What does it mean to be a man in gaming? How do boys and men find meaning in their gaming practices? How do gaming men make sense of themselves as gendered beings? How are masculine identities and experiences negotiated through gaming? How do gaming and a sense of manhood intersect?
Seven years have passed since Nick Taylor and Gerald Vorhees published their groundbreaking anthology Masculinities in Play (Palgrave 2018), quickly followed by Marcus Maloney’s, Steven Roberts’ and Timothy Graham’s Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming Community (Palgrave 2019).
These books set out to expand gender perspectives in game studies to include men and masculinities in a research landscape in which men are the dominating demographic, but rarely are approached from a distinct gender perspective. While studies of women’s marginalized experiences in gaming have been and are still important in a context where women face exclusion and harassment, it has left a counterintuitive blindspot in game studies that hides the gendered experiences of gaming men.
In cases where masculinity has been considered, it is in the context of women’s perceptions and as a framework for explaining the problematic side of game culture. This is a problem because it does not capture the diversity of modern gaming, but draws a picture of women’s experiences asthe norm of gendered experiences in game culture.
In this workshop we address this research gap and seek to explore men’s gendered gaming experiences and phenomenological perspectives on what it means to be a manin gaming. Our perspective is attentive towards manhood and masculinity understood as socially constructed, negotiated, and fluid, and this workshop is particularly aimed towards holistic and discursive understandings of manhood.We invite submissions that explore new perspectives on gaming culture, manhood and masculinity, including but not limited to:
- Empirical studies of men’s gendered experiences and identity work in gamingand game culture, such as
- men’s playful practices in and beyond gaming
- how men put meaning to their gaming practices
- how games are integrated into men’s lives and part of their identities
- men’s emotions and stories around the contestation of game culture.
- Critical and theoretical work that offers new perspectives on the relationship between manhood, masculinity, and gaming.
- Case studies and analyses of games and gaming that challenge previously accepted understandings of masculinity and games.
- Reflections and analyses of public discourses about gaming men.
The expected workshop outcome is to develop a more robust understanding of theintersection of gaming and manhood which will form the basis for a Call for Papers for aforthcoming special issue on men, masculinity, and gaming in Eludamos: The Journalfor Computer Game Culture, to be published late 2026.
Authors of promising workshopdrafts will be encouraged to submit their full manuscripts for review in this specialissue.
Important dates:
- Abstract submission deadline: Sept 1, 2025
- Notification of acceptance to the workshop: Sept 15, 2025
- Short paper draft deadline: Nov 7, 2025
- Workshop dates: Nov 20-21, 2025
Submission requirements:Abstracts may come from disciplines in the human and social sciences and must represent original research. Early-career scholars are specifically encouraged to submit. Abstracts should be c. 500 words (incl. references), and should include the author’s name, title and affiliation.
Abstracts should be submitted to Professor Kristine Jørgensen at kristine.jorgensen@uib.no. Accepted authors will be expected to submit a short paper draft (c. 4,000 words) to be discussed at a workshop on Nov 20-21, 2025 at the Center for Digital Narrative at University of Bergen, Norway. The workshop will be partly subsidized for accepted authors.
Submissions on non-hegemonic forms of masculinities within gaming and research that challenges the pervasive idea of toxic masculinity within games are encouraged.