Abstract
Few studies have examined gender and game play from the perspective of boys' participation. In this article we investigate boys' play in a tween-centric virtual world called Whyville.net, which had 1.5 million registered players at the time of study. Drawing primarily upon logfile data, we developed participation profiles and case studies of three boy players who ranged in engagement from casual to core players. In the case studies of boy players and their everyday activities in Whyville, we found that initial routines were remarkably similar but over time more nuanced differences emerged in players' identity and boundary play. Furthermore, Whyville provided the boys with relatively low consequence opportunities to experiment with different masculine identities. In comparing our findings with other work, we found that while virtual worlds offer space for the expression of boys' culture, they are qualitatively distinct from other gaming environments and thus need to be studied on their own terms.
Over a decade ago, Henry Jenkins (1998/2005) wrote “‘Complete freedom of movement’: Video Games as gendered play spaces” where he argued that video games provide a contemporary alternative to the out of doors freedom of movement boys historically accessed. Video games operate like a “fourth space” (a term coined by Van Vliet, 1983), a much-needed alternative to the adult-supervised, structured spaces of home, schools, and playgrounds that could provide room for independence, peer recognition, competition, role-play, humor, and violence in boys’ play (Reed, 2005; Rotundo, 1998). Jenkins’ cultural geography of video game spaces and their resonance with boy culture echoed the findings of developmental psychologists, educators, and others who have long understood that children’s access to and play in particular spaces is gendered (Opie & Opie, 1996; Sutton-Smith, 1981; Thorne, 1993).
With some notable exceptions Jenkins’ (1998/2005) essay remains one of the few studies which has examined gender and video games from the perspective of boys’ play (DeVane & Squire, 2008; DiSalvo, Crowley, & Norwood, 2008; Sanford & Madill, 2006; Steinkuehler & King, 2009; Walkerdine, 2007). Often what we know about boys and video games is captured in surveys documenting their play preferences and quantity of game play (e.g., Lenhart et al., 2008; Provenzo, 1991). But we lack a nuanced understanding of how boys construct and play in video games and virtual worlds—the kind of insights we have about girls’ play or the absence of it. Indeed, the research on gender and games has almost exclusively focused on explaining why girls and women are not present or interested in games (for overviews, see Cassell & Jenkins, 1998; Kafai, Heeter, Denner, & Sun, 2008) and developed designs to draw girls into games while developing technical skills (Denner & Campe, 2008; Flanagan, 2008; Kafai, 1995; Kelleher, 2008). Furthermore, the video game landscape has expanded significantly since Jenkins (1998/2005) wrote “Freedom of Movement.” We choose to view the various types of games available on the market today as occurring along a continuum that includes everything from single-player console games to multiplayer role-playing games (available for various gaming platforms and online) and virtual worlds, which extend from mostly social spaces to more game-oriented spaces and are difficult to categorize in and of themselves (see Federation of American Scientists, 2011).
This article intends to contribute to our lack of knowledge about boys’ gaming by examining boys’ play in a virtual world called Whyville.net, a massive online world that had 1.5 million registered players at the time of the study, who were between 8 and 16 years of age. Of these players, the average age was 12 and Whyville is widely characterized as virtual world that attracts primarily tween players, that is players between the ages of 10 and 13. Since its inception in 2005, two third of Whyville’s players (68%) have been and continue to be girls. While it may seem counterintuitive, studying boys’ play in a space primarily occupied by girls provides a unique perspective on boys’ play that complements research into boys’ play in more traditionally male video game spaces. Furthermore, research examining preadolescent development and masculine identity development complements the games studies literature and allows us to provide a more nuanced portrait of boys’ play in Whyville.
In Whyville, youth play games to earn a virtual salary that they use to develop their avatars and socialize with others (Kafai & Giang, 2007). We conducted observations in an after-school gaming club where youth came together to play on Whyville.net for 3 months and then continued at home for another 3 months. One of our goals was to expand Jenkins’ (1998/2005) analyses into virtual worlds that are unlike video games because they are constructed to a great extent by players’ contributions while often missing a finite goal and story (Castronova, 2001/2005). Another goal was to understand boys’ play on their own terms rather than essentializing it—a criticism often raised about research on gender differences. In this context, our research offered the possibility to examine notions of masculinity in boys’ play (Burrill, 2008; Hull, Kenney, Marple, & Forsman-Schneider, 2006; Kendall, 2002; Pascoe, 2007; Sanford & Madill, 2006; Walkerdine, 2007). Our focus age group, namely tweens, is of particular relevance, given their transition from childhood into adolescence. Of course, Whyville is a unique play space for tweens and, as such, our findings cannot be generalized across all virtual worlds.
To address our goals, we developed a new approach called connected ethnography that combined quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques (Fields & Kafai, 2009, 2010). Our main data source were log files that contained time-stamped records of all movements and chat interactions online. In more traditional fashion, we employed quantitative data reduction techniques to establish frequencies and clusters of participation for each boy individually and the club as a whole. Using the same log file data we then developed case studies of three boys, ages 10–12 years, who ranged in their play experience from peripheral to core gamers in the after-school gaming club. This time we used these records to rebuild the rhythms of daily interactions for each case, providing us with a better sense of what boys were doing and how their participation might have shifted over time. Before turning to our findings, we provide an overview of the relevant literature and outline our methods of data collection and analysis in more detail.
