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What nerdcore porn has to tell us about toxic masculinity in gamer cultures
The great majority of the existing work that examines digital games and pornography focuses on the
portrayal of women and sex acts in digital games. However, work has also emerged that marks the
parallels between the two due to the embodied and affective manner in which they are experienced.
This article examines the emergence of nerdcore pornography, a moniker developed and applied by
the destructoid (www.destructoid.com) online community to describe a developing genre of
photography that portrays nude subjects with digital game technology. These photographs are
primarily of women and are often overtly sexualized. This article examines a corpus of 74 nerdcore
porn images from the original destructoid post from July 2006, using a visual analysis of the
photographs to map key affective themes in the genre and how they resonate affectively within the
heteronormative male gaming subculture for whom they are curated. Visual analysis locates two key
themes, domesticity and nostalgia, that are themselves interwoven with the more explicitly carnal
depiction of female sexuality and nudity. This means that while nerdcore porn does objectify women
and sexualize women gamers it also offers insight into other connected issues in gaming subcultures
that demonstrates how digital gaming and gaming cultures are sites where particular toxic versions
heterosexual masculinity identities are constructed.
Keywords:
affect, curation, destructoid, digital games, domesticity, gaming, girl gamer, harassment,
heteronormative, masculinity, nerdcore, nostalgia, pornography, toxic masculinity,

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Toxic masculinity is a characteristic of gaming culture. It includes behaviours such as hate speech,
misogyny, racism, and verbal abuse, similar to the traits associated with trolling and cyber-bullying
(Busch et al. 2015). Behaviours associated with toxic masculinity are not confined to online games,
but also occur in chat channels, discussion boards and internet forums (Salter & Blodgett 2012), they
have also permeated e-sports and other gaming events, like festivals and expos (Consalvo 2012).
Regardless, the inclusion of women in gaming culture has increased substantially, and consequently
women have gained much more visibility and attention within gaming culture, and from the games
industry. However, this new gaming public only has the appearance of inclusivity, and is in fact
characterised by a dominant paradigm of masculinity and misogyny (Salter & Blodgett 2012). The
notorious #gamergate movement are thus not so much an exception, but rather demonstrates the
extent to which sexism and misogyny have become culturally embedded (Todd 2015, 66).
However, the actions taken by #gamergate were not confined to online speech, as they rapidly
became known for practices involving the misuse of private information, particularly the practices of
doxing publicly revealing personal information without the individuals consent, and swatting
making a false emergency callout to an individuals home or place of business (Marwick et al. 2016).
As a response to the widespread agreement among scholars that gaming cultures harbour toxic
masculinities, Mia Consalvo has called for research that examines the persistence of toxic
masculinity in gaming culture, particularly work that conceptualizes the role that player networks,
outside of the games themselves, have in sustaining toxic behaviours, attitudes and perceptions
(Consalvo 2012). This paper responds to Consalvos call by examining specific formulations of
masculine heterosexual identity that have emerged within gaming cultures around the collation and
sharing of pornographic images.
Rule 34if it exists there is porn of itaside, alongside the growing popularity of gaming as a
pastime there is an increasing reworking of gaming into various pornographic tropes, particularly the
emergence of the sexualised gamer girl, for example Pamela Horton the Gamer Next Door, who
was Playboys games-savvy ambassador (Poisso 2013). The figure of the girl gamer has become
pornified, in a similar manner to the airline stewardess, cheerleader, and real estate agent
"through their ubiquitous presence in pornographic scenarios" (Paasonen 2011, 70). This is yet
another example of how the new gaming public which includes women operates in a logic of
gender essentialism where women are restricted to particular roles within the wider cultures of
gaming. This article approaches the emergence of gamer girl pornography with Sussanna Paasonens
notion that "porn depicts fantasies about social relations turned quintessentially and even
exclusively sexual," (Paasonen 2011, 160) in mind. While the figure of the sexualized gamer girl
palpably conveys the uneven power relations at that are at play in gaming cultures, it is important to
also consider what this pornography can tell us about how this unevenness is embedded in the
heteronormative masculinity of gaming culture. In pornography the female body is not only site of
arousal, but also a distorted mirror onto which male vulnerability and mortality can be projected
(Paasonen 2011, 216). This article aims to pinpoint the vulnerabilities that the sexualised gamer girl
lay bare in order to open a wider discussion on how the libidinal figures in the development of toxic
masculinity, and functions to embed toxic masculinity in game culture, by serving a social role as a
rite of passage into macho and sexist cultural domains (Lindgren 2010, 173).
The pornographic images that have been selected for discussion, were located in the course of a
larger project that examines how digital gaming and social media structure experiences and
expressions of affect and emotion. This curated collection of images known as nerdcore, was first
shared through the online gaming community Destructoid (www.destructoid.com) during 2006.
These images feature women posed provocatively with gaming equipment (consoles, controllers,
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software and other paraphernalia). While it was certainly not the first incident of the sexualisation of
the gamer girl, it was the first publicly curated collection that earmarked the phenomenon outside
of photo and image sharing sites (although the moniker nerdcore does continue to cause
confusion, due to the use of the term to describe a style music). The intensity of the shared affective
responses to the Destructoid nerdcore collection, got the site a great deal of attention, andfor a
timecame to define the community. After elaborating the role of nerdcore pornography in the
Destructiod community, the article will discuss the curated collection of nerdcore images and locate
two key themes in the imageshabit and nostalgiathat indicate how toxics masculinity in
embedded in gamer cultures. But first a brief discussion of how the body, sex, and pornography do
figure in contemporary scholarship of digital games.

