Gender Age And Digital Games In The Domestic Context

Western digital game play has shifted in important ways over the last decade, with a plethora of personal devices affording a range of increasingly diverse play experiences. Despite the celebration of a more inclusive environment of digital game play, very little grounded research has been devoted to the examination of familial play and the domestication of digital games, as opposed to evolving public and educational contexts. This book is the first study to provide a situated investigation of the site of family play— the shared spaces and private places of gameplay within the domestic sphere. It carries out an empirically grounded and critical analysis of what marketing and sales discourses about shifts in the digital games audience actually look like in the space of the home, as well as the social and cultural role these ludic technologies take in the everyday practices of the family in the domestic context. It examines the material realities of video game technologies in the home; including time management and spatial organization, as well as the discursive role these devices play in discussions of technological competence and its complex relationship to age, generational differences, and gender performance. Harvey’s interdisciplinary approach and innovative methodology will hold great critical appeal for those studying digital culture, children’s media, and feminist studies of new media, as well as critical theories of technology and leisure and sport theory.

Western digital game play has shifted in important ways over the last decade, with a plethora of personal devices affording a range of increasingly diverse play experiences. Despite the celebration of a more inclusive environment of digital game play, very little grounded research has been devoted to the examination of familial play and the domestication of digital games, as opposed to evolving public and educational contexts. This book is the first study to provide a situated investigation of the site of family play— the shared spaces and private places of gameplay within the domestic sphere. It carries out an empirically grounded and critical analysis of what marketing and sales discourses about shifts in the digital games audience actually look like in the space of the home, as well as the social and cultural role these ludic technologies take in the everyday practices of the family in the domestic context. It examines the material realities of video game technologies in the home; including time management and spatial organization, as well as the discursive role these devices play in discussions of technological competence and its complex relationship to age, generational differences, and gender performance. Harvey’s interdisciplinary approach and innovative methodology will hold great critical appeal for those studying digital culture, children’s media, and feminist studies of new media, as well as critical theories of technology and leisure and sport theory.

Games Girls Play examines the role that video games play in girls’ lives, including how games structure girls’ leisure time, how playing video games constitutes different performances of femininity, and what influences girls to play or not play video games. Through interviews, focus groups, and qualitative content analyses, this book analyzes girls’ involvement with video games. It also examines different contexts in which discourses of girls and video games occur, including girl-oriented video games, activist efforts to change the video game industry, and informal education programs that teach girls video game design.

Tracing the genealogy of our physical interaction with mobile devices back to textile and needlecraft culture. For many of our interactions with digital media, we do not sit at a keyboard but hold a mobile device in our hands. We turn and tilt and stroke and tap, and through these physical interactions with an object we make things: images, links, sites, networks. In The Fabric of Interface, Stephen Monteiro argues that our everyday digital practice has taken on traits common to textile and needlecraft culture. Our smart phones and tablets use some of the same skills—manual dexterity, pattern making, and linking—required by the handloom, the needlepoint hoop, and the lap-sized quilting frame. Monteiro goes on to argue that the capacity of textile metaphors to describe computing (weaving code, threaded discussions, zipped files, software patches, switch fabrics) represents deeper connections between digital communication and what has been called “homecraft” or “women's work.” Connecting networked media to practices that seem alien to media technologies, Monteiro identifies handicraft and textile techniques in the production of software and hardware, and cites the punched cards that were read by a loom's rods as a primitive form of computer memory; examines textual and visual discourses that position the digital image as a malleable fabric across its production, access, and use; compares the digital labor of liking, linking, and tagging to such earlier forms of collective production as quilting bees and piecework; and describes how the convergence of intimacy and handiwork at the screen interface, combined with needlecraft aesthetics, genders networked culture and activities in unexpected ways.

Gender Equality and Responsible Business places gender equality at the heart of the responsible business agenda with the aim of contributing to CSR practice as well as research. Discussion about gender issues in the field of corporate responsibility has focused on workplace issues and corporate boards, which are important areas of work. However, the great benefit of exploring gender issues through a responsible business lens is that this requires us to also examine the wider gender impacts of business in the marketplace – for example, with regard to suppliers, supply chains, and consumers, and with respect to the communities where business operates, and the wider ecological environment – indeed throughout corporate value chains.Through contributions from practitioners in business and civil society, as well as academia, this book broadens the agenda, opening the field to new voices, and facilitates dialogue among and between practitioners and researchers. Contributions within the edited collection elucidate current practice, bring new perspectives, and help us to expand the field of responsible business with regard to gender equality, and beyond.

Media narratives inform our ideas of the future - and Games are currently making a significant contribution to this medial reservoir. On the one hand, Games demonstrate a particular propensity for fantastic and futuristic scenarios. On the other hand, they often serve as an experimental field for the latest media technologies. However, while dystopias are part of the standard gaming repertoire, Games feature utopias much less frequently. Why? This anthology examines playful utopias from two perspectives. It investigates utopias in digital Games as well as utopias of the digital game; that is, the role of ludic elements in scenarios of the future.

This book provides a thorough and novel examination of the gendered nature of innovations in the new economy. It tracks the contemporary shift from heavy industry to game industry and how this has altered relationships between gender, identity, corporate culture, creative work, and the future of business. Through empirical research and theoretical analysis, the authors present their own carefully contextualized cases and conceptual frameworks relating themes of innovation and gender to recent theories concerning globalization and transnationalism. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary text provides readers with insightful entries on what innovations are and the ways innovation processes become gendered. It explores the business landscape based on creative work and offers a wealth of information for scholars of entrepreneurship, management, sociology, cultural studies, and communication.

Cultural stereotypes to the contrary, approximately half of all video game players are now women. A subculture once dominated by men, video games have become a form of entertainment composed of gender binaries. Supported by games such as Diner Dash, Mystery Case Files, Wii Fit, and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood—which are all specifically marketed toward women—the gamer industry is now a major part of imagining what femininity should look like. In Ready Player Two, media critic Shira Chess uses the concept of “Player Two”—the industry idealization of the female gamer—to examine the assumptions implicit in video games designed for women and how they have impacted gaming culture and the larger society. With Player Two, the video game industry has designed specifically for the feminine ideal: she is white, middle class, heterosexual, cis-gendered, and abled. Drawing on categories from time management and caregiving to social networking, consumption, and bodies, Chess examines how games have been engineered to shape normative ideas about women and leisure. Ready Player Two presents important arguments about how gamers and game developers must change their thinking about both women and games to produce better games, better audiences, and better industry practices. Ultimately, this book offers vital prescriptions for how one of our most powerful entertainment industries must evolve its ideas of women.