Video game platforms and business models are increasingly built on collection, use, and sharing of personal information for purposes of both functionality and r

Moral panic.

They endure everything from subtle jabs to full-on death threats, but these women are not deterred from pursuing their passion for professional gaming

WTF McAfee.

The Ready Player One book used to be considered a fun romp. Then Gamergate happened.

Enough of a research article to assign as such.

Gender inequality and sexist behaviour is prevalent in almost all workplaces and rampant in online environments. Although there is much research dedicated to understanding sexist behaviour, we have almost no insight into what triggers this behaviour and the individuals that initiate it. Although social constructionist theory argues that sexism is a response towards women entering a male dominated arena, this perspective doesn’t explain why only a subset of males behave in this way. We argue that a clearer understanding of sexist behaviour can be gained through an evolutionary perspective that considers evolved differences in intra-sexual competition. We hypothesised that female-initiated disruption of a male hierarchy incites hostile behaviour from poor performing males who stand to lose the most status. To test this hypothesis, we used an online first-person shooter video game that removes signals of dominance but provides information on gender, individual performance, and skill. We show that lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behaved submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario. This difference in gender-directed behaviour became more extreme with poorer focal-player performance. We suggest that low-status males increase female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status as a consequence of hierarchical reconfiguration resulting from the entrance of a woman into the competitive arena. Higher-skilled players, in contrast, were more positive towards a female relative to a male teammate. As higher-skilled players have less to fear from hierarchical reorganization, we argue that these males behave more positively in an attempt to support and garner a female player’s attention. Our results provide the clearest picture of inter-sexual competition to date, highlighting the importance of considering an evolutionary perspective when exploring the factors that affect male hostility towards women.

Game company wants to take down YouTube star’s livestreams after n-word incident.

Science, your chance to use all that time spent gaming for the greater good.

Well, here we are folks. I knew this day was coming but it always seemed so far away. After five long years, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is over. This is one of the most emotionally complicated…

Within two minutes of walking into the welcome room in Altspace, a leading social VR app, I was given my first unsolicited "virtual reality kiss." Shortly after, my skinny brown-haired avatar was swarmed by male users rubbing on me and asking if I…

Diverse characters and storylines are often withheld from games to be sold as optional add-ons for additional cost.

Informing players of their mistakes dropped recurrence by 50 per cent, while providing detailed evidence of misdeeds saw a 70 per cent decline - MCV/DEVELOP

How a clunky Swedish computer game is teaching millions of children to master the digital world.

Use our advanced and powerful games editor to build the game you've always imagined. Our editor is packed with features to allow you to create your own games.

Digital Eclipse wants to build its engine into gaming's Criterion Collection.

Chris Suellentrop at Kotaku has posted an in-depth analysis of one of the more interesting findings from a recent Pew Research Center report on teens...