Background
Digital games and pornography are usuallyand most of the time quite rightfullyconsidered to be
different media industries. Several uncorrelated parallels between the two industries are drawn by
Brown (2008), for example the move from public to domestic modes of distribution that took place
in both industries in late 70s/early 80s (2008, 28). However, significant evidence exists that the
digital gaming and porn industries do have some remarkable historic entanglements, evidenced by
the interactive porn of the Atari era (Brown 2008; Mills 2015; Payne & Alilunas 2016). A wider
tradition of pornographic games has developed in Japan (see: Azuma 2009, 75-76; Pelletier-Gagnon
& Picard 2015) where they are known as Eroge, but these are usually only distributed on the local
market. Depictions of sex and sexuality have also appeared with some regularity in mainstream
digital games (see Brathwaite 2007, 26-54). There is a small but growing body of work on sex and
sexuality in digital games (Brown 2015; see also Harviainen et al. 2016).
This existing work on sex and sexuality has emerged alongside a growing interest in the role of
emotion and affectr in the experience of playing digital games. Digital games have been explored
through affect theory (Ash 2015; Vliaho 2015), suggesting that digital games are a full-body,
multisensory experience, temporally and corporeally delocalized, incorporating emotions but not
reducible to them (Shinkle 2005, 3). Other work has focused on the emotions experienced while
playing digital games (Fromme 2007; Lankoski 2012; Leino 2007), with a particular emphasis on the
nexus between horror games, emotion and embodiment (e.g. Ndalianis 2012). This work on
emotion, affect, sex and sexuality, is a part of the so-called material turn in game studies has seen
a growing interest in conceptualizing the experiences of body while playing digital games (Apperley
& Jayemanne 2012). This includes a growing corpus of work that considers digital gaming as a form
of performance (Beavis & Charles 2007; Burrill 2008; Miller 2012), and how people are enlisted into
the labour of producing digital play (Kuchlich 2005; Kline et al. 2003) as users (Hong & Chen 2014)
and as developers (ODonnell 2014) in what Parikka (2014) describes as the labour of code.
During the past decade digital gaming technologies have increasingly incorporated the body.
Kirkpatrick (2009, 130), reflecting on the long history of game controllers, notes that they
highlighted the relationship between hands and aesthetic experience. Ndalianis (2012, 49-50), also
points out that new gaming technologies intensify the corporeality of gameplay (see also: Gazzard
2013; Giddings 2009). In general, the major innovations from the digital gaming sectormotion
sensing controllers, the touch screens of mobile gaming platforms, and the natural user interface
associated with the Microsoft Xbox Kinect, even the current batch of new VR technologiesall
offer new expressive possibilities for the body, and for involving the body in gameplay. Similar claims
have been made regarding touch screen technologies and the use of gesture (Parisi 2013; Zehle
2012). Simon (2009) argues that the popularity of active or motion renders the body of the gamer
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spectacular. For example, he notes that the advertising campaign that accompanied the Wii
suggested that the object of consumption is no longer just the spectacle of the game on a screen
but rather players corporeal engagement and kinaesthetic involvement in that spectacle (Simon
2009, 1). However, this new spectacular body was also vulnerable to new forms of surveillance
(Apperley 2013; Millington 2009), both from the technology in terms of gathering and tracking data,
and from spectators.
This article proceeds from the position that both pornography and digital gaming elicit bodily affect
in their audience. While there are obvious differencespornography is generally focusing on more
erotic pleasures, both invoke a pleasure of the body (Frow 2012, 369). In her ethnographic work
on World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004) Jenny Sundn (2012, 145) also marks this parallel by
positioning both pornography and digital gaming as experiences that set bodies in motion. John
Frow (2012, 361), with a more literary concern, indicates the correspondence between pornography
and digital games rests on how characters (avatars, performers) are connected to users in both
representational and emotional ways. Frow, argues that in pornography and digital games, sense is
not made through the recognition of fictional characters, but rather through affective investment
(2012, 361). Tanya Kryzwinska (2015, 107) similarly argues that digital games are a site of libidinal
investment. Frow suggests affective investment as it avoids using the notion of identification which
presumes a particular structuring of the relationship between reader and text (2012, 361). While
identification is suitable for the analysis of the novel or cinema, it doesnt account for the affect that
flows between the player-viewer and the onscreen bodies of pornography and digital games (2012,
366). Kryzwinska uses the concept of libidinal investment in a similar manner, to shift the discussion
of the erotic in digital games from the visual imagery used, to approaching the erotics of the
experience of play, which is complex, embodied and tactile (2015, 114)
Core to the theorization of this nexus of digital games and pornography is the notion of investment.
In this article Kryzwinskas notion of libidinal investment will be used as a starting point for
understanding the role of pornography in toxic masculine gaming cultures. She points out that the
libidinal charge of digital gaming comes through the connection between the digital body and the
body of the person playing: Prompted by physical actions and the events on screen, the player
conjures from memory and imagination what it feels like to be doing that action (2015, 113). By
drawing on memory and imagination to connect the viewers bodily experience to that depicted the
libidinal investment of the player is very similar to that of the porn user. This process of insinuating
arousal through reference to past experience and the mapping of the body of another onto ones
own has strong parallels with Sussanna Paasonens notion of carnal resonance. This is the
experience of being moved, touched and affected by pornography (Paasonen 2011, 16), is
established by the viewers ability to recognize and experience the sensations, movements, and
positions depicted on the screen in their own bodies (Paasonen 2011, 201). Although Paasonens
interest is in affect, which she conceptualizes more broadly than simply the libidinal, both
Kryzwinska and Paasonen perceive the way that the operator relates their body to the images
viewed is crucial in organizing their experience of arousal. Paasonen also conceptualizes the affect of
porn as being intertwined with the experience of technology. Just much as in digital games, with
online pornographysexual desires are being mediated through the pleasures of the technology
itself (Patterson 2004, 119). The experience of viewing online porn involves the integration of a
number of online activities: search, browse (through sites, listings, and directories), bookmark, click,
download, upload, leave comments, rate, log in, and compare (Paasonen 2011, 259). So viewing
porn may be less interactive that playing digital games, the users still engage in interactive activities

