny of My Word Coach (Ubisoft, 2007)
223
Figure 18: Advertisement for My Word Coach (Real Simple Magazine, Nov. 2007)
224
Figure 19: Dr. Lobe, narrator for Big Brain Academy (Nintendo of America,
2006)
225
Figure 20: Advertisement Big Brain Academy (Good Housekeeping, July 2007)
226
Figure 21: Wii Fit Balance Board (Nintendo of America, 2008)
227
Figure 22: Wii Fit advertisement (Good Housekeeping, June 2008)
228
Figure 23: Wii Fit advertisement (Real Simple Magazine, April 2009)
229
Figure 24: My Weight Loss Coach Advertisement (Lucky Magazine, July 2008)
230
Figure 25: Do Something with your Nothing advertisement for the Nintendo DS
(Oprah Magazine, September 2006)
231
Figure 26: “Do Something with your Nothing” advertisement for the Nintendo
DS (Real Simple, August 2006)
232
Figure 27: Diner Dash opening story (Playfirst, 2004)
233
Figure 28: Diner Dash opening story (Playfirst, 2004)
234
Figure 29: Diner Dash opening story (Playfirst, 2004)
235
Figure 30: Diner Dash: Hometown Hero Screen Shot (Playfirst, 2007)
236
Figure 31: Cooking Mama game cover (Majesco Entertainment, 2004)
237
Figure 32: Cooking Mama 2 screen shot (Majesco Entertainment, 2007)
Figure 33: Cooking Mama “failed” screen shot (Majesco Entertainment, 2004)
238
Figure 34: Shopmania screen shot (Brighter Minds Media, 2008)
239
Figure 35: Mii Creation (Wii Sports, Nintendo, 2006)
Figure 36: Mii Family (Wii Sports, Nintendo, 2006)
240
Figure 37: My Wii Story: Linda Perry (Good Housekeeping, September 2007)
241
Figure 38: My Wii Story: Janiene Allen (Oprah Magazine, June 2007)
242
Figure 39: My Wii Story: Nancy Ponthier (Real Simple Magazine, December
2007)
243
Figure 40: My Wii Story: Tracey Clark (Martha Stewart Magazine, February,
2008)
244
Figure 41: Screen shot from World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004)
Figure 42: World of Warcraft Advertisement (Game Informer, Jan. 2007)
245
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