Welcome to Rule 34, a series in which Motherboardâs Samantha Cole lovingly explores the highly specific fetishes that can be found on the web.
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To be clear, weâre not talking about 3D models of Overwatch characters having sex or even live-action parodies like Fortnut. Weâre looking specifically at the genre of porn that involves women who game, and the sex that they have.Fetishizing female gamers, outside of any societal context, seems innocent enough. Itâs a fantasy, like any other genre of pornographyânurses, firefighters, librariansâ"gamer" is almost just another kind of uniform. But we live in a world where women who try to enter gaming fandoms are harassed and intimidatedâand often driven out of something they love doingâbecause of gamingâs culture of gatekeeping.
I asked Katherine Cross, a games writer, sociologist, and columnist for Gamasutra, to help unpack the genre of âgamer girls,â and what it might reflect about ourselves.âThere's cultural value in any image that allows people to envision women in nontraditional roles, and there's always legitimate concern when the only 'valid' women in those roles are portrayed as sex objects,â Cross told me in an email. âI think this sort of porn lends itself to both interpretations⊠the âgamer girlâ as an almost mythical fetish object has long been enshrined among even the most virulent misogynistic men in gaming, at once lusted after and mythologised out of all proportion to reality.â"I got yelled at by gamer bros about being fake, even though I disclosed it was for a scene and never pretended it was real."
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Early examples of how the âgamer girlâ has been viewed by society is seen in gaming magazines from the early 2000s. âGetting girls to play games? Easy. We paid this model $200 an hour to pretend to play with us,â one section of a 2004 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly reads. A letter to the editor in an issue of GAMEPRO magazine, also in 2004, waxes on breathlessly about nude codes for Lara Croftâs character.
Janice Griffith, a porn performer who has experience portraying a âgamer girlâ in her videos, told me itâs all about the fantasy. âI think it honestly has to do with the age-old idea that women don't play video games, and then hyper-sexualizing that,â she told me in an email. âMen who are really into video games see this extreme fantasy of someone they're attracted to sharing an interest with them, similar to other tropes we see in porno and media in general.âShe said her fans love her âgamer girlâ work, but many of them picked apart the scene: they wanted her to be playing Xbox instead of PS4, or the controller wasnât in enough of the shots, or they called her a âfakeâ gamer because she wasnât actually immersed in playing while fucking.âA lot of people get worked up over the idea of 'fake' gamer girls to the point where they're pushing women who'd be interested out inadvertently,â she said. âI explicitly stated I was âpretending to play video games for pornâ and it didn't matter, people thought it was the hottest thing in the world. [But] I got yelled at by gamer bros about being fake, even though I disclosed it was for a scene and never pretended it was real.â
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The toxicity Venn diagram of gatekeeping in gaming and harassment against adult performers meets in the middle at gamer porn. But it also represents a shift in how society views sexuality and games. Playboyâs 2013 âGamer Next Doorâ series featuring Playboy bunny Pamela Horton is an example of the notion of girl gamers who are also multifaceted sexual beings going mainstream. When the series launched, Horton spoke with Engadget about being a performer who also games, and having to prove herself to both the adult industry and the gaming community. "Honey child, I was a gamer before I was ever a pretty girl," she said.As a genre, gamer girl porn reflects âthe everydayness of gaming,â Tom Apperley, associate professor of digital education at Deakin University in Australia, told me in an email. He suggested that whatâs appealing about the gamer porn fantasy isnât just the idea that women do game, but that gamer men arenât stereotypically socially inept.Read more: Pewdiepie Is Teaching His Audience that Women Are Asking For ItâProbably what seems the most unusual is thinking of gaming as a form of intimacy, which really runs counter to a lot of the usual discourse on gamers being isolated, anti-social nerds,â Apperley said. âIn some respects, gamer girl porn reflects changing ideas about masculinity⊠This suggests a reconfiguration the fantasy of sexual fulfillment with a proximate every-woman, to an enmeshing of technological mediation in this fulfillment. The girl-next-door is somewhere in the neighborhood, whereas the gamer-next-door is at the other end of a network, often in her private and intimate space.â"The girl-next-door is somewhere in the neighborhood, whereas the gamer-next-door is at the other end of a network"
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The gamer girl is accessible in that next-door way, but even more than that, sheâs often at the mercy of her (frequently male) partner. âKey to the fetish is a kind of dominion,â Cross said. âThe âgamer/nerd girlâ may be smart, but she remains subordinate and compliant; she knows who's in charge, at the end of the day.âRead more: Twitch Commenters Talk About Games on Menâs Streams, 'Boobs' on WomenâsCross points to Ready Player One author Ernest Clineâs infamously problematic poem âNerd Porn Auteur,â about his Manic Pixie Gamer Girl, who begs her partner to stop having sex so they can watch Battlestar Galactica. âThe fetish is for a woman who does not fully exercise her humanity, whose qualities exist only to reflect those of her man in a flattering light.âBeing a woman existing in traditionally male spaces is an endeavor in itself, and gamer porn is no different. But itâs not all heteronormative masculinity: A ton of gamer girl porn is centered on men, but a lot of it is lesbian and queer, too. Cross cites in particular the fandom around transforming D.Va from Overwatch into a Doritos- and Mountain Dew-loving gamer. Many of those interpretations are queer, aimed at the gameâs LGBT fanbase.âThese things transcend the base motivations of those angry men who want a perfectly compliant girlfriend.âIf you have a freaky-obscure internet fetish that youâd like to see featured on Rule 34, please submit it to sam@motherboard.tv. No judgement.