Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and has not been thoroughly reviewed for completeness or accuracy.
[00:00:00] Gus Herwitz: This is Tech Refactored. I'm your host, Gus Herwitz, the Menard Director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska. Many Americans play video games 20 years ago. The stereotypical gamer was a young white dude playing doom or World of War cap craft in their basement while eating Doritos and drinking Jolt Cola.
Now, there's nothing wrong with Doritos or Jolt, but many other people play video games today. Our executive director and self-described gamer Elsbeth Magilton is joining me today as co-host, as we explore what distinguishes someone who plays video games from someone who is quote "a gamer". Elsbeth.
[00:00:42] Elsbeth Magilton: Thanks Gus, uh, it's exciting to be on the side of the mic for an episode and join you today as a co-host. So, RPGs or role playing games and video games have been an incredibly positive part of my life, and particularly in my husband's life. But we've also seen how certain facets of them have been negative for people we've [00:01:00] met along the way.
So I'm really looking forward to learning more from Dr. Lisa Kort-Butler's work. Lisa is a sociologist from the University of Nebraska, and her research examines several lines of inquiry, but generally draws on her interest in criminology and medical sociology, often in the context of adolescent wellbeing.
She recently published a paper entitled "The well-being of gamers, video game players, and non-players".
[00:01:24] Lisa Kort-Butler: Hi, uh, thanks for having me, appreciate it. Always glad to chat with folks about all kind of cool stuff, games included.
[00:01:31] Gus Herwitz: Well, we're, uh, really excited to have you joining us, Lisa. We're, we're gonna start with talking a bit about, uh, gamer identity and its origins and kinda the public assumptions around what a gamer is.
Um, and I'd like to start with asking about traditional depictions of gamers in the media. How have gamers been portrayed historically, and what are kind of the stereotypes and public assumptions about what a gamer is?
[00:02:00] Lisa Kort-Butler: I mean, I think you hit it on the, on the head in your intro there Gus, I think it's very much, and in some ways still tied to this idea of young men, young white men in particular, and, uh, who are engaged heavily, especially in, in sort of the role playing online games, first person shooter style games, and do so.
You know, in their basements with their Doritos or you know, Cheetos or cheese balls, which is what is popular in my house, you know? And that I think six has stuck with us despite the fact that the gamers are much more diverse, that many more women are, would self-identify, as Elsbeth mentioned as gamers and.
That stereotype sticks around. I mean, it's in, in some ways tied to older stereotypes we have about nerds. And if we go back to like people who are really into comics or people who are that sort of stereotypical big bang theory nerd, I think that's another example [00:03:00] of that that's still persists in our culture to the extent that it, it really does affect not only how the.
Thinks about gamers, but how game marketers push games out to folks and ultimately, as, as I argue, how it impacts how people conduct research about this. So Lisa, I wanna
[00:03:18] Elsbeth Magilton: talk a little bit about kind of gamer self identification. Mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm. , where it stopped being maybe something that people were a little embarrassed about, or.
It wasn't something that you were kind of proud to call yourself, where at least it's my perception that there's been a bit of a public shift into people being willing to label themselves as gamers, um, and the origin of that label and that title and its prevalence in the society.
[00:03:43] Lisa Kort-Butler: I definitely think you're right, man- I think that in the gaming community, certainly a shift, right? In terms of that term being. Like being adopted and used, Are people really taking that on as part of how they think about themselves and how they, [00:04:00] uh, engage with their social universes? Right. And I, I don't know if the exact, you know, where to pinpoint that.
I think that certainly. as the internet exploded and many more and much more gaming went really online, right? So out of the traditional sort of console gaming and even regular PC gaming and into this, the world of, of live streaming and all of these other things that are happening, I think certainly open the world up for people to see, hey, there's other people like me or who are interested in doing the same things that I am doing, and I can talk to them now, right?
I can talk to people online, uh, and I don't have to just. To conventions or I don't have to use some of these awkward old chatboards that we used to have on the internet that I can do it live in person with people all. In my community and all around the world. And so I think that, you know, that plus is sort of movement into a professional, like competitive gaming certainly has opened the [00:05:00] door, I think for people who are engaged in gaming to really see themselves as part of something bigger than maybe we, we did 15 or so years.