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during the process of configuring a resonance between their body and pornographic bodies (see
also: Apperley 2010).
The Destructiod Community
Destructoid or D-toid is an independent digital game-focused online community that was launched
in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, who posts to the site as Papa Neiro. It has developed
considerably since its launch, shifting from multi-author blog to a fully-fledged online community
which hosts the blogs of community members and also has a microblogging feature, Q-toid. In a
2016 interview, Gonzalzez states one of his reasons for starting Destructoid was gaming news
outlets at the time still buried their community content and refused to accept that they needed
comments sections. (CJ Andriessen March 15, 2016). From the start Destructoid was envisioned as
a community, where members played an active role in producing the sites content. In terms of the
content, Desctructoid is illustrative of the new games journalism movement, in the sense that it
covered the subculture of gamers as well as games themselves, and allowed a more personal,
subjective style in reviews that approached digital games as experiences (see: Stuart 2005). They
positioned themselves as providing an alternative to what was perceived as colorless and
impersonal games writing of the time (CJ Andriessen March 15, 2016), by creating a space for
highly opinionated, very personal games criticism (Destructoid Media Kit 2016, 1). Destructoid still
presents itself as genuinely community-based, and still has only as small staff of professionals, while
a substantial amount of the sites content is generated from moderated community posts.
It is not a stretch to say that the Destructoid community is overwhelmingly male, and also
predominantly white, self-declared geeks. In Destructoids Media Kit the community is described as:
Awesome, interesting, geeky people. Our readers are college-educated, 18-27, technology experts,
and very outspoken. Destructoids readers keep tabs on multiple news sources and are active on
social media (Destructoid Media Kit 2016, 4). A more detailed breakdown is also supplied, which
includes that 75% of the community are based in the USA, 73% are Caucasian, and 95% are male
(Destructoid Media Kit 2016, 7). The site is also notable for its stand in relation to #gamergate. In
general, the community and Gonzalez himself are considered by the Alt-Right press as being AntiGamergate (Nash 2016). Although, Destructoid journalist did use the initial standards in games
journalism claim by #gamergate to professionalize their own practices about the declaration of
conflicts of interest (Pena 2016). But #Gamergates misogyny and harassment were thoroughly
condemned. In a recent radio interview Gonzalez criticized them for their use of harassment tactics
on social media, and that he was particularly saddened by the targeting of women for harassment
(Pena 2016). While male dominated the community does not encourage or support the behaviours
that are associated with toxic masculinity, but even so Destructoid has permitted practices which are
less direct and overtly against particular women, while allowing forms of bonding and social
affirmation which encourage the notion that woman have a defined place within the cultures of
gaming.
Unsurprisingly, the community has changed over the ten years it has been operative. The aesthetic
has become more professional, the scope of community services has expanded considerably, and
the quality of the writing and editing has also increased. But, most recognizably, the approach of the
community has changed to embrace a progressive post-gamergate understanding of the gaming
audience, despite its overwhelmingly male readership. In the community posts, it is still possible to
voice a divergent opinion, but the community content that is shared through the main Destructiod
community portal has been carefully curated. To illustrate this realignment of community priorities
the two most recent Destructoid stories published with the #Girls of Gaming hashtag are CJ
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Andriessens Game Developer Barbie is real and coming to a daughter near you and Jed Whitakers
How many original black playable women have there been in the history of gaming?, both of which
give positive treatment to feminists and intersectional issues in digital gaming and game cultures.
While back in 2006 post titles on the same hashtag included:

