Casual Threats: Feminizing Casual Video Games

Abstract

Casual Threats: The Feminization of Casual Video Games -Ada New Media https://adanewmedia.org/2013/06/issue2-vanderhoef/ 2/28 trade show events that perpetuate a culture of sexism while continuing to marginalize or render invisible the contributions of women in the industry.This work accentuates the need for a continual interrogation of not just video games and their audiences but also the industrial cycles of production and promotion that help construct the total discursive matrix of video game cultures.Along with Kafai et.al, Huntemann, and other scholars, I agree that the continued exploration of gender and video games remains as important as ever and thus situate my case study within the ongoing discussion of video games and gender.Not enough scholarship currently investigates how the popularization of the feminized casual games genre has impacted masculinized video game culture.However, Erica Kubik tackles this exact problem in a chapter of Cyberfeminism 2.0 titled "Masters of Technology: Defining and Theorizing the Hardcore/Casual Dichotomy in Video Game Culture."Here Kubik suggests the terms casual and hardcore are relational and each constitutes the other; definitions for these terms help construct gaming identity by denigrating the casual gamer and celebrating the hardcore.Equally, Kubik deftly points out that "the end result is a normative value to the masculine hardcore gamer, and devaluation for the feminine casual gamer" (2012, 136).The majority of the work for this article was conducted between 2008 and 2010, and unfortunately I did not encounter Kubik's work until recently.As such, my work reaffirms many of her salient observations and arguments.However, while Kubik focuses largely on casual as a modifier for the identity of the gamer and couches part of her argument in online social spaces like World of Warcraft, I explore casual as a modifier for gamers, games, and hardware, perpetuated not just by game players themselves but by an array of discursive forces, including industry professionals and marketing teams.Ultimately, I hope this essay compliments and builds off the work of the scholars above, in general, and Kubik in particular.In this article I analyze the spectrum of gendered discourses surrounding so-called casual video games over the last half-decade, or roughly between 2006 and 2011 across popular culture, the video game industry, and in core gaming culture.This particular period was chosen because the commercial success of Nintendo's Wii, released in 2006, publicly galvanized what was already a thriving casual games industry and arguably brought the phenomenon to popular attention.However, as with everything in the technology industry, the landscape of digital games changes rapidly and the "casual games" moment has largely subsided, giving way to an era of social and mobile games.Although the same gendered discourses circulate around these new forms of games, I