[00:05:11] Gus Herwitz: So I, I love the discussion and the idea of, in the old days, there were these awkward, difficult to use chatboards, uh, ls. Beth is a modern day gamer. Uh, I'm an old school gamer and I'm no, I no longer think of myself as a gamer. Um, I, I, I told this. Terrible story before we started recording, about probably 1991 Wolfenstein 3D had just been released and I got a copy and spent all night playing it on my IBM PS2 model 50.
And this was before computers had sound cards. So all the sounds were beeps and bloops and whatnot. And morning comes along and I've been playing the game all night. I go downstairs, the graphics were terrible. I proceed to sit down in a chair, uh, in, uh, the living room. The room is spinning. I get immediate vertigo and motion sickness and apologize- apologies to [00:06:00] everyone listening; I projectile vomit all over the living room, and this was the early nineties, and I, I played video games through the mid, late nineties and a tech geek, a tech nerd, this was before the internet is when I started, before the, uh, the modern commercial internet. And I played video games with all of my tech friends and learned computer networking, learned a bunch of programming, figuring out all of this stuff.
Um, that was very much a nineties era gamer identity, very tech focused, very tech nerdy, very cutting edge internet, and it feels to me that things are different today, are, are- would I still have been a gamer today with that sort of understanding and view of what it was to be a gamer? Or is the social identity of a gamer different today?
[00:06:49] Lisa Kort-Butler: Uh, I'll pop in and say that you and I must be about the same age, Gus, because I remember the days where you couldn't save video games and literally just had to leave it on if you wanted to go do something [00:07:00] else or like grab food or something. And it's an argument that I have had with my kids. Like, you don't understand what it's like to have to yell at your brother not to turn off the game or something. I don't know. I think that certainly, I think there's plenty of folks who still are building PCs and, and engaging gaming in that way, but I don't know, I was about to jump in on that because she might have a better sense of, um, you know, what that looks like.
I know in the literature, like the research literature, there is, you know, talk of sort of gate keeping about who can be a gamer and who can't. I mean, it may, it may fall along those tech lines in some ways, but I'll let Elsbeth, uh, pop. Yeah. So
[00:07:36] Elsbeth Magilton: what I first wanna, that I think is really interesting about this is that it shows how rapidly that technology evolves.
Mm-hmm. Right? That the generational differences between us are notable, and I think we probably did have very different experiences who were really only about five and a half years apart in age, at least I know Gu and I. So that's a really short window to be having such different experiences. I would say that my [00:08:00] gaming experience was much less tech focused and much more storytelling focused.
And that might have been the sort of games and communities I was drawn to. And certainly I, I would say that me and my friends that did this when I was in junior high and high school and in college, We're probably more traditionally nerdy than the average person in our community or in our school groups, but certainly we're more focused on sort of story focused games, community built games, and, and that sort of piece of it, and certainly different.
Points in my gaming career, if you wanna call it that, have experienced that sort of gate keeping thing that Lisa's discussing about not feeling like I was really a gamer, or that I could self-describe that way because I wasn't as tech focused in the way that I approached video games. And I approached my relationship to gaming.
And I guess that brings me to the next question here, which. What are the advantages for self-identifying as a gamer, right? Why do we want to be able to say we're a gamer? Or why maybe do we not want to tell people that [00:09:00] we're a gamer? Right? What does that mean? May maybe both the difference between in the nineties to now.
[00:09:07] Lisa Kort-Butler: Yeah. I mean, I think that it's, I, I think that there is certainly some, and this is what I find in my, in my research, some social advantage to being able to say, I am a gamer. Right? And knowing that, that me, that connects you in some ways to other people, whether that's virtually or in person, right? That you have that connection.
Just like people might identify as like a football fan, like a Husker football fanatic or something like that, ties them to a group in the same way that being able to say, I'm a gamer. This is the kind of stuff that I'm into, and that's how I connect with people. I, I think that there are still though, right, and this is maybe from back in the day, but also now, right?
I think about some of the undergrads actually who helped me, you know, get started thinking about this, may not have openly, openly said, Hey, I'm a gamer. Because there are of other [00:10:00] things they're doing in their social worlds, right? So that if I wanna be seen as a professional, right in world of business or law or something like that, I may not wanna claim this identity as gamer, where maybe in another field that would be completely.
