Adrienne Shaw | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania Mount Holyoke College |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Temple University |
Main interests | video games,Queer theory,Cultural Studies |
Notable works | Gaming at the Edge:Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (2014) |
Adrienne Shaw (born 1983) is an American game studies scholar and Associate Professor at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication. [1] She is known for her work on queer theory and LGBTQ representation in video games. She is the author of Gaming at the Edge:Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture,the co-editor of Queer Game Studies,and the founder of the LGBTQ Video Games Archive.
Shaw received her Ph.D. in 2010 from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Shaw's academic work focuses on gamer identity,the representation of marginalized populations in video games,and how members of marginalized communities understand their relationship to video games. Her work also extends to queerness and technology more broadly.
Her first book,Gaming at the Edge:Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota Press,2014) received the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association,Warp Zone's 2015 Video Game Librarian Award, [2] and it was listed on the American Library Association's 2016 Rainbow List. [3] Media scholar Adrienne Massanari describes the book as an intervention "against much of the rhetoric of gaming culture that suggests that diversity is good but does little to interrogate why or for whom or in what ways diversity is desirable." [4]
Shaw co-edited,with Bo Ruberg,Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press,2017),an anthology of essays by academics,journalists,and game designers about queer representation and queer theory in video games. The collection was reviewed favorably by the LA Review of Books and Lambda Literary. [5] [6]
Shaw also co-edited,with Katherine Sender,Queer Technologies:Affordances,Affect,Ambivalence (Routledge,2018) and,with D. Travers Scott,Interventions:Communication Research and Practice (Peter Lang,2018).
Shaw is the founder of the LGBTQ Video Game Archive,a publicly available online archive that catalogues LGBTQ representation in video games. [7] As part of her work with the LGBTQ Video Game Archive,Shaw worked with the Internet Archive to resurrect the oldest known example of an LGBTQ video game,C.M. Ralph's Caper in the Castro. [8]
In 2018,Shaw was one of the curators of the Rainbow Arcade exhibit at the Schwules Museum in Berlin,the first exhibit to cover the history of LGBTQ people in video games. [9] USA Today included Rainbow Arcade on its list of best exhibits in Europe for winter 2019. [10]
In 2014,Shaw was one of the researchers in the Digital Games Research Association singled out for her work on feminism and video games during the Gamergate controversy. [11] As a result of the attention,Shaw and Shira Chess wrote analyses about their experiences in the Journal of Broadcasting &Electronic Media and the Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association. [12] [13]
Queer theory is the perspective that questions the perception that cisgender and heterosexual identities are in any sense “standard.” It revisits such fields as literary analysis, philosophy, and politics with a “queer” approach.
A gamer is a proactive hobbyist who plays interactive games, especially video games, tabletop role-playing games, and skill-based card games, and who plays for usually long periods of time. Some gamers are competitive, meaning they routinely compete in some games for money, prizes, awards or the mere pleasure of competition and overcoming obstacles. In some countries such as the UK and Australia, the term "gaming" can refer to legalized gambling, which can take both traditional and digital forms, through online gambling. There are many different gamer communities around the world. Since the advent of the Internet, many communities take the form of Internet forums or YouTube or Twitch virtual communities, as well as in-person social clubs. Originally a hobby, it has evolved into a profession for some. In 2021, there were an estimated 3.24 billion gamers across the globe.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters have been depicted in video games since the 1980s. In the history of video games, LGBT characters have been almost nonexistent for a long time, reflecting the overall heteronormativity of the medium. While there has been a trend towards greater representation of LGBT people in video games, they are frequently identified as LGBT in secondary material, such as comics, rather than in the games themselves. In 2018, Sam Greer of Gamesradar+ found only 179 games commercially released games with any LGBT representation, only 83 of which have queer characters who are playable characters, and only 8 of those games feature a main character who is pre-written as queer as opposed to them being queer as an option.
Video game culture or gaming culture is a worldwide new media subculture formed by video game hobbyists. As video games have exponentially increased in sophistication, accessibility and popularity over time, they have had a significant influence on popular culture, particularly among middle-class adolescents and young adults. Video game culture has also evolved with Internet culture and the increasing popularity of mobile games.
