Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games

The subject matter of this article emerged in part out of research for the author's thesis project and first game patch, Madame Polly, a “first-person shooter gender hack.” Since the time it was written, there has been an upsurge of interest and research in computer games among artists and media theoreticians. Considerable shifts in gaming culture at large have taken place, most notably a shift toward on-line games, as well as an increase in the number of female players. The multidirectional information space of the network offers increasing possibilities for interventions and gender reconfigurations such as those discussed at the end of the article.