Gary Alan Fine
This article is a continuation from the first installment.
MT: Readers also expressed doubts about the way girls play (that they don’t sit down to play for long periods of time in groups, like boys do). Have girls changed over the years so that they are more similar to boys in their play? Or has gaming shifted to accommodate girls?
GAF: I think both have happened. We have a very different gendered society. There are more women than men in law school and medical school—I'm not sure what the ratio is in business school, but it's getting more and more equal. The standard gender models have shifted, even to the point that we increasingly think less about particular occupations as being gendered. At one point—certainly when I was doing this research—the term "doctor" would come with a particularly male image. But now you can say "doctor," and in most agreements it would be male or female, surgeon or psychiatrist—the gender matters much less. We haven't reached the equal state yet, but in time, with another generation or so we are very much likely to.
I also think the games themselves have changed in some regards. It seems to me that World of Warcraft is much less Warcraft than it is World, and that makes it more appealing for women. There are a lot of things that a guild can do in World of Warcraft without having to go out and slash and burn. And certainly Second Life provides equal opportunities, maybe more opportunities for women than for men. Because D&D and other role-playing games grew out of wargames, they were very male-dominated at the onset. Then they became these kind of adventure games that did permit some women to participate. Over time that has changed so that they're more society games, more like Sim City.
MT: One of the themes that's represented strongly in your work is the notion that "kids" are "invading" the gaming hobby. Do you think that's true today?
GAF: Back in the day you'd buy D&D third edition and you'd play with your buddies. Now that you're part of World of Warcraft, you pay a certain amount a month, so that economic structure works better for adults than for kids. One of the other things that has changed is that's there's much greater concern today about sexual predators, to have a child in this activity in which there's often some amount of sexual talk and all these strangers…it's understandable that given our fears about sexual predation that parents would want to keep their kids separate from that kind of world. So they might permit them to do over the table gaming more so than to participate in these games with large number of strangers online.
I often tell my students that it would have been very difficult to do some of my research today, particularly my earlier research on little league baseball. Here I was, a guy in his twenties hanging out with 12-year-olds and listening to them tell dirty jokes and driving them to ice cream parlors! I spoke to their parents of course, told them I was a professor conducting a study, but I think today parents would be a lot more worried about a young adult wanting to spend all this time with their kids.
MT: What are you focusing on today?
GAF: My current research is on competitive chess. What's interesting in chess is the large amount of history embedded in the activity. RPGs are a much newer hobby than chess, so there's a much richer history to explore.
MT: Is there a common thread you've found throughout your study of various pastimes?
GAF: Over the years I've studied a number of leisure activities from fantasy baseball to high school debate to mushroom collecting to art collecting to role-playing games. In all of these activities there are parallels in how you develop a community, a boundary, a set of norms and cultures and beliefs. Each activity is different, which makes it challenging and fascinating sociologically.
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