Cheerleaders/booth babes/Halohoes: pro-gaming, gender and jobs for the boys

Abstract

In recent years, a 'professional' digital gaming industry has emerged in North America: this interconnected series of organisations and leagues host competitive gaming tournaments (often televised) in which young, mostly male participants compete for increasingly lucrative prize money and sponsorship contracts. Taking up Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter's (2005) challenge to confront the ways girl gamers are rendered 'invisible' by gamers, researchers and designers, this paper maps the various ways women participate in a set of practices around the organisation, promotion and performance of competitive gaming, framed as the exclusive domain of (young, straight, middle class) male bodies. Mothers flying their sons' teams to events all over North America, female players participating in tournaments or promotional models operating sponsorship booths, the women who participate in competitive gaming tournaments negotiate different expectations and carry out different kinds of embodied work. Each of these 'roles', however, is tenuously maintained within a community that most commonly reads female participation in sexualised terms: mothers at events describe themselves as 'cheerleaders', female players risk being labelled as 'halo hoes' and promotional models become 'booth babes'.

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

“…However, she also proposes that these women may not self-identify as gamers; they are presumed, instead, to be the family or friends of professional players who take part in the event for their partner's sake. Similarly, N. Taylor, Jenson, and De Castell (2009) note the role of pro-gamers' mothers in organizing their sons' intensive game play activity and travel to gaming events. Two other female roles in e-sports they highlight are Preprint of the publication Paaßen et al (2016).…”

I’d rather be a cyborg than a gamerbro: How masculinity mediates research on digital play

“…Practices associated with intensive and competitive gameplay are at the forefront of major transformations in the casualization of work and the professionalization of gaming, and are sites for the experimentation in increasingly sophis-Article: I' d rather be a cyborg than a gamerbro Nicholas Taylor ticated techniques of attentional management and surveillance. Furthermore, as a robust body of work makes clear (Harper, 2014;Voorhees, 2015;Witkowski, 2013), these forms of play are crucial in understanding the shifting gendered politics of digital gaming more broadly, especially considering how eSports and its attendant economies gained traction in North America around the same time that Wii, smartphones, and other platforms and devices, as well as breakthrough titles such as Th e Sims, began to expand games beyond their typical core demographic of young, straight, and usually white males (Taylor, Jenson, & de Castell, 2009).…”

“…Digital game researchers have demonstrated the costs (in harassment and marginalization) and limits (in terms of full cultural acceptance and potential professional and personal opportunities) which confront those who try to embody this subject position from conventionally marginalized genders and sexualities (Harper, 2014;Taylor, 2012;Taylor, Jenson, & de Castell, 2009). Borrowing from pop culture, I refer to this technomasculine subjectivity in relation to games as the gamerbro.…”

“…Th e specifi c subject under consideration here is me, and my own qualitative fi eldwork; the specifi c domain I engage is intensive and competitive gaming, which remains heavily male-dominated (Harper, 2014;Ratan et al, 2015;Taylor, Jenson, & de Castell, 2009), even as the broader landscape of digital play has seen some recent tendencies toward greater inclusivity, however precarious (Chess, 2017;Shaw, 2015).…”

Reconsidering Esport: Economics and Executive Ownership

“…Indeed, esport is rich in its forms and features, perhaps to the degree that associating it with the traditions of 'professional sport' does more harm than good. While many scholars have probed these associations (see Taylor 2009, Lee & Schoenstedt 2011, Hebbel-Seeger 2012, Ferrari 2013, Stein & Scholz 2014, Hewitt 2014, Kari & Karhulahti 2016, Nagel & Sugishita 2016, Seo 2016, the nine years between Hutchins' report and the review at hand reveal how the phenomenon has come to imitate its assumed archetype -the Western ideal of professional sport -more than it differs from it. With its refined leagues, live broadcasts, collegiate programs, and growing doping control, the core of contemporary esport is, unquestionably, in the aspects that derive from professional sports.…”