Video Games and Gender Assemblages

This book examines why women are often treated with vitriol in the video game industry and communities of play. Using a Deleuzoguattarian lens, it considers the content and production of video games; the affects they amplify and how they impact gender identity; and how affects flow throughout communities of play.

In this book, Sian Tomkinson examines why, despite around half of gamers being female, highly-gendered stereotypical assumptions pervade the video game industry and communities of play, leading to toxic attitudes and events such as Gamergate and beyond. Tomkinson utilizes a Deleuzoguattarian lens through critique of categories to encourage a shift away from the binary oppositions that often lie at the root of this tension. Through the use of concepts including the assemblage, faciality, and the refrain, the book argues that the increased diversity of games, producers, and players have challenged traditional gamer identities. Gamers faced with this challenge, Tomkinson posits, can either embrace new experiences and affects – deterritorialising this identity – or become destructively reactionary by reterritorializing and refusing to meaningfully engage with difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how video game cultures and communities have a unique assemblage of influences while also functioning as a microcosm of broader social, cultural, and political tensions. Scholars of media studies, video game studies, women’s and gender studies, philosophy, and sociology will find this book of particular interest.