Background
When Jenkins (1998/2005) developed his argument around boys’ video game play, he contextualized it within the research of developmental psychologists and other researchers interested in the gendered dimensions of children’s play and games. While this perspective remains salient, more recent research from educational and sociological perspectives and games studies gives us ways of analyzing boys’ video game play that extend beyond gendered dimensions of children’s play and games to include gendered identity development and a specific focus on tween boys. Taken together, these perspectives nuance and update Jenkins’ argument for a more contemporary gaming landscape populated not only by console video games but also by massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and virtual worlds. Additionally, the genre of the game played and whether it is single-player or multiplayer are more deterministic of the kinds of game play that can occur than the game platform is at this point in time. In this article, we frame our own investigations of boys’ play in Whyville.net in relation to preadolescence as a developmental stage, masculine identity development, and the games studies literature on boys’ video game play.
Preadolescence, or the “tween” years occurring between the ages of 10 and 13, is developmentally important because during this time period youth begin developing a self-identity and achieving increased independence from parents. For boys, this process involves exploring multiple versions of masculinity. While masculinity was historically tied to being biologically male, more recent research on the social construction of gender has shifted attention to the ways in which a masculine identity is developed through participation in particular practices and discourses over an extended period of time (Butler, 1990; Pascoe, 2007; Whitehead, 2002). Still, some versions of what it means to be a man are valued more than others, placing pressure upon youth to conform and potentially limiting their options for developing a masculine identity (Connell, 1996; Hull et al., 2006; Pascoe, 2007).
In the United States, the dominant conception of what it means to be a man “privilege[s] being white, straight, strong, athletic, competitive, and invulnerable” (Hull et al., 2006, p. 5). Thus it is not surprising that Pascoe (2007) observed that homophobic teasing (e.g., calling someone “gay” or a “fag”) was a key characteristic of the masculine behavior she observed among high school students. The boys in her study were also obsessed with hypermasculinity and felt the need to prove that their own masculinity conformed to hegemonic norms through public assertions of masculinity, such as excelling at sports or being a “stud” with the ladies. Tween boys, however, are younger than the participants in Pascoe’s study and, as such, may not be as certain about their own masculine identities or as aware of the social and cultural hierarchies of masculinity that operate in their communities. Hull, Kenney, Marple, and Forsman-Schneider (2006) echo this sentiment when describing the tween boys in their study of an afterschool digital storytelling program:
[F]or these children—all on the cusp of adolescence—the process of identifying as masculine seemed to take various paths. None of these boys had yet wholly adopted a “cool pose.” In their diverse families and ethnically mixed neighborhood and afterschool program, they came into contact with a variety of models (Hull et al., 2006, p. 5).
In other words, tween boys are in the process of trying out different masculine identities, sometimes taking on more hegemonic notions of what it means to be a man and at other times challenging such notions.
While Jenkins (1998/2005) turned to research on gendered play, which suggested that boys’ play has historically been hierarchical and violent, often with a distinct preference toward rough and tumble physical play (Pellegrini, 1996; Reed, 2005; Rotundo, 1998; Willis, 1977), recent games studies research on boys’ video game play supports a more nuanced portrayal of boys’ play in relation to masculine identity development. After all, video games are a dominant media form in the lives of youth. A 2008 Pew Internet and American Life study found that 99% of boys and 94% of girls between ages 12 and 17 play video games (Lenhart et al., 2008). In general, boys played more frequently and for longer periods of time than their female counterparts, especially tween boys who spend more time playing video games than both girls of their own age and older boys and girls.
From the Pew study, we also know that both boys and girls who game typically play multiple genres of games: boys typically play eight genres of video games while girls only play six. These genres include, in decreasing order of popularity, racing, puzzle, sports, action, adventure, rhythm, strategy simulation, fighting, first-person shooters, role-playing, survival horror, MMOGs (e.g., World of Warcraft), and virtual worlds. While more boys (50%) ranked video games with a “mature” or “adults only” rating in their top three games than girls (14%), other studies have shown that boys are also playing other kinds of games (Lenhart et al., 2008). Taken together, these preferences in game play partially reiterate what we know about boys’ play historically but they also suggest that boys’ video game play is attuned to more than just sports and violence, making it more nuanced than much previous research indicates. This emerging portrait of boys’ video game play aligns well with research in education and in the sociology of gender that investigates the multiple ways in which tween boys may take up masculine identities.
In addition to an increased awareness of masculine identity development and the multiple genres of video games that boys play, there has also been increasing concern among scholars who study boys about educational outcomes (Young & Brozo, 2001). Connecting boys with video games that engage them and also support educational outcomes has been discussed as one possible solution (DiSalvo et al., 2009; Steinkuehler & King, 2009). Yet, we know surprisingly little about boys’ actual video game play and the in-group variation among boys. Only a few recent studies have addressed these shortcomings (DeVane & Squire, 2008; DiSalvo, Crowley, & Norwood, 2008; Hull et al., 2006; Sanford & Madill, 2006; Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2008). One aspect that is important to our research pertains to the level of experience that players have with the game. Devane and Squire (2008) found that players experience the same game (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) differently depending on what outside knowledge they bring to the game, as well as their own and their friends’ familiarity with the game being played. Because of these aspects of video game play, Devane and Squire advocate viewing video games as “possibility spaces,” or “open work[s] that [allow] the player many potential actions and thus styles of play” (2008, p. 281).
