Raise Your Game

Available for over a year

Jay-Ann Lopez is a serious gamer - first-person-shooters a speciality. But across the gaming landscape, she sees a dominant culture which is not geared towards her: male, white and macho, with games, characters and narratives to match. Despite some games being targeted at women since the 1980s and independent gaming companies challenging the status quo for decades, this culture has remained mainstream. She ask why that particular gaming culture has remained so resilient, and what shaped it. And what part it plays in the misogyny and racism facing many gamers today. Using the treasures of the BBC archive she transports us back to defining moments in our relationship with video games. She watches Pong, Manic Miner, Lara Croft and Fortnite working their magic and climbing inside our minds. And watches the industry grow: today gaming is bigger than music and movies combined. Jay-Ann debates the tensions and opportunities in this vast landscape with sociologists, psychologists and gaming industry insiders. Producer: Melvin Rickarby A BBC Wales production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in September 2020.