SIO167: Studying Sexism and Video Games with Johannes Breuer

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is Episode 167! I'm Thomas Smith and today, I bring you an interview with Johannes Breuer, who, it's not, you'll see how you actually pronounce that in a minute, I'm not going to try, sorry, I'm, I'm, that, don't know how to speak German or sound like I speak German, anyway, uh, he was a co-author of a really interesting study on gaming and sexism and it, it came to some conclusions that, I don't know, you might find counterintuitive, but it's a fully acknowledging, it's very complex area, and and there's so much more to study, but I think there's, this is a really interesting one. And Johannes was kind enough to come on and try to walk me through it.

0:01:14 Thomas: You know, again, as a non-academic, you'll hear me ask plenty of basic questions. So sorry to all my academics listening that that, that will probably be a little basic for you, but for everybody else, hopefully you're, uh, you know, you're as dumb as I am and then it'll be fine. Now, I want to thank Kristi Winters for setting this up, uh, Kristi is fantastic by the way and she's she's sent me a few people over the, I guess, a couple years of our relationship now, of friendship, and uh, they're always good, so thanks Kristi, and check out her channel on YouTube, of course, if you search her you'll come across a bunch of ugly anti-feminist stuff, so you'll have to actually find her channel, which is Dr. K.M. Winters, you can find it on there somehow. Anyway, thanks to Kristi. Thanks. And let's go on over to Johannes to learn more about this study. Cutty. Johannes, how are you doing?

0:02:09 Johannes: Good, thank you.

0:02:10 Thomas: I, why don't you tell everybody how to actually pronounce your name, because I, I will have attempted it in the intro, but I will not have done it well, so give, give me the real pronunciation.

0:02:18 Johannes: The real pronunciation in German would be Johannes Breuer.

0:02:21 Thomas: Okay, thank you so much, I have that, uh, everybody has that, and I don't have to try to do it again. Uh, alright, thanks for joining me today, uh I'm really interested to talk about this study you recently completed, uh it's called Blame the Players, Don't Blame The Games, games why we should worry less about sexist video game content and focus more on interactions between players. So that's an interesting title. I'm curious to get into it, but first can you tell us kind of how you got into this and what led you down this path?

0:02:53 Johannes: So I did my PhD in psychology on the uses and effects of video games. And my main focus back then, I can already say, because it was, oh, five years ago now that I finished it, my focus was aggression and learning. So they're two of the main topics when people discuss the effects of video games, um, and I was involved in a in a project that did a longitudinal study, um, a survey among German gamers, um, and it asked about many topics, and one of the topics that was included was attitudes towards gender roles. So we were interested in looking into if there was a, some sort of relationship between the use of video games and, well, you could to put it briefly call call it sexism, but let's say gender role attitudes. Um, and based on that study I worked with some other colleagues on that topic and wrote two book chapters, and this is the second one now that just came out, right?

0:03:06 Thomas: Okay, so it's kind of a study branching off from a study you had done previously.

0:04:01 Johannes: Right, it's a, it's it was part of a larger project that looked into many different aspects of the uses and effects of video games.

0:04:09 Thomas: Okay,so do you want to give us any any examples of questions or ways that you're determining these gender roles? Like, what are some of the questions asked or ways you're measuring that?

0:04:20 Johannes: So, those, this was a very long survey that it included many questions on different topics, and been a while that I actually looked at the wording of the questionnaire items, but I can just check it if you give me a second. Here? Well, they were something like, in a group of mixed gender, like men and women, men should take on the leading role, and women should be more responsible for the household course, something like that.

0:04:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:46 Johannes: Sexist attitude scale, mostly related to gender roles in society.

0:04:50 Thomas: And this is in the first study, or did you use this data for both of them?

0:04:56 Johannes: The book chapters are not strict exactly or directly based on the study. We wrote a journal paper, and that has been published in 2015, if I remember correctly. The book chapters are not based on recent empirical data. They're more like an overview of the whole field.

0:05:13 Thomas: Oh, I see. Okay. Other things were you measuring when you were looking at these gamers?

0:05:21 Johannes: Lots of things. It was a really long survey. Well, we measured aggression. We looked at aggression. We looked that different types of video game use, of course, social demographics.

0:05:33 Johannes: Some of my colleagues were interested in the effects on your social circle. So many questions about social skills and social contacts. Yeah, a large variety of topics, I'd say.

0:05:47 Thomas: So, it sounds like, and, you know, I'm not an academic, so sorry I'm asking these kind of basic questions, but it sounds like this was a very large study with a lot of different data, and then people were maybe taking bits and pieces and using it for different book chapters, you're saying, stuff like that. Is that what it was?

0:06:05 Johannes: Pretty much, it was a project over several years, and we looked at... In this part of the project, we looked at a representative sample of German video game players aged 14 and older across a time span of three years, and it was large surveys, starting off with 5,000 people, and then it was about like 50%. It got halved in the following years because people dropped out, so...

0:06:06 Thomas: Oh, okay. Oh, Okay. So you were interested in the question for this chapter I'm looking at here, you were were interested in the question of, you know, where to differentiate between whether the games are like making people sexist or if the video, the gamers are already sexist and bringing that in, or is that the kind of question you're looking at?

