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Girl Gamers and Toxicity

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Girl Gamers and Toxicity GIRL GAMERS AND TOXICITY _______________ A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Sociology University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Master of Arts _______________ By Jonathan Khandaker August 2019 GIRL GAMERS AND TOXICITY _______________ An Abstract of a Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Sociology University of Houston _______________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Master of Arts _______________ By Jonathan Khandaker August 2019 ABSTRACT People who play online video often experience toxicity, a term used by those who play video games, and scholars, to describe various forms of hostility people encounter from other participants in this environment. Researchers have recognized that girls and women are more likely targets of toxicity, with toxicity having potential negative mental and physical health outcomes, while acknowledging that the way targets of toxicity perceive organizational responses can affect whether they stay or leave the environment. For these reasons, it is important to understand how online video game participants, whose presentation of self is perceived by others as feminine, perceive toxicity and organizational efforts to reduce it. Using qualitative interviews with participants who play Overwatch and are perceived by others as feminine I investigate how participants perceive toxicity and organizational efforts to reduce it. I use “girl gamers” as an umbrella term to refer to my participants, a term widely used and understood in the video game environment. My specific research questions are: (1) What are girl gamers’ experiences of toxicity in competitive online video games? (2) What themes in the game do girl gamers find attractive? (3) How do girl gamers construct their identity and carve out space in the online video game environment? (4) How do girl gamers identify with characters in- game? (5) What are girl gamers’ feelings towards the in-game mechanics for reducing toxicity and do they perceive that more could be done? Results show that participants have varied feelings about their own identities and the ways others perceive them, with both affecting how they perceive toxicity and their environment. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Literature Review 5 Sociology of Gender 5 Gaming Background 10 Toxicity 12 Negative Impact 16 Literature Gap 22 Theory 24 Feminist Theory 24 Tokenism 25 Disinhibition and Anonymity 25 Methods 27 Data Collection 27 Game Selection 28 Sampling 30 Data Analysis 31 Consent and Anonymity 32 Analysis 34 Gender Inequality 34 Treatment of Girls 34 Guys’ Behavior 42 Conclusion 44 Stereotypes 45 What is it to be a Gamer? 45 Girl Gamer Stereotypes 50 Conclusion 57 Toxicity 57 What is Toxicity? 58 To be a Girl on the Internet 61 Boys will be Boys 75 No Faith in Humanity 79 Conclusion 83 Positive Experiences 84 Getting into it 84 Coalescence 87 Conclusion 91 Anxiety Online 91 Online Sneakiness 91 Feeling Limited 94 Conclusion 98 Identity 98 Self-conception and Gamer Identity 98 Community Identity 100 Conclusion 103 Characters 103 Sex Still Sells 104 Getting into Character 105 Diversity and Inclusivity 108 Conclusion 115 Views Towards In-game Moderation 115 Faith in System 116 Things Done Differently 120 Conclusion 125 Discussion and Conclusion 127 Discussion 127 Conclusion 136 Limitations 136 Future Research 138 References 141 INTRODUCTION Recent studies on video games is starting to address how toxicity affects players in the video game communities. Through a range of different hostile interactions, communities can come to be seen as toxic by its members, owners, or outsiders. Behaviors such as trash talking, griefing, and sexual harassment are commonplace in many games, to varying degrees. Research is also looking more at how players’ perceptions of the response of video game organizations to this toxicity affects whether the players continue to play those video games. Over the last decade, according to the Electronic Software Association’s (ESA) annual reports, the video game industry has grown from about 9 billion dollars in 2007 to an estimated 100 billion or more by the end of 2017. This pattern of growth has been consistent during this time and there is little reason to suspect it will not continue to grow, as new avenues for making money are emerging. Gaudiosi (2016) claims eSports generated $175 million in revenue in 2016, predicting it would rise to $1.5 billion by 2020. An increasing number of teams are forming in more games to play at the professional level. In terms of having salaries, coaches, practices, match announcers, and broadcasts, eSports is becoming very similar to traditional sports. As video games become more popular and online multiplayer becomes a bigger part of the video game world interactions between human players increase and the opportunities for toxic behaviors also increase. Several researchers