Gaming for All: Discourse and Identity amongst Difabel Gamers in Indonesia

Key insights

7 takeaways

01
Digital games served difabel gamers in Indonesia as spaces for socialization, self-esteem building, and identity formation, while structural barriers such as exclusion from formal education, constrained employment, and media portrayals that commodify disability persist.
02
The study's central thesis is that empowerment requires both inclusive game texts and inclusive actors, with difabel communities leading the process rather than non-disabled people.
03
Participants broadly adopted the social model of disability, understanding disability as produced by environmental and social barriers rather than located solely in the body.
04
E-Sports Ability Indonesia, a difabel-led group formed to expand gaming and competitive e-sports access, has been credited with introducing inclusive gaming environments and shifting community norms.
05
Participants diverged on whether disability should serve as a collective identity: E-Sports Ability Indonesia members articulated a shared vision, goals, and code of conduct, while others took more individualized positions, some embracing and some downplaying disability as a shared category.
06
All participants treated accessibility as a precondition for participation and argued that non-disabled people should act as facilitators rather than overseers.
07
As a qualitative study of only four purposively sampled participants using micro-ethnography and narrative analysis, its findings are interpretive and not statistically generalizable.

Summary

This study examines how difabel (differently abled) gamers in Indonesia use digital games to construct disability discourses and identities, arguing that hegemonic non-disabled culture shapes both gaming environments and public narratives about disability. Grounded in disability studies and critical game studies, the research draws on micro-ethnography and narrative analysis of four purposively sampled participants, including members of E-Sports Ability Indonesia, a group formed to expand difabel access to gaming and competitive e-sports. The work's central thesis is that empowerment requires both inclusive game texts and inclusive actors, with difabel communities leading the process.

Across the participants, a shared adherence to the social model of disability emerges, with disability understood as produced by barriers rather than located solely in the body. Digital games functioned for these gamers as spaces of socialization, self-esteem building, and identity formation. Structural obstacles nonetheless persist, including exclusion from formal education, constrained employment opportunities, and media portrayals that commodify disability. Participants diverge in how they position disability as a collective identity: the members of E-Sports Ability Indonesia articulate a clear collective vision, goals, and code of conduct, while others adopt more individualized perspectives, some embracing and others downplaying disability as a shared category.

Despite these differences, all participants emphasize accessibility as a precondition for participation and insist that non-disabled people should serve as facilitators rather than overseers. The study finds that E-Sports Ability Indonesia's principal contribution has been introducing inclusive gaming environments, demonstrating how difabel-led initiatives can reshape community norms. The authors contend that identity and action among disabled gamers must originate from within their own communities, and that games designed by non-disabled developers, including those framed as serious games, may not capture the social and worldview-building functions that participants experience. Equality, on this account, requires non-disabled people to step back and allow difabel-led empowerment to proceed. As a qualitative study based on interviews with four participants, its findings are interpretive rather than statistically generalizable.