0:06:54 Johannes: That's the basic question always with media research is, is there a media effect? So does the medium affect, in this case, your attitude, or a selection effect? So do you select certain media because of your attributes or attitudes? In this, or it could also be a combination of both, which is sometimes called a downward spiral, or or reinforcing spiral, if you want to phrase it more neutrally.

0:07:18 Thomas: Right.

0:07:19 Johannes: And that was the key question behind all of this. What's the relationship between sexist attitudes, or more broadly speaking, sexism and video games or video game use? Is there an effect of video games on that?

0:07:34 Thomas: So how would you untangle those? I'm curious, at what ways you would use to try to determine, like, how much is this responsible for that, and, you know, this other thing responsible. It just seems like such a complex question. How did you try to tackle it?

0:07:48 Johannes: It is indeed, and this is what the recently published chapter is largely about, about it being so complex. What we did is we had a longitudinal study. So we could look at attitudes at time point one and video game use at time point one, and then attitudes and video games use at point two, and see did sexist attitudes at a time one affect video game use at a two, or the other way around, did video game use at one time one effect sexist attitude at time two? Spoiler alert, the answer is not really. So there were no effects, actually.

0:08:24 Thomas: Hmm.

0:08:25 Johannes: Neither a median or a selection effect in our study. So the way we tried to disentangle it was using longitudinal data. Because, right, if you just have a cross-sectional survey and only ask once, you don't know which came first. So you can't disentangle with cross-sectional survey data. You need a longitudinal study for that. Of course, you can also do an experiment, but with experiments, you only get short-term effects. So you only see stuff in the lab, And then right after you did whatever you did, like a treatment, you let people play specific games. So you can only see the short-term effects. If you're interested in causality, in the long run, you need longitudinal data.

0:08:25 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Okay. So, Can You just define what is longitudinal data? I'm sorry to ask you, what, does, what does that mean, okay?

0:09:12 Johannes: No, no, no worries. I tried to put it very simply. It's asking the same people multiple times over time, the same things. So we ask them.

0:09:20 Thomas: I see, all Right, so That makes sense. So rather than, like, do one of those things where you're putting people in a room, having them play a little bit of a game, and then asking questions right after, or maybe before and after, and seeing, like, does anything change? You guys were asking questions and then waiting quite a while, asking the same group of people the same questions, and then seeing if there was meaningful changes, and comparing that with the usage of video games or whatever, to try to see if that was a cause. Do I have that right?

0:09:53 Johannes: Exactly. Exactly, right. The other scenario you described would be experimental research, which is good to tease out causality, because you give people a treatment, and in this example, it would be a game or different games, different version of a game, but you can only see short-term effects, because usually people are in the lab, and then they play a game for, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes or so, and they get a questionnaire right after that.

0:10:14 Thomas: Right, right.

0:10:15 Johannes: So you don't know if any of the change you see is persistent, or if it's only a very short-lived effect of that game or game content. We

0:10:24 Thomas: I see. Were there specific games you were were trying to get players of, like, were you looking at it that way or were it, was it just kind of gamers in general?

0:10:34 Johannes: Looked at gamers in general, so any any type of games, but in this, in this original study, in the original publication, we also at particular genres. In this case, it was action games and role-playing games, if I remember correctly, because several... There, there are lots of content analysis. So people, or studies, that looked at video game content and coded it. So they looked at the actual games, or descriptions or videos of the games, and then coded it for different types of content. And what they found is that these genres of games tend to have, and this is kind of the key problem in all of this, is the definition of what does sexism and also sexist content mean.

Because what they find is, a, um, there are fewer female characters in, in video games, and in some genres in particular, and they are also tend to be depicted in a more sexualized manner. And then you can ask, rightly ask, because this is a problem of defining it, um, is the absence of female characters already sexism? Would you define that as sexist, or at least female protagonists, um, or is it only, um, sexualized depiction? But if it's sexualized depiction, then it's probably more appropriate to speak of sexualized content, um, than sexist content. So this is, this is one of the things that we talk about in the, in the book chapter. This is

0:11:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:00 Johannes: Incredibly difficult to define, um, what sex video game is, and also sexist attitudes, because there are different types of sexism, um, that you could measure, uh,

0:12:10 Thomas: Yeah. And especially like I'm, I'm thinking about it and I, you know, I I'm I'm of the opinion that wider society is at least I, I, yeah, I am speaking about the U S I have no idea what, what attitudes are like in Germany, but I'm I'm of the opinion that wider culture and video game, movie, media, everything is pretty sexist and at least doesn't represent people enough, doesn't give representation to enough groups. So that's I'm wondering, like, if you're starting from already a kind of a sexist baseline, does that matter? Like, are you comparing when you when you are evaluating like, OK, is such and such gamer? Do they have pretty sexist attitudes? Is that like over and above what just general society is?

0:12:57 Thomas: Or is that sexist by some standard that you're using for the purposes of the study that, you know, like how do you have any idea how just the run of the mill non-gamer population would fare on these sexism studies or questions?

