Gender

Event details

DateJune 2025
TimeTBC
LocationVirtual (Zoom) |
Speakers TBC [Chair: Tess Watterson]

Call for Contributions

Guest chair/convenor: Tess Watterson

Gender shapes the way that we interact with the world, and thus the way we interact with and in virtual worlds. From avatar creation and embodiment, to the design of non-player characters and in-game interactions, to the marketing and popular reception of games – gender is a crucial factor but not one that is always actively examined. Gender in games is often engaged with subconsciously or is assumed to be a neutral or natural part of designing a ludic world, even though we are broadly quite familiar with the notion that gender roles have changed over time. Questions of gender and play are even more significant for historical games that are layered amalgamations of different understandings of gender across the historical contexts of the player, designer, and game setting or inspiration.

This Historical Games Network theme calls for contributions about how gender might shape the design, play, and reception of historically inspired video games, and how we can contextualise the gendered meanings produced through game play and counterplay.

There has been growing interest in gender as a category of analysis in recent historical game studies scholarship, including two edited volumes, Women in Historical and Archaeological Games and Women in Classical Video Games.1 Most broad scope edited collections in historical game studies have included at least one chapter or article examining gender or analysing the representation of women specifically.2 Player gender and gender representations are often amongst the categories considered in research on historical games for learning and education.3 This scholarship covers a broad range of different case study games, with some reoccurring focuses on games such as the Assassins Creed franchise,4 Red Dead series,5 fantasy games series like Dragon Age and The Witcher,6 strategy games like Total War,7 and games with female protagonists like Heaven’s Vault or A Plague Tale: Innocence.8 Using gender as a lens through which to analyse historical games enables our research to dig deeper into a whole range of other interconnected questions about ways that we represent and engage with the past in games.

This scholarship on history and gender in games owes its foundations to the diverse body of research on gender and sexuality in game studies. Feminist game studies, as well as feminist media studies more broadly, is expansive and offers useful models for analysing gender representation in games and the role of gender in game design, community, and reception. The topic of gender is also often woven into games alongside questions of sexuality, so while our focus in this theme is on gender, we are also open to considerations of the interplay between gender and sexuality in historical games.9 These themes are particularly entwined in systems that embed mechanics for romance and sex in their storytelling (whether between non-player characters, player characters, or potentially players in spaces like Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games [MMORPGs]), but can also be significant factors that shape the design and play of all genres of games in different ways.

Game designers face a difficult balancing act to represent past worlds with both the authenticity desired by audiences (or potentially required, for educational games) and with current values and worldviews about gender equality and equity.  Modern games that draw on historical inspiration are always an amalgamation that layers both intentional and unintentional modern influences into what we know of past worlds. Games are a significant part of the modern media landscape and have a particularly complex recent history in terms gender-based harassment campaigns and exclusive practices in game communities and industry. Questions around the role of games to entertain, inform, or educate are often quite contentious. Do games have a responsibility as part of this landscape to tell stories that contribute positively to contemporary perceptions of gender minorities? To what extent can players expect games to facilitate diverse experiences within one game, such as in open world games? Are games that represent the past more or less significant in this space? That is, do historical settings make it acceptable to include representations of discriminatory or harmful past practices, or should these games be even more closely scrutinised given the way that historical representations are often mobilised to provide legitimacy or authority to present beliefs? 

This theme is a call to meaningfully explore, consider, and reflect on the many ways gender shapes and is shaped in historical games. As this topic sits at a relatively new intersection of fields, gender in historical games is an exciting area of research that is alive with questions. How does the game convey gendered beliefs and roles to the player? Are gender and sexuality assumed or instructed? Are gender and sexuality conveyed as part of the historical inspiration of the game, or are they framed as external to the fictional world, like character stats accessed in a game menu? What factors shape the way designers model gender in historical games? In what ways does gender shape whether a player will engage with different kinds of historical games and their corresponding community space? How does gender shape the in-game choices available to the player character? Are there aspects of the game only accessible through particular kinds of gendered performance? What kind of historical meanings are produced when gender is—or isn’t—a factor in accessing aspects of the game or story?

These are just some initial questions for consideration as we open the gender theme for contributions. 

Contributions to the Gender theme

We are seeking contributions from anyone interested in discussing the roles of gender and history in games (of all kinds). We are open to a range of formats and approaches: blog posts, book reviews, literature reviews, state-of-the-field posts, game criticism and reviews, event reviews, game analyses or post-mortems, podcast recordings, video essays, or any other type of creative contribution you might be interested in sharing. We would also note that we welcome contributions with thoughtful subjectivity, as positioning yourself and your own understanding of gender within your work is a well theorised aspect of feminist methodologies, especially in game studies.10 This is a space for inclusive and respectful approaches.

As a guide, we might expect written pieces to be in the region of 1,000-1,500 words, and video essays or audio recordings of around 5-10 minutes. However, if you have more to say, get in touch!

We particularly want to encourage the submission of content which addresses underrepresented histories and perspectives, including histories of minorities and from the wider world. 

The Gender theme is open for contributions until 30th June 2025. All material will be treated in line with our copyright statement (you can find this on our About page: TL;DR – it’s free, open access, and you can repost your work wherever you like).

