Like men, about half of
all women play video games. But men are far more likely to call themselves
“gamers.”
That’s according to a
new Pew Research Center survey that found 48 percent of women play video games,
just shy of the 50 percent of men who play. The gamer identity was far less
attractive to women, however, with 6 percent of them adopting the label
compared with 15 percent of men.
Video game experts said
it was no surprise that women are shunning an association with gaming culture
as the community of hard-core players has become increasingly identified with
sexist attitudes among its fringe members.
“Having a label of
gamer is not just about being geeky,” said Rosalind Wiseman, an author who has
studied gaming attitudes among young people. “It also has spilled over
unfortunately into a really negative connotation of people who are just really
angry and intolerant of other people.”
She added that the
reputation “is really not representative of a lot of people who play games.”
The stigma gained
currency last year with so-called GamerGate, an online campaign to discredit
critics of sexism in video games and gaming culture. As harassment veered into
threats of violence and rape, the controversy drew news media attention, and
set off debates over how bad misogyny in gaming had become.
Other unwritten codes
about what qualifies a person for membership in the gaming community have
helped to raise the bar to entry: Casual playing, for instance, doesn’t count,
and you must play games that are sufficiently intricate, strategic and
difficult.
Jamin Warren, founder
of the video game arts and culture company Kill Screen, said the reason many
hard-core gamers cling to a restrictive definition of the word can be explained
by “classic in-group favoritism.”
As video games have
become more a part of the cultural mainstream in recent years, Mr. Warren said,
“the protectiveness of the term has only heightened.”
Ms. Wiseman, who
studied gaming habits among middle- and high school-aged people, said girls
face elevated scrutiny over their gaming skills. They describe harrowing
experiences in web-based multiplayer games where participants talk through
headsets. When a girl’s voice chimes in, the reaction from other players often
follows a certain script.
“It’s something about
they’re a slut, they’re fat, they’re ugly, or they are bad at the game,” she
said.
As a result, girls will
often mute their voices.
Some in the gaming
community have proposed a shift in the meaning of gamer to be akin to
cinephile, a person with a deep knowledge and appreciation of the whole medium.
Others have argued that the definition should be broad and, in particular,
reflect the wide array of people who play.
“Marginalized groups
have always engaged in gaming,” Kishonna Gray, director of the Critical Gaming
Lab at Eastern Kentucky University, said in an email. “They just haven’t been
acknowledged by gaming culture yet and they really aren’t catered to.”
The Pew survey, which
was conducted this summer among a sample of about 2,000 adults, found that
young men play games far more than other groups, with 77 percent of 18- to
29-year-old men saying they play, and 57 percent of young women.
With older Americans,
the pattern flips: Over the age of 50, women are more likely to play video
games, with 38 percent saying they play, compared with 29 percent of men.
Society at large seems
to remain apprehensive about the benefits of video games. Forty percent of
respondents to the Pew survey said people who play violent games are more
likely to be violent themselves, while 26 percent said video games are simply a
waste of time.
The survey did not make
distinctions among players of console games, PC games, online games or mobile
games.
By MIKE McPHATEDEC. 16,
2015
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