When Jenkins (1998/2005) developed his argument, he was primarily focused on console video games, like Super Mario Brothers and its scrolling screen, which, relative to virtual worlds, are more closed environments with a story and set goal. While the dividing line between video games and virtual worlds is somewhat ambiguous, Castronova (2001/2005) characterizes virtual worlds on the basis of their persistence, the lack of an end goal, the presence of an economic system, and the physicality of the world as established through avatars and the simulation of a first-person experience that they allow. Given these characteristics, the freedom of movement that Jenkins conceptualized for boys’ play in video games might take on different dimensions in virtual worlds. As a starting point, we drew on Leander and McKim’s (2003) view of space as a process rather than a static entity—“a rich process that draws upon multiple material and discursive resources, is imbued with relations of power, and is malleable through individual agency and imagination” (p. 212).We conceptualize play spaces in virtual worlds as gendered along the dimensions of mobility within the space, access to the space, and control over the space. Several studies have addressed the gendered dimensions of in-room and in-world play (Carr, 2005; Lin, 2008; Orr Vered, 1998) but few have addressed gendered play in game (Beavis & Charles, 2005), with a particular focus on what boys do. The ability to explore and challenge the preexisting notions of masculinity in virtual worlds merits an examination in its own right, especially in conjunction with the tweens we studied, because they are developmentally beginning to separate themselves more and more from female caregivers and behaviors that would characterize them as “feminine” (Reed, 2005). Furthermore, one might argue that boys playing in a girls’ space like Whyville might be less susceptible to hegemonic versions of masculinity.
The ability to choose one’s online representation is another form of gendered expression. Character choice in a console video game with stock characters versus in an MMORPG or a virtual world with multiple players varies along a continuum. This is not to say that, for instance, a White male player might not learn something from playing a Latina female in the Grand Theft Auto series or that the avatar design options in a space like Whyville are unlimited. In fact, finding non-Caucasian face parts in Whyville can be quite a challenge (Kafai, Cook, & Fields, 2010) and others have argued that our notions of race always shape our interactions with others, even in cyberspace (Nakamura, 2002). Still, choosing one’s character in a game where the character has an established history and biography (e.g., Elizabeta Torres in Grand Theft Auto IV), as well as predetermined relationships with other game characters, is relatively fleeting compared to the ongoing avatar constructions of boys playing in virtual worlds like Whyville. Avatar constructions are a central feature of virtual worlds and are qualitatively different from the stock characters that players of console games are able to choose from.
In addition to negotiating the meanings of masculinity through avatar design, boys also negotiate these meanings through interactions with others. Both are key features of virtual worlds. Many players in Whyville spend most of their time engaged in social functions like chatting and y-mail (Whyville’s version of e-mail). Further, Whyville offers an unprecedented opportunity to address the social dimensions of play in relation to masculinity because of its unusual demographics. Most of the previous research has focused on the entrances of boys into a “girls only” space and vice versa (Pascoe, 2007; Taylor, 2006). With Whyville’s prominence of girls we have the opportunity to study a girls’ space from a boys’ perspective and perhaps also learn something about how to create virtual spaces that appeal to players of both genders, albeit for different reasons.
Context, Participants, and Methods
Whyville.net is a massive, free virtual world (in 2005 at the time of our study it had over 1.2 million registered players, in 2011 it counted over 5 million players) that encourages youth ages 8–16 to play casual science games in order to earn a virtual salary (in “clams”). The general consensus among Whyvillians (the citizens of Whyville.net) is that earning a good salary and thus procuring a large number of clams to spend on face parts or other goods is essential for fully participating in Whyville (Kafai & Giang, 2007). Looks also demonstrate a player’s tenure and relative experience level; new players have fewer clams, and their looks generally show this because cheaper face parts are perceived as less attractive (Kafai, Cook, & Fields, 2010). When Whyvillians enter the site, they immediately arrive at the Welcome Page with links to events for the week, The Whyville Times newspaper, survival tips, and FAQs. Users can also check their personal e-mail, the status of their Whyville salary, and their latest bank statement. Whyville has an active community life that elects its own mayor, organizes annual virtual proms, and posts many public petitions that campaign to include or change features of Whyville. Places like the trading post allow Whyvillians to exchange goods. Whyvillians may head to the sunroof, pool party, and other locales to chat with friends and other users on topics related to school, friendships, and appearance. Of course, within Whyville there are many distinct communities, many of which have designated hangout spots. For instance, the SpinGeek lounge is very popular with African American players and the players we studied typically referred to it as the “Black Place.”
In early 2005, we set up an after-school club where 21 older children (tweens) in the fourth–sixth grades (9–12 years old) came to play on Whyville for an hour most days after school. While the club began as a quiet place, it became lively as participants learned to navigate the site and began to shout advice to each other, arrange parties on Whyville, chat, throw virtual projectiles, and critique each other’s avatars (Fields & Kafai, 2009; Kafai, 2008). Most youth were new to Whyville, so learning to participate in the site was a common (if tacit) goal. Club members eagerly displayed their knowledge of the site by offering advice and answering questions, such as how to create a good look or throw a projectile. The club members were racially and ethnically diverse and came from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. All had access to computers at home and in school. In addition to the after-school gaming club, we also recruited over 500 online players who consented to be tracked on Whyville.net.
