Where Are the Girls? Locating Girlhood in Game Studies

Abstract

Where Are the Girls? Locating Girlhood in Game Studies Ashley P. Jones (bio) Cunningham, Carolyn M. Games Girls Play: Contexts of Girls and Video Games. Lexington Books, 2018. 181 pp. $90.00 hc. ISBN 9781498554565. Carolyn M. Cunningham’s Games Girls Play: Contexts of Girls and Video Games paints a picture of how girls within the United States interact with, relate to, and understand video games at large and within their personal lives. The book works to better understand the relationship between gender constructions and video games. Cunningham takes a media ecology approach to the different contexts in which girls in elementary, middle, and high school consume and interact with video games within the United States. Cunningham builds on Adrienne Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, which focuses on marginalized populations of gamers and their relationships with video games in their everyday lives. Shaw focuses on the effects of social contextualization of video games within player’s experiences as an important factor to consider when exploring gaming in conjunction with gender identity and performance (22). “Girl Games” are games that feature female protagonists or feminine gameplay (Cunningham 26). Addressing the marginalized gamer population of girls and drawing from research on girls elementary school age through high school, Cunningham explores the intersection of girlhood with gaming through a variety of lenses, such as marketing and consumption as well as feminist theory and activism. Cunningham argues that gendered differences in video games are reflections of both the video-game industry and the home lives of girls in her study. Girls reported that games designed for and marketed to them often operate in accordance with a rigid form of femininity that does not capture their attention. Furthermore, video games are a leisure activity that many felt was denied to them, in part due to the challenges of accessing video [End Page 194] games within their homes. Limited access was often attributed to the role of brothers and the assumed masculinity of video games, as well as rules imposed by parents on access to certain games and hardware to play the games. In addition to the gendered differences advertised by marketing companies, the girls’ understanding of how video games fit into their personal lives, and access to video games, Cunningham also looks at how feminism is playing a role in video-game culture at large. Historically, female gamers have been excluded from the public spaces of gaming including, but not limited to, gaming conventions (Huntemann 75), Xbox Live clans (Gray 413), and in e-sports competitions (Witkowski 186). Within these spaces, Nina B. Huntemann, Kishonna L. Gray, and Emma Witkowski have all shown that female participation is policed and regulated in ways that keep the gaming space masculine oriented. Furthermore, Gray argues that these spaces are also policed to keep the spaces white through such tactics as linguistic profiling and the use of language in the spaces (414–16). Recent changes brought about by hashtag activism have shown that cultural discourses surrounding feminism, gender, and video games are changing, and, as a result, video game spaces are becoming more friendly to those who have historically been excluded. The Gamergate controversy—a campaign of hate speech and sexual harassment directed toward female video game designers by young, male gamers— highlights how issues of sexism, gender discrimination, and feminism have been making their way into these discourses for the last decade. Cunningham argues that it is within these feminist conversations that video games have the potential to make an impact in shaping larger cultural values. She also argues that STEM-directed community groups show potential for change, as they provide opportunities to girls of all ages to participate in video-game design. While Cunningham argues for the developmental benefits that these programs provide to a marginalized group within the video-game industry, she also adds that the economic justifications that tend to be featured as benefits of these types of programs are not reflected in real video game development companies. Women within the gaming industry still face problems with being hired and staying with companies for any extended amount of time. Cunningham presents a well-researched perspective...