TY - JOUR TI - Proving Grounds: Performing Masculine Identities in Call of Duty: Black Ops AU - Healey, Gareth T2 - Game Studies AB - This article reports on a piece of participant observation research into the gaming cultures of boys when they play Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops (Treyarch, 2010; henceforth CoD). Specifically, it focuses on the notion of the “digital imaginary”, proposed by Derek A. Burrell (2008), and how the speech and actions performed by 11 boys when they played both with and against each other help to construct the boys' individual masculine identities, constitute the identity of their gaming group as well as police its composition. The research finds that boys construct ever-shifting performances of masculinity, sometimes drawing upon the same hegemonizing signifiers from which they later (in post-game interviews) try to distance themselves. Drawing upon the notions of “performativity” (Butler, 2008), “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell, 1995) and “working consensuses” (Goffman, 1990), it proposes that these average-attaining boys choose the proving grounds of CoD in which to enact their masculine identities largely because such digital arenas do not rely on traditional signifiers of masculinity (like size, strength, sexual prowess). In their symbolic destruction of these signifiers they also re-enact many of the hegemonizing relationships found in these self-same discourses. The article suggests a link between the sorts of policing of identity found in masculinities and the kill-or-be-killed nature of the war game. DA - 2016/// PY - 2016 VL - 16 IS - 2 UR - http://gamestudies.org/1602/articles/healey ER -