0:13:14 Johannes: To looking at our data, I would, I would say, there, that's exactly right. So I would, I would say there is no, as there is no effect of video games, I would also pretty much assume that there is no difference between gamers and non-gamers, like, on average.

0:13:26 Thomas: Oh, well, when you said there's no effect of video games, I thought you meant there's no effect over time, like they didn't get more sexist in the length of the study. So you're saying there's not even a difference between gamers and wider society?

0:13:41 Johannes: That's, again, the question of definitions, like who qualifies as a gamer, and of course there are gender differences in sexism. It depends on, again—and then we come back to the issue of measuring it—it depends on the kind of questions you ask, um, so that the items that we used would usually be answered differently on average across large groups, uh, by males and females, um, but since since video game, the gamer community, um, became so much more diverse over the years with all the what's been called casual games and mobile games. So if you include all of that, like the time when our data was collected, which which was 2010 to 2013, mobile gaming was not as big as it is today. And I would also say that the whole casual thing grew with the Nintendo Wii and now the Switch. So seeing that the gamer population, if there is such thing, is so diverse now, Now, it doesn't significantly differ from the general population in basic respects. If you say gamer population in general, if we look at specific genres, that's different.

0:14:48 Thomas: Yeah. Okay.

0:15:02 Johannes: But if you say people who play video games, depending on which country you look at, you have a diffusion rate of video games around 60% or more. So the question is, who is a gamer? Is kind of, I don't know, I would, I would like probably say silly to ask because you don't ask who's, who's the average television viewer, like everybody basically you know, at least, at least right, like Western, Western countries, or Europe and the U.S., if you will, um, everybody just uses a smartphone nowadays or uh watches TV, and a large part of the population also plays video games, even though people wouldn't usually self-identify as gamers. So if I ask people

0:15:12 Thomas: So it's such a big population of people already that it's, you know, I see. Yeah, pretty much everybody.

0:15:46 Thomas: Right.

0:15:47 Johannes: Who only play, I, I don't know, like quiz games or casual stuff on their smartphone, they probably wouldn't call themselves gamers.

0:15:47 Thomas: Right. Yeah, or Pokemon Go or something. Right.

0:15:55 Johannes: So that's, again, right. I keep coming back to the question of definitions, but, well, research is hard. So the point that we're trying to make with the book chapter I'm trying to makes is that researchers especially need to be cautious in making grand claims about video games or gamers because both are quite diverse. So video games in terms of genres and content and gamers, also the makeup of the population for different genres or even games is quite different.

0:16:00 Thomas: Yeah, no, no. I understand. Yeah.

0:16:28 Thomas: Yeah, I'd be interested in. Yeah, it sounds like drilling in on particular games could be could be an interesting thing, because yeah, it makes sense that once you're once you're so far broad as just anybody who kind of plays any sort of game, including on their phone and all that, then it that has such a large percentage of the general population, that it's kind of everybody. But yeah, so it's also interesting, this data was, I guess, before Gamergate. I don't know if that would have much significance in what you're looking at, but this sounds like it was just pre...

0:16:53 Johannes: Yeah. Oh, it got kind of published in the middle of it. Like the original study, the original journal study got published almost, I would say, I didn't follow it closely, but it was still ongoing and very much active on social media. So, but the

0:17:03 Thomas: Right.

0:17:16 Thomas: Well, you said 2010, 2013. I think GamerGate was like 2014 or so. Right. Gotcha.

0:17:23 Johannes: Paper was published in 2015.

0:17:24 Thomas: Yeah. But I just meant in terms of gathering your data.

0:17:25 Johannes: So you're right, you're Right. When we collected the data, that was not a topic, exactly. But in academia, it takes quite a while to get from designing your study, collecting your data, to getting your stuff published. It usually takes a couple of years. When it got published in 2015, that Was still an ongoing debate. But when we collected The data and designed the study, That was before that.

0:17:27 Thomas: Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

0:17:48 Thomas: So did you take a look at any of these specific, I don't know, gamer communities where, where we hear these horrible and, you know, kind of have experienced these, you know, stories of just really crappy people saying really bad things all the time? Or was, was that, I mean, was That anything you looked into? Or was it strictly related to this, this data that you, that you use.

0:18:14 Johannes: We didn't, but other people did. And they looked at the prevalence of experience of harassment. And they do differ by by genre and by game, actually. So it really depends on the community and, uh well, the norms of the, well, the makeup of the community. So who plays these games? Technical things like, do you have voice chat or not? Can you just contact people, or do you need to send a request? Of course, it depends on, like, where people play. Do they play on large public, public servers where everybody can be potentially anonymous? And things like, do the game companies sanction specific behaviors? How do they sanction them? So all of these, of course, affect, let's say, that the climate, uh, of a game, um, and the social interactions that happen within the game. So there can be, there are, there are large differences between the games, between individual games.

