technoculture314-09

I am currently in the market for a new laptop. When before, my search priorities were weight, size, and design, now I spend endless hours comparing technical aspects such as memory, hard drive, video card, keyboard size, battery life, display resolution and operating temperature. Why the sudden change in searched qualities? Gaming. A few weeks back, lectures based on gaming emphasized the unbalanced gender playing field and stereotypes of women purport by gaming. Although this is possibly the most important issue in relation to gaming and gender, I think that it is also imperative to look at minor effects of gaming on women.
From personal experience and observations of other female gamers, it seems that most female gamers have a better understanding of and a more “fervent” interest in the technical aspects of technology. Although it is true that men are more interested in the actual functionality of the technology while women are more interested in the social aspects, women, especially women who play games, are slowly being immersed into the male side of things.
For me, it was my fascination for the game “The Sims” that got me interested in the technical aspects of my laptop. Upon playing the game, I noticed that sometimes the game would lag or crash. So I set upon finding a way to enhance my laptop, thus enhancing my gaming experience. Upon much Internet research, I found out that a larger RAM and a larger HDD would help with the lagging problem. Thus I bought a larger RAM and a larger HDD and upgraded my laptop myself. Now, I know that this isn’t much of a big feat for men, but how many women can say they have upgraded their own laptop RAM and HDD? While in search for the RAM and the HDD, I also learned the difference between DDR2 and DDR1, and SATA and PATA. Upon having to (or really just wanting to) upgrade the parts myself, I learned how to successfully open up my laptop without breaking everything, and the places of where everything was.
My interest in technology was furthered by my developing interest for The Sims. When the Sims 3 came out, I was dying to try it out. I was unsure about the system requirements so again, I searched around on the web and found a helpful website (http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest) that determines if your computer is able to run specific games. From this I learned that I would need a better video card and processor (in which I learned about NVIDIA GeForce, ATI Radeon, Intel GMA and GHz), which is impossible because a video card is welded onto a laptop. Thus, I am back to my opening sentence, I have no other choice but to look for another laptop that will meet my requirements.
Although this blog post is primarily based on my own experience, I know that other women who are frequent gamers are also more technology savvy than most others because it is a requirement for gamers. From what I have observed, women who play more complex, competitive games such as WoW are especially more knowledgeable about technology. Thus the interest in gaming fuels interest in technology.

*Another piece of actual evidence is the growing number of websites dedicated to women interested in technology. A particularly useful one that I often visit (although it is void of information about laptops) is http://www.technologyforgirls.com/ , and the “Jargon Buster” section is especially helpful!

The 2nd lecture pointed out how even in the Digital Age, a gender hierarchy exists. Elana Bertozzi expresses the difference in treatment to females gamers and also the difference in level of expectation towards male and female players.

Bertozzi points out the cultural history of males having to be "protective of women and seek to help them", this idea came from males' being considered the dominant sex. The society today has evolved where male and female are considered equals, but the cultural history interferes with the way males act towards female game players.

The level of expectation between males also make males reluctant to engage in competition with females. Bertozzi points out "when a male is competing against a female, he is in a lose/lose situation". The society has an underlying expectation that males should beat females in one on one competition, but if a male is beaten by a female he loses social status between his male friends. The difference in expectation level may not be just due to cultural history, but the fact that females have been objectified by males. They have been objectified to look 'beautiful' and only for male desires which undermines the value of female players in the gmaing world.

Female gammers do not help themselves as they criticize the skills of other female players and alienates personal excellence. De Boer pointed out "social leveling and social harmony are higher values in female groups than encouraging individuals to attain and express personal peak performance". While males rank themselves according to individual success and skill within a group, females hold a different criteria in social status according to Bertozzi. Bertozzi states "female rank is often determined by beauty, thiness, blondness and attractiveness to males" which can only encourage males to objectify women.

Elena Bertozzi's reading highlighted a few things about gender and digital game play that makes a lot of sense. Girls are starting to cross into this male dominated online world so it is worth a look at, because the girls didn't forget their 'social rights' and feminist ideologies, fellas!

Bertozzi had a particular point that really hit home with me. Bertozzi explains how females are seen as the 'weaker sex' irl (in real life, for all you non-nerds), and how this acceptance of females needing to be protected by males, and more importantly, for males never to be aggressive towards woman, leaps over into the online world from the real world. My question is, does this bring the good with the bad?

I play online games myself but casually. However, there are people that invest most of their day 'earning gold' or 'grinding' or 'pvping' (player versus player combat, in online role playing games). These people take gaming to the extreme and consider personal hygiene a joke. These gamers tend to be males from my experience, have a feeling of ownership, or a stronger sense of citizenship, to the online gaming world. So when we have a *gasp* female come and challenge them, in the form of the attention they get from other players, and their social status within a particular group, misogyny can rear it's ugly head.

An example from World of Warcraft:

"What the f**k, why did she get those boots, is it 'cause she's a girl?"
"Haha, look at that stupid newbie b*tch, she had no idea what to do and got owned".

We all like to believe we live in an egalitarian world, but in this sense, digital gaming makes it easy for the misogynist in every male to rear its ugly head. And the main reason? Anonymity. You can call a girl whatever you like online and there's no fear of retribution, the worst she can do is call you names back. I don't know about the girls out there, but that to me isn't very inviting.

Although I tend to see the whole Male vs. Female FPS (first person shooter) argument as a little redundant (I think we're all aware that Men tend to ‘masculanise’ their hobbies, computer games being one of these). I am intrigued by the Female 'power user' tendencies to denounce other players online for lacking what the other might see as sufficient skill (noob), and as the research suggest, be less willing to help others to learn new skills within game-play. I reluctantly place myself in the 'power user' category, although just meeting the threshold of 'several' hours of gaming a week, and it is in my experience that men are far more competitive and less likely to help other players. I am speaking specifically about Counterstrike, where having played religiously as a teenager I found there to be little or no desire for teenage boys to dote on other players, secret tips or tactics. Perhaps it is my own stereotypes relating to gender but I see this research as being in direct contrast to my own personal experience. At the risk of sounding old fashioned or even chauvinistic, isn’t it Women whose instinct lends itself to caring and nurture? And if so, why once a new-media platform is introduced, do these presumed values go out with the bathwater? Perhaps there has been a shift since my days entrenched in the FPS online community (2001-2004), in male and female attitudes not towards games, but other gamers. Are there any Females out there who would agree/disagree and/or guys who have had a similar experience to me?

Tim W