![]() ![]() I critically approach the extensive literature produced by scholars interested in videogames, particularly those of ludology, narratology and cultural studies, evaluating their theoretical and methodological contributions to the field. By focusing on a critical assessment of gender and sexuality politics in the making and playing of videogames, this thesis highlights the configurative nature of interactions that inform videogames culture and discusses how the political appears in videogames content, production, consumption and media. This thesis investigates the characters, plots, and images in BioWare’s videogame trilogy Mass Effect and its transmedia universe with the aim of informing what is political about videogames and where politics is found in videogames. #Mortal kombat 12 banalities mods#I observed the interactions on the forums on which these mods were posted and interviewed these women in order to draw conclusions about how women are participating the community. I looked at whether or not these women were learning technical skills. I chose two mods created by female fans as case studies. I looked specifically at how women participated in the community and whether or not they were creating content for the game. I am looking at one game which has a fairly sizeable female fan base in order to see how women are playing the game, participating in the community, and creating content: the Swedish game Minecraft. This means that men might be benefiting from these communities more than women. However, men are generally more involved than women in both playing video games and participating in their fan communities. These digital skills will become increasingly important in the new global information economy. Creating this type of content for video games requires technical knowledge, and so creating it can lead to an increased digital literacy as well as spark interest in technology careers. Mods are user created add-ons to games that can change its art or mechanics. #Mortal kombat 12 banalities mod#While skills such as programming and digital art creation are often tedious to learn on one's own, they are much more easily learned with the motivation of creating a mod (modification) for a favorite video game. The fan communities around video games can be valuable spaces for learning. The Sims 2 skinning offers an example of a productive practice that does not go beyond what we understand as gameplay, but demands revisiting the very notion of gameplay itself. Consecutively, the approach in this thesis questions the straightforwardly embracing undertone of the current Web 2.0 `buzz' that claims democratisation of media production. Such practice therefore appears different from the `high' forms of subversive user-participation that are typically cherished in the studies of media use. ![]() While skinners seem to have a possibility to change a game that results from a male-dominated game development culture, their skinning is fundamentally facilitated and invited by the game they play. This work's original contribution to knowledge is in offering a nuanced view of female game playing which resists easy assimilation to some of the dominant concepts recently in play within the field of study, such as political resistance in the form of game content appropriation and female empowerment through video game play. Furthermore, a group of women players whose engagement with the game is characterised by creation and sharing of new and altered game content, the skinning of it, appears interesting since the women skinners resist traditional gender roles by taking active, productive positions towards the game. ![]() The Sims 2 (2004) computer game sets out a unique case for a study of women's player identities because it is both exceptionally popular among women and individuated by a theme and a structure that are understood as `feminine'. Small-scale ethnography tied together with an analysis of concurrent cultural discourses and the game system's characteristics allows a deep analysis of the construction of identities that conflict with the naturalised idea of a player. Engagement in such a culture, this work suggests, is characterised by confusion and incoherence for women players who are simultaneously taking part in male dominated leisure which marginalises them and a society which assumes gender equality as an acquired right. Despite some remarkable shifts in gender demographics of game players during the last decade, computer games remain male-gendered media. ![]()
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