0:18:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:07 Thomas: Yeah I mean I, I play a little bit of Rocket League, uh here and there and I'm trying, I'm thinking, thinking about it and it's like that doesn't seem like it would be a particularly, you know, there's no, there is no gender really involved in the game content, you know. It's not not like a Theft Auto kind of game where there's all that violence and all that stuff. And yet, you know, even still, it's the most unpleasant experience. I have to turn the chat off constantly, which sucks because I would love to be able to communicate with teammates, but it's just such a toxic soup of just people being awful. And it really does seem to be based on, well, like you were saying, just can people talk talk anonymously or not, you know, that kind of thing. So yeah, I don't know.

0:19:52 Thomas: But I guess in thinking it through, it doesn't seem like the content is really an issue just in that one anecdotal example that I can think of. So is that also kind of where you're headed with this? Is that it's not really content based?

0:20:11 Johannes: Exactly, because, uh, in, in aggression, like, research and video games aggression, this is mostly, the focus is on content. So does, do violent games, again, we have a problem with definition, what's a violent video game, um, does a violent view game increase, usually they look at aggressive behavior, let's just say aggression, could also be aggressive, uh, cognition, um, and then some parts of of research on video games and sexism applies to the same design and wants to look at, does sexist content have an effect on sexist attitudes? But the point that we're trying to make, and this is completely based on a quote, actually, on a quote, or the the name of a newsletter article by James Ivory, in the newsletter of the International Communication Association, where he made the point that if we want to look at...

0:21:00 Johannes: Back then, Gamergate was happening. If we want to look into that as communication researchers, we should look more into, or focus more on, the interactions between players, and not so much on the content of the video game, because, like, the evidence so far would suggest that the content matters less than the interactions between players, or the, like, community aspects of the players, their community, so Just what You mentioned, it's a good thing that you mentioned Rocket Leak, because, yeah, it's right, in the game there's no gender of, like, the avatar, it's the car, um, but there's still toxic behavior happening, which, well, you know, we know, we all know it happens online because anonymity is a big factor, but also social norms.

There's a lot of social psychology research on what is, what's called the social identity model of de-individuation effects, or SIDE for short, and it exactly looks at this, like, is there disinhibition if, if, if there's anonymity and people can't identify you, but what they all, with this line of research, also found, is that group norms play a huge role. So the group norms that you perceive, do you perceive it as normal that people insult or harass other

0:21:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:22:13 Johannes: Players, or is that not the norm? So is it, is it sanctioned or not? Is it common or not? Um, and this is what makes, uh, kind of the, is the, the important part that influences the, the community, um, or the climate, as I, as I said, or would call it, of, of that player community. And, and this hasn't, this is, this is huge impact on, on individual, like, the individual player behavior. Are, are you worried about being sanctioned by other players or by the game company or not? And how do others behave? If others insult you, you are, of course, more likely to insult them than had they not insulted you or harassed you.

0:22:52 Thomas: Yeah, that it strikes, strikes me, what you're saying, uh, makes perfect sense, especially because, you know, in, in kind of the, the battles I've had to tried to fight, anyway, involving just being really, people being really horrible online, the one of the one of the main responses I get is like, it's, it's the internet, man, like, this is what it, you know, that kind of feeling that if this is the norm, like, if everybody behaves this way, then it's not a big deal that we behave this way. I, I've actually come to believe this is based on nothing but, again, my own experience, so feel free to tell me if there's data that proves me wrong, but I've kind of come to believe that anonymity isn't really as big a part of it as maybe I thought originally. You know, like, when the stuff first started happening, when the internet was, you know, I don't know, when social media and all that was first blowing up, and there was horrible interactions on it, that was always the thing.

0:23:47 Thomas: Oh, well, you can get get on there. You're anonymous. No one knows it's you, but like all the harassment on Twitter, all this stuff, you know, on Facebook, people being awful to each other, their names are on it. They don't, they don't care. You know, like it doesn't for me, I don't mean anonymity. I'm sure it's not nothing like I'm Sure, it's a component, but it doesn' t seem to me to be even that big of of a factor, but is there, do you have any data on that? Do

0:24:12 Johannes: Exactly what this Line of research suggests. So anonymity does play a role, but it is not the most important factor. Sometimes it's not even an important factor at all, because, as you say, people post mean comments with their real names, their full names. If it's newspaper websites or news websites, if it's Twitter or Facebook, people use their real name and they still do it. So it's not only anonymity, at the very least. Group norms are one thing, so it depends on the part of a Facebook group, or your list of Twitter connections that you have, or the video game, if you want to come back to that example, example um, and the the other, like, more, more like broader factor, is the, the absence of real consequences, and anonymity is related to that, right? If you don't Have to fear any, any detrimental consequence

0:24:13 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Well,

0:25:04 Johannes: For Yourself, right?

0:25:04 Thomas: Or just distance, right? Like insulation.

0:25:07 Johannes: Yeah, distance, Yeah, yeah, so, like, distance, like, physical or social distance, and So it means that you don't have to fear any negative consequences, and that's what I, I said about sanctions by the game companies, you know, if you don't even have to be afraid that people will, or if people can't even, can't report you, or the, the company will not react and will have no consequences, then, well, why should people stop if they enjoy it? So It's Like it's, uh, yeah,

0:25:07 Thomas: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. So, so it sounds like, uh if game companies or whoever's kind of hosting these platforms, you know, if they, if they are able to make some effort to police this kind of thing, then it it could make a substantial difference.