To meet our research goals, we obtained assent forms from all of the after-school club participants and informed consent from their parents or guardians to record interactions in Whyville during and outside of school time and to interview club members about their Whyville experience. In this article, all players were assigned pseudonyms for themselves and their Whyville avatars. For our analyses, we focused on the log file data for all of these players, which was indexed by participants’ names and time-stamped for every mouse click and chat interaction. Thus, we could follow players’ participation in Whyville, whether they were logged in from home, school, or any other location over a 6-month time period. We condensed the locations and activities into 13 main categories: ymail, whypox, whisper, economic, social, multiplayer games, information, house, games, face, chat, bbs, and miscellaneous. We then created clusters based on their participation frequency that revealed three main player profiles: core, semicore, and casual players (for more detail on clustering techniques, see Giang, Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2012).
For the case studies, we selected one boy from each player category. By distilling mouse clicks and chat interactions into narrative form, we were able to develop a more nuanced understanding of how each boy player in the gaming club moved from “newbie” status to being a full-fledged Whyvillian. We have described elsewhere this technique of qualitative log file data analysis in more detail (Fields & Kafai, 2009; Kafai & Fields, forthcoming). In addition, we conducted debriefing interviews with all participants at the end of club. A set of open-ended questions focused on their general Whyville experiences, their choices in avatar designs, their science-related game play, and their experiences with Whypox, a flu-like epidemic that strikes the Whyville community on a yearly basis.
Findings
So how do boys play in the virtual world of Whyville? We answer this question in two ways: in the first section, we present an overview of general club activities and introduce the players based on profiles drawn from quantitative analysis, while in the second section we present enriched portraits of individual player’s engagement in activities over time.
Club Activities
Our first take on boy’s play is rather traditional by capturing frequency of play activity on the club level. When we examined their overall participation (see Figure 1a) we found that chat, y-mail, and avatar design-related activities (shopping, trading, creating, or putting on face parts) were the three most popular. This was also true of the club as a whole. When we compared these frequencies to those of the girls in the after-school gaming club using raw numbers, we found significant differences only in relation to economic activities (e.g., looking at salary or bank statements), participation in multiplayer games (e.g., checkers), and engagement with the Whypox epidemic (searching for information or participating in Whypox-related activities), all of which boys did more frequently than girls (Giang, Kafai, Fields, & Searle, 2012). Overall, player participation was highest during the time when the after-school gaming club was in session, but players also increased their usage toward the end of the study period.
A. Player profiles for all after-school club users; B. Player profile for Blake/raybeams—core player; C. Player profile for Brad/vulcan61—semi-core player; and D. Player profile for Aidan/masher47—peripheral player.
As informative as this overview is, it tells us little about individual boy players, how they become players in Whyville, what their centers of activity were, and how their participation might have shifted over time. By creating profiles based on clusters of their participation, we were able to select three cases along a continuum of engagement ranging from core to peripheral players (see Figures 1B Blake: core, 1C Brad: semicore, and 1D Aidan: peripheral). There are few things we knew about these players from field notes and interviews.
(continued)
At the time of the study, Blake was a fourth grader. On Whyville, he was known as raybeams. While Blake/raybeams was considered a core player, his participation in Whyville was initially not as intense as other players. When asked how he would describe Whyville to a new player, he said, “you play games and you make your face look different, you talk to people.” During the first 9 weeks of the study, his game play is notable, but the major shift in his participation comes in week 19 when he jumped from a prior high of 361 instances of face-related activity in week 6 to 1,215 instances in week 19 and 1,506 instances in week 22. The increases in his instances of chat reveal a similar pattern beginning in week 19. During this time of intense participation, raybeams developed a reputation for himself as a dealer of hard-to-find face parts. He also managed to hack and scam his way to 1 million clams—something that would make him “the best” on Whyville.
Brad, also in the fourth grade, was a semicore player. On Whyville, Brad’s avatar was named after a video game character, an aspect we have tried to capture by calling his avatar vulcan61. After visiting Akbar’s Face Mall for the first time during his fourth day, he spent more time engaged in face-related activities than anything else. He also liked to play games like Chinese checkers, at which he excelled. Another interesting aspect of vulcan61’s play in Whyville is that he frequently sought out information on the games. For instance, when he started to play the car racing game, he viewed the tutorial and tried out his skills on the practice tracks before playing in the main public arena.
Aidan, our peripheral player, was a sixth grader. He liked to partner with Blake during the after-school gaming club because “[Blake] taught [him] where to go” and knew a lot about Whyville. In Whyville, Aidan went by masher47 and especially liked “the money,” since earning clams allowed him to buy stuff. He fluctuated between regularly changing how his avatar looked so that “nobody [would] recognize [him]” and he could play tricks, and keeping it the same, which made it easier to meet up with friends. In addition, masher47 spent a lot of his time being social and even went through a 3-week phase of intense flirting. In order to develop a fuller portrait of boys’ lives in Whyville, we turn to a more fine grained analysis of their activities.
