Human IT - tidskrift för studier av IT ur ett humanvetenskapligt perspektiv

Online Gaming and Embodied Subjectivities: Methods to Reach Women’s Social Story of Gaming

 - av Louise Madden, Cardiff School of Social Sciences

Abstract:

The article introduces a set of methods that have been used to explore the richness of the social world around women’s relations to online gaming. It uses critical psychological notions of subjectivities and relationalities to argue for an approach to gaming as an embodied social practice, which takes place within a complex of relations that operate together to produce women as (non-)gaming subjects. Methods are developed to investigate this view of gaming, and findings from a pilot study are presented within three themes: firstly, the place of guilt, pain and other emotionality in the experience of gaming, secondly, the impact of breakdown and interruption in terms of crashing machines, inadequate Internet connections and availability of games and game-time, and thirdly, the role of significant others in how games are experienced.