Gender in Gaming (WisCon 30 panel)

Panel Description

59 Gender in Gaming Feminism, Sex, and Gender•Conference Room 5• Friday, 10:15-11:30 p.m.

Gender dynamics in-character and out of character in role playing games and LARPs can be pretty complex. This panel will discuss gender perceptions and how they affect plotting, characterization and game play; delving into experiences of play and into theory.

Panelists

M: John H. Kim, Bill Humphries, Heather Kinast Porter, Victor Jason Raymond, Gregory G. Rihn

Moderator Comments

This was a wide-ranging discussion of issues of gender within gaming, including many comments from the audience. As moderator, I felt self-conscious that we only had one woman on the panel. However, we drew out many comments and anecdotes from the audience on this. There was discussion on several levels, including how gender issues can be raised within the context of game fiction on the one hand, and female players within male-dominated games on the other. I had come to the panel intending to concentrate on the feminist and gender-explorative games -- since my impression of the WisCon general trend was to talk more about feminist writing rather than criticize non-feminist writing. However, there were a lot of good points which came up about the latter.

Overview

Friday 10:15-11:30 p.m, Gender in Gaming. John H. Kim (moderator), Bill Humphries, Heather Kinast Porter, Victor Jason Raymond, and Gregory G. Rihn.

Discussion began with questions to the panelists about the history of gender issues in gaming. I started by asking panelists to introduce themselves.

• Gregory Rihn described himself as a long-time gamer (since the 70's), and ....
• Victor Raymond was also a long-time gamer, and
• Bill Humphries was a lapsed gamer, who had not played for a long time, and brought feminist
• Heather Kinast Porter was a second-generation gamer, who had
• John Kim described himself as a "gaming slut" who had played

Original transcript notes by Liz Henry - please correct or fill in or add commentary

Transcript (Incomplete)

The panel began with the moderator asking everyone about their history of dealing with gender issues within gaming.

Gregory R. discussed how awareness of gender issues came up early on in gaming from cross-gender play and romances within an all-male group, such as playing a female spy within a campaign of the James Bond 007 RPG, whose James-Bond-like exploits.

Victor R. mentioned ...

Bill H: Discussed a long-time Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign that included mix-up of genders as well as gender-relevent issues. Asked how much was our community, and how much game? He said it was partly the game since if you want to kick vampire butt they you play a slayer -- and the source material in the Buffy series included plenty of feminist material. Also mentioned German board-games, and mixed gender play in general. He disliked rules-heavy games -- i.e. simulationist divisional level of the eastern front -- and that the more sophisticated play is going in the direction of simpler rules.

heather kinast porter - Mentioned her two gaming groups. First a gaming club, 1/3 female and 2/3 male, where almost everyone plays gender bent characters. Some people even played 90% gender bent characters...

Liz H.: Gender bent? or other gender than they are?

John K.: Presumably opposite gender from the player rather than transsexual ...

Lee A.: or other genders than male or female

Heather: yes.

Heather: females better at playing male chars than males are at playing female chars. although i know some.

John K.: I want to get thru my end and then one more round of questions. For myself, for most of my history I don't think gender has been an overt issue for groups that i was in. Some exceptions but that was the generality. Where i got interested in it was, a period when i was away overseas for a few weeks and got involved with MUDding.

Bill H.: define MUDding

John K.: Multi User Dungeons. There, when gender switching, you really don't know the actual gender of the person playing. That was fascinating . people would have .. they would assume that you were female in real life if you had a fem char. You could see all sorts of gender dynamics there. That's actually a really big issue for online games. people don't ... they know about dont' realize the impact.

Liz H.: Was the impact that you felt the impact for the first time of being treated like a girl? In a sexist way?

John K.: I guess maybe... More importantly, you could log off and come on again as a male char and hang out with the same people. People who log into chat rooms pretending to be 13 year old girls are usually...