That might be something that everybody's involved in and you might feel a connection in that way. So certainly as we see that sort of change over time and how we've come from like building PCs to, to play games in, in more fantastical ways, to just doing the community based things that you're describing, Elizabeths Beth, where we're, you know, engaging in these storytelling role playing games where we can really connect with other people.
That that identity means something, right? It means that even if I'm not getting directly supported, I have a sense that other people are like me. I have a sense that there's a group of people to whom I can potentially turn for support. So you may be engaged in gaming, but also these other sort [00:11:00] of conversations may be happening as part of those networks that you're develop.
[00:11:05] Gus Herwitz: So am I write, Uh, I, I would just assume that the internet has fundamentally changed how we think about all of this. Ga there were gamers or people who enjoyed playing RPGs, Dungeon, and Dungeons and Dragons watched Stranger Things in the 1980s and even before then, and they were the free. And the geeks, they were ostracized, uh, as the, the weird kids.
But with the internet, they can connect to other people, play games with massive communities, even if they're the only three kids in their elementary school, they're playing with, uh, millions of other kids as part of a community. It has the internet been uniquely pivotal in changing how we're thinking.
[00:11:45] Lisa Kort-Butler: It certainly doesn't hurt.
I mean, I, I think it does just like it has in other realms, right? Other, in other places where we've been able to connect online in other, other communities, whether we're talking about healthcare or family [00:12:00] gaming is one of the spaces where the internet certainly has allowed people to. Expand their networks in, in ways that we couldn't do before.
Right. We couldn't, um, our, our net networks were largely confined, is sort of face-to-face interactions, especially when it came to gaming. Right. Friends come to our house, we'd go to their house, and now, you know, my, my kids are playing, they're playing with people. They know that like they may live around the corner from us, but also people who might live underside of town or people who live in, you know, other states.
It's changed in that regard in in terms of how one can keep and make connections to other people.
[00:12:38] Gus Herwitz: We are talking with Professor Lisa Cort Butler, discussing a gamer's gamer identity and what it means to be a gamer. We will be right back after a moment while we upgrade our graphics card.[00:13:00]
[00:13:01] Lisa Kort-Butler: I'm Li Sandra Marque, the Associate producer of Tech Refactored. I'm so glad you're tuning in today. Did you know every episode of Tech Refactored is summarized by our research associate Neil Rutledge and made into an easy two to three minute. Check out our blog, the record to see more episode highlights and find quick reads on all these complex issues.
Also, we know word of mouth is critical to reaching new listeners, so we hope you tell all of your Tuck interested friends about us and encourage them to listen. Now back to this episode of Tech Refactored,
[00:13:44] Gus Herwitz: and we are back with Professor Lisa Cor Butler. I am wearing my new gauntlet of power and L's Beth has a magical ribbon on. So we are ready to resume our discussion. Lisa, uh, can you talk to us about who is playing video games today and how it's [00:14:00] changed over the last, uh,
[00:14:01] Lisa Kort-Butler: It's, it's everybody. Honestly, it is this sort of, uh, situation where even if you look at like, So Nielson tracks this, uh, the Entertainment Software Association tracks this every year actually.
They track these sorts of things and. It's just been this steady increase of people who say they play video games or report owning video game consoles or PCs that are dedicated to gaming. And so I, I think the latest ESA data suggested something like 75% of households have some sort of gaming console.
Nielsen reported about two thirds of. 13 and up report playing video games, and that's, if you go back and look at some of the older data, just like ticks up, you know, at some point we'll hit a threshold, of course, but certainly has been ticking up in terms of. Not only like overall play, but if you look across age categories, we tend to think about it being like [00:15:00] teenagers and young adults.
And certainly those are big chunks of it, but some of the data suggests that, you know, 30% or more of middle aged folks report playing video games in some capacity. Now that's different than them identifying as gamers, right? They just report playing in some capacity. But it's, to the extent, I would argue that it's, you know, a pretty pervasive pastime, uh, in, in the United States, in, in many parts of the world
[00:15:29] Gus Herwitz: No, I, I have to ask, this is going to hurt, but, uh, let's say you're the type of person who occasionally loads up an emulator and plays through Metro from start to finish or plays through a doom from start to finish, or
[00:15:43] Lisa Kort-Butler: Super Mario Brothers.
