ABOUT
As an art form, a performance, a technological product and a tool for socialisation, video games are now considered the tenth art form and occupy an undeniable place in our society.​ As several studies have shown, video game culture is still a sexist and stigmatised environment in which women have difficulty integrating. In our study, we investigate whether these issues also translate into a local community playing video game by conducting semi-structured interviews with two women and two men, as well as my own experience and photos of blogs and articles documenting the various issues encountered by women regularly playing the video game Call Of Duty in London.
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THE RESEARCH
Using different theories from the fields of sociology, anthropology, feminist studies and game studies, I interpreted the testimonies of the participants interviewed as well as the different findings through the archival and tried to draw general conclusions about the integration of women, the rituals and norms observed and the gender dynamics that prevail in the Call of Duty game.
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For the Interviews I decided to recruit 'regulars' of the game in order to ensure that their perception of women's place and gender dynamics within the online community was based on recurring observations, and not on anecdotal, one-off situations. I define regulars as players who have been playing at least 1 to more times a day for at least 5 years. In addition, the four individuals we interviewed do not necessarily represent the opinion of all members of the community. I have therefore tried to be cautious in interpreting the data and avoid generalising the results. In addition to this, I have research in depth different call of duty blogs and Twitter accounts of female players bringing more testimonies and accuracies to the research. The aim of the study is to gain a better understanding of what gender relations and women's place in a specific media culture might be.