Portraits of Boy Players
We start out with describing boys’ regular activities, giving us a sense of their everyday lives in Whyville. The daily routine that many players develop over time as they move from being new members of the community at large to more involved players with specific affinity groups is perhaps most indicative of their navigation in Whyville. This aspect also featured prominently in Jenkins’ (1998/2005) analysis of video games offering freedom of movement to boys no longer venturing out in their neighborhoods. These dimensions of boys’ play most closely mirror the historically established practices of boys’ culture (Jenkins, 1998/2005; Rotundo, 1998) and allow us to examine how the tween boys in our case studies are engaging with circulating discourses about masculinity and experimenting with a variety of masculine identities.
While each boy played with differing levels of intensity their first steps into Whyville and later routines are remarkably similar. All of them began their adventures from the welcome page, which initially served as a home base from which they ventured further afield as they grew more comfortable with the various aspects of Whyville. Over time, these home bases shift as players become more engaged with particular aspects of Whyville and carved out niches for themselves. Analyses of word frequencies highlight this element. For vulcan61 the avatar design areas of Whyville became a kind of home base but he also frequented the moon and the beach. Masher47 spent a majority of his time at the beach, which is consistent with our characterization of him as a peripheral player who mostly enjoyed the social aspects of Whyville, including a 3-week phase of intense flirting. Finally, raybeams is particularly interesting because his home base shifted over time. He went from frequenting one of the Geek Speak lounges (places where you can learn more about a particular science-related topic from experts that often serve as hangouts for particular groups of players) to later spending more time in a series of specific trade rooms. Thus, players’ home bases are one component of viewing space as a process in Whyville. “Home bases” provide places of relative stability from which players venture out into the rest of the world, but they also shift over time in conjunction with players’ participation patterns. While these data are not generalizable beyond Whyville, it is worth noting that players in other virtual worlds develop similar routines and preferred places where they can be found hanging out within the virtual world (Boellstorff, 2008; Dibbell, 1999). Like our case study players, we would expect participants in other virtual worlds to shift home bases as their interests change or they became more involved in a particular area of the community. Within any virtual or real community, there are many smaller communities or affinity groups in which individuals may choose to participate.
In interviews, all of the case study players described finding new places in Whyville through trial and error. While this is certainly not unique to the case study players—almost all of the players we studied described finding new spaces this way—it is important because it illustrates case study players spatially roaming farther from their “home bases” and making the most of the “possibility spaces” of Whyville (DeVane & Squire, 2008) by imbuing them with their own meanings through interaction. For instance, after discovering that he could teleport to Mars, Earth, Saturn, and the moon, vulcan61 experimented with teleporting elsewhere, trying out the commands, “teleport Florida” and “teleport anywhere.” In addition, players hosted group parties on planets, arranged to meet their friends in a particular place, or used less popular places (like the “secret” planets) for meeting players of the opposite gender.
Thus, Jenkins (1998/2005) suggestion that video games might provide “complete freedom of movement” for boys increasingly confined to domestic spaces seems to hold true for virtual worlds. While in some ways there is less fantasy play involved, virtual worlds may allow for more “freedom of movement” because there is no prescribed story line and boys may create their own paths. Furthermore, we may extend Jenkins’ conceptualization of freedom of movement beyond play that was historically gendered male to include the ways in which virtual worlds like Whyville allow tweens to explore a variety of masculine identities within a relatively safe space. In order to develop this argument, we supplement our understanding of Whyville’s various cultural geographies by taking a more in-depth look at the avatar design, projectile throwing and scamming activities of the case study players.
Identity play: Avatar designs
With their avatar design opportunities, virtual worlds provide an ideal location for tweens to try out different personas. Two snapshots drawn from interviews with Aidan reveal masher47 emulating Fifty Cent (who was one of Aidan’s favorite rappers) with a jersey and a headband and, later, dressed up in his “Goth look” with a Dracula Suit, sunglasses, and angel wings. Aidan described the second avatar design as having “[his] look—the chin thing, it has the wings, it has the sunglasses.” Aidan’s choice to play with masher47’s appearance hints at an exploration of various masculine identities, from hypermasculine rapper to “Goth.” Of course, it is one thing to change one’s clothes and another to adopt distinct speech patterns or styles of interaction associated with various masculine identities. Still, given what we know about boys and masculinity, Aidan’s choice to clothe his avatar in Fifty Cent-style garb connects to the popular (and problematic) representations of African Americans often seen in video games (Leonard, 2003, 2006) and suggests an obsession with hypermasculinity that is common among tween and teen boys (Pascoe, 2007).