[00:15:44] Gus Herwitz: Yeah. Super Marios or, or command and conquer the original version and just plays that all through, but doesn't- first gosh darn thing about any of these. What, what's a World of Warcraft? I don't know. D- does that, does that make such a hypothetical person, a, a, a gamer [00:16:00] or would that show up in these, uh, statistics that Nielsen and ESA are collecting?
Yeah. Or do they focus on the new, uh, titles?
[00:16:06] Lisa Kort-Butler: They are, I think, a Nielsen and ESA doing some generic. Like, do you play video games, sorts of questions, or do you own a gaming console? So do you own a Xbox or a PlayStation or things like that. And really there is less, They might throw the term gamer around if you read some of their reports, but they don't necessarily specifically ask people.
Are you a gamer? Right. And that's, there's a, there was a Pew study in 2015 where they specifically asked people who reported playing video games if they identified as a gamer. Um, and at that time it was about 10% of their overall sample. Right. Or 20% of people who report to playing games also identified as a gamer.
So we are talking about a smaller subset of people, um, from people who report playing video games. So I might play the games once in a while, or [00:17:00] I might play on, you know, on my phone, uh, that is distinct from the Xbox based activity that my, my kiddo might engage in, uh, and think about, uh, themselves as a gamer.
[00:17:13] Elsbeth Magilton: So I think that distinction is, is interesting and kind of leads into the next question, which is the difference between a video game player. and a gamer, which might have distinction both in how they label themselves and then also in the types of games they play and how culturally they might kind of have different social groups based on their game.
So, you know, Gus already made the joke about me having my Mag jerk ribbon available. My name every Saturday and Sunday night is Mystique Ravenwood, and I am an elf druid. So like Dungeons and Dragons is a major part of that. And I have to be honest for in, in my family. We like to play in person. We're not big online.
Wow. We're World of Warcraft players, Although I have played Wow. Quite a bit in the past. Um, so my question for you is, is I'm not affronted when people kind of conflate that with video game [00:18:00] playing, but other people in our social group are
[00:18:02] Lisa Kort-Butler: Right. The idea that they play video games
[00:18:05] Elsbeth Magilton: is vaguely offensive despite the fact that, you know, we're spending this.
Playing role, playing games in person, and so kind of the distinctions between who's a video game player and who's a gamer, both in terms of the distinction in the games they play, and then the distinction in how they
[00:18:23] Lisa Kort-Butler: label themselves. It's really interesting, the research that we're talking about, the, the survey that I did, it was, is among college students.
It's really interesting is we actually had them, if they identified they, if they said they played games, right? So whether they were what we called a casual video game player or a gamer, If they said they played games, we just had them list what are the top three games that you play or just, you know, let them decide.
And there was substantial overlap in those games. Right. So nine of the top 12 of those games overlapped in terms of the games they reported playing. So Call of Duty was most popular. Grand Theft Auto, right. That those were popular games. [00:19:00] And then the, the folks who. Sort of more in the gamer camp did identify things like League Legends, for example.
I know this is, this serves a bit older, so they may not have some of the most current games, but those sorts of games where they are, what you're describing, right, The role playing games. But I was really surprised actually to see that how much overlap there was. I think that when we looked at, we tried to look at where some of the distinctions lie.
Certainly the amount of time people report playing was one of those things. So the gamers reported playing more often. Just across platforms and reported playing more so not only by themselves, but also with other people. Whereas casual players, you know, they did report playing with others, but not nearly to the extent of, of folks who identified as gamers.
And so casual game players were almost always sort of in the middle, right? So there's a group of folks who said they were non players, and then the small group of gamers. And then the video game players are the casual players. When we looked at [00:20:00] different attitudinal measures, for example, we're pretty much, you know, sort of in the middle, right?
That they sometimes were more like non players and sometimes were more like gamers in terms of their attitudes about gaming or their attitudes about, uh, media in general. So there was this sort of gradient that happened, but I think it's important to sort of keep those distinctions in mind, right?
Because for for gamers it is something personal. Versus for casual or kind of video game players who don't want to take on that identity. It is something different, more of a leisure activity and only a leisure activity versus being part of, or seeing themselves as part of a gaming community.
[00:20:45] Elsbeth Magilton: So what is the kind of the research objective and trying to draw those distinctions?