Audience: ...Policemen. *laughter*

John K.: Yes... hahaha... But role-playing gives an excuse to try this out. In a campaign of mine (the Vinland game), a girl character dressed as man to get revenge. Most of other players did not know her character was really a woman. The player was a woman. We went through a quarter of the campaign with people not knowing. so gender was an issue. and more in the buffy game.

Lee: what are you takling about... give us examples of gender issues in the buffy game

John K.: The slayer and her witch girlfriend had a baby.

Lee: how do you deal with a pregnant slayer?

John K.: The process of birth itself was super easy, like pulling off a band-aid to a Slayer...

Cynthia G.: the child care issues were the big thing.

John K.: She asked: how do i take care of the baby and fight evil? She convinced her partner Max to split her with a duplication spell. so she could be split into her fighting self and her mommy self.

Audience: that makes t hings easier.

Cynthia: not really.

John K.: She had issues with having a split personality of duplication.

Cynthia: Playing in that Buffy campaign, I didn't switch. i played the same age and gender as myself -- a middle aged woman i can do. It was my first role-playing game.

Bill H.: Magic item that caused people's souls to become deeply "intertwingled". *laughter* This was a side effect of a spell that... the PCs of the group switched bodies.

Jennifer: in later d&d... i play a warforged.

Audience : whats a warforged?

- Several guys try to answer what a construct is. - liz yells at them to let her answer -

Jennifer: a construct without a gender... and...

Victor R.: When gaming first began in the mid 70s... some of this stuff got explored almost instantaneously. Lee Gold... and people would write about their campaigns right from the very start. dealing with isues of gender. because the rules themselves were not very explicit about any of this stuff. over time this led to... this is not reflected in the official rules till much later. in early issues of dragon. what to do about having female characters. also what if you want to do something else. from very first issues of alarums and excursions and the wild hunt. these discussions taking place below the official level.

John K.: Lee Gold had an article about self-censorship and homosexuality. She had a norse game and a japanese setting game, and researched and had a bunch of material on homosexuality which she left out by herself. Though she found out by talking to the publisher much later that they would have taken it out anyway. I want to bring out one more thing. There are much greater possibilities for gender in gaming. When I went to the scandinavian conventions there are much more gender pushing articles out there in scandinavia. Melan Himmel Och Hav ("Between Heaven and Sea") was a live action game run in Sweden. Everyone was recast as morning people and evening people, rather than male or female. They had different social mores and stereotypes. They could have sex, but they had sex with their hands. There was a code where you could have.. within the game, you could have sex by touching up to the point of the shoulders. The game was 72 hours long, a lot of alienation in it. Within the fiction, it was 4 days since the days were 18 hours. By the accounts, it was very powerful. for everyone to go into this.. they all went to sleep and woke up and were in character for 4 days with all their interactions and then left. everyon it described it as a

Victor R.: that gets back to... idea of psychodrama.

Phredd: i was playing queer characters and switching gender 20 years ago. what i find more intersting is that there are systems coming out that you solve problems not by the end of the sword.

Audience: it depends on the group

Phredd: It's not just the roup, it depends ont he rule system and game culture

Victor R.: formalizing non-violent interactions

John K.: It has a lot to do with the internet. niche game's , gamers bringing their ideas directly out to people rather than having to go through trraditional gamem publishing companies. which have very narrow views about what's going to sella dn how they're going to sell it and who to

Victor R.: Jonathan Tweet (author of third edition D&D) wanted to use "she" as a pronoun in writing it...

John K.: and I did a textual study of how female characters were rpresneted in d and d and they did not come out so well

Michael Menard: i helped write the three little brown books.

• applause*

Bill H.: thank you for ruining my childhood.