Like Aidan, Blake created an avatar that did not look exactly like him. As he told us in an interview, “I don’t have blond hair, I’m not wearing a hat, I don’t wear sunglasses, and I don’t have a straight . . . nose.” Nonetheless, Blake “liked it that way” and infrequently changed raybeams’ appearance, usually only changing his shirt. Still, when we examine Blake’s most frequently used words in his chat records, three of the top hits related to specific face parts that he was searching for. Finally, while we did not collect data about the specifics of Brad’s avatar design over time, we know that he spent most of his time engaged in face-related activities. When we look at a time analysis (Feldon & Kafai, 2008), we see that all the boys (and girls) spent significant amounts of time participating in avatar design activities. In sum, the boys experimented with different appearances but to varying degrees. While changing one’s appearance is not tantamount to adopting the styles of speech or patterns of interaction associated with a given masculine identity, it is a low-risk way of experimenting with different identities and perhaps seeing how others respond. As we will discuss in the following sections, the boy players we studied engaged in highly typical masculine behavior while playing in Whyville, so it is not a stretch to view the time they spent engaged in avatar design-related activities as one version of masculine identity play. Like video games, virtual worlds may serve as a space where boys can experiment with different masculine identities. Not only do we see this in the boys’ avatar design activities but also in how their avatars were perceived by others.
One way in which we noticed that the boys were concerned with how others perceived their avatars was in their use of space related to avatar design. It was not uncommon to see them use the “Pick Your Nose” feature to alter their appearances before heading into the more public spaces of Whyville. In addition, avatar design was a hot topic of conversation in Whyville and the gaming club. While chatting with someone in Whyville, masher47 acknowledged that he “[couldn’t] seem to get the face right” and, in the gaming club, others accused Aidan of giving masher47 “girly eyes.” In addition, masher47 sometimes said things in Whyville like, “whoever likes me press 222” or attempted to flirt with others by saying things like, “I like your face” or “cute hat.” Raybeams and vulcan61 also engaged in similar behaviors. On one occasion raybeams even participated in a beauty contest (or “bc”), an activity usually associated with girls. Thus, we see the boys taking up circulating discourses about masculinity and testing them out through their avatars’ appearances and interaction with others. Further, we found that Whyville.net provided boys with more freedom of movement than some video games in relation to experimenting with different masculine identities because there was no set story line or ultimate goal and they had greater agency in relation to shaping their avatars’ looks and actions. The aspect of experimenting with various masculine identities and understandings of what it means to be a “man” is even more evident when we look at boys’ projectile throwing activities, which is one of the closest things to “touching” someone within the virtual realm of Whyville.
Gender play: Projectile throwing
At the time of our study, one of the most popular activities in Whyville was throwing projectiles at other players. There is a projectile store where you can buy different types of objects to throw at other players using the throw command (e.g., throw mudball kas293). It is perhaps the activity that comes closest to the rough-and-tumble play and chasing games observed in boys’ play (Taylor, 2006). Overall, we observed that boys were more interested in projectile throwing than girls in the gaming club (Fields & Kafai, 2009). Each of the boys engaged in projectile throwing to a different extent. Raybeams was the most frequent projectile thrower and masher47 was the least frequent even though he stressed that he liked to “[follow] people around and start throwing things at them.” The boys also varied in how they threw projectiles, who they threw them at, and what kinds of projectiles they threw. Elsewhere we have elaborated on these themes in more detail (Fields & Kafai, 2008).
Boys assigned nuanced meanings to projectile throwing that connect with our understandings of how boys assert a form of hegemonic masculinity by demonstrating their physical prowess and their heterosexuality. On one hand, boys engaged in a sort of virtual rough and tumble play (sometimes accompanied by actual rough and tumble play in the gaming club) when they had projectile throwing wars with one another. On the other hand, they threw heart and kiss projectiles, which carried specific meanings depending on the intended recipient of the projectile. When these projectiles were thrown at girl avatars, it was seen as a flirtatious move and, by extension, an assertion of one’s heterosexuality. However, when they were thrown at other boys, it was seen as a teasing gesture that reflected on both the thrower and the recipient’s masculinity. By throwing “girly” projectiles, the thrower was playfully suggesting that the recipient might have some feminine qualities. In return, the male recipients of these projectiles often accused the thrower of being “gay.” Such “homophobic teasing,” as Pascoe (2007) calls it, characterizes much of boys’ play in the tween and teen years. In one instance, vulcan61 threw a heart projectile at another Whyvillian. The accompanying chat interchanges included phrases like “your [sic] dead,” suggesting that the individuals were engaged in playful teasing. As the barrage of projectiles continued, vulcan61’s playmate accused him of being “gay” because he was throwing heart and kiss projectiles at another guy, to which vulcan61 responded, “I only have hearts. I’am [sic] not gay.” In fact, anytime the boys did something that was perceived as too feminine, society-level discourses about masculinity, and in particular a pervasive homophobia, surfaced. This echoes Pascoe’s (2007) findings concerning how high schoolers negotiated masculinity, Reed’s (2005) discussion of boys’ understandings of appropriate and inappropriate touching during rough and tumble play, and Sanford and Madill’s (2006) discussion of boys taking up and resisting popular narratives of masculinity through video game play.
When we analyzed boys’ throwing of other kinds of projectiles, we found similar themes within the space of Whyville.net and in the space of the gaming club. One day, while not participating in the action on Whyville, our field notes recorded Blake actively encouraging his male classmates who were engaged in a projectile throwing war with one another. He ran back and forth between their computers, typed commands on their keyboards, and gave away players’ locations to others. For instance, after throwing a pie projectile at another player’s avatar using Trevor’s keyboard, Blake yelled out “Yeah! We got you, Gabriel!” to which Gabriel replied, “I’m taking you down!” As the projectile throwing war continued, Blake taunted various players about being scared and gave away their locations so that others could chase them from location to location and throw projectiles at them.
