CONCLUSION

My Findings

Based on the analysis of interviews with four regular Call of Duty users, the blog, Twitter testimonies and the auto-ethnography, the situation of women in this local video game community is imperfect, compared to the general media and literature portrayal of the situation of women in video game culture, the results are similar. With regard to gender issues, it is interesting to note that the perceptions of female and male respondents diverge quite significantly. The women interviewed in the study point to the existence of gender discrimination in the Call of Duty lobby in relation to the stereotype that women are not good players, whereas the men noted only a few isolated cases of sexist comments. Both women reported having been victims of occasional inappropriate behaviour, whereas the men who participated in the study stressed that this was a rare occurrence. In addition, the male respondents identified few labels attached to women, while the women respondents mentioned a number of labels that relate to women's bodies and sex lives or deny their 'true' nature as gamers, in contrast to the labels attached to men that relate to their gamer status or performance. The participants specified that women's voices are less respected than men's online.

Finally, such a binary conception of gender tends to obscure the differences between women and the different realities of minorities (gender, sexual and ethnic). They also perpetuate harmful norms of stereotypes such as that women are not good gamers because they have not been exposed to video games as much as men.

The results therefore repeatedly point to the negative impact of this stereotype on women online gamers. There is a certain fear that is perpetuated by reproducing this stereotype so that women play less often with their microphone on and find it harder to really integrate into the game, and if they do put the microphone on, they feel more pressure to perform when they do so.

Finally, it can be assumed that this stereotype feeds the lack of confidence and the imposter syndrome among women who want to integrate into the local Call of duty community. Impostor syndrome is defined as the tendency of an individual to underestimate their performance and feel that they do not belong or that their success or integration would be a mistake. The consequences of this syndrome include loss of self-confidence, anxiety or frustration due to the inability to feel (Kolligian Jr. and Sterberg, 1991, p. 309). Men tend to take up more space, while women participate less in online activities and conversations. All this information helped me to conclude that the community has a binary view of gender as socially constructed identities through norms and different rituals. For every woman, there is this idea that they are bad player.

Although participants did not observe any systemic sexism or harassment, several instances of derogatory behaviour were reported. The labels applied to women gamers also tended to refer to their bodies or sexuality rather than to their personality as gamers, as is the case for men. It is also important to note that the majority of men in the research do not report such incidents, believe that such problems hardly exist or do not exist at all, or that they affect both genders equally.

This denial of the risk of discrimination, sexism, and harassment faced by women echoes what some authors call complicit masculinity or negativity and undermines the denunciation of the toxic rituals and behaviours that take place within the game Call of duty.

Bibliography