Video games have continued to increase in popularity. While the growth has been substantial, representation and acceptance of women throughout gaming environments, including those with traditional sport influences such as NBA2K, a basketball simulation game, have been lacking. Recently however, the NBA2K franchise added Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) player avatars to the NBA2K20 game. While this recent inclusion of WNBA avatars may be a great step in improving upon the concerning state of inclusion and representation of women throughout gaming, the reactions to and receptions of this change have not been fully explored. As a result, the current investigation, led by the tenets of hegemonic masculinity and bottom-up framing, sought to examine the perceptions of NBA2K fans, enthusiasts, and participants in regards to this change made by the NBA2K franchise in an effort to more fully understand the culture of gaming in relation to the treatment of women/girls. This objective was accomplished via an analysis of comments made through the social media application Instagram on the NBA2K20 WNBA inclusion announcement post. The Instagram comments were coded and analyzed through the use of the qualitative software Leximancer, which conducts thematic and semantic analysis on written words as well as visual text. Results revealed perceptions of the WNBA avatars embroiled with displays of hegemonic masculinity, demonstrating that the negative sentiments and framing women face within traditional sport settings are weaved within the virtual sport game simulations as well.

电子游戏的持续流行。尽管增长迅速，但在整个游戏环境中，包括在具有传统体育影响力的游戏中，例如篮球模拟游戏NBA2K中，女性的代表性和接受度一直缺乏。但是，最近，NBA2K系列又将女子国家篮球协会（WNBA）的球员头像添加到了NBA2K20游戏中。尽管最近加入WNBA头像可能是在整个游戏过程中改善女性的包容性和代表性的重要一步，但尚未充分探讨对此变化的反应和接受。结果，以霸权男性气质和自下而上的框架为指导的本次调查试图研究NBA2K粉丝，发烧友，以及参与者对NBA2K专营权所做的更改，以更全面地了解与女性/女性待遇相关的游戏文化。通过分析社交媒体应用程序Instagram在NBA2K20 WNBA收录公告中的评论，实现了此目标。通过使用定性软件Leximancer对Instagram的注释进行编码和分析，该软件对书面文字以及视觉文字进行主题和语义分析。结果显示，人们对WNBA头像充满了霸权男性气质的印象，这表明在虚拟体育游戏模拟中也编织了传统体育环境中的负面情绪和成帧女性。