Researchers at Ohio University conducted a study on reactions to gendered voices in Halo 3. The same recordings (of generic things like “thanks for the game”) were played in the lobby and after matches. https://vgresearcher.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/reactions-to-a-womans-voice-in-an-fps-game-kuznekoff-rose-in-press/
via r/girlgamers
link to abstract of study: http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/12/1461444812458271
I like that they also compared performance and found that the female voice after a game where that player performed well garnered more directed “positive” comments than a high-performing player with a male voice or a high-performing player that didn’t say anything. I’d like to know more about the “positive” comments because I wonder if “you’re so good for a girl” or “I’ve never seen a girl who played halo” count as “positive” in this study.
Obviously this is something I’m passionate about. I should dig up the screenshots of the first sc2 3v3 game I played with Fritz and Javan where one of our opponents typed at length about his plans to rape me and how juicy my butt was, because I made my sc2 name “judy”, because… well, I wanted to see what would happen, and I didn’t feel like using a gender-neutral name. Which is nothing compared to all the other blogs out there chronicling worse behavior, or even other things I’ve personally had directed at me. We repelled their 6pool zerglings and won the match and my teammates hadn’t even noticed the talking.
But this exists and we should talk about it. It’s kinda weird because every gamer knows all about this, but the mainstream has no idea. It’s like preaching to the choir if I ever do talk about it. When I tell people who don’t experience this every time they play games, it’s so out there that they can’t believe it, so they tell me “oh, these must be isolated incidents,” or “why do you care so much about what stupid people think?” which makes it into *my* problem for complaining. The problem is that it’s so systemic. So kudos for all the people getting the word out, Anita Sarkeesian among them.