Gender and the player cyborg: Ideological representation and construction in online games. Paper presented at the Internet Research 8.0: Let's play Conference

This paper offers an analysis of the ideological implications of the dynamic representational proc-esses in online games, particularly MMORPG such as the massively popular World of Warcraft. In online multiplayer games, there is room for an extensive amount of user-created content working within the larger frame provided by the game design. However, games still set up a framework of indispensable rules and conditions, and studying these can help point out the underlying ideologi-cal constructions inherent in games that are challenged, reproduced or modified in the process of user creativity. Specifically, I am interested in the construction of gender that arises in this meet-ing (both in the sense of collaboration and of confrontation) between the game as designed struc-ture and the player/user, and I propose using the cyborg image or “myth ” as presented by Donna Haraway (Haraway, 1991) to shed light on the dynamics and theoretical implications of the com-plex of player, game and gender identity