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6 Reasons Why I'm Studying Female Table-Top Gamers

26/8/2016

9 Comments

 
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WE HAVE REACHED THE FULL NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS, THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR INTEREST!

​I blame my dad for a lot of things; some of them are trivial (i.e. stupid, impossible to style hair), and others are a little more integral to my personality (i.e. being stubborn to a fault). The thing I blame him the most for is making sure I turned out to be a huge nerd! I was raised on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Doctor Who, and all things sci-fi and high fantasy. I was hooked on the nerd lifestyle before I knew what it was. My dad is also responsible for me being an unapologetic feminist; he always made sure I knew I could do whatever the hell I wanted to regardless of my gender. He was perfectly content to play tea party with me or to teach me how to fix up old furniture. Even though he doesn’t always get issues facing women, he always makes an effort to understand.
 
Despite having played D&D in what he often calls a “misspent youth,” my dad never introduced me to the game. It wasn’t until I met my significant other, The Heavy Metal GM, that I was introduced to table-top RPGs. Needless to say, I’ve been playing ever since.
 
As a senior psychology major at the wonderful institution that is UMass Boston, I was offered the opportunity to do an independent research study for my thesis. I was working in a lab that does a lot of research on mentoring relationships, and a few people in my lab encouraged me to do my thesis on mentoring relationships in the cosplay community (which is my real wheelhouse). It never occurred to me that I could do research on things I cared about outside of my “serious research interests” in psychology. My thesis was a success and will hopefully be published soon, and also opened me up to doing more research on what we call “connected learning communities.” Which leads us to: why bother studying lady table-top gamers?
 
1. Connected learning communities are those which come together with a shared purpose and interest, are openly networked, peer supported, and academically oriented. The table-top RPG community fits the bill for this description! Although you may raise your eyebrows at “academically oriented,” you learn skills through playing table-top RPGs that translate to real life. By solving puzzles in a dungeon you increase your problem solving skills and bolster creative thinking; by having to interact with some other humans to achieve your party’s goals, you learn teamwork and gain social skills. All of these things have value in the “real world,” but have yet to be studied quantitatively in gamers.
 
2. Connected learning communities are also fertile ground for mentoring relationships, which is great, because natural mentoring relationships that form outside of organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters based on mutual interests usually last longer and are of higher quality than agency-based relationships. This means the mentees in these relationships get more out of them, so research on how natural mentoring relationships form is really exciting because it can help us form better interventions for agencies and offer resources for natural mentors in the community.
 
3. Very little research has been done on table-top gamers since the 80’s and the Satanism scare of that period. (Side note: D&D doesn’t make you more prone to Satanism, RPG players aren’t any different than non-players in terms of neuroticism or Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator personality type. They do, however, have more empathy than non-players. Take that, MADD!) Not continuing to do research is just silly, because people still play D&D and communities are ever-changing.
 
4. Most research on table-top games have focused exclusively on D&D (other RPGs exist!), and have had either negligible samples of women, failed to recruit any, or deliberately excluded them from their samples. This is a pet peeve of mine as a researcher because it’s REALLY short sighted to exclude people who make up, you know, HALF the world’s population. Just sayin’. If lady gamers’ experiences differ from male gamers, that’s important for us to know how and why! 
 
5. With the rise of the trash fire that is GamerGate, women in gaming have experienced a huge amount of backlash both online and in person resulting in doxxing, death threats, rape threats, trolls popping up in social media feeds with their special brand of vitriol… do I need to go on? And while there is some research that’s been done regarding this new gross faction of the gaming community, most of it focuses on competitive video game RPGs. No empirical research to date has been done on whether or not these attitudes exist within the table-top RPG community, although anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that things are just as bad here.
 
6. Lady gamers are thus a twice marginalized population; mainstream folks don’t appreciate our niche interests and often scorn us for them (although now it seems like it’s cool to be a nerd???), and men in the gaming community who are supposed to appreciate our interests treat us like garbage. No, not all men, but enough creeps exist to make many of us seriously doubt whether or not we want to risk our sanity and safety to stick around in this hobby. Which, from a research standpoint, means that we would miss out on all of the great benefits that the table-top community has. Ouch.
 
So, I want to study how much sexism lady gamers perceive within this community, and how they cope with it and maintain their interest in the hobby.
 
I can’t reveal too much about my hypotheses otherwise it’ll bias responses of anyone who decides to take part in my research, but after analysis is complete (and hopefully accepted to a journal somewhere) I’ll give y’all an update!

If you are a lady gamer interested in taking my study please read on:
 
Hello table top gamers!

My name is Jessica Cunningham and I am a researcher based out of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. I am currently conducting research on women’s experiences within the table top role playing game (RPG) community.