explore how video games help players gain real life social capital, as well as providing new forms of social capital within the video games themselves through gaining levels, skill rating, and other rewards (Castronova 2008, Shen, Monge, and Williams 2014; Burch and Wiseman 2014). This new kind of social capital creates something of worth to the individual that can be lost or gained, such as skill rating. This has profound effects on the way the gamer feels about matches where this social capital is at stake in a different way than when 1 they are not, it is a more serious loss, they are not losing only the match, but some of what they have earned and something that may be valuable to their construction of identity as a gamer. Toxicity becomes a problem in these games when people become upset with the actions or performances of others. There are many forms of toxicity, but according to a Pew Research Center study in 2014, women receive the most severe forms of toxicity online. This study found that men actually received more harassment, but it was not as severe. Some of this may be due to what Conmy, Tenenbaum, and Eklund (2013) describe as “lighthearted” trash talking. This is the idea that some harassment is friendly teasing, instead of harassment aimed at hurting another. While both genders experience toxicity such as griefing or trash talking, women were more frequently the target of sexual harassment and stereotyping (Pew Research Center 2014, Kuznekoff and Rose 2013). The kind of toxicity that targets women more frequently is associated with performance decreases within the games (Littleton et al. 1998, Littleton et al. 1999) as well as performance decreases in school (Paino and Renzulli 2013). For women, reduced performance in school and lack of interest in computers and the development of computer cultural capital is also linked to a decrease in performance in particular subjects, such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). The reduction in performance in STEM classes is linked with a decrease in entrance into STEM fields for careers (Mayo 2009, Paaßen, Morgenroth, and Stratemeyer 2017). Toxicity also affects mental health, with the most serious effects coming from sexual harassment. Most sexual harassment is directed towards women (Pina, Gannon, and Saunders 2009) so most of the negative effects are felt by women. Sexual harassment leads to mental health deficits such as depression and PTSD, and rumination may occur (Fitzgerald et al. 1997, Fox and Tang 2017, Pina, Gannon, and Saunders 2009). Rumination may lead to withdrawal 2 from the environment increasing the damage to opportunities provided by video gaming (Fitzgerald et al. 1997, Fitzgerald 1997, Fox and Tang 2017). Even when not directly experiencing sexual harassment, observing it or feeling that it is inherent in an environment can lead to these negative outcomes as well (Fitzgerald 1997). Research on women and girls who play video game’s perception of the video game environment has been done, looking at the world of LAN (large area network) parties and World of Warcraft (Beavis and Charles 2007, Eklund 2011). Patterns of stereotypes are consistent with what was found in other studies (Dietz 1998, Paaßen et al. 2017, Vermeulen 2016). The ideas that girls or women shouldn’t play video games, and that if they do play they should fit certain roles or perform certain duties, is salient (Beavis and Charles 2007, Eklund 2011). In Beavis and Charles’ (2007) study, girls and women who play video gamer perceive that they are not wanted in video games and that gaming is a male activity. Eklund’s study (2011) finds that when they are able to play, girls and women may find themselves being put in gendered roles, such as tending to the emotional needs of a gaming group. For this study I use the term “girl gamers” to refer to girls, women, trans-girls, trans- women, non-binary individuals perceived as girls or women, and any other person who would fall into the category of people perceived in the online video game environment to be a girl or women. I do this due to the numerous ways in which my participants, and people in the online video game environment, identify and the difficulty of finding terms that capture everyone. “Girls” is used instead of women due to the informality that is present in the online video game environment, with girls having a “girls and guys” type of catchall meaning, rather than being demeaning as with “boys and girls” vs “men and women”. Participants felt that “women gamers” or “female gamers” sounded awkward, preferring “girl gamers” for use in the study when asked 3 their opinion on the matter. The term “girl gamer” is also an established term in the online video game environment, with communities and groups with “girl gamer”, or some variation, in their name or title. This term is not used to imply that the participant identifies as a “girl gamer”, but that they are okay with this term being used to describe a group of individuals with some common traits.
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