0:25:34 Johannes: Yeah, And I think it does, I think that's what also the research by the companies themselves show, but, of course, it's, it's a, it's thin line for them, uh, that they have to balance between, between being off-putting to or losing customers, right? So some people want to have their, I'm going to put it in air quotes, freedom of speech, Like complete freedom of speak on the game channel. And if you restrict that or ban some stuff, they will leave your game. But others are scared off by the kind of behavior or language that is being used in these games, games.

So for them, it's also a very, um, you might call it cynical, but economic, uh, calculation, right? How Do You, how Many customers do you lose or attract if you, if you want to, what, and what's, what's your community, what do you want your community To be, um, and, of course, of course, it's effort, it costs money to do these things, to the policing, if you wanna call it that, it costs, costs money, so I Can, I can understand that, uh, that different games or different companies have different policies and different resources

0:26:01 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:26:31 Thomas: Yeah, I guess they have to... Right.

0:26:54 Johannes: For this, I

0:26:48 Thomas: True. Well, I mean, you can ship some of it off to the players, a little bit of it, reporting and Flagging and stuff, but I guess that ultimately does take some sort of payroll to monitor that and filter out what's an actual abuse from what somebody just trolling and reporting, and it's something that's nothing, um, yeah, no, that's interesting, and it, it really makes sense to me, because it, that is, does seem to be exactly the battle lines that have been drawn out with a lot of these things, you know, like, so many of the, um, many of the the issues I see, I'm not that much into it, but there's a little bit of overlap between some of these real awful types that I've interacted with online in the gaming community. They want this libertarian, anything goes, if you monitor us or you limit us at all, it's this horrendous insult to free speech and the Constitution.

0:27:01 Johannes: Think

0:27:51 Thomas: And it makes sense. It must be because it actually does work. When you keep people from behaving as awfully as they want to, then it actually does reduce that behavior. Behavior, um, yeah, that, that, that does seem to be the very battle lines drawn, and with the exact thing you're talking about, where they're saying, well, we won't buy your game, or well, you know, you'll lose all of us as customers. So I guess it really is a cynical calculation by companies of, you know, what do I want to, first off, how many customers are we going to lose versus how many do we gain, but then also I would hope they would also factor in how much better they might look if If they have a healthy, non-shitty environment in which their game takes place, you know, that's kind of a positive externality or whatever that might not necessarily be, you know, related to customers, but at least would reputationally be a good factor. But

0:28:43 Johannes: In general, the whole idea about content, having media content, especially fictional media content, having strong effects is something that we, um, that's the, the connecting line between our, the aggression video games and aggression research that I did, or me and my colleagues did, um, and the sexism research is, uh, is focused on, on content is problematic for, for various reasons. And what you can see in both cases, with aggression and sexism, is that, um, if there are effects of content, they are usually very limited, so they don't generalize to other games or other players. Uh, these effects are small or subtle and not very long lasting, so much of the effects you find for aggression are found in the lab, but not like long, long-term. And it seems to be similar for the video games and sexism research line.

0:29:33 Johannes: So this is the big point, the big argument that we're trying to make, or two of the arguments are, A, the effects are more complicated and more subtle. And also the whole question of definitions. It is difficult to, well, it's helpful and it's how humans think, by putting stuff into categories, but, um, it's, it's a limitation.

So, as I said, same, if something is a sexist games or not is difficult, like what do you mean by sexist game, same with violent video game, um, on, or on the other end, what types of regression or sexism do you measure. So those are some, some more methodological points that we want to get across, that if you read a broad claim, you know how it is, you know, you have a study, and then a study gets published, which is already a reduction of all the stuff that has been done, or condensation, and then there's a press release, and then there's media reporting on it, so you go from very specific finding to claims like, study shows video games cause sexism, right? And this is, this is like very, very broad. Video games, like, which video games?

0:30:36 Johannes: But like, who, among who, what type of sexism do they cause? So this is, the this is something that we want to caution against with our work, that that claims like, like this, video games increase aggression, or video games make you sexist or increase sexist attitudes, are unwarranted or unscientific, as they are very unspecific. Because you always have to look at what exactly, which games, which players, which types of aggression or sexism did the researchers actually look at. And then, at the very least, be cautious about generalizing it to other games, players, or behaviors or attitudes. So I guess this is the overarching and the key point that we try to repeat, because we think it's very important in this whole discussion that's also very heated, not just online, but also within academia about media effects. And if there are media effects, if they're large, if there long-term or persistent or not.

0:30:33 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:31:39 Johannes: So this is something that's important to keep in mind.

