Gender, Simulation, and Gaming: Research Review and Redirections

This review of gender and gameplay research over the past three decades documents a set of persistent methodological repetitions that have systematically impeded its progress since the inception of this trajectory of research. The first is, in fact, a refusal to consider gender at all: Conflating gender with sex impedes possibilities to identify nonstereotypical engagements by girls and women. Second is the persistent attempt to identify sex-specific "patterns" of play and play preferences "characteristic" of girls and women mainly to support and promote these in the name of "gender equity," whether in women's involvement in the game industry as designers, in the development and marketing of "games for girls," or the access and uses of digital games for education, training, and entertainment. Third, it is found that "gender" is an issue in research studies only long enough to dismiss it as a significant variable, which in turn makes any deeper critical interrogation unproductive.