References

  1. Jane Draycott and Kate Cook (eds.), Women in Classical Video Games (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022); Jane Draycott (ed.), Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022);
    See also: Mona Bozdog, ‘Book review: Women in Classical Video Games, edited by Jane Draycott and Kate Cook (Bloomsbury, 2022)’, Historical Games Network, (December 2022) https://www.historicalgames.net/book-review-women-in-classical-video-games-edited-by-jane-draycott-and-kate-cook-bloomsbury-2022/ ↩︎
  2. See, for just some examples: Gareth Crabtree, ‘Modding as Digital Reenactment: A Case Study of the Battlefield Series’, Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Andrew B.R. Elliott (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013): 199-212; Oliver Chadwick, ‘Courtly Violence, Digital Play: Adapting Medieval Courtley Masculinities in Dante’s Inferno’, Digital Gaming Re-Imagines the Middle Ages, ed. Daniel T. Kline (New York: Routledge, 2014), 148-61; Blair Apgar, “Matilda of Canossa and Crusader Kings II: (Papal) Warrior princess”, in Playing the Middle Ages: Pitfalls and Potential in Modern Games, ed. Robert Houghton (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023): 245-64; Markus Eldegard Mindrebo, “Representations of medieval gender archetypes in fantasy role-playing games” in Playing the Middle Ages: Pitfalls and Potential in Modern Games, ed. Robert Houghton (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023): 211-26. ↩︎
  3. See for example: Robert Houghton, ‘“Where Did You Learn That?” The Self-Perceived Educational Impact of Historical Computer Games on Undergraduates’ gamevironments 5 (2016): 8-45; Pat Cullum, ‘Play as a Technique for History in Higher Education’ in Historia Ludens, eds. Alexander von Lünen, Katherine J. Lewis, Benjamin Litherland and Pat Cullum (New York: Routledge, 2020), 89-101; Sian Beavers ‘The Informal Learning of History with Digital Games’, (PhD dissertation, The Open University, 2019), 266. ↩︎
  4. See, for example, Adrienne Shaw, ‘The Tyranny of Realism: Historical accuracy and politics of representation in Assassin’s Creed III’ Loading… Journal of Canadian Game Studies, Vol 9.14, (2015): 4-24; Nanci Santos
     ‘Assassins and the Creed: A look at the Assassin’s Creed series, Ubisoft, and women in the video games industry’, in Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games, ed. Jane Draycott (De Gruyter, 2022): 25-56; Simran Dhaliwal, ‘Absent Arabic Women in Assassin’s Creed’, The Middle Ages in Modern Games: Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2, ed. Robert Houghton (2021): 61, https://issuu.com/theuniversityofwinchester/docs/mamg21_proceedings?fr=sMDYyMTU2MDg1ODQ ; Or, there are a number of chapters in Women in Classical Video Games, eds. Jane Draycott and Kate Cook (Bloomsbury, 2022), including: Jane Draycott, ‘Playing Cleopatra in Assassin’s Creed: Origins’, 162–174; Richard Cole, ‘Kassandra’s Odyssey’, 191–207; Roz Tuplin ‘‘We do what we must to survive’: Female Sex Workers in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey’, 208–222. ↩︎
  5. ‘Chapter 5: Women in Rockstar’s American History’ in Esther Wright, Rockstar Games and American History (De Gruyter, 2022); Ashlee Bird, ‘Playing Wrong: The Horse Girl Takeover of Red Dead Online’ Historical Games Network (November 2021), https://www.historicalgames.net/playing-wrong-horse-girl-takeover-of-red-dead-online/ ↩︎
  6. For example: Mohamed S. Hassan “You can Be Anyone; but there are Limits. A gendered Reading of Sexuality and Player Avatar Identification in Dragon Age: Inquisition,” gamevironments 6 (2017): 34–67; Aurelia Brandenburg, “‘If It’s a Fantasy World, Why Bother Trying to Make It Realistic?’ Constructing and Debating the Middle Ages of THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT,” in History in Games: Contingencies of an Authentic Past, eds. Martin Lorber and Felix Zimmermann (Bielefeld: transcript, 2020) ↩︎
  7. For example: Josh Webb, ‘Warriors and Waifus: Community responses to historical accuracy and
     the representation of women in Total War: Three Kingdoms’, in Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games, ed. Jane Draycott (De Gruyter, 2022): 101-139. ↩︎
  8. For example, Jane Draycott, ‘Not male, not pale, and definitely not stale: Aliyah Elasra and
     archaeology in Heaven’s Vault’ 341-60; Kate Cook, ‘Whose Middle Ages? Exploring the Representation of Women in Historical Video Games’ Keynote Lecture at The Middle Ages on Screen 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1JUFw-BhSM ↩︎
  9. For example: Kazumi Hasegawa, ‘Falling in Love with History: Japanese Girls’ Otome Sexuality and Queering Historical Imagination’, Playing with the Past: Digital Games and the Simulation of History, ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Andrew B.R. Elliott (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013): 135-50. ↩︎
  10. On subjectivity and feminist game studies, a useful starting point is: Sarah Stang, “Too close, too intimate, and too vulnerable: Close reading methodology and the future of feminist game studies” Critical Studies in Media Communication 39.3 (2022): 1-9; Amanda Phillips, ‘Negg(at)ing the Game Studies Subject: An Affective History of the Field’ Feminist Media Histories, 6, no. 1 (2020): 12-36. ↩︎