So after the first tutorial today I found covering aspects of the course including what was discussed about what is a gamer quite interesting. There was one point I found quite intense to discuss and it was the one about what 'labels' a person a gamer. People brought up brilliant points like whether you play for 30 minutes to 7, 8, 9 hours. If you play a game, you are a gamer and it led to others saying that maybe making it a habit leads to it being classified as a gamer.
When the point of masculinity in gaming was brought up, at first I thought nothing much of it. Growing up, gaming was always considered a male thing amoung my friends but there was always one or two of us that would break those 'boundaries' and join the boys in Tekken or some random that forced you to pull a gun and shoot someones brains out, not that it bothered us. What I found quite interesting is that after it was discussed, I thought how the media may portray it.
People have grown up to believe that gaming is not associated with females and I guess some part of me believes that the media may have something to do with it. Whenever there is a gaming conference or some new game coming out, and journalists are sent out to cover the story, there interviews are mainly based around male gamers. So the media may have some influence into what society believe. Another point I thought up, and correct me if I'm wrong, but when there has been a story in the news about a teenager or a kid being jailed or sentenced or something, it has always been a male. Like that teenager in America who broke into a police station, stole a gun and ended up shooting all the cops in the station. In court, it was uncovered he was playing a video game just hours before and ended up thinking 'oh this'll be cool to do in real life because I'm basing my life around this game'. The teenager was a guy. Or the one that got drunk and stabbed I don't know how many people and it turned out he was a hardcore Grand Theft Auto gamer. That was a guy too. Which makes me wonder, we hardly ever see, if any, females in the news murdering or stabbing or stealing in real life only to blame it on a videogame they'd been playing hours before and this makes me think that the media play a large role in being gender specific when it comes to gamers, potentially because gaming it considered largely masculine.
Yeap, that's all I got so far. All this linking into each other starts to get confusing because it's so contradicting.
Jenni M.
Yeap, that's all I got so far. All this linking into each other starts to get confusing because it's so contradicting.
Jenni M.
Some excellent points there, Jenni, and I think you're absolutely correct about the role played by the media in the public perception of what a gamer is. Even more insidious is the way that some gamers may adopt that persona from the media's portrayal of them.
ReplyDeleteI find the notions of masculinity associated with gaming to be fascinating, so hopefully we will have some great discussions in future weeks.