All of a sudden, someone is shooting at me! In the corner of my eye, I had previously noted the movement of another player. I closed the menu where I was browsing the wares the robot is selling and turn to my right to see who is shooting at me – a level 200 something player in a power amor. Thanks to the ‘pacifist’ setting they cannot hurt me until I fire back, which I don’t. The player fires a few more rounds at me and uses the ‘wave’ emoticon while looking at me. Uninterested in any additional interaction with the player, I turn my avatar back towards the robot. […] It is not until many hours later that I realize why I couldn’t shake the feeling of having done this before. Then it occurs to me: I was following the same interactional patterns as when I try to avoid unwanted interactions at the bar! I tried communicating “I am minding my own business here, please leave me alone”. (Matilda’s fieldnotes 25.8.2021.)

In the chapter (Ståhl & Rusk, 2025), we discuss constructions of gender in a specific context: the multiplayer game Fallout 76 (Bethesda Game Studios, 2018). Game communities have traditionally been a subculture dominated by men; however, this normative idea of a player is currently being questioned (T. L. Taylor, 2015; Maloney et al., 2019). Multiple terms have been coined to describe the (gender) norms that shape both individual players as well as game culture at large, see e.g. ‘technomasculinity’ (Johnson, 2018), ‘gamerbro’ (N. Taylor, 2018) and ‘neoliberal masculinity’ (Voorhees & Orlando, 2018). Several of these concepts are based on Connell’s (1985; 1987) theory about gender structures and hegemonic masculinity, which is the dominating norm for masculinity, and how it shapes a certain context. The concept has since been discussed, questioned and revised by, e.g., Connell & Messerschmidt (2005), Connell (2021), Messerschmidt (2012; 2018), and Duncanson (2015), especially in relation to changing hegemonic gender structures. In dialogue with previous research, we discuss how we construct gender when playing Fallout 76.

Exploring Fallout 76 through a duoethnography

Fallout is a successful game series and Fallout 76 is the latest title. Like the previous titles (e.g. Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4), Fallout 76 allows the player to explore a post-apocalyptic USA after a nuclear explosion in the form of a roleplaying game through the perspective of a ‘first person shooter’ in real time. Each of the games have their own narrative but take place in the same universe and together they create a coherent world (McClancy, 2018). Unlike its predecessors, Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer game and the first in the series to offer player-to-player-interaction in addition to player-to-game-interaction (Mo & Kim, 2019). So far, the game has not received the same academic interest as previous titles, which might be due to the moderate reception on its release: for example, Wills (2018, p. 1) described it as a “digital ruin to wander through but without purpose”.

The in-game situation with the player in power armor described in the opening of this blog post was the starting point of the chapter (Ståhl & Rusk, 2025), after which we started playing Fallout 76 together as a duoethnography. In this case, duoethnography (Sawyer & Norris, 2012) refers to two interwoven autoethnographies where both the analysis as well as the in-game experience was shared, but where our individual narratives are given space. The material consists of field notes, screen recordings and documented analytical discussions. Through our gender identities, as a cis woman and cis man respectively, we gained a situated understanding of how hegemonic masculinity shaped our shared in-game experiences. The aim of the chapter is thereby two-fold: 1) to explore how we as players (co)construct player identities and correspondingly 2) analyze our experiences through the lens of hegemonic gender structures in change. The results show how we construct identities that are shifting between maintaining and challenging the hegemony and in the chapter, we exemplify this through two in-game situations. One of these situations is introduced below.

‘Note to self: don’t play the banjo in raider camps’

It is early in the fieldwork: the first time where we felt like we could play the game seamlessly together without needing breaks to discuss things. We were on the northern part of the map where we conquered an area by killing all raiders of the Blood Eagle faction. Due to technical issues, Fredrik was temporarily thrown out of the game and Matilda took the opportunity to loot the area. While waiting for Fredrik to return, Matilda decided to let her avatar play the banjo and as we were using a separate application for the voice chat, we could continue talking. All of a sudden, all raiders respawn and Matilda was surrounded by enemies firing at her! She fights back, and in the middle of this fight, Fredrik returns. This moment was described in both our fieldnotes (17.12.2021) as noteworthy: we wrote “Fridde [Fredrik] to the rescue!” and “The save when I respawned” respectively.

