Balance Boards and Dance Pads: The Impact of Innovation on Gendered Access to Gaming [Abstract]

This paper considers the impact of innovations in game interfaces, locations, and controllers in considerations of access to gaming for female and male players. The role of gender in video game culture has been considered from the perspectives of production, culture, marketing, content, mechanics, and preferences, and several scholars have argued that we need to understand gendered preferences and play through assemblages and networks of these elements [1, 2, 3]. Access to games is argued in this paper to be a key dimension of these assemblages, as it is the factor that will determine the experiences that in turn shape play preferences that lead to particular game genre choices. This paper considers innovations in gaming, including mini-games in virtual communities and groundbreaking controllers like Dance Dance Revolution dance pads, Wiimotes, nunchucks, balance boards, rock game guitars, drums, and microphones. These innovations mark a move towards a more diverse terrain of gaming that may challenge understandings of video game play as hypermasculine.