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Eklund, Lina. "Who are the casual gamers? Gender tropes and tokenism in game culture." Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The changing gaming landscape. Ed. Tama Leaver and Michele Willson. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 15–30. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 26 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501310591.ch-002>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 26 September 2021, 22:47 UTC. Copyright © Tama Leaver, Michele Willson and Contributors 2016. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 2 Who are the casual gamers? Gender tropes and tokenism in game culture L i n a E k l u n d igital gaming (henceforth, gaming) constitutes a still expanding activity. D At present we know that the population of gamers is large and wide- ranging with an estimated 40–50 per cent of the Western population now engaged in digital games (e.g. Kallio, Kaipainen and Mäyrä 2007; Juul 2010). This extensive involvement is largely owing to what Juul (2010) dubbed A Casual Revolution . Owing to technological advances and a more mature industry, new games attract audiences previously unfamiliar with gaming. Yet, research on gaming often builds on self-selected samples picked by posting on websites aimed at gamers and/or by using snowball sampling (e.g. Griffi ths, Davies and Chappell 2003; Quandt, Grueninger and Wimmer 2008; Juul 2010; de Schutter 2011). These targeted samples are often motivated by a desire to scrutinize specifi c groups or subsets of gamers. However, as the general body of gamers today are far from a small minority (Kallio, Kaipainen and Mäyrä 2007; Juul 2010) additional research using representative samples is needed. In other words, samples which allow us to make statistical gener- alizations about digital gaming in the general population. Therefore, this chap- ter reports on results from a study using data from a nationally representative 99781501310607_Ch02_Final_txt_print.indd781501310607_Ch02_Final_txt_print.indd 1155 110/28/20150/28/2015 110:04:560:04:56 PPMM 16 SOCIAL, CASUAL AND MOBILE GAMES survey of over 2,611 Swedes, aged 12–100, dealing with computer, Internet and digital game practices. The chapter focuses on ‘casual gaming’, with the aim of investigating this gaming audience in detail, using a representative sample. The data is Swedish, yet results are of relevance for most Western contexts due to similarities in usage patterns of digital gaming in this region and, as Sweden is often considered a forerunner in relation to the spread of digital technology (Bilbao-Osorio, Dutta and Lanvin 2013), the research con- text can shed light on the expanding use of these technologies. Growth of casual games Here, the term digital game is used as a label for all types of games mediated by technology. Digital games are engaged with on a screen, they take electricity to run and, perhaps most important, the computer rather than the player upholds the rules (Juul 2005). The computer frees us from keeping track of what we can or cannot do; a move not permitted will simply not be allowed. From early arcade games such as Space Invaders , to modern online games such as Star Wars–The Old Republic built around the rich and intricate Star Wars universe, games have changed in form as well as gained in complexity as computers can maintain intricate fi ctional worlds. Yet, at the same time as digital gaming changed, so did those engaging with them, the gamers. The history of digital games has been told in many ways over the years (and in reality it is rather histories , in plural, than history). The description below is one story among many and focuses on the dialectic interplay between technology and users; technological advances made more types of games available as well as more ways of playing them, which attracted new audiences. Yet at the same time demands by new and old users spurred developments as creators match market demands, resulting in an iterative process of expansion, adoption and development of games and technologies. For example, the growth and success of touch-based games played on tablets and smartphones followed individuals searching for ways to fully utilize their new touch technology. The fi rst commercial digital games were adult activities, as arcade games appeared in pubs (Williams 2006). As consoles became available for private use they were then marketed as family entertainment – available to play in the family home. However, after the video game market collapsed in 1983 the industry needed a new approach. When Japanese Nintendo released their Famicom console – the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the West – they aimed their product at children, foremost boys, in order to fi nd a 99781501310607_Ch02_Final_txt_print.indd781501310607_Ch02_Final_txt_print.indd 1166 110/28/20150/28/2015 110:04:560:04:56 PPMM WHO ARE THE CASUAL GAMERS? 