In this example, we see the boys collectively engaged in mapping the space of Whyville as they launch projectiles at one another and move from place to place to avoid being hit by projectiles. This play is violent, aggressive, and as close to physical as players can get in Whyville, but it is also cooperative as boys team up for action (Orr Vered, 1998). In addition, their verbal commentary in the club is similar to the kinds of things we expect to hear when boys are engaged in rough and tumble play, the kinds of chase games Thorne (1993/1998) observed on the playground, or simply in attempting to assert their own masculine self-identities (Pascoe, 2007). Thus, boys’ play can indeed be translated into the realm of video games and virtual worlds as Jenkins (1998/2005) posited. However, whereas Jenkins worried that video game spaces were limited in that they provided “only pre-structured forms of interactivity” (p. 340), virtual worlds allow boys to create their own pathways and interactions as they chase each other and throw projectiles. Our own understandings of these processes are also nuanced by theories of preadolescence as a developmental stage and masculine identity development. In these projectile throwing examples, the boy players revealed another dimension of how boys engage with and test larger cultural understandings of masculinity by playing war-like games and taking up Western, hegemonic understandings of masculinity.
Transgressive play: Scamming clams
The last activity we wish to highlight is scamming, by which we mean preying upon other less experienced players and exploiting their lack of knowledge about how institutions work within Whyville in order to turn a profit. While scamming is typically not included in discussions of play in video games and virtual worlds, Consalvo (2007) has shown that it is a fairly common practice and should be considered an everyday part of game play. Further, Sanford and Madill (2006) highlight the fact that, “[b]y using cheats and engaging in a community that understands the purpose of cheats and the importance of them, players can band together to resist traditional and mainstream rules” (p. 296). In other words, scamming in virtual worlds allows players to be transgressive, which is usually taken to mean that the player is playing against the ideal player type or participating in ways not anticipated by the site designers (Aarseth, 2007; Sundén, 2009). Of our three case studies, only raybeams was engaged in scamming, but one of the girl case studies from the same after-school gaming club (Fields & Kafai, 2009) also scammed others in similar ways. Raybeams was a relatively low-profile player on Whyville during the gaming club, where he participated in standard Whyville activities like buying face parts and playing games. Raybeams initially visited the trading post intermittently, but as he spent more time in Whyville, he began to spend more time in the trading post and completed more successful trades. In mid-April he completed 20 trades in a 14-min time span (74% of his total session). Then, in May, he began heavy duty trading and accusations that he was scamming others began, as evidenced in his constant denials of, “im not a scammer.” He advertised a scam that involved an illegal trade that transfers all of the victim’s clams into the scammer’s bank account. For instance, on May 15 while in a trading room (13) with another player, he advertises a scheme to help the other player get more clams quickly. Trade Room-13 2:58 take him off i know a way to double ur elmo want to do it 2:59 thats how i got rich ok heres how i put up 1 clam then i leave and u agree and that’s leave like now agree 3:00 i think it only works on elmo bcuz of the glitch see elmo has a glitch and it do work 3:01 ok fine u dont want this leave
Several elements of this interaction suggest that raybeams is (unsuccessfully) attempting to scam another player. First, having another player put up all of his or her clams for a trade and then putting up very few yourself is a key indicator that a scam is taking place. Second, raybeams asks the other player to agree only after he has left his trading seat, meaning that he will not owe the other player any clams. Notably, the other player picks up on this too. Raybeams appears to be annoyed when he says “ok fine u don’t want this” at the end of the interaction.
It is unclear why raybeams begins hacking and scamming in the first place, but he mentions getting hacked by someone on May 9, when he says “me I got hac[k]ed . . . well man I lost 800 k lol” (raybeams, 2005, log file, p. 41). When someone gets hacked, it means that another player has accessed their account without their permission. Sometimes this involves simply pretending to be that person in Whyville but more often it involves taking the individual’s clams and transferring them to the hacker’s account. While we cannot be certain whether Blake meant 800,00 when he typed 800 k or whether he is simply toying with his interlocutor, having his account hacked by another player and losing a seeming lot of money may serve as justification of raybeams for hacking and scamming others. By repeatedly affirming that he does not hack his friends, such as on May 20 when he says, “no I never I don’t hack friends” (raybeams, 2005, log file, p. 62), raybeams confirms that he possesses the knowledge to hack into others’ accounts and does so when it promises to be financially lucrative. Not surprisingly then, raybeams’ scamming might have been connected to his desire to earn 1 million clams, which he decided would make him “the best” on Whyville. There are no official ways (beyond one’s salary, which is indicative of game play ability as well as tenure in Whyville) to measure one’s performance in Whyville in relation to other players. Thus, it is interesting that raybeams developed a goal of earning 1 million clams for himself and used all necessary means to succeed at his goal. Raybeams’ engagement in scamming activities in pursuit of a particular goal he set for himself is indicative of the player-driven nature of virtual worlds and the ways in which this kind of configuration provides for more freedom of movement. Through a combination of legitimate trade activities, hacking others’ accounts, and scamming, raybeams achieved his goal of earning 1 million clams and was able to experiment with multiple masculine identities. On one hand, he was engaging in forbidden, though common, hacking and scamming activities in order to gain more clams, or money, in Whyville. On the other hand, the fact that he was financially successful as a result of his activities made him an important player in Whyville. This desire to be financially successful, however it was achieved, is not in and of itself transgressive but rather is consistent with notions of Western hegemonic masculinity and larger political–economic patterns in American society where men are expected to be breadwinners and financial success is valued.