Michael: i was in a math class in 7th grade with rob kuntz who wrote grayhawk ... one thing that astounds me is that people want or expect rules for things that , back when we did the three brown books was, how can we convey t he important parts in the fewest possible words:? adn there, hi my name's michael and i'm a star wars geek. i've gotten invovled in a star wars game. it wants me to do the ... it's the most overbown turgid complicated piece of shit i've seen.. which ... *rumble in room* with gender, people wnat to write rules for stuff that .... you want to use your fast talk? well let's hear it.

• general rumble of objection*

Liz H.: there are gender problems with that

someone: you might not be good at t he thing...

Michael: well then practice it.

• rumble*

Greg Rihn: amber. diceless. never sold a lot of supplements... you don't need a whole lot... well rule bloat, one of the oldest jokes in

Heather: for people who aren't good at fast talking, we can have a mix of dice rolling and actual fast talking. if you aren't good at it, you can try, and if you do well you might get extra experience for it.

Audience: i'm married to the guy who wrote the little brown books. and i misunderstood the title of the panel because i thought it woudl be about women gamers and guy gamers. and at Gen Con... we were sitting htere.. we were the bait. people would walk in and go !!!!!!!!! girls!!!!! there was thiscrowd aroudn our table.

Heather: some surveys.. percentages

Paige:: i've played every kind of char. and the thing i've found interestign, no one really cares. except during sex scene... maybe homophobia.. theyr'e interacting with me not t he character.

John K.: um. actually they are interacting with you.

• various* discussion of sex and violence, why okay to kill your friends pretend but not have sx with t hem pretend.. violence is clean and sex is dirty

Greg R.: ...

Bill H.: no matter how you look at it, I'm flirting with Jim.

Victor R.: as a sociologist there needs to be some comment on that that it's more complex than that.

[I so much want to talk about female characters being defined by their rapability. when i play a female char... -- Liz H.]

Victor: permission to play something other than what we are.

John K.: um

Victor: I'm not done... i'm not done. frame of interactions. between our chars and between ourselves as individuals and we don't have mechanisms for dealing with that collision of frames , EXCEPT for the social mores we've developed within our own social group. that having been said, one coudl argue that with the frame of giving yourself permission to play something different that eventually that ferame collision will fade because you're starting from a deeply held impression that you are different. It's similar to what an actor has to do to take on a role. does that help?

Paige: yes. because if i'm a chauvinistic black man who's straight.

Liz H.: arrrgh i keep busting in. but it does matter because you're playing your concept of what you think a chauvinistic black man is and you're not one and that does matter...

Woman in Audience: i've worked in miniatures and gaming industry for years and tabletop war gaming and by extension strategy wargaming. i was probably the only girl i knew who had any interest in playing war games unless they were attached at the hip to a boy who was playing. i've noticed from the manufacturing end that there seems tobe a growing interest in miniature gaming among women. i'm not re because of the painting end of it has been dominated by women very laguely at GenCon in the last few years. and women are thinking, oo, painting, i can do that, ooo i could build a whole army of little naked catwomen! *laughter*

Audience: That's psychological warfare!

Wargamer in Audience: ...and my groups were half men and half women.

Man in Audience: there are a lot of women in gaming now, it is increasing.

John K.: in the surveys there is a perception that women do roleplay and don't wargame, but the numbers are equally low... about the same at 15-20%.

Wargamer in Audience: My guy friends are more surprised that I like wargaming but not roleplaying.

John K.: maybe once there's a foothold there's a lot of 50-50 groups and a lot of all male groups.

Woman in green shirt: your surveys may not reach the female role-playing gamers because they aren't in the same communities.

John K.: Well, I agree about that, but most write-in surveys find less than 10% women. The 1999 Wizards survey, which used random polling to avoid that bias, found 19%.

I had to leave the room a few times b/c of phone calls so this is v. incomplete. - Liz H.

Cabell: Something about online MMORPGs is that the anonymity can be very normative. Since people don't know the gender of who is really playing, they can dismiss the actions of female players who do not act according to their preconceptions. (i.e. If you don't act girly, then you aren't really a girl.)