Department of Global Communication and Cultures
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Item Open Access When passion isn’t enough: gender, affect and credibility in digital games design(SAGE Publications, 2016-03-02) Harvey, Alison; Shepherd, TamaraRecent controversies around identity and diversity in digital games culture indicate the heightened affective terrain for participants within this creative industry. While work in digital games production has been characterized as a form of passionate, affective labour, this article examines its specificities as a constraining and enabling force. Affect, particularly passion, serves to render forms of game development oriented towards professionalization and support of the existing industry norms as credible and legitimate, while relegating other types of participation, including that by women and other marginalized creators, to subordinate positions within hierarchies of production. Using the example of a women-in-games initiative in Montreal as a case study, we indicate how linkages between affect and competencies, specifically creativity and technical abilities, perpetuate a long-standing delegitimization of women’s work in digital game design.Item Open Access Making the grade: Feminine lack, inclusion, and coping strategies in digital games higher education(SAGE Publications, 2021-01-09) Harvey, AlisonThe barriers faced by women in games production have been firmly established, including well-documented harassment and material forms of structural discrimination such as gender pay gaps. At the same time, the explanation that homogeneity in the games industry is due to a ‘leaky pipeline’ between training and the workforce persists, extending discourse familiar from the history of computing. Games higher education, the presumed feeder for diverse talent, remains underexplored despite the increasingly compulsory nature of university degrees in job postings. This article addresses the gap by exploring the experiences and perspectives of students studying games subjects in five UK universities. Based on thematic analysis of interviews, I argue that efforts to ‘get in’ to exclusionary tech spaces based on discourses of feminine lack fail to account for how these environments require marginalized people to develop strategies for coping with exclusionary norms to ‘stay in’.