investiGaming is a publication of the Serious Game Design group in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University, 2007
This gateway is partially supported by grant supported by grant 0631771 from the National Science Foundation.
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent Michigan State University or the National Science Foundation.
Author: Alix, Avery
Date: 2006
Source: International Communication Association, Dresden International Congress Centre, Dresden, Germany,
Full Text Link:
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p92748_index.html
Keywords:
case study, gender identity, internet use, CounterStrike, gaming culture, masculinity, femininity
Abstract:
Drawing on Goffman, Shugart, de Klerk, Cameron, Kulick, and Edley & Wetherell, this critical discourse analysis examines how players socio-discursively negotiate gendered identities and norms in video games. Game talk involves communicative sharing and policing of ideas, values and norms within a tortuous, mediated system of game mechanics, digital tradition and wider cultural constraints. Counter-Strike, played by millions worldwide, makes an excellent case study of gamer interaction. Transcription for this study was gathered digitally and analyzed for conversational sequences that demonstrate more widespread trends in game communication. Game messages are filled with disembedded references to broader social practice and pop culture. Messages are personal, spontaneous, informal, and linguistically transgressive, performing variety of purposes: from task accomplishment, to entertainment, persuasion, and identity work. This study focuses upon the ways in which participants employ socio-discursive power and construct both sexual identity and inter-gender relations within the game. Here, the Cartesian dualism imposed by games as media is felt. Masculinity is difficult to demonstrate physicality in games because one need not be macho to win. It is perhaps even more difficult to achieve femininity in a game that features all-male characters partaking in endless violent conflict. It is through discursive interaction that gamers achieve gender and sexuality in digital play. It is in the display of the mental or social attributes that gender is articulated in cyberspaces where the physical body is abstracted and only the movement of the eyes and hands externally marks the difference between 733T and n00b.