Home History Hot Tubs and Pac-Man
book: Hot Tubs and Pac-Man
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Hot Tubs and Pac-Man

Gender and the Early Video Game Industry in the United States (1950s–1980s)
  • Anne Ladyem McDivitt
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2020
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

About this book

Now In Paperback

This work looks at the gendered nature of the US video gaming industry. Although there were attempts to incorporate women into development roles and market towards them as players, the creation of video games and the industry began in a world strongly gendered male. The early 1980s saw a blip of hope that the counter-cultural industry focused on fun would begin to include women, but after the video game industry crash, this free-wheeling freedom of the industry ended along with the beginnings of the inclusion of women. Many of the threads that began in the early years continued or have parallels with the modern video game industry. The industry continues to struggle with gender relations in the workplace and with the strongly gendered male demographic that the industry perceives as its main market.

Author / Editor information

Anne Ladyem McDivitt, University of Alabama, USA.

Reviews

Anne Ladyem McDivitt has succeeded in writing an exceptionally thoroughly researched and extremely readable book that will be an important foundation for the field of the history of digital games, for it deconstructs the founding myths of the US games industry around Nolan Bushnell and Atari. McDivitt has found and thoroughly prepared exciting new sources for her readers. It can be assumed that many subsequent researchers will gratefully draw on these research results. (translated from German)

Eugen Pfister: Rezension zu: McDivitt, Anne Ladyem: Hot Tubs and Pac-Man. Gender and the Early Video Game Industry in the United States (1950s–1980s). Berlin 2021. ISBN 978-3-11-066446-1, In: H-Soz-Kult, 26.04.2021, <www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-95835>.


Publicly Available Download PDF
i

Publicly Available Download PDF
vii

Publicly Available Download PDF
ix

Publicly Available Download PDF
xi

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
1

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
20

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
35

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
58

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
80

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
102

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
122

Requires Authentication Unlicensed

Licensed
134

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 12, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9783110668575
Hardcover published on:
October 12, 2020
Hardcover ISBN:
9783110664461
Paperback published on:
June 30, 2025
Paperback ISBN:
9783112216125
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
12
Main content:
136
Illustrations:
3
Coloured Illustrations:
2
Tables:
2
Downloaded on 29.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110668575/html
Scroll to top button