[00:20:48] Lisa Kort-Butler: I really, what motivated me is I started so, so part of my work in, in criminology and, and medical sociology really focuses on how we [00:21:00] sort of socially construct ideas about what people are, what people do, and how that those ideas then influence how. We react to other people and how other people engage in their social world.
And one thing that that, I'm not sure how much research just starts from people being annoyed, but I was getting annoyed, right, That, that some of people in who do research on people who play video games, were using the term gamer pretty casually to me, right? That they would say, Okay, this person said that they played video games five hours a week, so therefore I'm now gonna call them a gamer.
And not that I am really engaged in the gaming community. It just seemed not the best way to impose a label on somebody because that label carries a stereotype whether we, you know, even though we know that stereotype really isn't accurate anymore, it carries the stereotype, which then influences honestly how we might think about and interpret the research that we do.
So [00:22:00] for me it became, um, Sort of a challenge, uh, and getting inspired by one of my undergrad students several years ago, uh, who noticed this right in their own lives, that there were these groups of people. And it seemed really strange that, uh, to them that they were getting called, some of these casual or game players were getting called gamers when that's not how they saw themselves at all.
Um, so for me it started there. Like it, you know, if, if we're gonna use this term, and we're gonna imply something from it or hypothesize about what it means. We better make sure we ask people themselves. It just seemed from a, a sociological point of view, the right thing to do. Like, I don't wanna impose a label on somebody.
I'd rather you just tell me how you think about yourself. And so from that, it's just interested is if, does this categorization, does this self-identification matter for, for people's attitudes? Does it matter for their activities that is engaging in gaming or engaging with others who are participating in video game play?
[00:23:00] Um, doesn't matter ultimately for health and wellbeing, right? Because one of the major stereotypes about gaming is that people who are "gamers"- you can't see my air quotes on, on audio- are unhealthy, are aggressive, are bullies, all all the kinds of negative behavioral stereotypes that researchers attribute to gamers without actually asking those people if they are in fact gamers.
Right? And so what, what I, um, and as I mentioned you 900 college students that. Although we did see these sort of attitudinal and activity based differences when it came to people who were gamers, uh, casual players and non players, the health and wellbeing outcomes were really minimal, like the differences across groups, minimal to nonexistent actually, uh, which, which for me, you know, suggests that if we're gonna use this term, well we, without asking people, but it doesn't [00:24:00] seem to carry.
At least in, in my sample, uh, meaning for outcomes beyond what it means to be part of a gaming community.
[00:24:11] Gus Herwitz: Uh, there's a ton of work, uh, that's being done by the word community there. Yes. And we, the, the, the stereotypical vision of a gamer, again, going back largely to the nineties era, lone, young, white. Dude sitting in the basement. No friends. Antisocial. I just hit on the key word. Antisocial. Yeah. No community. They go off and do, uh, horrible things or they're believed to do horrible things. I guess I've got two compound questions, and as a, a podcast host, I'm not supposed to ask multiple compound questions, but, uh, In some ways are you really just identifying not by any means to diminish the importance of your work by identifying that, hey, these people are part of a community.
If you're part of a community that tends to suggest pro-social behavior, [00:25:00] attitudes, wellbeing and side, does your work tell us anything about that nineties area era stereotype and how we should think about it? Or is that a future direction, uh, that we can go with your work?
[00:25:14] Lisa Kort-Butler: Let me tackle then the community. Yeah. For sociologists community does a big word, uh, as a big umbrella word for a lot of things. And I, I guess when I am saying community, I think about it as sort of, uh, your specific group of people as your community, because. The gaming community broadly, like so big tent gaming community, um, necessarily always welcoming or big tent for everybody, right?
That there are have been notable incidents of really toxic, what I would call toxic sort of interactions, right? I alluded to gate keeping earlier so that there's gate keeping and then there's beyond gatekeeping really pushing people out in really, um, unfortunate. , Right? And trying to guard this group. So when I [00:26:00] say community, really what I mean is your social network, right?
The people that you connect with. And certainly there is this broader sense of what it might mean to be a gamer, right? What an identity might mean. But it's usually defined when we talk about any sort of identity by the people we're most in contact with. So, um, That, that's what I mean by community, your second qu- this is why you don't ask double barreled questions. Same in survey research. Don't do that. Your second question was about, I forget, nine, you said something about nineties stereotype.