The history of video game breasts (Papa Neiro 11 December, 2006)

8-bit hotties poked, prodded, categorized (Earnest Cavalli 2 December, 2006)
Are you the next Miss Video Game 2007? (Faith 29 October, 2006)
Tekken girls pose for Maxim NSFW (Faith 7 October, 2006)

In the first year or so that Destructiod ran, Gonzalez admits that he relied heavily on others for
additional content, as he was making four post a day and working fulltime (CJ Andriessen March 15,
2016). In particular he relied on two community posters Faith or Faith Naked and Hamza CTZ
Aziz. These writers, while alleviating Gonzalezs workload, also brought additional attention and
notoriety to the site due to the salacious and controversial content that they posted. Faith was
Destructoids first female contributor, and was also allegedly a stripper, while Aziz crafted content
that was based on the weirdest stuff he could unearth from 4chan and YTMND (CJ Andriessen
March 15, 2016).
During 2006 and 2007 Aziz, along with Faith and Gonzalez created a series of popular posts on
Destructoid which examined various aspects of what was dubbed as nerdcore: naked gamer girls
covered in videogames (Hamza CTZ Aziz 21 July 2006). The series consisted of seven main posts,
starting from July 2006, and continuing through to April 2007, began with Nerdcore: Naked gamer
girls covered in videogames, which featured 74 images (although 16 of the images were included
twice). This initial post had a massive impact on the fledging community. Aziz later edited the
written content of the original post to reflect on the topics popularity and how Destructoid had
changed:
Boobs. Big tits. Titties.
Instead of gaming keywords, these are the top three Google searches that brought new
readers to Destructoid back in our wild west days. Before you curse the ground I walk on
know that nearly every blog across every country linked to this story back in the day when it
was less taboo. Thus, this is still the #1 most trafficked story on our site. (Hamza CTZ Aziz 21
July 2006).
Gonzalez has also reflected on the impact that the nerdcore posts had on the first year of
Destructoid: instead of something more constructive like creating a true unfiltered dialogue
between publishers and gamers ... we're just attributed to the mass peddling of naked women with
video game consoles (Pape Neiro 6 October 2006). The posts were incredibly popular, and
resonated with many cultivated elements of the site, the collected images were amateur and edgy,
as well as reflecting the primarily heterosexual and masculine libidinal interests of the community.
Affective investment in the images became a part of how the community defined itself. This is
illustrated in the original official crowd-sourced Destructiod community theme song, by Jonathan
Mann:
Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey
Mr. Destructoid
Get your claws offa my lady, now
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She's got video games all around her tits

