Beyond Freedom of Movement

Few studies have examined gender and game play from the perspective of boys' participation. In this article we investigate boys' play in a tween-centric virtual world called Whyville.net, which had 1.5 million registered players at the time of study. Drawing primarily upon logfile data, we developed participation profiles and case studies of three boy players who ranged in engagement from casual to core players. In the case studies of boy players and their everyday activities in Whyville, we found that initial routines were remarkably similar but over time more nuanced differences emerged in players' identity and boundary play. Furthermore, Whyville provided the boys with relatively low consequence opportunities to experiment with different masculine identities. In comparing our findings with other work, we found that while virtual worlds offer space for the expression of boys' culture, they are qualitatively distinct from other gaming environments and thus need to be studied on their own terms.