Title: Finnish women players’ gaming and game cultural agency
In Finland, 64.2% of women play digital entertainment games, and 43% play them actively, at least once a month. For their doctoral dissertation (University of Turku, 2022), Usva Friman collected interview and online questionnaire material from Finnish adult women who play digital games. The women participating in the study were playing actively on different platforms and a great variety of game genres. They also actively participated in game culture in other ways: following game media, participating in gaming events, and watching esports. However, despite their active gaming and game cultural participation, these women were continuously rejected from game culture because of their gender and did not usually identify with the idea of ‘a gamer’. In this talk, she will discuss women’s contradictory position in game culture – as active participants and rejects – by examining Finnish women players’ gaming practices and the gendered limits of their game cultural agency.
Digital Games Research Association, India 