"The Entrepreneurial Gamer": Regendering the Order of Play. Issue 7 (November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jenson, Jennifer; de Castell, Suzanne
• Other Names: Harvey Alison guest-editor.; Giddings Seth guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Games and culture. Volume 13:Issue 7(2018)
• Page Start: 728
• Page End: 746
• Publication Date: 2018-11
• Subjects: video game players -- ludic economies -- affective and immaterial labor -- video games -- gender; Games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Video games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Computer games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Interactive multimedia -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 303.4834
• DOI: 10.1177/1555412018755913
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1555-4120

Abstract

The designation "gamer" is structurally bound to networked economies of digital play that are rewarded fiscally, socially, and publically, an order of play that is proving difficult to overturn. That girls and women have enjoyed at best marginal positions within video game cultures is by now well recognized, yet at the very same time is too easily dismissed in light of persuasively documented increases in the numbers of women who play. This article traces a large-scale transformation of ludic engagement from participation to spectatorship that parallels the professionalizing and commodifying of traditionally embodied sports, games, and play to demonstrate how new and emerging economies of gameplay, far from opening up the playing field, threaten a further entrenchment of gendered relations.