DEATH OF THE GAMER

“’Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over”, claims the title of a Gamasutra feature published in the midst of a particularly disheartening episode for the gaming community (Alexander, 2014). The same market probing tools that have greatly contributed to the hegemony and overrepresentation of
the male adolescent “gamer” figure in game production and marketing now show that, beyond this common reference point, many audiences are waiting to be engaged. In spite of the bias for male gamer preferences in mainstream video game production, women now represent approximately 50% of the audience in many age groups (ESA report, 2013). While gender related stereotypes are slow to evolve in mainstream game production, more and more voices in the community are echoing feminist critiques that have emerged from the 1990s onwards (Consalvo, 1997; Cassell & Jenkins, 1998). In this paper, we will lend our ears to an early critique that sought to put an end to the tyranny of the gamer. Most surprisingly, this voice emerged from within the gaming community, at a time – the early 1990s – understood to be the heyday of heteronormative male power fantasies, and in a fictional scene – the final confrontation of a hack ‘n slash game – designed to provide a peak of gratification to the stereotypical gamer. At the end of Legendary Axe II, in the throne room, the gamer is put to death.