17 more secure audience. As Krotoski (2005) has shown, before this, the gaming industry aimed games at everyone – men and women, old and young alike. This shift towards young men changed ideas about who the consumers of digital games were, and this strategy in production and marketing still prevails. During the 1980s and early 1990s, digital games were seen as boys’ toys and game developers were/are almost solely men (Haddon 1988) leading to a marginalization of female users. Since then three major waves of social and technological changes can be identifi ed that have impacted on the game audience. The following simplifi ed exposé is not meant to give a complete background to gaming, but is rather meant to offer historical context. In the mid-1990s the fi rst ‘pink games’ wave hit the game industry in the wake of the very successful Barbie Fashion Designer . Game companies making games for girls cropped up, some aiming to make money by broadening the audience and some trying to encourage female gaming, arguing that it provided important technological knowledge (Beavis 2005; Hayes 2005). Pink games are still fl ourishing, although they have been heavily criticized for polarizing the market into girl and boy games and ignoring adult female gamers (Kafai et al. 2008). Gender stereotypes and female inclusion in game culture is still a controversial and hotly debated topic, as seen in the recent #GamerGate debacle. See the Afterword to this volume for a more detailed discussion by Shaw and Chess. A second major shift also occurred in the 1990s with the spread and growth of the Internet and a whole new genre of games that could be played with others online. These online games allowed gamers to compete and collaborate in massive digital worlds. Online games attracted an older and more mixed user group (Griffi ths, Davies and Chappell 2003) and some have argued that they also opened up the game medium further for women (Taylor 2006). Thus, research and user demographics of online gaming made us aware that digital gaming was not something only the young engaged in and that the game audience was growing up. The third major change, referred to as A Casual Revolution (Juul 2010), gained momentum around 2005. Owing to technological advances and a more mature industry, digital games were being developed that attracted an audience previously unfamiliar with the medium, as well as gamers who had ‘grown up’ and started families of their own. Digital games played in web browsers became popular, as well as party games such as Dance Dance Revolution. In 2006 the Nintendo Wii, advertised as a family entertainment machine, was released, in a sense returning to the roots of consoles as family entertainment. Digital gaming today comprises more than the classical Super Mario or fi rst-person shooter (FPS) games that often get to symbolize this medium. Facebook games, exercise games, smartphone and touchpad 99781501310607_Ch02_Final_txt_print.indd781501310607_Ch02_Final_txt_print.indd 1177 110/28/20150/28/2015 110:04:560:04:56 PPMM 18 SOCIAL, CASUAL AND MOBILE GAMES games and much more are genres and platforms for digital games that have expanded the medium in an era where so many people have a range of technologies available to play games on. Casual games and gamers The term ‘casual gaming’ came about as digital games as well as users became more diverse and different designations came into use to contrast early digital gaming (hardcore) to what were perceived as new (casual) game types, genres and gamers. Dividing gamers into hardcore and casual is now one of the bases for understanding different types of games/ers both in academia and industry classifi cation (Juul 2010). Casual games tend to have more positive fi ctions featuring no or cartoonish violence, require little previous knowledge of games, allow players to play in short bursts and practise excessive positive reinforcement of success (ibid.). Casual games are lighter, easier to play and fl exible (Kultima 2009). In contrast, hardcore games are seen as heavier, featuring violence and dark themes and taking time to learn (Juul 2010). The portrayal of game types is closely connected to preconceptions of who engages in these games. Casual gamers are often portrayed as female, especially in reports from the game industry (Kuittinen et al. 2007) and in news reports (e.g. Wolverton 2007; Calvin 2013; Enright 2013); and female gamers are seen as preferring casual game genres (Krotoski 2005). The term ‘casual’ is furthermore often used to describe a play style (Kuittinen et al. 2007) and this way of playing, with less time investment and dedication is often, both from the game community and industry, connected to female gamers (Juul 2010). Some have argued that casual genres demand less time investment and are easier to pick up and play, thereby making them more accessible to women who still take on the majority of unpaid labour in the West, resulting in more fragmented leisure time (Winn and Heeter 2009).
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