Discussion
One of our goals in this study was to apply Jenkins’ (1998/2005) notion of freedom of movement to virtual worlds. We conceptualized space as a process rather than a static entity using Leander and McKim’s (2003) definition, which allowed us to examine gender play in boys’ interactions and activities. We found that virtual worlds, like video games, offer a geographical expansion of play space to their participants. However, we argue, video games and virtual worlds are qualitatively different in many ways and, therefore, virtual worlds need to be studied in their own right, alongside studies of other gaming environments like MMORPGs.
All players in Whyville, boys included, establish a home base from which they start their ventures into the larger virtual world and to which they return. Furthermore, these home bases shift over time as players’ interests shift and they become involved in varying aspects of community life. All our case study players developed home bases and then routines as they entered and navigated Whyville; what changed was the destination of their navigation. Different places such as the trading post became temporary centers of activity for shorter or longer time periods before players moved on to other things. The notion of a home base is interesting since much of the literature on the study of play has marked girls as staying close to home while boys ventured outside the home for their bases. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why we did not observe many of the so prominently documented gender differences in previous research literature—at least not on the geographical level.
Another goal was to understand boys’ play on their own terms rather than to essentialize them. Whyville’s demographics (68% girls) made it an ideal site for observing boys engaged in “border work” (Thorne, 1993/1998). We found that while boys generally show a strong preference for the same activities as girls in Whyville, including chatting, y-mail, and avatar design activities, there were qualitative differences in how boys engaged in these activities. For instance, vulcan61 spent more time engaged in avatar design–related activities, while raybeams became a specialized dealer of hard-to-find face parts and made lots of clams by hacking and scamming other players. Had we simply looked at boys’ play using quantitative methods, we would not have uncovered these subtle but important differences because they were all collapsed within the “face” category. Our findings confirm that while gender is an important component of tween play in virtual worlds, expertise is equally important (DeVane & Squire, 2008). Raybeams’ player profile is more similar to that of Bluwave, a central girl player (Fields & Kafai, in press) who also engaged in scamming, than it is to either masher47 or vulcan 61. Yet, we also found aspects of boys’ play in Whyville.net that closely resembled boys rough and tumble play and playground chase games, which might have been obscured had we been looking comparatively at boys and girls play.
In this context, our research offered the possibility to examine notions of masculinity in boys’ play (Burrill, 2008; Kendall, 2002; Pascoe, 2007; Sanford & Madill, 2006; Walkerdine, 2007). Our focus age group, namely tweens, is of particular relevance, given their developmental transition from childhood into adolescence and their experimentation with different versions of masculinity. We found that boys used their avatar designs as a way to experiment with different versions of masculinity at a very basic level, one that did not necessarily involve adopting the speech patterns or interactional styles of a particular group. In addition, boys’ projectile play allowed them to play with mainstream understandings of masculinity. At times they engaged in the virtual equivalent of a rough and tumble chase game (accompanied by equally physical activity in the gaming club itself) while at others they jokingly threw heart and kiss projectiles at one another, provoking comments about their sexuality from other boys. Both of these actions are aligned with assertions of hegemonic masculinity common among tween and teen boys: in the first instance through proving one’s physical dominance and in the second instance through homophobic teasing (Pascoe, 2007). Finally, raybeams’ scamming provided us with an opportunity to examine transgressive play and observe the ways in which a virtual realm like Whyville.net allowed him to simultaneously experiment with a “bad boy” persona without any real consequences (see also Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2008) and enact a version of Western hegemonic masculinity through his desire to achieve financial success. In these ways boys were able to use Whyville.net as a space where they could experiment with various masculine identities and determine which ones worked for them without the consequences of doing so in a real-world environment.
In conclusion, virtual worlds offer another space for the expression of boys’ culture, including hierarchical play, peer recognition, competition, violent elements, humor, and independence. Because virtual worlds do not have a singular story line or an end goal, individuals and groups of players have more opportunities to move about freely and create their own pathways but also recreate much of the gendered play found on the playground. The shifts we observed in participation over time, like raybeams’ transition from being a relatively low-profile player to a scammer and Whyville millionaire, and the contextualized meanings that developed around activities like projectile throwing contributed to our understanding of how boys leveraged freedom of movement in Whyville. It is important to bear in mind, in keeping with our understanding of space as process, that these meanings are always shifting and changing over time. A more recent study of play in Whyville suggests that projectile throwing is no longer a big deal. Thus, our analysis provides just one snapshot of how space is populated within Whyville.net at a particular moment in time. In this way, drawing on DeVane and Squire (2008), virtual worlds as fourth spaces are possibility spaces.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The data collection for this case study was supported by a grant of the National Science Foundation (NSF-0411814) and the analyses and writings in part by a grant of the MacArthur Foundation to the second author.