But she's mine, she's mine
I posted her pictures
And you whipped out your robot cock
And I wonder if you're shootin' all your nuts and bolts tonight
But she's mine, yeah she's mine (Mann, 2007)
Mr Destructoid was the communitys robot mascot, which was prominent in the design aesthetic of
the community, and was occasionally personified by Gonzalez himself, who achieved notoriety for
attending events wearing a helmet model on the mascot.
Reflection
This article approaches the Destructoid nerdcore images as a curated set of images. While individual
images are referenced below, they are selected as representative of the collection as a whole. Not
that the collection is without internal contradictions or ambiguities, rather that these collective
images are able to articulate a resonance that was felt among members of the community, and
indeed, more widely, as Destructoid became associated with the phenomenon itself. In this
context, due to this articles focus on the collection the individual status and history of the images is
outside its scope. It is important to recognise that the individual images emerge from many distinct
contexts, particularly that they may not have been originally composed as hetero-porn. Rather, the
analysis of these images as hetero-porn stems from their manner of curation, and subsequently
distribution, on Destructoid. It is important to acknowledge that Nerdcore-style porn which also
explores the libidinal elements of digital play, exists from queer perspectives, but that it is also an
area I hope to develop further.
Through the process of curation, the images are unified through a masculine heterosexual
perspective. Thus, my approach to unpacking the content of these images is through focalization, a
tool from literary theory that has already been reinterpreted by Paasonen in the study of porn. In
Grard Genettes (1997) original formulation focalization referred to the perspective from which a
given narrative is depicted it refers to whose sensations, perceptions, and thoughts are brought
closest to the reader (Paasonen 2011, 157). With these photographs perception is the most reliable
point of focalization. Thus the starting point for this investigation is what is shown in the
composition of the images, which I develop through what Paasonen (2011) calls close looking to
draw out the emotions and sensations that connect these images.
Usually my status as a middle-aged white male heterosexual researcher is unremarkable, but in the
context of this project it is salient. Particularly as I am of the generation of men that are described by
Brown (2008, 16), as teenagers raised on Mario that now fit the profile of the average
pornography consumer, which are the core audience of the Destructoid nerdcore collection. It
would be nave for me to attempt to approach this topic neutrally, how exactly do I write about
masculinity without merely reinscribing the ways that gender has for thousands of years been a
basic abstraction managed by dominant forces much larger than the individual. I recognize that
these images are addressed to men like me, and I recognize the role such images play in masculine
rites of passage. Im using recognition quite deliberately here, as recognition is an important
element of carnal resonance. Which, involves the viewers ability to recognize and experience the
sensations, movements, and positions depicted on the screen in their own bodies (Paasonen 2011,
201). In this respect, my masculine heterosexual identity intersects offers me a useful perspective on
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the nerdcore collection. But not the only perspective, understanding how our bodies are moved by
pornography, whether it is arousal, delight, disgust or bemusement is equally important, and this is a
challenge that faces much pornography research, and many researchers. Previously, in my work on
gaming in cybercafs in Caracas and Melbourne, I used Henri Lefebvres (2004) concept of
rhythmanalysis to develop an understanding of the body of the game player (Apperley 2010; see
also Apperley 2013). The rhythmanalysist positions their body centrally in the research process: He
listens and first to his body, he learns rhythm from it, in order consequently to appreciate external
rhythms. His body serves him as a metronome (Lefebvre 2004, 19). For porn research, the role of
the researchers gendered, sexualized, racialized body is equally important, especially in a project
like this where the goal is to understand how porn structures desire and toxicity.

Discussion
A great deal of the shots featured digital gaming equipment, including hardware such as consoles,
game controllers, keyboards, and both packaged and unpackaged software. Of the 58 images, 47
feature gaming hardware and/or software, of the other eleven images nine show women wearing
clothes that reference gaming, like a Capcom t-shirt, or a Nintendo branded belt, or underwear (see
table one). Only two images stand out as markedly different from the rest: a close up of a breast
with the nipple covered with a UMD sticker (UMD is a data storage format used by the Sony
PlayStation Portable); and an image of woman disrobing on a couch.
Total images
Images featuring only hardware
Images featuring only software
Images featuring hardware and software
Images featuring other gaming peripherals (clothes, toys
etc.)
Other

58
36
1
10
9
2

Table One: Gaming content of nerdcore collection

Nerdcore porn demonstrates a peculiar ordinariness. As an everyday and habitual technology and
activity it seems unsurprising that digital games have become intertwined with social relations. But
the collection offers a synopsis of how these social relations are reworked into a masculine
heterosexual fantasy. Primarily the images were shot in domestic settings, giving access to the
intimate space of the apartment and house. This setting evokes an amateur aesthetic that is
common in porn, but even though the composition of many of the images is carefully constructed,
they also hint at the inhabitation of the space by conveying a lived-in-ness and casual intimacy,
rather than the sterile environment of the studio or set. Of the 58 images, 52 of them were shot in a
domestic environment. 23 were shot in bedrooms, and 29 in the other domestic spaces, including
rooms clearly for domestic recreation (living room, longue etc.) and home offices. The other six
images, were either close-ups that only showed the body and thus resisted classification according
to location, or were shot in a studio, recognized by the presence of a backdrop.
The common composition of the nerdcore fantasy scenario across the collection is a woman
alternately naked, partially naked, wearing only undergarments or fully clothed (see: table two)
with gaming technologies. Generally, the gaming technology is positioned in a peculiar way which
emphasizes that the inclusion of the woman in the image is for masculine visual pleasure, while also
removing the visual technological spectacle of digital gaming, which serves also to focus the
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attention of the gaze on the womans body: the spectacle of technology is replaced with one of the
flesh. Only seven of the photographs show women who are playing digital games. Even in these
cases the importance of this presence is minimal: in two cases the game is outside the frame of the
photograph; and another four images show women playing handheld devices, but do not show the
screen. Two exceptional shots do show the game screen, the composition of these photographs is
more candid, and both feature the same woman, playing Halo: Combat Evolved (Bungee 2001) in her
gamer-branded underwear (from 2old2play.com and gamerswife.com).
Clothing
Undergarments/Swimwear
Partially naked
Naked