As a member of the table top RPG community, you have the opportunity to participate in a research study about your perspectives as a female gamer. The study consists of an online survey that should last 1 hour. Participants must be at least 18 years of age and identify as female. You can enter to win one of four $25 Amazon gift cards as a thank-you for participating if you are a United States resident. The link to the survey is here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BHKXBJS

None of your responses will be linked to your name or email address. Please contact me if you have any questions via email at [email protected]  

 
FancyDuckie is a 20-something researcher by daylight, and mahou shoujo cosplayer by moonlight! She’s also known to play murder hobo elven clerics with a penchant for shanking twice a week. Also known as “science girlfriend” of The Heavy Metal GM. When she’s not chained to her sewing machine or doing other nerdy stuff, she enjoys watching ballet, musical theatre, pro hockey, and playing with any critter that will tolerate her presence. You can find her on Twitter, Tumblr, ACParadise, Facebook, Instagram, & Wordpress.  

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9 Comments
Jon
26/8/2016 01:49:49 pm

Arguably, the only thing you might considering regretting with respect to your collegiate decisions is not completing this research at Bard College.

Otherwise, I look forward to reading this research and hopefully more like it in the coming years.

Reply
Arlene
26/8/2016 01:54:13 pm

I don't know if you created that image, but really, so the sternum is such a pain and there's a risk your blade will get stuck. Go underneath it. You'll need a longer blade, but it's worth it.

And more seriously, I've shared your blog (& its link to your survey) to several of my fellow gamers who are also women.

Reply
Devin Lentz link
26/8/2016 02:57:02 pm

The possible answers listed for question #3, "What is your gender identity?" are highly problematic, I would even say outright transphobic.

"Male to Female Transgender" is not a gender identity. A "Male to Female Transgender" person (and that term itself is problematic) has a female gender. "Male to Female" is not a gender.

What I suspect you intended to ask was more like two separate questions, "What is your gender?" (male, female, both, neither, other) and "Are you transgender?"

I fail to see why you did not consult with some trans women before writing these questions.

Reply
Jessica
28/8/2016 08:56:25 pm

Hi there,

It's the author. I'm terribly sorry that you found my method of asking for one's gender offensive, I actually do quite a bit of research with LGBTQ individuals and am a member of that community myself so that was definitely not my intent. This is the method that both of my labs have used for surveys in the past, and was my way of disqualifying FTM trans folks and cis men from taking the survey through surveymonkey's skip logic feature. If you're still concerned, and would like to discuss this further, please contact me via my email at [email protected] or feel free to contact my supervisor or the IRB.

Reply
Kim
27/8/2016 11:30:54 am

You should see if you can get in touch with Laura Bailey (@LauraBaileyVO on twitter), Marisha Ray (@Marisha_Ray) and/or Ashley Johnson (@TheVulcanSalute) from Critical Role, which is a weekly livestream of a bunch of voice actors playing D&D. It airs Thursday nights on Geek & Sundry's Twitch channel and regularly gets 19k-22k people watching live.

Reply
Dat Guy link
27/8/2016 04:23:00 pm

A short sighted rant about learning through play that otherizes men, arguably demonizing them but weaseled out with a, “not all guys are jerks” aside and all culminating around games but focusing on female gamers to the exclusion of men, and then ending in a resounding victimization of the ladies. Whatever you plan to study I think you’re creating more issues than solving them when you talk about games, gamers, and cry marginalization and do the exact same thing by only observing a gender as opposed to the group. What exactly is your intent? To further divide the sexes? Your rant is a good starting point if that is the case.

Reply
Sarah link
28/8/2016 02:33:36 am

Games impact on kids big time. they teach destruction, kidnapping and other crime in some games which are not suitable for kids.

Reply
Beth Argyropoulos link
29/8/2016 09:07:38 pm

I'd love to see what your findings are on the addictive nature of table top gaming. Much is said of the addictive nature of video games- but from being around both types of gamer, what I find bothersome is they both seem to be addicted, unable to concentrate in regular conversations, and seem so engrossed in the culture that it takes over their lives. So, while I support a hobby that brings joy, I also have a problem when a behavior becomes obsessive. In any case, might be interesting to see your thoughts/research on that in your article.

Reply
Jessica
1/9/2016 10:09:06 am

One of the items from my study was taken from a different study: (Walden, C. R. (2015). “A living, breathing, world”: Examining participatory practices within Dungeons & Dragons. Unpublished master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Australia.)
on tabletop gaming and asks about adverse/unwanted impacts from table top gaming; one of the responses for it is "I have experienced addiction/obsession with gaming"; but only five people out of the 137 who answered that question on my survey selected that response; and only 5/50 of the original survey on men selected this response as well.

So just based on frequency, I'd say that addiction/obsession isn't super common (I'd need to renew my statistical software to tell you if the gender difference is significant or not), and that the gamers I surveyed actually have pretty decent social skills. I included one scale measuring social skills with a max score of 60 points, and a lowest score of 15 points; the mean average for the group is 43.17, with a standard deviation of 6.61. But because the sub-sample of people who have experienced addiction/obsession with the table-top gaming is so small, I wouldn't be able to tell you anything meaningful about that group as a whole in terms of social skills. :( I'll keep it in mind for potential future studies though!

Reply



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