Nolan and McBride highlight in their section on “autonomy” that “[w]hen children are playing, they need freedom to not only choose the form that the play will take, but to choose everything about it, with minimal interference from others; this extends to the tools and technologies they use in their play as well” (emphasis mine, 599). This “minimal interference from others” is suggested to be coming from an external source only, ie. parents, siblings, those occupying the same physical space as the player while he/she is gaming. What it does not highlight is the internal interference, ie. the “others” who exist during gameplay (by which I mean other “human” players, not NPCs/sentient AI). As the [http://www.voxspace.in/2018/05/15/multiplayer-games/ current trend in gaming leans heavy towards non-local multiplayer], this is without a doubt a growing—and at times troubling—new dimension.

While Nolan and McBride in their 2013 study were right (I believe) about their handling of autonomous play (highlighting the need for “choice” among gamers in what they play, where they play and who they play with), extrapolation is needed to understand how this translates to 2019. In adding “community” (non-local), the first aspect needs to be focused on who each gamer is playing with. Though this can oftentimes come down to the game itself, [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613 a 2015 study by Kasumovic and Kuznekoff] (which made a few noteworthy headlines) found that in the popular multiplayer game, Halo 3, a vast majority of players were male. They acknowledge that multiplayer games of Halo’s nature represent a “male-dominated arena”, and use social constructivist theory to illustrate how “men behave in a sexist manner towards women to remove them from a male-dominated arena”. If “community” is to be defined, however, then it is important to note that many online-multiplayer communities are made up of male gamers, many of which Kasumovic and Kuznekoff demonstrate are not friendly to women.

While Nolan and McBride in their 2013 study were right (I believe) about their handling of autonomous play (highlighting the need for “choice” among gamers in what they play, where they play and who they play with), extrapolation is needed to understand how this translates to 2019. In adding “community” (non-local), the first aspect needs to be focused on who each gamer is playing with. Though this can oftentimes come down to the game itself, [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613 a 2015 study by Kasumovic and Kuznekoff] (which made a few noteworthy headlines) found that in the popular multiplayer game, ''Halo 3'', a vast majority of players were male. They acknowledge that multiplayer games of Halo’s nature represent a “male-dominated arena”, and use social constructivist theory to illustrate how “men behave in a sexist manner towards women to remove them from a male-dominated arena”. If “community” is to be defined, however, then it is important to note that many online-multiplayer communities are made up of male gamers, many of which Kasumovic and Kuznekoff demonstrate are not friendly to women.

“Mad because bad” is an oft quoted saying in the gaming world, implying that when a player is angry/frustrated with a game, it is typically due to his/her inability to play it “correctly”, rather than a flaw with the game/fellow players. Kasumovic and Kuznekoff found that within the Halo 3 community, the vast majority of hostile comments directed towards women were coming from men performing poorly in-game (these same men behaved submissively when the top performing player was male). This community, like sports, can be referred to as one of the final remaining “Boys Clubs” in modern society, thus there is likely a feeling to “protect” it from “outsiders” (ie. anything other than another heterosexual man). The authors of the study themselves conclude that “[b]y demonstrating that female-directed hostility primarily originates from low-status, poorer-performing males, our results suggest that a way to counter it may be through teaching young males that losing to the opposite sex is not socially debilitating.” If modern gaming “communities” exist in this way, there is the notion that though gaming may be the lens through which the problem is viewed, it may also be usable as a learning tool in which to positively disrupt (what are often termed) “toxic” spaces in which anyone other than the “status quo” is accepted.

“Eliza Rawling, chief business officer at Cloud Direct, shared an experience she had whilst studying electronic engineering at university. She said one of the male lecturers walked into the lecture theatre and seeing only a handful of girls, amongst mostly male students, very seriously said: ‘Ladies, what are you doing here? You are wasting your time. There is no place for you in this industry. I mean it - don't waste your time here. The industry doesn't want women.’”