[00:26:29] Gus Herwitz: Yeah. The what, what does this tell us about how we should think about that nineties stereotype? I, I know that's not directly what the survey was about, but any thoughts on what lessons we can learn or future, uh, research questions or direct.
[00:26:43] Lisa Kort-Butler: I think the stereotype is done. I wish it people would stop, like every stereotype, but I think that we've certainly moved beyond that. Uh, at least we can clearly see it in, in lots of different sources of data. That stereotype is just not accurate. The gaming community [00:27:00] is much more diverse. It is more outside of tech, right, than it maybe used to be and certainly.
In most households in the, in the United States. What it means, I think, for research is a, is a great question. In part what we've. Um, what just sort of what I've read in the literature about this is that as we are seeing this, this, this sort of generational shift of ul of people who are been engaged in gaming, have come up with gaming and done so in this internet environment, are bringing to the table much just a broader idea of what it means and how it shapes the social world.
And I think that's really important. I think. There is, there is research suggests that I don't wanna make it an age thing. Right. But there's certainly a body of research to suggests that people are, scholars too are motivated by what their idea of, of youth [00:28:00] problems are, what their idea of gaming is and may not.
Have taken the step to think what this means to people who are engaged in it beyond just the basics of is it making you overweight or is it making you aggressive? Right? So I think that as more of this research comes to light and we see more research coming from people who are engaged in gaming, from people who are engaged in the gaming community, it is broadening how I think it should be broadening, at least how we approach these questions about gaming.
In ways that, that take into consideration that gaming can be pro-social, that gaming, uh, can mean support networks, that gaming mean, um, people learning and being able to cope with social stresses because they have a community they can be engaged with. So I hope that that's the direction we're going, uh, driven by folks who are engaged in, in gaming the.[00:29:00]
[00:29:02] Elsbeth Magilton: Circling back a little bit on the colligation of community wellbeing and diversity and gaming, of course brings me back to some of that conflict you were talking about earlier. Mm-hmm. , my head is immediately to gamer gate. My head is immediately to women being doxed for saying mean things about video games.
That's obviously a vast oversimplification of that situation, but there is lots of conflict here and particularly for, I think what most people would say are underrepresented individuals in gaming communities. And so thinking through the wellbeing of those individuals, I think the social reputational impact of gamers, right?
Cause a lot of people who maybe were starting to get interested, see those controversies and are no longer interested cuz it's still sort of seen as an exclusive club as your work looked at all about the impact of those kinds of controversies on the wellbeing or on sort of the entry point to gaming?
[00:29:53] Lisa Kort-Butler: Not specifically. I didn't, You know, it's interesting because this was, The survey itself [00:30:00] was right around that sort of game or gate era, right? When that stuff was breaking. And I had, I mean, I had plenty of women in, in the sample who, who said they played games, but far fewer who identified it as a gamer. And I couldn't help but say, think the same thing, right?
That women are excluded from, or feel that they should be excluded from the identity in part because they saw. What was going on, right? Um, likewise for people of color, for L T Q I A, folks that they may feel shut out of those communities because one, the stereotype persists that it's a white male space.
And two, because there, there are these situations in which, um, that that space is guarded by white male players, right? And so, I, I, I can't speak to specifically about what that might mean for wellbeing. One thing that I've talked with some folks about is just seeing what, like, so bully bullying online, especially online gaming spaces around these ideas and how that [00:31:00] might impact people's one wellbeing, but also even their desire to be in gaming spaces.
Um, you know, and, and what that, that's sort of a another way to think about this. Once we've. Allow people to actually self-identify as gamers. That I think hopefully opens the door for us to ask these kinds of questions more broadly, um, so that we can, um, pick up some of these nuances that we anecdotally see or saw splash all over Twitter, right? Um, and trying to make sense of them.
[00:31:35] Elsbeth Magilton: You know, it's interesting, I hadn't realized until we were sort of in this part of the conversation that when I was even kind of drafting or thinking through my introduction in this episode, I was careful to call myself an RPG gamer and, and sometimes video games because I don't wanna claim that video game part of that, right? Cuz I'm a little bit more nervous about saying that I'm a gamer when it comes to video games or some of that sort of piece of the culture. So I think [00:32:00] that's a really interesting part of this dynamic.