15
12
3
28

Table two: Relative nakedness of women appearing in the nerdcore collection

Most often the composition involves the woman touching the device(s). Of the images, 44 involve
women touching digital gaming hardware or software (see: table three). The importance of this
physical and intimate connection between women and technology in these photographs indicates a
profound desire to affirm the association between digital gaming, masculinity and heterosexuality.
More often the woman poses with the technology, how this is portrayed falls into two recognisably
dominant and highly intersecting ways which are found in 22 of the 47 images showing women with
gamin technology. The most common of these, which is found in eleven images, is that the gaming
tech is used to strategically conceal their nakedness. This is illustrated in figure one, where the nude
subject lies on a bed on her left hand side, holding a SEGA Genesis to her chest, which combined
with bringing her right knee up conceals her breasts and vulva. Almost as common, found in ten
images is the strategic concealment of nudity using gaming equipment combined with the wrapping
of the cords of the equipment around the subjects body. For example, figure two shows a naked
woman sitting on the floor, arms raised above her head and legs akimbo, with a SEGA Gensis
positioned on the floor between them. Two SEGA Genesis controllers are positioned over her
breasts hiding her nipples, they hang by their cords from her neck, one is coiled twice around her
neck with the rest of the cord hanging just to the right of her navel, the other goes around the back
of her neck with the rest of the cord hanging down, curving into the inside of her thigh and across
the mottled orange bedspread. Figure three, shows this encircling of the body in this manner
without also using gaming tech to conceal parts of the body. In this picture a bikini-clad woman
holds an NES Zapper, a gun-like controller that was packaged with many NES consoles. She holds the
NES in her left hand and the cord winds around the back of her waist, around her stomach and
buttocks and then coils around her right leg two more times, ending just above the inside of her
right ankle.
Playing videogame
Using gaming technology to conceal nudity
Using gaming technology to conceal nudity and wrapping of
cords around body
Wrapping of cord around body
Touching/holding gaming technology in another manner
Immediately proximate to gaming technology

