Speaking in Public: What Women Say about Working in the Video Game Industry

Abstract

Since the 1990s, conversations about the dearth of women working in the video game industry have centered on three topics: (1) ways to draw more women into the field, (2) the experiences of women working in the industry, and (3) the experiences of those who once worked in the industry but left. Although there has been considerable research on the conditions and occupational identities of video game developers, less scholarly attention has been devoted to women in gameswork, the barriers/obstacles and challenges/opportunities they face, and how they talk about their experiences. This article offers a feminist approach that demonstrates how discourse focused on affect can be reread as intimately related to silences about power and how the rhetorical constraints that public speech imposes upon what can be said about “women in games” aid us in understanding what might remain unspoken, and why.