Issues of harassment, inequity, and lack of diversity in the video game industry, culture, and community came to the fore in 2014, when numerous critics and writers were targeted by campaigns of online harassment. However, the issues at the heart of this phenomenon did not begin that year, nor have they yet been resolved. In The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture, edited by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson, writers, critics, and scholars of videogaming explore these issues in depth. Many of the contributors experienced these difficulties first-hand on social media, in online communities, or within games themselves.
Identity and representation are key concepts in massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft. These are examined in depth by Zek Valkyrie in Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online became Who We Are Offline. More so than many other types of games, MMORPGs encourage players to play for long periods over long stretches of time. Though they provide online spaces to explore one’s own identity, they also have the potential to expose game players to hostility, prejudice, and harassment—even, Valkyrie points out, for “casual” players less invested in time and resources. Positing that representation and identity are integral to analyses of video games, but continue to be neglected, Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, edited by Jennifer Malkowski and Treaandrea Russworm, comprises essays that, taken together, build a critical blueprint for expanding these topics in scholarly research. In Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture Adrienne Shaw proposes that gender, race, and sexuality are essential but inseparable elements of interaction between players and games, and thus also essential parts of game criticism. Finally, Carolyn Cunningham’s Games Girls Play: Contexts of Girls and Video Games focuses on gender inequities in gaming access and representation—particularly how perceptions and access to games and other technology in homes are often divided by gender, limited, or outright withheld from girls.