0:31:40 Thomas: But I want to separate that, though. I take your point and that makes sense, but I would want to separate that from the idea and the argument that, you know, video games should be more inclusive even if them being kind of sexist doesn't increase sexism, you know what I mean? Like, there's other reasons for wanting there to be better representation and maybe wanting more women involved in the design or whatever it was, you you know, a lot of what Gamergate was about was, you know, can there be some more, well, on one side of it, can there be some more representation? And, you know, can there be fewer of these sexist tropes in these video games? I mean, I guess it's interesting to note that it seems as though your data shows that video games aren't causing sexism per se, but could they be perpetuating it? Could they be, you know, like, is there anything, is that a question touched on by your data, would that make any sense to say, uh, could

0:31:58 Johannes: Yeah, completely.

0:32:44 Thomas: If, if video games were more representative, could they in fact be decreasing sexism, kind of thing, like, is that missed opportunity, right?

0:32:54 Johannes: That's a good question that we, we haven't looked at, but I, but it's completely correct, you're completely correct in saying that these are two separate issues. One is like the effects, uh, angle that we look at, does the content have an effect on players, and what we and others find is it doesn't seem like it, at least not in the long run. Uh, but the other question is like, can video games be more inclusive, or the video game community, um, and certainly, yes, certainly can be more inclusive. And there are opinions on whether it should be or to what degree or in what regard it should be. But, well, of course, video games, they already are more diverse and inclusive. A very recent content analysis found that the number of female protagonists, characters, and especially protagonists, has increased over the last few years.

0:33:40 Johannes: And of course the whole question of inclusion or diversity is connected. In the first book chapter that we wrote about this issue, we developed this model of exclusion and sexism, and we would think it's connected that the workforce in the games industry is largely male, and that for some genres and games, the player community is largely female. Of course this also has effects on the contents of these games, but then if you then continue this, and one thing we speculated in our model is that the contents will also affect the attitudes of the players, but there seems to be no evidence for that, at least. But it's completely true that those things are two separate topics, and those are probably also need to be addressed separately. But I agree that if you want more diversity for, for games or video gaming, the gamer community, it doesn't hurt, or it certainly helps to have a diverse set of games.

0:34:39 Johannes: There will always be people who enjoy games that you, again, depending on your definition, could call sexist, which is, to some degree, this is okay, as long as, I don't know, depends on the legal regulations of different countries, what's possible or not. But there should also be games that have strong female leads, and it's not a zero-sum game, or shouldn't be, right? If we, if we have more video games with strong female characters and narratives or game mechanics that are also enjoyed by female players, or video games mit player communities that are not toxic, that, that's something positive, and it doesn't, it doesn' take away from the other games, right? You You can still have, there can still be people who enjoy, yeah, yeah.

0:35:25 Thomas: Yeah, I know, that was all the gamer gay people were like, oh, they're gonna run out of games with like white male leads and, and violence, and

0:35:34 Johannes: It's like, no, yeah

0:35:34 Thomas: All that stuff, as though that, yeah, if we have one more game that's, like, you know, more inclusive, and possibly designed by women, it's going to just completely undermine the, all the million other games that they have, yeah.

0:35:47 Johannes: That's a strange fear like that it's a zero-sum game, right? If we have one more game with a strong female lead, we have one less game with, we'll have one less Duke Nukem. There will always be stuff like Duke Nuke, if you want to play it, if that's your thing, it will always beat her because there's a market for it. And I don't think it would also be kind of an economical bad decision by the video game companies to say, "Oh, we're not going to do the next, I don't know, Dead or Alive or Duke Nukem, but instead we're just going to focus on games that have a strong female lead and are more narrative or whatnot."

They want to make money, so they want to sell games to both these demographics or groups, so So it makes sense. And if people are interested more in the video game medium of video games because it's maturing, there will also be a bigger diversity in the types of video game that are sold. As we can see now with the whole, everything that came out of what's called indie game scene, it's much broader than it used to be. And new platforms, new forms of release, and financing through crowdsourcing.

So I think the diversity of games will increase And that in the end will increase the diversity of the gamer population even more. And then potentially also the diversity because people get introduced to the technology through playing video games. It will probably also in the long run increase the biodiversity in the industry. That's

0:36:02 Thomas: One less Duke Nukem, yeah right, yeah well, that's a very optimistic picture, I like it, But what,

0:37:25 Johannes: What I hope. I try to be an optimist.

0:37:25 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I guess I want to ask what areas you are looking to further study. I mean, are there any, you know, any irons in the fire? If you were able to, what would you want to look further into along these lines? And what kinds of studies might you wantto do to get more data?

0:37:43 Johannes: Yeah, personally I moved on to slightly different research areas with my New job. But I'm still interested in video games, and some stuff that I've been looking at in other studies is learning with video games or some sort of positive effect, if you will. There's already a lot of research, but again, there are some problems with existing studies and types of evidence, to phrase it slightly more negatively. Working with all this stuff, of, I got a bit tired of the video games and aggression research because I think it, it has hit a dead end in some regards, um, with, with the, with the back and forth between people who make claims about it having strong effects and people who are more skeptical, and it's kind of a, it's environment for research to happen, um, it is really polarized within in academia. Well, and then sexism is a very heated topic. The other thing that's been a huge topic, both in academia and in the public and the media, is the topic of excessive use or addiction, so

0:37:48 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:38:17 Thomas: Why is that? Hmm. Hmm.

