![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
In recent years, a ‘professional’ digital gaming industry has emerged in North America: this interconnected series of organisations and leagues host competitive gaming tournaments (often televised) in which young, mostly male participants compete for increasingly lucrative prize money and sponsorship contracts. Taking up Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter's (2005) challenge to confront the ways girl gamers are rendered ‘invisible’ by gamers, researchers and designers, this paper maps the various ways women participate in a set of practices around the organisation, promotion and performance of competitive gaming, framed as the exclusive domain of (young, straight, middle class) male bodies. Mothers flying their sons' teams to events all over North America, female players participating in tournaments or promotional models operating sponsorship booths, the women who participate in competitive gaming tournaments negotiate different expectations and carry out different kinds of embodied work. Each of these ‘roles’, however, is tenuously maintained within a community that most commonly reads female participation in sexualised terms: mothers at events describe themselves as ‘cheerleaders’, female players risk being labelled as ‘halo hoes’ and promotional models become ‘booth babes’.
Notes
While researchers of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have for some time now explored the ‘blurring’ of work and play in games like EverQuest (Taylor Citation2006a; Yee 2006), World of Warcraft (Taylor Citation2006b), and Ultima Online (Dibbell Citation2006), very little research has been done with players for whom digital gaming is a vocation, as it is for many competitive gamers aspiring to become professional.
We have changed the name of the organisation, as well as the ‘gamer tags’ (the ‘handles’ players use at tournaments) of NerdCorps players; all other names (of ‘professional’ players and of larger-scale leagues and tournaments) have not been changed.
See, for example, Bryson Citation1987; Connell Citation1987; Curry Citation2002; Welch Citation1997.
Cheerleaders in professional men's leagues like the NBA and NFL, and Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, are two examples.
Women's leagues such as the WNBA, LPGA, etc., have traditionally and continue to gain less attention, media coverage and financial support than their male counterparts (McDonagh and Pappano Citation2008).
A 2005 report by the International Game Developers Association finds that women constitute only 11.5% of the games industry workforce (http://www.igda.org/diversity/report.php), while a Los Angeles Times article from 2008 claims that only 3% of game programmers are women (Pham 2008). Research group NPD reports that while more women are playing console games—presumably because of the Wii—they make up only 28% of console gamers (Riley 2009). Finally, Jillian Winn and Carrie Heeter (2009) report that significant gender differences in play persist across almost all game platforms and can be at least partially attributable to inequities in male vs. female leisure time.
The 2008 World Cyber Games tournament in Cologne, Germany, for example, featured bronze, silver and gold medals for 11 single-player games, 2 four-player games and 1 two-player game: 63 players received medals. Not one was female.
Major sponsors include Samsung, for the WCG, and Microsoft, for MLG, and other digital technology producers. Ford and Zellers (a department store chain) are also significant and highly visible sponsors of MLG tournaments.
Or, for that matter, in the lives of dedicated ‘pros’. In an interview posted on MLG's website MLG-sponsored player “Strongside” says that competitive Halo 3 gaming has taught him invaluable “life lessons on how to deal with women… Make sure they know Halo comes first. haha :)” (http://www.mlgpro.com/?q=pro/strongside).
North America's most prominent competitive gaming league, Major League Gaming runs an annual ‘Pro Circuit’, a series of tournaments for 4-person team Halo 3 play in different cities around North America. The top 16 teams at the end of the Pro Circuit are designated as ‘professional’ teams by MLG. A handful of individuals and teams are awarded lucrative, and exclusive, sponsorships with MLG; league contracts specify that players/teams cannot play in other competitive gaming events.
As opposed to, for instance, an Olympic model of ‘amateur’ athletics, which the World Cyber Games invokes (Hutchins Citation2008).
The 2008 MLG Toronto Open took place over a weekend in late summer and attracted over 500 Canadian and U.S. Halo 3 players (128 teams of four) who competed for the top prize of $20 000 (U.S.). The Toronto event was part of the six-city 2008 ‘Pro Circuit’, culminating in the National Finals in Las Vegas to determine the overall winning team for 2008 (http://www.mlgpro.com/procircuit/2008).
See de Castell, Jenson, Taylor, and Lindo Citation(2007) and Taylor Citation(2007) for a more detailed discussion and deployment of the MAP tool.
See, for example, Mundsack, Deese, and Deese Citation(2002), How to study.
‘Booth babes’ are a common site at game development industry gatherings as well, such as the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Tokyo Game Show, and Game Developers Conference (GDC).
The World Cyber Games are an annual, four-day event, consisting of tournaments for multiple games on multiple platforms (the 2008 Games featured 16 titles, or ‘disciplines’). Tournament participants (over 800, in 2008) are chosen by a series of local and national qualifying competitions. Where MLG invokes a North American sports industry, WCG mimics the ritual and imagery of the Olympics.