Vivian is a character appearing in the 2004 role-playing video game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. She initially serves as an enemy to the player character Mario, later joining the player's party after he helps her. In the Japanese version and European language translations, she is a transgender woman, while the script in English releases was altered to remove any mention of her trans status. Vivian has been called one of the best LGBTQ characters in video games.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+(LGBTQ+)music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.
The portrayal of men and women in video games, as in other media, is a subject of research in gender studies and is discussed in the context of sexism in video gaming.
Flea, known as Mayonnai in Japanese, is a fictional character in the Chrono series of video games. He is a shapeshifter that presents as feminine but identifies as a man and, in Japanese, uses feminine signifiers in his speech. He first appears in Chrono Trigger, where he serves as a subordinate to the antagonist Magus and cameos in the sequel, Chrono Cross. Flea has been recognized as a noteworthy LGBT character, particularly for non-binary and genderqueer people. Critics like writer Flynn Demarco and author William Gibbons felt disappointed by the use of stereotypes of transgender people and androgyny to represent villainy.
Mattie Brice is an independent video game designer, critic, educator, and industry activist. Her games and writing focus on diversity initiatives in the games industry, discussing the perspective of marginalized minority voices to publications like Paste, Kotaku, and The Border House. Her games are freeware and do not require programming to create.
Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015. Beginning in August 2014, Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, among others. The harassment campaign included doxing, rape threats, and death threats.
Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but do not depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ representation. The purpose is to attract ("bait") a queer or straight ally audience with the suggestion or possibility of relationships or characters that appeal to them.
Rainbow capitalism is the involvement of capitalism, corporatism, and consumerism in appropriating and profiting from the LGBT movement. It developed in the 20th and 21st centuries as the LGBT community became more accepted in society and developed sufficient purchasing power, known as pink money. Early rainbow capitalism was limited to gay bars and gay bathhouses, though it expanded to most industries by the early-21st century.
The Fembot Collective is an international collective of feminist media activists, artists, producers, and scholars that publishes the academic journal Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. Fembot has been a catalyst for multiple large scale feminist digital projects, providing the digital and social infrastructure for FemTechNet, publishing the podcast series Books Aren't Dead, and hosting collaborative hack-a-thons and Wikipedia edit-a-thons with Ms. magazine. Although having been funded and supported by multiple institutions including School of Journalism and Communication and the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon., Fembot is concentrated in the University of Maryland currently.
Social justice warrior (SJW) is a pejorative term and internet meme mostly used for an individual who promotes socially progressive, left-wing or liberal views, including feminism, civil rights, gay and transgender rights, and multiculturalism. The accusation that somebody is an SJW carries implications that they are pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and engaging in disingenuous arguments.
The relationship between race and video games has received substantial academic and journalistic attention. Games offer opportunities for players to explore, practice, and re-enforce cultural and social identities. Because of the multifaceted cultural implications of video games, there may be issues of race involved in the player base, the creative process, or within the game's universe. Video games predominantly created and played by one racial group can unintentionally perpetuate racial stereotypes and limit players' choices to preconceived notions of racial bias, and issues of representation and harassment may arise in the industry and the player community.
Straightwashing is portraying LGB or otherwise queer characters in fiction as heterosexual (straight), making LGB people appear heterosexual, or altering information about historical figures to make their representation comply with heteronormativity.
Caper in the Castro is a murder mystery video game developed by C.M. Ralph and released in 1989. It is the earliest known computer game to focus on LGBT themes. The game was originally released for Mac computers and distributed freely on bulletin board systems as charityware to raise money for the AIDS epidemic.
Bo Ruberg is an American game studies scholar and associate professor at the University of California, Irvine in the Klein College of Media and Communication. They are known for their work on queer theory and video games. They are the author of Video Games Have Always Been Queer, The Queer Games Avant-Garde, and Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies, as well as the editor of Queer Game Studies. From 2023 to 2027, they are the co-editor-in-chief, with Liz Elcessor, of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. They are also one of the co-founders of the Queerness in Games Conference.