[00:32:02] Lisa Kort-Butler: Yeah, I think it certainly is. I mean, some, some interesting sort of qualitative researcher that talks about RPG game, RPG games in particular, and the ability of people to, um, shift their identity, right?
So they don't have to play as who they are. They can play as an entirely different individual and what that intersection means for, like, I'm, I'm this person in gaming. This person outside of the gaming space and how individuals work to sort of reconcile those, those parts of themselves.
[00:32:35] Gus Herwitz: So this entire discussion, I know there's a, a broad literature on group identities and communities and the, the positive and the negative, uh, as.
Aspects of, uh, how you identify or affiliate with different groups, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of, uh, gamer identity or gaming communities, except that it does. I wonder, uh, if you have any thoughts [00:33:00] on the use of the gamer space as a research microcosm that we can use to learn broader lessons about society or how we interact with others outside of this specific context.
[00:33:14] Lisa Kort-Butler: I mean, I think it's a great idea. I think that that's, um, you know, as it as the world becomes more virtual, I think that it, gaming spaces are, um, An important place to look at how those relationships develop and how they endure or how they fall apart, how people work on things like cooperation or not, as the case may be, I'm totally blanking on the title of the study, but, uh, or the, even the name of the games that a student told me about it about several years ago, and this is pre pandemic, right?
But, uh, a group of researchers sort of accidentally stumbled on how pandemic, how disease spreads via video gaming, right? So within the. How this pandemic swept through the game and sort of [00:34:00] extrapolated to what that might look like in the social world. And I think that's, I wish I could remember the name of it right off the top of my head, but I think it's fascinating, right, to think about essentially gaming as simulation, um, of the social world and what that can look like for a host of, of social problem.
[00:34:15] Gus Herwitz: Now I'm thinking about from a research perspective, how we could gamify research and all the IRB issues that we'd have. I've got this great design methodology and I'm going to, uh, implement my research project as a game without letting the participants know until they see it in the terms of service, actually designing games for re research purposes.
If you're gonna do anything like that, listeners get IRB approval. I'll leave it at that ELs. Beth, any, uh, last questions you want to, uh, jump.
[00:34:46] Elsbeth Magilton: I have to tell you guys, my head immediately went to, I do that all the time, Gus. It's called war gaming and we do it in national security exercises or we're red team all, all the time. And I always think that maybe that's why that field of research maybe appealed to me on some [00:35:00] level. Was that I got to do sort of high stakes gaming in my research, but I wanna give Lisa a final chance to say anything, any misconceptions about both your research or the field and, and your experiences in it that you want, Would you wish you could correct or that you want people to know?
[00:35:18] Lisa Kort-Butler: That's a great question and I, lots of things, but I, I will just come back to the, to, to me as a, as a research of just the importance of one, letting people say who they are and as, as much as possible, sort of checking ourselves as, as scholars to not layer in. Our own ideas about what should be happening or what gaming should look like, or who gamers should be, and rather letting people self select into that and drive those conversations, uh, rather than researchers, policy makers never imposing this label onto individuals that may or may not fit with how they think about the.[00:36:00]
[00:36:02] Gus Herwitz: The time has come to say farewell. Thank you, Lisa. This has been a wonderful discussion. I, I'm 100% certain I, I know I have a dozen other questions I want to get into that we could, uh, keep this going for much longer, but unfortunately these bits ain't free. Thank you, uh, for the time. Thank you so much and thank you listeners for joining us today.
I've been your host, Gus Herwitz. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Tech Refactored. If you want to learn more about what we're doing here at N gtc, you can go to our website at ngtc.unl.edu. Or you can follow us on Twitter at UNL underscore ngtc. This podcast is part of the Menard Governance and Technology Programming Series hosted by the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center.
The Nebraska Governance and Technology Center is a partnership led by the Nebraska College of Law in collaboration with the College of Engineering Business and Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska. Colin McCarthy produced and recorded [00:37:00] our theme music. Casey Richter provided technical assistance and Elsbeth Magilton is our executive producer and sometimes co-host and Lysandra Marquez is our associate producer, our research associate, Neil Rutledge provided topic and substance development for this episode. Until next time, gold farming ain't cool.