Tomkinson, Sian, and Tauel Harper. 2015 “The Position of Women in Video Game Culture: Perez and Day’s Twitter Incident.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 29 (4): 617-634. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2015.1025362.

As video game culture becomes more mainstream and attracts a larger player base both male and female, the tensions between the genders increased, manifested by misogynistic acts against females. Video games are normatively framed as a hypermasculine space by the men who dominates it. These men call women to “degender” themselves to achieve equal opportunity, and those who don’t are labelled “fake” and harassed. This article is a historical research revolving one incident particularly where the female video game celebrity Felicia Day was attacked online by video games journalist Ryan Perez and other online posters. The authors’ research question asks whether this ‘Twitter Incident” and the events following it were acts of catharsis or a watershed that signals that females in gaming culture and industries could experience an evolution in gender relationships. The type of data the researchers gathered were reports of events that they gathered from various articles. These reports paint the story of how the gaming space were gendered, how games marketed to females failed, and how men reacted when females joined their space and played games marketed for male. They also did research on Felicia Day’s history as she became an iconic actress and content creator in the gaming industry, a representative of females in game culture, and all the events leading up to the “Twitter Incident.” The also did research in all the events that happened following the incidents, how Destructoid, the gaming journal and Ryan Perez’s employer, apologized to Day, how people came to her defense and call out the misogyny in the industry. The analysis was qualitative and the authors showed in their analysis that the incident was a watershed for gender relationships that promotes a crackdown on misogynistic tendencies and a change of attitude when Perez was condemned by the community, and it was also an act of catharsis, where the community feels their guilt about the misogyny were cleansed. This article paints a clear and detailed picture of the history of misogyny in video games culture and how the community have started to move forward with a more open attitude towards women who play games.