Sexism in Gaming: Perspectives From Victims of Harassment

Qualitative Research Study - School Project

TL;DR

Skills: Literature Review, In-Depth Semi-Structured Interviews, Grounded Theory, Qualitative Coding, Recruiting

Top Lessons Learned:

From this project I learned how to work with research participants on sensitive topics like gender, harassment, and discrimination. I love working with participants and believe I am a sensitive and empathetic moderator, but there is always room for growth, and I learned so much by listening to my recordings.
I also learned how difficult recruitment can be, and to prioritize it by allowing for more time in the future!

Project Background

Among gamers, it is well known that playing video games (particularly those with voice chat) can expose players to toxic behavior and harassment. However, female and non-binary gamers are significantly more likely to face in-game harassment which can include slurs, belittling, gaslighting, stereotyping, gatekeeping, and more.

Inspired by participatory action research (which emphasizes that members of communities affected by that research are direct participants in its application), the goal for this project was to take an open and exploratory approach to discuss the issue of sexism in gaming with female and non-binary gamers to see what they believed were the most pressing issues in relation to in-game harassment, and what they believed could be potential solutions. This project was conducted under the supervision of the chair of the psychology department at Foothill College.

Methodology and Analysis

Research Questions

How do women and non-binary individuals feel about sexism in video games, and how do they think that game companies should deal with in-game occurrences of sexism?

Research Methodology

For this project I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with female and non-binary individuals. I chose this method due to the exploratory nature of the research questions, and to allow me to explore topics more deeply as they were raised. I started off with some pretty open-ended questions regarding sexism in gaming, their experiences with sexism in gaming, if they had seen any methods used by gaming companies to prevent sexism, and more. I followed topics of interest as they emerged during the interview, allowing participants to discuss what they felt was relevant.

Some of the questions I asked included:
     -Have you encountered sexist behavior from teammates, opposing team members, or other players, while playing video games?
     -How would you define sexist behavior from other players in video games?
     -What methods, if any, have you seen video game developers use to prevent toxic or sexist behavior?
      -How do you feel about these methods?

Following each interview, a transcript was created, cleaned, coded, and analyzed. As more concepts emerged in interviews, the interviews were coded and analyzed, and then interview questions were adjusted in order to follow and potentially confirm the emerging hypotheses.
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Recruitment Criteria and Process

For this study I wanted to find female and non-binary gamers that had experienced sexism while playing video games. Participants were recruited through reddit and discord “girl gamer” groups and word-of-mouth. Though they often include the word "girl" in the title, most of these groups are welcome to all genders and identities.

There was no incentive to participate, and most of the people I interviewed participated because they wanted to bring awareness to the issue of toxicity and sexism in online gaming.
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Analysis

Each interview was transcribed using otter.ai and uploaded into atlas.ti for qualitative coding. I iteratively coded the transcripts using open, axial, and selective coding. This allowed me to examine what each participant said individually without preconceived ideas for themes, then after a thorough reading of all transcripts, observe common themes and begin solidifying the hypotheses.

Findings

There were several main themes discovered during analysis:

1. There was a general lack of faith in reporting systems. It's very easy to create new accounts, there is an unclear understanding of how reporting helps and how bans work, and most people want feedback when reports are taken seriously and a ban is enforced. Most importantly, it is difficult to report harassment when it occurs over voice chat.

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2. Most participants wanted to see increased representation of female and non-binary people at all levels of gaming, from pro-players, esports casters, game developers, and in-game character:

"I think if your development team, especially for your community tools, is all men, they honestly don't even think about that struggle. It doesn't occur to them. It's not something they experience."

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3. Most participants believed that game companies should do more to foster wholesome gaming communities, by not only creating content in their games that reflect these values, but also by supporting content creators and pro players that also espouse these values:

"I feel like I see [sexism] more in shooters versus MMOs, it really strongly does depend on the community that the developers foster, because there was a lot more sexism in World of Warcraft versus Final Fantasy."

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4. Most participants also saw a limit to how much improvement could actually be achieved through implementing these changes, and see the issues they face in gaming as a reflection of how society treats women in general:

"And they would still say those things. And in order to counter that, we just need more social reform in general. Yeah, educate half the population on Earth. I'm sure it could be done."

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5. Most participants do see improvement over time. Some attributed that to gaming becoming more mainstream and less of a nerd culture hobby, and others highlighted changes made by game developers to prevent harassment:

"Along the way, I met other women who had been in similar situations who had been like, ‘yes, the boys and men that I knew didn't really understand why I played games. But as I got older, it got better."

Next Steps

Because this is an academic study, the next step would be to continue adjusting interview questions and conduct more interviews based on those changes until saturation is achieved. Saturation is when no new findings are emerging from new data, and indicates there is enough data to support the emerging hypotheses. I would then generate theory from the data.

Limitations

There were several limitations to this study. It was difficult to find participants and I was limited to gamers with active online presences. More interviews are needed to achieve true saturation. And I only had participants from the US and Europe, so these results may not be replicated cross-culturally.

Reflections

Difficulties:
The primary difficulty in this study was participant recruitment. I had initially thought I could post in the subreddit Girl Gamers (which has almost 200,000 members) looking for participants, but discovered that is strictly against the rules of the subreddit. The workaround I employed was to message people directly who had already posted about facing sexism in gaming, but many people do not read reddit direct messages, so some responses took awhile to receive. One participant who had faced sexism in gaming had dealt with in-person sexism from professional gaming coaches, so the data from that interview was not as relevant to the research question. I also had participants sign up and fail to show up for interviews, or sign consent forms and never schedule their interviews.

My second biggest difficult was time constraints; due to participant recruitment taking longer than expected, I was able to conduct fewer interviews than I initially wanted, and had to work through the coding process more quickly.

Lessons learned:
This project taught me some invaluable lessons that I took into future projects. This was the first time I did my own recruiting - I underestimated how difficult and time-consuming this part of the project would be, and didn't consider that some participants wouldn't show up to our scheduled interviews. I also learned a lot from listening to my interview recordings, which made me realize that I was not giving my participants enough breathing room after they finished their thoughts. I listened to each interview before conducting the next, so I believe I was able to improve upon each interview.

If I were to redo this study, I would give more time to participant recruitment, and if recruiting from online forums, make sure that there are no rules against study recruitment. I would also end an interview earlier if I realized that my participants experiences were not within the scope of my project, as I believe I continued one interview longer than necessary because I was looking for relevant information.

If you are interested in seeing the slideshow that was presented at the Foothill College Research and Service Leadership Symposium, which includes more detailed background to sexism in gaming (including coping strategies and types of harassment) and more quotes from my participants, you can check that out here:
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