7
11
10
1
15
3

Table three: Positioning of women with gaming technology in nerdcore collection

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These images offer a conditional inclusion of women on the periphery of gaming. Their presence,
while establishing a resonance between bodies, also legitimizes digital gaming as a heterosexual and
masculine practice. As Sveningsson (2012, 81) notes, one way to assert heterosexual masculinity in
digital games is to express interest in women: the presence of gaming women leaves room for the
male players demonstrations of a heterosexual interest. Despite digital games often presenting
highly heteronormative assumptions and worldviews (Kobrova et al. 2015; Shaw 2009), it has been a
struggle for the gaming industry to present digital gaming as a traditionally masculine activity
(Kocurek 2015, 40-44), because it doesnt gel with normative assumptions that associate masculinity
with athleticism (Consalvo 2003; Taylor 2012). The connection made in these photos between digital
gaming and sexually available women serves a dual purpose. First, it masks the homosociality that
takes place, as making women ostensibly present legitimizes a close sociality between men. Second,
it resituates the spectacular imagery of gaming in everyday spaces, moving away from the
hypersexualized virtual bodies of gaming like Lara Croft or Cortana (see: Kennedy 2002), to depict
women as fleshy and accessible accessories to gaming.
This second point, the externalization of the libidinal and visual pleasures of gaming from the screen
to women again suggests the importance of domestic space in this configuration. Bernadette Flynn
(2003, 569) describes the videogame console as a rupture in the everydayness of domestic space, a
focal point of excitement and risk that brings masculine activities into an otherwise safe and
feminine environment. If the domestic is associated with femininity, then the intimacy between
women and technology shown in this curated group of images also expresses a desire not to escape
domesticity but to reconnect with it on particular terms. The predominance of images where the
intimate connection between gaming and womens bodies that are located in domestic spaces,
whether it is the bedroom (or boudoir), or common living space, suggests a carnal resonance with
the habitual. Habitual in the sense that it is not just established through an association with the
recurrent and rhythmic activity of digital gaming, but that this resonance is also embedded in the
place, or habitat, in which it occurs. The resonance between the body of the viewer and the body in
the photograph is achieved not only through the positioning of the womans body vis--vis digital
gaming technologies for heteronormative masculine visual pleasure, but through the way that body
intersects with the everyday activity and intimate space of gaming.
The nerdcore collection strongly references gamings past. This indicates that the resonance felt
between the viewer and the photographs is also structured by the viewers memories of gaming
practices and technologies. Memory is a crucial element of carnal resonance, as it bridges the gap
between how things feel, how they look, and how they are being depicted (Paasonen 2011, 205).
However, these images rely not just on the carnal memories evoked by the fleshy presence of
women, for some heterosexual male gamers the technologies and spaces of gaming also have a
crucial role in establishing and embodied and affective connection with the image.
Forty-seven of the images contain digital gaming hardware and/or software (see: table four). With a
particular predominance towards classic consoles, as 23 of the images reference retro-gaming, 21
of these images contain consoles which were more than ten years old at the time, and 2 images
have keyboards from that era in the composition. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) first
released in 1983 was the most common, and featured in 12 images, followed by the Atari 2600
released in 1977, which featured in eight images, and the SEGA Genesis released in 1988, which
features in five images. Other consoles that were released before 1996, which appear in the images
are the Nintendo 64 (1994) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment system (1990). Three images
contain collections of consoles, software and digital gaming paraphilia, that contain multiple classic
consoles (see figure four). These three pictures resonated strongly with the Destructiod community
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at the time, and are referenced in the community-sourced theme song Hey, hey, Mr. destructiod by
Jonathan Mann: she's got video games all around her tits. These pictures are also referenced in
popular culture, most prominently in Playboy (figure 5.) to promote the launch of their The Gamer
Next Door blog in 2008, in a widely circulated picture featuring Jo Garcia, 2008 Cybergirl of the Year
and the original presenter of The Gamer Next Door.
Console
Atari 2600
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
SEGA Genesis
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo 64 (N64)
Sony PlayStation One
SEGA Dreamcast
Microsoft Xbox
Nintendo Game Cube
Nintendo DS
Microsoft Xbox360
Sony PlayStation Portable
Sony PlayStation 2

Year of US release
1977
1983
1988
1990
1994
1996
1998
2001
2001
2004
2005
2005
2000

Number of photos it appears in

8
12
5
3
3
1
3
6
5
4
3
1
4

Table four: Release dates of consoles appearing in nerdcore collection

In total ten images feature collections of gaming software and hardware. This suggests that the
nerdcore collection doesnt only appreciate classic consoles, but also resonates with the collecting or
completionist elements of gaming culture. Certainly, the relative frequency of images containing
retro-consoles indicates that the thrill of the new is not essential to carnal resonance in these cases.
But while also rejecting a fetishization of the new that is often associated with gaming cultures, the
images do not especially often dwell on rare or unusual platforms or software (only one platform
remains unidentified by this researcher). The platforms are almost without exception made by major
companies (Atari, Microsoft, Nintendo, SEGA and Sony), distributed in a US market, and were mass
produced for receptive markets the Nintendo Entertainment System, for example, sold just under
62 million units. The software referenced in the pictures includes: Call of Duty 2 (Infinity Ward,
2005), Halo: Combat Evolved (Bungie, 2001), Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Nintendo, 1991),
and Pacman (Atari, 1982). Are titles that are (or were) popular, potentially with a cult following, but
by no means obscure.
Memory is particularly important for how these images resonate, they establish a connection
between heterosexual males of a pre-internet and individualized highly intensity experience. In this
sense through claiming digital gaming as a heterosexual masculine domain by materially connecting
in to sexually available women, this connection also legitimizes a homosocial affiliation of men who
share this predilection. The emergence of nerdcore porn as a thing, creates the potential for it to
be used to establish ambient affiliations a shared sense of co-presence (Zappavigna 2011) by
curating, sharing, tagging, commenting on, even creating nerdcore images. Thus to collect evokes a
shared affect that indicates a resonance not only between the affective fantasies, memories and
experiences of the heterosexual male viewer and the nerdcore image, but also between male
bodies. Digital gaming is sexualized in this manner to legitimize the heterosexuality of the collective
bond which has been produced by shared intensities.

