Date of Award
Spring 2026
Language
English
Embargo Period
4-29-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of Anthropology
Program
Anthropology
First Advisor
Jennifer Burrell
Committee Members
Jennifer Burrell, Walter Little, Elise Andaya
Keywords
care, esports, identity, patriarchy, play
Subject Categories
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Abstract
Video gaming culture has long been a site associated with norms and values of whiteness, masculinity, and neoliberalism, with games, players, and developers all reinforcing these. Recently though, gaming culture has been directly involved with social movements and forms of resistance that are contrary to these norms and values. The typical gamer is no longer a white man, and gaming culture is now acknowledged to include race and gender dynamics that are close to that of the broader population. These communal shifts have both challenged and reinforced existing power structures. This research addresses these shifts and struggles by analyzing how people interact with, through, and around video games in ways that challenge dominant cultural narratives. A combination of ethnographic methods is employed with members of gaming culture, including a more traditional ethnographic approach in the form of in-person participant observation, interviews, and surveys, as well as newer methods like digital and hashtag ethnography. This approach is then built upon through autoethnographic work conducted directly in the virtual worlds of video games. To anthropology, I bring an analysis of the racialized and gendered contexts of capital and community in a vastly understudied area. For video gaming culture, I offer an anthropological perspective on the issues that my interlocutors have described within gaming culture, and further their recommendations for how both gamers and anthropologists may help to address these issues. Thus, I find that how gaming culture partakes in these contestations against norms and the ways that these struggles shape emerging culture are significant as video games and overlapping digital worlds are an increasingly prevalent part of our lives in the world today.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Muller, Jonathan D., "New Game Start: Playing With Power, Community and Change in Video Gaming Culture" (2026). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 403.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/403