How do women create and manage their identity in a hostile and gendered gaming community: The case of League of Legends.

Abstract

In an era where inclusivity and gender equality are at the centre of our societal preoccupations, this thesis investigates, through the prism of identity dilemmas, how female gamers manage their identity(ies) in a hostile and gendered gaming community: League of Legends. Accordingly, this research fills a gap in the literature by combining the themes of online communities, female gamers, and identity creation in relation to aggressive behaviours, namely gender-based harassment and stigmatisations. Additionally, this research, by investigating such a challenging topic for the industry, brings food for thought to the gaming sector, namely game developers. As a result, various findings could be drawn from this research relying on in-depth-interviews of 20 female League of Legends players. First, the focus of this research is based on the definitions of the gaming communities and the notion of femininity accepted by both our society and respondents. I argue that several women and gamer identities must be considered to analyse such an identity process. Then, the sources of identity dilemmas are explored which leads to the conclusion that stigmatisations are the trigger of the studied identity dilemmas, complemented by gender-based harassment and incongruity between identities. Later, this research allows the identification of four types of resolutions to identity dilemmas, also called identity management styles in this thesis. In addition, factors which might influence the identity management styles developed by female gamers are addressed. Thus, the influence of game rank is denied while the influence of exposure to stigmatisations outside the community is assumed. Finally, recommendations for future research are formulated, as well as the identified limitations of this thesis.