Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on players’ negotiation of their own conduct of communication. Drawing from a sample of YouTube commentaries of "The Last of Us: Part II"-videos, I will show how players discuss, regulate and reflect on their own discourse.

Paper long abstract:

The release of the sequel to the widely beloved video game “The Last of Us” in 2020 led to a series of controversies in the video game sphere. The topics of these controversies, led by gamers as well as the gaming press and even mainstream feuilleton, touched on a wide spectrum both political and cultural; from allegations of homophobia towards the fanbase, to corruption and misinformation allegations from the players towards gaming media and producers. Those particular instances of discourse, I argue, are ideal moments to study value-formations in gamevironments (Grieve et. al. 2020). How did players’ views differ on representations of femininity, masculinity and LGBTQ characters? How did the game’s commentary on violence clash with the players every day gaming experiences and expectations? How did discussions of the game and media content mirror the players’ perception of their own subculture? In short, what values and value-systems have come into conflict when players discussed “The Last of Us: Part II”?

In my paper, I will focus on the specific aspect of players’ negotiation of their own conduct of communication. Drawing from a sample of YouTube commentaries I will show how players discuss and reflect on their own discourse, regulating and condemning certain forms of speech and action, and drawing lines to what they deem “too extreme”. I will have a closer look on both encouraging and discouraging regulatory tactics players deploy on each other as well as gaming medias’ community management strategies. Taking all actors and their vantage-points seriously, I will show how the common narrative of “toxic internet culture” is both reproduced and challenged in these contexts, allowing for deeper insights into players’ value-laden perspective on their inhabited mediatized spaces.