University of Helsinki
The media discussion surrounding digital gaming tends to be risk- and problem-oriented. For example, computer video gaming has been depicted as causing mental health problems and reducing social competence and cognition. Such public concerns are often heavily gendered by emphasizing how young boys lose out due to their gaming habits.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) involve long term intense social bonds between male players. Still, there is not much knowledge on how masculinity constructs work as glue in these game communities. A new CEACG-study investigates masculine identities in applications (N=210) for community membership of a MMORPG community in Finland.
Researchers Matilda Hellman and Maija Majamäki draw on three identity dimensions (virtual, real, and projective) and three masculinity dimensions (heroic, ordinary, and revolting) showing that gamers emphasize real-world identity’s ordinary and deviant masculinities. This means that in the community, the male gamers tend to present themselves as geeks who play and who are not part of a hegemonic masculinity culture. Heroic real-life identity constructs are almost non-existing.
Constructs of the virtual in-game identity contained attributes and characteristics of the gamers’ gaming skills. An ordinary masculine identity was emphasized in view of gamers’ suitability as member of the clan and it was further underscored by “geek” and “nerd” characteristics.
This position of gamers feeling like an outsider group in society at large, but still emphasizing the “ordinary” and being the “average guy”, deviates very much from governing media images of gamers’ communities as breeding grounds of isolation and aggression.
Read the article here.
Hellman, C. M. E. & Majamäki, M. (2016) Ordinary men with extra-ordinary skills? Masculinity constructs among MMORPG-gamers. Journal of Research in Gender Studies 6(2):90-106.