A proposta desta dissertação aborda o consumo de videogame entre os sexos e como essa relação, tipicamente econômica, perpassa padrões de gosto individuais e afeta a formação de uma relação simbólica: a identidade gamer. A grande área que permeia este estudo está no mundo virtual dos games, principalmente ao elaborar a caracterização e a tipologia dos avatares. Esta dissertação surgiu durante a leitura de material da sociologia britânica, no qual o sociólogo Garry Crawford destacou que existe uma diferenciação no consumo dos games entre homens e mulheres, e esta diferenciação ocorre pelo avatar. Destaca-se que este trabalho se compreende como um estudo interdisciplinar com foco sociológico e nele está presente literatura do game designer, filosofia, antropologia, educação, entre outras áreas que debatem e que teorizam o videogame. Utilizou-se de metodologia mista, quantitativa e qualitativa, para realizar a análise dos personagens e das entrevistas dos jogadores; por conseguinte, destaca-se um capítulo somente para a abordagem metodológica. Ressalta-se que, dos resultados encontrados, sobressaíram-se três caracterizações de avatares (uma inesperada), além da respectiva tipologia; bem como, das entrevistas, aponta-se para uma convergência no consumo dos videogames. Pode-se afirmar, categoricamente, que, na cidade de Porto Alegre, não há uma extensa diferenciação no consumo de games. / The proposal of this dissertation addresses the consumption of video game between the sexes, and this typically economic relation permeates individual patterns of taste and affects the formation of a symbolic relationship, the gamer identity. The great area that permeates this study is in the virtual world of games, especially when elaborating the characterization and typology of the avatars. This dissertation arose during the reading of material from British sociology, where the sociologist Garry Crawford, pointed out that there is a differentiation in the consumption of games between men and women; and this differentiation occurs by the avatar. It should be noted that this work is understood in an interdisciplinary study with a sociological focus, but there has literature of the designer game, philosophy, anthropology, education, among other areas that debate and theorize the video game. It was used the mixed methodology, quantitative and qualitative, of the analysis of the characters and interviews of the players; therefore, a chapter is only highlighted for the methodological approach. It should be emphasized that three avatars characterizations emerged from the results, an unexpected, besides the respective typology. As well as, from the interviews, one points to convergence in the consumption of video games. It can be affirmed, categorically, that in the city of Porto Alegre there is not an extensive differentiation in the consumption of games.

The gaming community is generally regarded as highly masculine. Gamers are often identified as white, heterosexual, young men. Women who play games are viewed as an anomaly. In reality many women play, and depending on which games that count, women are the majority of game consumers. The gaming industry has gone through changes and now companies try to satisfy a variety of consumers. The transition to a more including community has woken outrage among those who are no longer the core group of the gamer identity.  Drawing upon discourse theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and by Stuart Hall's thoughts on identity, this thesis examines how gamer identity is constructed and the conflict that occurs when women enter the masculine imprinted scene of gaming. The empirical material consists mainly of interviews with women who play games as well as a Facebook group made for the informants.  The study shows that there are competing definitions of who is a gamer and that even the most inclusive definition sets up boundaries that distinguishes gamers from non-gamers. A diversity in the gaming community and in the games is a cause of friction. An inclusion of characters that are not representative of the white, young, heterosexual male gamer are sometimes viewed as political statements, which are both celebrated and detested, which leads to a question of how a discourse of politics plays a role in the construction and reproduction of a gamer identity.

<p dir="ltr">Since the Electronic Software Association (ESA) began reporting data for the video game industry in 2002, women have represented nearly half of the game playing population. However, despite this stable statistic, the industry’s ideal “Gamer” is consistently depicted as a young, white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied male, and the games industry frequently targets this idealized identity through advertising and game design. This has resulted in a culture that is notably toxic towards women and marginalized players, built on an assumption of meritocracy within games—or the expectation that every player begins each game with the same advantages, disadvantages, and skills as every other player. While the construction of gamer identity has received extensive scholarly attention, gaming peripherals—such as video game controllers—are either minimized or left entirely out of the conversation. This dissertation, informed by feminist methodologies in technical communication and game studies, uses a mixed-methods approach involving archival research, visual analysis, surveys, and interviews to understand the intersections of video game controllers and gamer identity. Using Microsoft’s Xbox as a case study, the findings demonstrate how a dominant narrative has controlled controller design decisions through iterative processes. This has resulted in controllers that are more uncomfortable, more unusable, and more frustrating for and viewed more negatively by women and marginalized players. For each controller iteration, women and marginalized participants rated controllers significantly lower. Though the total improvement score (TIS) from first iteration to current iteration were similar between women and marginalized participants and cismale participants, the lower starting point for women and marginalized participants resulted in a lower ending point. Design decisions across controller iterations privilege cismale experiences, reifying gamer identity through controller design and resulting in not just an ideal gamer identity, but an ideal gamer body. </p>