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The intermingling of the bodily experiences of the intensities of digital game play with more libidinal
intensities also suggests a rewiring of digital gaming into more libidinal circuitries. Paasonen (2011,
256), in her recounting of her early memories of porn, recalls the materiality of the memory, arguing
that carnal resonance is not simply a question of content, but also of haptics and tactility. The
nerdcore images suggest that the tactility of the experience of play is an important focalization point
for resonance through the common depiction of the female touch. But this touch is located in a
shared past, characterized by the domestic, everyday and material, just as much as it is in the
present. Through the collection, the presence of the sexually available women is a conduit that
connects the past and presence, and recalibrates the experience of digital play from childish to
adult while keeping key elements that structure of affect intact. In particular, the security
experienced as a child absorbed in virtual play in the cocooning domestic space is assured by the
continuing presence of the materials and environment of gaming. Furthermore, it is effectively made
manly by the presence of sexually available women, rather than suggesting an inordinate motherbond, that can be associated with weakness and femininity.
The significance of the touch between the female subject and the digital gaming technology is not
reduced to the moment captured in the photograph. For the image to move the body of the
heterosexual male gamer, it is also important that the women in the pictures have also shared the
haptic and affective experience of digital game play. On the Destructoid website, there was a
concern that one of these images (figure six) did not represent the subjects own practices of gaming
and that rather than showing a real gamer nude, they are merely stylish compositions using
models that are designed to appeal to a particular demographic. The reviews of the professional
This is Nerdcore calendar, for which figure six is the promotional picture, on the Destructoid
websites voice this concern. In light of the Destructoids ambivalence about the Nerdcore calendar
projectwhich while supported was seen as tapping into an interest that Destructoid had initially
sparkedYanier Gonzalez, speaking of the quality of the pictures, claimed that the boredom on
their faces is palpable, and the the calendar lacked the genuine geek factor (Papa Neiro, October
6, 2006). A Kotaku review was even more critical
I'll pretty much masturbate to anything. Yet I still may have too much pride to masturbate to
the Nerdcore wall calendar of bored looking, naked women pretending to like video games
(quoted in Destructiod, 2006).
This indicates a strong boundary policing from Destructoid about how the collection was curated,
and how it understood the affective resonance of the pictures. For Destructoid the pictures are not a
case of desiring naked woman and videogames, but of a desire for a woman that plays videogames.
They are moved by a body that has a shared experience of being moved by technology. But this
desire for the female subject of pornography to also be a gamer creates a complex inter-relationship
between the audience and culture of gaming and pornography. The subject of nerdcore
pornography is not simply an other demarcated by heterosexual masculine visual pleasure, as the
framing of the nude also seeks to include the object of the gaze within the culture of gaming. Yet
women do not inhabit this space on their own terms, they enter it as accessories for
heteronormative libidinal play.

Conclusion
The nerdcore images present a desire to control how women are included in gaming spaces and
gaming cultures. The terms seem clear, gaming is understood as a heterosexual masculine space,
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and women who want to be a part of it should enhance its heterosexuality and masculinity through
a performance of a particular version of womanhood. But the way that the female gamer is
appreciated is not solely based on her gender and sexuality, it is also on her ability to play games in
a way that externalizes particular intensities of affect. She should enjoy games, or look like she is
enjoying them. The nerdcore images also infer the reason why the desire to control access to digital
games has emerged. Carly A. Kocurek describes how American boyhood was shaped by the
videogame arcade, but I suggest that the libidinal dimensions of this reshaping of masculinity took
form in private, embedded in the routines and rhythms of the domestic sphere. As gaming became
habitual in the living room, bedroom and basement an unsupervised territory was opened where,
for some gamers toxic forms masculinity were explored and cultivated. This territory was
understood as an intensely personal and private, and one that should be asserted and defended.

Acknowledgements
Versions of this paper have been presented at Adult Play (Tampere, May 2015), DiGRA2015
(Luneberg, May 2015), and Reason + Enjoyment (Sydney, July 2015), the Cultural Studies Association
of Australasia (Melbourne, December 2015), DiGRA + FDG 2016 (Dundee, August 2016), and at
Ethnoforum, a seminar series run by the School of Political and Social Sciences at the University of
Melbourne (October 2016). Thank you to the following people for their useful comments on the
work as it developed: Ashley Brown, Danny Butt, Mahli-Ann Rakkomkoew Butt, Justin Clemens, Kitty
Hawkins, Mark Johnson, Veli-Matti Karhulahti, Remy Low, Frans Myr, Souvik Muhkerjee, Edwin
Ng, Janne Paavilainen, Jussi Parikka, Markus Rautzenburg, Jaakko Stenros and Lars de Wildt.

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Figure One: Laying nude with SEGA Genesis console

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Figure two: Sitting nude with SEGA Genesis console

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Figure three: Woman in bikini holding Nintendo Zapper

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Figure 4: Nude with classic console collection

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Figure five: Playboy promotional shot for The Gamer Next Door.

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Figure 6: This is Nerdcore calendar promotional image

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