0:38:35 Thomas: Is it really polarized?

0:38:50 Thomas: Hmm.

0:38:50 Johannes: There's there's a, there seems to be a strong negativity bias in research on video games, so we look at sexism, aggression, and addiction, and then another part of research looks at learning, but, but again, effects, they are also more limited and and subtle in many cases than some, some claim them to be. So yeah, I've been interested in video games and learning for, for quite a while, so in my dissertation, and that's something that I continue to look at, possibly also because there's a bit less heat in the academic

0:38:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it

0:39:25 Johannes: Debate about it, so it's

0:39:27 Thomas: Seems like they could be such a powerful tool, you know, because like it's they're so they can be so addictive and engaging. And it's like if you could turn that into something, you could try that into learning something really positive. I don't know if maybe maybe that is being done, but it does seem like it would be interesting to if to make that.

0:39:28 Johannes: Yeah, the whole the whole area of serious games is something that's a big research area, so using games for something other than just entertainment and I think there's great potential in that. Problem with that is always that they are competing against billion-dollar budget entertainment games for attention and money, in the end, so it's difficult to make very appealing serious games or educational games, to be a bit more specific, but there's good work that's happening in this area, and I, and I think there's this overlap or intersection between some stuff that's happening in the indie game scene and serious games. Because there are games with serious topics that can teach you about history or politics. And those games can still be very enjoyable. I don't like... What's the one game called? You are the border patrol officer in some made-up Eastern European country Glory to Arstotzka

0:39:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Oh, wow. Wow. I've never heard

0:40:49 Johannes: Don't know if you heard about it it's a very simple game I don't know if you can call it enjoyable in a very classic sense but it's interesting I liked playing it and Glory to Stotzka you're a officer who checks passports at the border it's fictional Eastern European country, but it shows something about dictatorships and oppression and the role of the individual in oppressive systems. So there are games that get across a very powerful message, and

0:40:49 Thomas: Of it. No, Was Go ahead. Huh?

0:41:15 Thomas: Yeah. I

0:41:20 Johannes: Don't know, they wouldn't probably fall into the category of serious games necessarily, but they are entertaining, and they still have a message that goes beyond just entertainment. So I think games have big potential for that and not just educational games, like I don't know, in the U.S. I think you had something like Math Blaster, it's not like so not like something like, like the very simple educational games that you have to play in school or for school, but stuff that has serious message or serious topic and can still be fun to play, uh, so that's something that I see great potential in, with the with the the types of games diversifying these days, it's

0:41:40 Thomas: Remember that Yeah.

0:41:58 Thomas: Yeah, you know, I should have asked earlier, um, so you, you have mentioned that it is a a polarizing thing, and I just want to make sure I cover my bases here, and, and, you know, if are there going to be people listening who are going to think, you know, this is BS, there's... there's definitely got to be an effect of sexist games creating sexist behavior. And I'm just wondering, you know, in your opinion, like what is their best evidence for that? Is this a case of they'll have some conflicting study that'll tell them that, or is it that, you know, or would you say that they're more based on an intuition, and, you know, how much data is there going either way on this question?

0:42:35 Johannes: The same with the aggression research, there is data going either way, um, but at least the studies that I found, or that we looked into, um, that found an effect on some sort of sexist attitudes were, um, mostly laboratory studies, so they looked at short-term effects, um, and some of them, it didn't use games, they used virtual environments, so not really video games. And dependent variable or measure that was used in many of these was rape myth acceptance, which is a very specific construct. So yeah, there are studies that you could, if you want to generalize very far, used to say that video games can can increase sexism. I don't think even these studies would support a claim that they really cause it.

0:43:26 Johannes: But yeah, there are studies that have found other results that are not in line with what we found. The reasons are differences in methods and differences in definition, again, coming back to that issue. So there are stories that you could use to make the opposite claim. But by looking at at the evidence and our own study, I would argue or say that if there is any evidence, it's very limited that video games cause sexism or not. So we

0:43:32 Thomas: Hmm.

0:44:02 Thomas: Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. What about if they were to drill down on more specific games? Cause it seems like you, you guys didn't do that as much. Would that be an evident, like a claim you're open to the idea that, okay, this, this game might have an effect in particular kind of thing.

0:44:20 Johannes: Only looked at games broadly. So I can't say that this is, if you look at a very specific game and or a very specific type of attitude or behavior. But, but the question again is, like, what effects are we looking at? If you say a specific game, because of its, the community it has, or the norms that their player community has, proliferate sexist behavior or harassment, that is something different than saying that playing these games or even the content of these games increases or affects your attitudes, that sexist attitudes or attitudes toward gender roles.

0:44:21 Thomas: Probably.

0:44:48 Thomas: Hmm.

0:44:59 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. So,

0:45:01 Johannes: But looking at specific games is a good idea. That's something that we would also suggest, because what we find and others find is that many findings don't generalize to other genres or video games. So you might look at a specific game. Of course, then you have the problem that you have so many differences. So you could say, well, we found that there's an effect of Grand Theft Auto, but so what? I mean, it kind of depends on, like, not a huge part of the population plays this game, maybe. And then there's also differences between individual play sessions. Especially in, like, sandbox or open world games like GTA, people experience different things. So depending on how you play it, I imagine, I don't know if you can play it completely violence-free, but there are games like

0:45:01 Thomas: I mean, it's, it'S yeah.

