Emerging Insights into Esports – serie

This edited volume explores the various and unique motivations driving the rapidly-growing esports industry, which attracts attention and financial investment from major sponsors, athletic organizations, and entertainment values. Contributors draw on a variety of perspectives and theoretical vantage points to examine the multitude of traditions, cultures, expectations, and rituals that different stakeholders factor into their motivation to play and watch esports. Scholars of media studies, game studies, communication, entertainment, and digital communities will find this volume of particular interest.

In theory, esports should be inclusive regardless of gender, race, or ability – however, incidents in the world of esports indicate otherwise. This collection provides an examination of diversity and inclusion in esports as contributors offer a way for readers to understand the history, current issues, and potential impacts of diversity and inclusion in the industry. Through analyses of players, games, fans, and broadcasts, this book highlights the exponential growth of the industry alongside the burgeoning cultural importance of diversity and inclusion. Ultimately, Diversity and Inclusion in the Esports Industry contributes to an intersection of well-established research areas to draw new insights as the industry continues to evolve. Scholars of communication, media studies, game studies, and sociology will find this book of particular interest.

In this book, Sian Tomkinson examines why, despite around half of gamers being female, highly-gendered stereotypical assumptions pervade the video game industry and communities of play, leading to toxic attitudes and events such as Gamergate and beyond. Tomkinson utilizes a Deleuzoguattarian lens through critique of categories to encourage a shift away from the binary oppositions that often lie at the root of this tension. Through the use of concepts including the assemblage, faciality, and the refrain, the book argues that the increased diversity of games, producers, and players have challenged traditional gamer identities. Gamers faced with this challenge, Tomkinson posits, can either embrace new experiences and affects – deterritorialising this identity – or become destructively reactionary by reterritorializing and refusing to meaningfully engage with difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how video game cultures and communities have a unique assemblage of influences while also functioning as a microcosm of broader social, cultural, and political tensions. Scholars of media studies, video game studies, women’s and gender studies, philosophy, and sociology will find this book of particular interest.

In this book, Sian Tomkinson examines why, despite around half of gamers being female, highly-gendered stereotypical assumptions pervade the video game industry and communities of play, leading to toxic attitudes and events such as Gamergate and beyond. Tomkinson utilizes a Deleuzoguattarian lens through critique of categories to encourage a shift away from the binary oppositions that often lie at the root of this tension. Through the use of concepts including the assemblage, faciality, and the refrain, the book argues that the increased diversity of games, producers, and players have challenged traditional gamer identities. Gamers faced with this challenge, Tomkinson posits, can either embrace new experiences and affects – deterritorialising this identity – or become destructively reactionary by reterritorializing and refusing to meaningfully engage with difference. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how video game cultures and communities have a unique assemblage of influences while also functioning as a microcosm of broader social, cultural, and political tensions. Scholars of media studies, video game studies, women’s and gender studies, philosophy, and sociology will find this book of particular interest.

This book demonstrates how embracing and engaging with personal identity—both positively and negatively—has led gaming culture to evolve and fracture past the monolith of the stereotypical “gamer” image that exists within the popular imaginary. Video game culture tends to be cloistered and closed off to those who don’t appear to align with the assumed demographics of a “gamer”, despite the reality that a large portion of game audiences fall outside of that category. Christine Tomlinson poses critical questions about the circumstances in which it is deemed acceptable to broach the topic of identity within gaming spaces, with an emphasis on players who have been marginalized in broader gaming culture, largely on the basis of gender and/or sexuality.In light of this dichotomy, Tomlinson observes how these marginalized players have formed their own communities to produce new individual and shared gaming identities and cultures as acts of resistance and resilience through which they can reclaim a position in an often-hostile environment and a slowly-changing industry and content landscape. Ultimately, Tomlinson argues that while these alternative communities should not need to exist, they have paved the way for a fracturing of gaming culture that provides marginalized players with safe and productive outlets for discussion and community.