Event Date: June 12, 2025
Location: Onsite, Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center (please note we are simply near the convention center, we are not using the convention center itself)
Submission deadline: February 09, 2025
Toxic describes disruptive, chaotic, and frequently illegal behavior in games and social media. Since the reactionary Gamergate movement in 2014, users have weaponized the ‘gamer’ identity to harass women, queer, and people of color who call for more diversity and inclusion in games. These strategies originated in multiplayer games, frequently directed at journalists, game developers, and other professionals. We seek submissions interrogating toxic behaviors, identities, and strategies to understand better how anonymous and misogynistic speech shapes online environments in games and beyond.
As more of our professional, social, and recreational networks are mediated on digital platforms, it is imperative to consider which identities are celebrated and which are contested and harassed. Feminist game studies scholars discuss harassment and how it prevents marginalized identities from fully participating in online spaces (Gray, 2020; Cote, 2020; Consalvo, 2012; Marwick & Caplan, 2018). In this climate, some have argued that “the future of media studies is game studies” (Chess & Consalvo, 2022), suggesting that game studies scholars have valuable perspectives, methods, and insights toward understanding the relationship between toxic masculinity that privileges cis-gendered white and Asian men, and networked harassment that allows people to harass their targets both online and off. This presents valuable opportunities for analog and tabletop game scholars to contribute their expertise on how these versions of games may challenge or reinforce aspects of toxic masculinity in gaming industries and communities.
Game studies is well positioned to organize and host a conversation about the harmful effects of toxic masculinity in online games and social media, but is by no means the only communication discipline that can meaningfully contribute to the study of toxic masculinity. Most fields and disciplines within the big tent of Communications can meaningfully engage with toxic masculinity in some capacity. Political scientists may take interest in the recent increase of reactionary politics or the self-described ‘incel’ ideology. Whereas public relations, crisis communication, and journalism scholars may consider how news coverage can reinforce toxic masculinity, while media studies scholars can contemplate the representations of toxic male characters throughout history. Regardless of the specific discipline or tradition, communication scholars must continue studying how toxic men develop harassment strategies to use against journalists, academics, politicians, game developers, and anyone else who must use social media and the internet as part of their job.
This preconference aims to bridge disciplinary divides and emphasize collaboration by bringing together practitioners and scholars whose work highlights the intersection of digital and analog games, media (including but not limited to games), communication studies, and online harassment. We aim to offer specific evidence of where and how some identities can be toxic and how that shapes how people can participate in online life. Openly interrogating the relationship between video games and toxic masculinity is an opportunity to showcase how game studies can be a helpful mechanism for taking seriously what many take for granted, but more importantly, to shed light on points of resistance against these pervasive forces of toxic masculinity.
We encourage scholars and practitioners, especially our junior colleagues, to consider contributing their expertise to our conversation about the harmful effects of toxic masculinity and harassment in online spaces in and outside of gaming. Toxic masculinity is not just an issue in media studies and game studies, so we emphatically encourage scholars from various traditions and disciplines to consider applying. In this way, we foster interdisciplinary connections and open up conversations.
Taking place before the plenary session, the preconference will also be an opportunity to draw as much from the past connections between games and communications as the present and the future.
Please direct all questions, comments, and concerns to: icagamespreconf2025@gmail.com
Topics might include (but are not limited to!):
- What similarities and differences are there between“toxic”, or abrasive, destructive, potentially illegal behaviors that occur in video games compared to other online spaces?
- Examples of effective resistance and strategies against toxic masculinities from gaming communities
- Exploring effects of toxic masculinities across different gaming genres (e.g., FPS, Simulators), types (e.g., esports, Cozy games), and within both analog and digital formats
- Communities supporting and subverting toxicity in game adjacent platforms (e.g., Discord, Reddit).
- Developing taxonomies, conceptual models and theories around toxic masculinity behaviors both within and outside of gaming
- The negative impact (economic, emotional, social, etc.) that toxic masculinity can have on games, and other popular media industries
- Unpacking the systemic factors that contribute to toxic masculinity in gaming and other workplaces as well as affiliated in fandoms
- Investigate the relationship between toxic masculinity and (gaming) platform governance
- Unpacking the relationship between toxic masculinity and extremist ideologies and the potential threat for violence they pose and how men use them to inflict different kinds of harm (red pill, black pill, siege pill, rape pill, etc.)
- Investigating incel culture (both within and outside of gaming) to understand this community better, to hopefully prevent even further radicalization
- Investigating the individual influential creators who profit from, and popularize, toxic masculinity (Ninja, Dr. Disrespect, Andrew Tate, IDubbz, NickMercs, etc.)
- Analyze the relationship between various ‘manosphere’ platforms, subreddits, and websites, to highlight specific instances where platforms enable toxic masculinity
- Which platform features and affordances enable toxic masculinity? Which prevent it?
- Propose solutions for combating the spread of toxic masculinity
- Highlighting strategies and tactics that people use to challenge instances of toxic masculinity or misogyny
Types of Submissions (abstracts only):
– Research papers
– Theoretical papers
– Pedagogical works (e.g., teaching about/with games)
– Short papers / roundtable presentations
– Panel proposals
– Industry presentations
– Creative submissions
– Research-in-progress showcases
– Games-in-progress showcases
How to Submit:
Please email anonymized abstract submissions of no more than 1,000 words in length (inclusive of references) as a PDF attachment to icagamespreconf2025@gmail.com and include your name, role/title (i.e., independent scholar, graduate student, postdoc, assistant professor, etc.), affiliation/institution if you have one, and preferred email address in the body of the email. In the subject line please indicate submission type (e.g., Theory Paper, Creative Submission, etc.).
Submissions may be organized into themed panels outside of submission type.
Deadline for Submission: February 1, 2025
References:
Chess, S., & Consalvo, M. (2022). The future of media studies is game studies. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 39(3), 159-164.
Consalvo, M. (2012). Confronting toxic gamer culture: A challenge for feminist game studies scholars.
Cote, A. C. (2020). Gaming sexism: Gender and identity in the era of casual video games. In Gaming Sexism. New York University Press.
Dibbell, J. (1994). A rape in cyberspace or how an evil clown, a Haitian trickster spirit, two wizards, and a cast of dozens turned a database into a society. Ann. Surv. Am. L., 471.
Ging, D. (2019). Alphas, betas, and incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere. Men and masculinities, 22(4), 638-657.
Gray, K. L. (2020). Black gamers’ resistance. Race and Media: Critical Approaches. NYU Press, United States, 241.
Marwick, A. E., & Caplan, R. (2018). Drinking male tears: Language, the manosphere, and networked harassment. Feminist media studies, 18(4), 543-559.