Understanding Women Modders Using the Serious Leisure Perspective
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This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Tancred, Nicoletta, Turkay, Selen, Vickery, Nicole, Wyeth, Peta,& Mc- Coombe, Anna (2020) Understanding Women Modders using the Serious Leisure Perspective. In CHI ’20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), United States of America. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/211848/ c 2020 ACM This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. 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If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376351 Understanding Women Modders using the Serious Leisure Perspective Nicoletta Tancred Selen Turkay Nicole Vickery Queensland University of Queensland University of Queensland University of Technology Technology Technology Brisbane, Australia Brisbane, Australia Brisbane, Australia [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Peta Wyeth Anna McCoombe Queensland University of Queensland University of Technology Technology Brisbane, Australia Brisbane, Australia [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION Modding, the act of custom creation in videogames, is a large Modding is described as the action of creating custom content enterprise comprising millions of people. Despite the large for videogames [73, 75]. It engages millions of people across number of individuals creating mods, our understanding of multiple modding sites around the world. Investment into mod who modders are and their motivation for modding is limited. creation by players in videogames has been shown to improve This is especially true for minority groups, including women. the shelf-life of games [48]. Modding practices demonstrate In prior research with modding communities, women modders the strength of individual and community interests in creat- were consistently underrepresented. Using a mixed-method ing and maintaining mod content [18, 74]. Modding can survey (N = 68) that incorporates the Serious Leisure Frame- be considered as Serious Leisure, since it typically involves work, this study begins to unravel women’s participation in the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer modding activities. We begin to identify who women modders activity [61]. Studies found that modders find fulfilment in are, examine what motivates them to mod, and investigate improving or gaining skills as a part of continuing hobbyist or their modding practices. Results show that women modders amateur endeavours [49, 59]. Modding is closely related to value the creation of multiple mod types, including cosmetic, crafting practices. It is a substantial activity that participants environmental and gameplay modification. They are primarily value, and find important and engaging [61]. motivated by self-gratification and enjoyment. These findings Previous studies examined motivations of modders and mod- create new insights into how women interact with gaming environments, as well as identifying those aspects of the expe- ding practices, investigating modding as a creative endeavour rience that motivate women’s engagement in modding. and/or artistic expression [49, 59], as a social experience [59, 49, 47, 15, 22], as a means of gaining ownership [1], and as a mechanism for fixing game flaws [22, 26]. The other common Author Keywords modding motivations are enjoyment of the modding process Modders;Modding; Women Modding; Game Modifications; and increased enjoyment with the modified game [2, 26, 47, Custom Content; Video Games; Serious Leisure 49, 59]. Despite the popularity of and the increasing indus- try investment in modding, and current research on modding practices, very little is known about different populations of CCS Concepts modders. This is especially true for minority groups, including •Human-centered computing ! User studies; Hu- women. Women in modding are either underrepresented or man computer interaction (HCI); Participatory design; not represented at all in the extant modding research [27, 34, •Software and its engineering ! Interactive games; 43, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 58, 59]. Often gender demographics are not explicitly mentioned [49] and when they are mentioned there is a large focus on men [59, 47]. As a result, we know Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed very little about what drives women to mod and what their for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation modding practices look like. on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, To address these research gaps, as part of a larger study on to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. modder behaviors and motivations, this paper investigates the CHI’20, April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA modding motivations and behaviours of women through the © 2020 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-6708-0/20/04. $15.00 lens of the Serious Leisure Framework [61, 20]. In this paper, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376351 we use responses from women participants in an online survey The research surrounding modders appears to present a rel- to answer the following research questions (RQ): atively comprehensive representation of the modding com- munity. However, the participants involved in these studies RQ1: Who are women modders? were either all men [59], 95.5% men [47] or gender was not RQ2: What motivates women modders to mod? specified [49]. When there was a larger number of women involved in a study [26] there was little investigation into the RQ3: What do women modders’ modding practices look like? differences between women and men modders. Hirvonen’s (e.g., What games are they more likely to mod? What types of [26] thesis study had 14.6% women participants but it did not mods do they create?) examine women’s motivations exclusively or comparatively The contributions from our study are threefold. Firstly, we with the men participants. As a result, modding discussions discovered a level of diversity in the women modding popula- skew significantly towards understanding men’s modding mo- tion that some may find surprising. The span of age-groups, tivations while women’s modding motivations are typically experience levels, countries, and games being modded is no- ignored. table. There is no typical women modder. Secondly, unlike previous studies that included mainly men [59, 47, 49], we Modder Motivations found that women tend to mod for their personal enjoyment Modders in general are motivated by wanting to play the game and rarely mod for financial or social reasons. While some and have fun [2, 59, 22, 26]. There are also social, creative women engage in modding as amateurs, embracing profes- and personal motivations towards engaging in modding prac- sional practices and establishing a public profile, many others tices[27, 34, 43, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 58, 59]. Previous studies are dedicated hobbyists. Modding for these makers and tinker- identified social aspects of modding such as socialization, col- ers provides an avenue for self-expression and personal fulfil- laboration and social forces as one of the main motivations ment. Many embrace the acquisition of knowledge for its own for modding [47, 49, 59]. The social aspects of modding sake. Finally, women modders create various types of mods are defined as having a sense of community via engaging in including cosmetic, environmental and gameplay mods. This forums [49, 47], wanting to socialise with others, and work- finding debunks any potential public perception that women ing on the same modding project [49, 59]. Another common modder equals cosmetic modder. Women who mod are not motivation is the desire to fix and improve gameplay or the one dimensional, but rather are important contributors across usability of the game. As seen with the Vampire: The Mas- a range of modding practices and communities. querade - Bloodlines (VTMB) patch mods work on by user Wesp5 for the past 14+ years [74], many modders want to BACKGROUND fix their perceived issues with the game content [22, 26, 59]. This motivation also relates to the replay value and continued Modding and Modders enjoyment of the game [59, 22, 26,2]. Research also suggests Modding in today’s gaming culture is very different from that some modders mod for creativity, artistic expression or what it was in its early conception. Today, multiple modding to investigate how mods work [49, 59]. This suggests that the sites available to both players and modders (e.g, ModDB [13], key overarching motivation for many modders is the desire to Nexus Mods [53], Steam Workshop [72]). The release of make the game "their own" [49]. popular games like Skyrim [62] have changed modding for everyone, with Skyrim mods being extremely popular [17, Since the release of many of these modding studies mentioned 26] and the most modded game on Nexus Mods since its above, modding communities have changed.