It took a few rounds of analytical discussions, but eventually Matilda realized why this particular moment both bothered her and was at the same time relevant for the analysis. Echoing the conflicting feelings regarding her fieldwork by Altork (1995), Matilda noticed a similar dissonance in herself. On one hand, she was surrounded by enemies and genuinely thankful for having Fredrik back in-game. On the other hand, she saw this instance as gendered because she experienced this “absurd sense of relief” when a man (both in terms of player and avatar) saved her, despite having gotten herself out of similar situations “without a knight in shining armor” before (8.2.2022). Fredrik did at first not see the situation as gendered, only that he wanted to help someone “who counted on him”. Rather, in his fieldnotes he noted that he had died multiple times in that play session and thereby felt like a burden to Matilda. Our understanding of the situation is thereby connected with gender norms (Connell, 1985; 1987; 2021) positioning competence withing games as masculine, and thereby Fredrik as someone capable of “rescuing” and “saving”. Matilda aligned with the hegemony in the moment but challenged it later.

The activity of men is often seen as primary, whereas the activity of women is secondary or marginal (Connell, 2021) and by seeing Fredrik’s activities as primary, we thereby maintain the hegemony. Fredrik initially not seeing the situation as gendered can, therefore, be seen as a limited understanding of the power dynamics with game culture, but his comments can also be seen as a step to deconstruct the hegemony (Duncanson, 2015) by positioning Matilda as the more competent player of Fallout 76. Looking at the screen recording of the event, Matilda seems startled by the enemies respawning but take two of them out and heal herself. Fredrik rejoins the game and kills one of them. Matilda spots one additional enemy but does not fire because Fredrik steps into her aim. This enemy throws a Molotov cocktail at Fredrik who dies. Matilda shoots the enemy and tries to heal Fredrik but cannot do that (because we were currently not in the same team as he just rejoined the game). She realizes that her attempts of helping him are unsuccessful, heals herself and kills another enemy. Fredrik respawns and takes out the final enemy. The screen recording supports positioning Matilda as the one doing the primary activity, a masculine position and competency Matilda was hesitant to claim, which aligns with previous research where women players tend to undervalue their competence in relation to that of the men the play with (Ratan et al., 2015). However, this is not solely an issue within games: in an academic context, we have also noted that our co-authored texts are often assumed to be written by Fredrik as the lead author, despite us communicating that it is Matilda who should be named the lead author. By claiming her role as such, she is both doing and claiming to do the main activity of that study, whereas gender roles would dictate that her role should be secondary.

By discussing how gendered situations like this occur, we are reflecting on our own understanding of the situation by putting it into words at the same time as we listen to the other persons’ experiences. As such, we are creating an opening for change in line with Duncanson (2015): we question contradictions and through respect and empathy, this results in a more equal shared game experience, a form of equality which potentially is extending beyond the game context as well.

This English summary is based on the following open access book chapter, originally published in Swedish. In a nutshell, the book, edited by Astri Dankertsen and Ann-Torill Tørrisplass (Nord University, Norway), focuses on how gender constructions are part of the society in the Nordic countries through research from different fields, using various methodological and theoretical perspectives.

Original chapter and the references: Ståhl, M., & Rusk., F. (2025). Hegemoniska genusstrukturer i förändring – en duoetnografi i multiplayerspelet Fallout 76. I A. Dankertsen & A-T. Tørrisplass (Red.) På sporet av kjønn. Debatter og dialog i en nordisk kontekst. Universitetsforlaget. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18261/9788215069326-25-10

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