Playing the Man

Playing the Man is a collection of play-based prototypes that use game mechanics to create space for emotional expression among men, exploring whether the same spaces reinforcing masculine norms can also expand them.

Adrift is a narrative video game where players use their own voices to shape the story, with emotional tone detection determining how the story and its outcomes unfold.

Western societies have spent generations telling men that vulnerability is weakness, that expressing hurt or pain comes at the cost of their manhood. The cultural forces shaping young men's sense of what masculinity should look like, from media to online communities, are not getting quieter. They are getting louder, more coordinated, and algorithmically precise. Since the 1990s, the share of men reporting no close friends has increased fivefold, and gaming spaces, with their predominant male presence, have become one of the most efficient channels for those definitions of manhood to proliferate.Playing the Man is a collection of games that explore how play can be a vehicle for social change, through mechanics rather than messaging. Adrift is a narrative video game where players use their own voices to shape the story, with emotional tone detection determining how the story and its outcomes unfold. Man vs. Man is a satirical game where players debate which archetype of masculinity would best survive a random, hypothetical scenario, with a win condition that requires engaging with every archetype on the table. Lastly, Clippd is a mad-libs style card game where the words you choose shape the questions you end up answering.

Built on participatory research with male-identifying PC and console gamers, this work maps how masculinity is learned, performed, and enforced in gaming spaces. If culture shapes the media men consume, then perhaps the media can reshape our culture. If games are already teaching men what manhood looks like, they can also teach new ways of being a man.