0:45:47 Johannes: All these stealth games that are popular now, you can play them without killing any character, for example. So if you do that, that is a very different playing experience than if you just kill every character you see. If you talk about effects, right, if you say violent content has an effect, or if you assume that, but people can play the same game with or without violent content. And to some degree, that's probably also possible with sexist content. I know in some, some games of the GTA series, Grand Theft Auto series, you have prostitutes. But I think, as far as I know, that is something optional that you don't have to do to get through the game.

0:45:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:23 Thomas: Right. Yeah, no, I haven't really played it, that's my understanding too. Um, right.

0:46:26 Johannes: So even if you just look at a single game, the experience of the individual player might differ if the game gives you a lot of freedom. Or if you play online, your experience totally depends on the people you play with.

0:46:38 Thomas: But it's, it seems to me that you could, you could fashion studies that would try to measure these things, right? I mean, it's just, it's a complex problem, but it might be worth looking into, what I mean, because hypothetically in your data could be, uh, one game that is making people super sexist, and then it's offset by another game that's making people way less sexist, or something.

0:46:47 Johannes: Yeah, that's completely possible, Of course. That is completely possible, possible. Yeah. Yeah, so it would make sense to look at specific genres or even individual games. So, yeah. And then maybe there is a game that that it even reduces sexism over time, um, I can't think of one right now, but maybe. Or maybe it's not, maybe it's not the game, but it's maybe being involved in a, in a very non-toxic playing community that has these effects. I, I don't know, uh, could be, or Or I don't know, if you start and you do have what you could call sexist attitudes, and then you play with other teams or against other teams, and I know there are, like, all-female esports teams or clans and whatnot. If you play again at STEM and have a very positive experience, maybe that might change your mind from the point of view that video games are only for boys or men to a different view.

0:47:00 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, right. Yeah

0:47:51 Johannes: So these – again –

0:47:51 Thomas: Get your ass handed to you by a bunch of girls and then then you'll change your mind. Yeah no that's interesting. So lots of interesting questions possibly going forward but it sounds like you're you're on to different things. Any other closing thoughts on the study before

0:47:53 Johannes: Yeah, maybe.

0:48:05 Johannes: Said, it's a big, big thing that big argument that we want to make is that games are not monolithic. So violent game is not always the same thing. And players are quite different. It's a diverse population. So talking about players as a whole population is difficult. And talking about video games per se is difficult, so we should always look at the specific differences between individuals and between individual games. And then the other thing, the one point that I also, our study was published originally in the wake of Gamergate and the whole debate, again, one thing that I, when I was asked about it by the media before that I made is, it is just a hobby. It is games. So for the people who play it, it is, for some people, it probably is a huge part of their life, but, you know, it's not you.

0:48:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:51 Thomas: I was going to say, yeah, there's a lot of gamers.

0:48:55 Johannes: It's not your personality. It's not your family. It is not your work. It is not your religion, or some people may treat it like that. But in the end, one thing I say is we talk about a hobby. People spend a lot of money and time on it, but it's a hobby. It is like, we don't have knitting gate, or we don't have huge big debates about other kinds of hobbies. It is part of the social identity of many people, but in the one thing that we think is important to keep in mind is that it is a pastime. It's a nice thing to do. It's big industry and they make money, but it's not the only thing, that it's not the main thing that defines people. It's something you spend your time with, but it is not your, your job, and it's not other, other parts of your identity that, that are threatened by this, even though some people strongly identify with the hobby.

0:49:48 Thomas: All right. Well, Johannes, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot, and that's interesting work.

0:49:54 Johannes: Cool, thank you, was fun to talk to you, and yeah, they

0:49:56 Thomas: Is there anywhere you want to point listeners to find you or your work or, you know, social media, anything like that?

0:50:03 Johannes: Can't send you the link of the, to the, to the book that, this or you probably saw it already, um, the link to the, to the book chapters that, um, you might have in your show notes or so.

0:50:07 Thomas: Sure. Definitely.

0:50:13 Johannes: That's something you want to do, I can, I can just send you to the two book chapters, I get, I think those have a good overview with the books, the books in general, they also have other chapters, uh, on the topic and other stuff that's related to video games, so I guess if people want to have an overview, they might want to look into these books.

0:50:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:30 Thomas: That sounds great. All right, thanks again so much for taking the time.

0:50:33 Johannes: Yeah. Sure, oh, thank you for talking to me.

0:51:00 Thomas: All right, thanks again to Johannes so much for taking us through that, and thanks most of all to the patrons, and, oh, it's Thanksgiving, guys, so, yeah, that's what I'm most thankful for, is the patrons who make this show happen. You can join them at patreon.com/seriouspod or seriouspod.com support, either way, whichever tickles your fancy. Thank you for listening so much, and I will see you next week. Week.