Type of Document Master's Thesis Author Boyer, Steven Andrew Author's Email Address stevenaboyer@gmail.com URN etd-07142009-154909 Title L337 Soccer Moms: Conceptions of "Hardcore" and "Casual" in the Digital Games Medium Degree Master of Arts Department Communications Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Ted Friedman Committee Chair Alisa Perren Committee Member Greg Smith Committee Member Keywords
- Online gaming portals
- Shareware
- Audience
- Industry discourse
- PopCap Games
- Gameplay
- Demographics
- Genre
- Hardcore
- Digital games
- Casual
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Gears of War 2
- Digital distribution
- Gender
- Nerds
- Satisfaction and feedback
- Control schemes
- Difficulty
- Hardcasual
Date of Defense 2009-07-03 Availability unrestricted Abstract As digital games have become increasingly significant in the entertainment media landscape, the terms “casual” and “hardcore” have become the primary ways to describe gaming audiences, genres, and gameplay. However, these terms are saturated with outdated stereotypes involving gender, age, and class. Focusing on industrial discourse, this thesis examines this dichotomy, emphasizing areas of discontinuity and overlap to question why these terms have become so ubiquitous in gaming discourse and what functions they fulfill for a variety of groups including the industry, advertisers, and audience members. Ultimately, I suggest that these terms need to be replaced in order to move beyond restrictive stereotypes, proposing a new framework for digital games that takes into consideration user motivation, personal investment, and historical specificity.Files
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