Representing Users in the Design of Digital Games

Key insights

5 slides

Key finding

Designers usually represent players implicitly, not through direct engagement.

Digital game designers typically represent their users implicitly rather than through direct engagement. This tacit approach is often shaped by the designers' own tastes.

Page 16 of the report — See it on page 16

Broader forces

Economic pressure and production culture together shaped the design decisions.

The author concludes that economic pressures, venture funding, industry discourses, and masculine production culture together shaped these decisions. Female representation alone may not change content if women are socialized into a male production culture.

Core conclusion. Digital game design more closely resembles media production than conventional software development.

Page 11 of the report — See it on page 11

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Summary

Aphra Kerr's paper argues that digital game designers typically represent their users implicitly rather than through direct engagement, and that this tacit approach, often shaped by the designers' own tastes, can embed gender bias into game design. Drawing on Madeline Akrich's "scripts" framework and Steve Woolgar's concept of user configuration, the author contends that designers' knowledge of players is frequently contradictory and untested, and that digital game development has traditionally been intuitive and designer-driven with little user involvement.

The study grounds this argument in interviews with Irish digital game companies, which were almost entirely male and targeted young men aged roughly 15 to 40. Industry factors such as risk-averse publishers, console manufacturers, and a shortage of skilled labour were found to shape both game types and design priorities. The analysis situates these findings within the historical masculinization of computing and warns that increasing female representation alone may not alter content if women are socialized into a male production culture.

The central case study examines an online multiplayer strategy game developed by the fictional company games.inc, launched in Germany in December 2001 with about 1,000 subscribers. Designers relied on implicit assumptions, projecting their own preferences as technologically literate male gamers aged 25 to 40, rather than conducting formal user research. Explicit user involvement was limited to beta testing by about 200 mostly male professionals or students and to post-launch player feedback. Designers acknowledged they had not considered female players and were uncertain whether any existed among their audience.

The author concludes that economic pressures, venture funding, industry discourses, and a masculine production culture together shaped these decisions. The study suggests that digital game design more closely resembles media production than conventional software development, and that this distinction matters for how users are represented. The paper's scope is Irish and European game development around 2001 and 2002, and its reference base draws on scholarship across gender and technology, user-centred design, and the social shaping of technology.