Today’s Plan:
- Introduce Project Two
- Watch Some Videos
Project Two: Representations of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Games
Our first project this semester approached games as aesthetic objects; that is, we treated them as artistic objects and analyzed them to learn/challenge how they operate. Our second project this semester will approach games as social objects. Rather than analyze how they operate on us (affect our emotions and/or shape our attitudes), our analysis will focus on how games represent marginalized groups (particularly in the gaming sphere, which has a notorious reputation for being white, male, and hostile to difference).
You will work together in groups to analyze representations of gender, race, or sexuality in a specific genre of video games. You will work as a team to design a research methodology, collect “artifacts” (which collectively form your “corpus”), and analyze those artifacts. As a group, you will construct a heuristic for that analysis (a list of yes/no or a likert-like scale of things you can see). Unlike our first project, we do not have time to actually play the games for this project. Your group will analyze something like:
- Game covers
- Character selection screens
- Game trailers
- Significant NPC’s
Then, you will (collaboratively or individually–your choice) develop a paper of around 2000 words. Drafts of the paper will be due the Friday before spring break. Final drafts will be due Friday, March 26th. The paper will follow the “traditional” outline for qualitative or quantitative research:
- Outline
- Literature Review (we will likely skip this step by incorporating it into the introduction)
- Methodology
- How did you find the artifacts in your corpus?
- How did you analyze them?
- Data
- Discussion
- How does your findings compare to previous studies?
- What didn’t surprise you?
- More importantly, what did surprise you?
- Why do you think you found what you found? What do you think you would find in 5 years [is there a trend? a reason to think some things might change?]
- Conclusion
Let Me Do the Literature Review for You (Sorta)
The inspiration for this project lies in the work of This will be built off of the work of two other game scholars. First, the work of Extra Credit–I want to watch an example of this (to plant the seed for a future project), but also stress that this is the kind of deep analysis we can’t do for this second project.
Second, Anita Sarkeesian, and her “Tropes in Games” project. Tropes in Games started as a kickstarter in 2013; Sarkeesian produced a series of videos examining the stereotypical portrayals of women in games. Let’s take a look.
We might need this.
And this: Hawkeye Initiative.
Sarkeesian has done considerable work in this area. I see two ways of building off her work. First, we might explore whether representations of women have progressed: are contemporary games making the same mistakes? Are there some genres where this is more of an issue than others? Can we extend her analysis of Beyond Good and Evil to find other positive representations?
Second, we can extend her robust methodology to other representations: can we identify and develop a list of racial tropes for characters of color (for instance, “the criminal,” “the athlete,” “the minstrel,” “the black panther,” “the rapper”). Can we investigate representations of sexuality in games? Are there tropes for LBGTQ+ characters? Can we (maybe outside of the Mass Effect series) identify positive representations of non-CIS/heteronormative/binary sexuality?
Full disclosure: I originally wrote the paragraphs above in 2018, and I just copy/paste them every time I teach this class. However, I do think there is some progress that suggests we are seeing better representation (even if Sarkeesian herself has done research that leaves her underwhelmed).
Project Two Calendar
Below is the calendar for this project. Three COVID related complications:
- We are only meeting once a week, so you will be responsible for keeping up with quite a bit of work outside of class.
- You will be collaborating with folks from the other class session (T/R). There will be collaborative workspaces (Google Docs) in which you can share materials, pose questions, etc.
- The reason this has to be a team project is that for your research to be valid, you collectively have to analyze more material than any one person reasonably could. Say, for instance, you wanted to analyze how many video game trailers contained a woman wearing a chainmail bikini. How many trailers could you watch in a week? How many more trailers could 6 people watch? Exactly.
One more thing: there exists the possibility of shifting which day folks come to class. But I am hesitant to do this because I know a lot of people chose their day (T or R) around their work schedule and cannot easily change.
I am thinking about cancelling class week 8 so that you can meet on Zoom with your team to finalize your research findings before you write your papers. But even this doesn’t really solve the T/R commitment problem. [Frustrated “COVID-sucks-and-I-am-over-it” sigh]. One thing at a time–let’s look at the calendar.
Week 6
Project Introduction (Extra-Credit, Feminist Frequency). Introduction to Sarkeesian’s work. Thinking about methodology. Writing a research annotation.
Homework: Read and annotate 3 pieces (see homework below; turn-in via Canvas). Sign up for either gender, race, or sexuality group via Google Sheets.
Week 7
Robust review of Research Methodology / Designing a study. Read Moyer, Do Violent Video Games Trigger Aggression?
Are you using a likert scale type of device?
Nail down how each group will collect and catalogue artifacts for analysis. Share team workspaces.
Homework: Draft methodology. Collect artifacts for analysis. (Both assignments in team workspaces–the methodology has to be complete so you can collect the artifacts according to methodology).
Week 8
Revisit methodology with an emphasis on coding scheme. I/we (when does this happen?) has to turn your methodology into something that can be tracked via a spreadsheet.
Test methodologies in class (so 15 minutes on gender, 15 minutes on race, 15 minutes on sexuality). Make sure the machines are running smooth because…
Homework: Do. All. The. Coding. Make sure coding is all collected in one spreadsheet.
Week 9
Draft that paper. I will go over paper format expectations in class. I will also go over visualizing data (using Google Sheets to create simple graphs).
Week 10: Spring Break
I begrudgingly will comment on the drafts over the break.
Week 11: Revise Papers and Begin Final Research Projects
What it says^^^.
For Next Class
Read and annotate the following 2 of the following 6 academic articles:
- Shaw. 2016. Where Is the Queerness in Games? Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games
- Bayeck et al. 2018. Representations of Africans in Popular Video Games
- Utsch. 2017. Queer Identities in Video Games: Data Visualization for a Quantitative Analysis of Representation
- Burgess et al. 2007. Sex, Lies, and Video Games: The Portrayal of Male and Female Characters on Video Game Covers
- Gestos et al. Representation in Video Games: A Systemic Review of Literature in Consideration of Adult Female Well-Being [note–meta analysis, keyword method–focus on findings]
- Burgess et al. 2011. Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial Stereotypes in Video Games
You can find these articles in the files section of Canvas. I recommend picking two articles with different foci–the purpose of this assignment is to familiarize you with different ways of developing research studies–how do you select objects to analyze? How do you analyze them? How do you build your “research machine”?
Writing annotations is a part of any research project: they are essentially a quasi-formal approach to writing reading notes. I teach annotating as a three-paragraph process:
- Paragraph One: the first paragraph covers the purpose, findings, and recommendations of the article. What did the authors set out to prove? What are their major findings? And/Or what concrete recommendations do they make based on those findings? [You should find this material in the intro, discussion, and conclusion sections]
- Paragraph Two: the second paragraph details the methods, including how many subjects were in the study, how subjects were found, the location of the study (if relevant), the length of the study, how data was analyzed/synthesized, and any other significant details regarding their research process. [The Methods section]
- Paragraph Three: What you write in the third paragraph of an annotation is unique to the project at hand. Here’s where you free write, developing ideas about how this source might contribute to your project. In this case, I am asking you to design a study of video games, examining representations of race, gender, or sexuality. So–what in this study is particularly valuable to that project? What ideas do you have? How can we use this?
