Women in eSports

 

As we see eSports (electronic sports) grow, there’s one factor that stays consistent and it’s the lack of women in professional eSports. There aren’t many mainstream eSports leagues that have female players and as noted by Jake Seiner, “LoL’s Championship Series hasn’t had a female gamer since 2016, and the Overwatch League’s inaugural season featured just one.” (Seiner). To be clear, there are some female players but the longevity of these players in these leagues are questionable. With the staggering lack of introduction of female players to the professional scene, why is there a lack of women in professional eSports? What is being done right now to increase the number?

 

Why is There a Lack of Women in Professional eSports?

Stereotypically, men are seen to be the majority of the players in eSports, but in fact, “45 percent of U.S. gamers are female” (Seiner). There isn’t a gender gap in gaming but yet, there is a huge gap on the professional level. There’s no reason for women to not be in the professional eSports scene as there is no biological advantage in eSports; the advantages comes from a person’s ability to strategize, be situationally aware, and have good reactions. To find out why there’s a lack of women in professional eSports, we need to go to the root of the problem and it’s the community’s actions and reaction to women in eSports. 

 

Community

The community consists of people from many backgrounds and is seen as primarily male, but as mentioned earlier, there is almost an even split of gender in gaming. However, the most vocal of the community are males and are the main offenders of verbal abuse. These members of the community are the ones against having more women in professional eSports and are hypercritical of them. One instant of the community being hypercritical is through the accusation of Kim “Geguri” Se-Yeon—the first woman in the Overwatch League, the professional eSports league for Overwatch for cheating due to her team beating the favorites of the tournament. She had to prove to everyone that she was not cheating even though she was cleared by the game developers by doing an hour livestream proving her innocence and by the end of it, “the stress of the accusations over the past few days had finally gotten to her” (Alexander). Although Geguri was able to prove the community’s accusations wrong, it’s instances like these that causes an internal conflict in the women. The unnecessary hypercriticism that the community is using to specifically target women in the professional scene causes them to reconsider their choice: to continue being a professional player and face the community’s hate or leave and have the hate stop. The male community is trying to preserve what they believe professional eSports should be— a male exclusive field where women shouldn’t be allowed to compete. 

Sexism is also another problem which arises from the discovery that you’re a woman playing the game instead of a man. The moral of multiplayer games is to promote collaboration and there will be those who play with a mindset that women are inferior players and their treatment will reflect that. An everyday example of sexism to the casual player is experienced by Briah Luther. When she tells her teammates crucial information, they ignore her. Briah recalls that, “The second they realize I’m a woman, I no longer have power” (Seiner). Women become powerless once they speak to their teammates because they see her as lacking knowledge towards the game and feel that she is the weakest link to the team. They’ll just ignore her and from doing that, have a higher likelihood of losing the game which explains why women would use voice disguisers when talking to other players just to avoid this outcome. In the 2015 season of the NA LCS (North America League of Legends Championship Series), Remilia, a transgender woman left her team, Renegades’ roster citing anxiety & self-estem issues. Although there were many who praised her for playing in the league, “the comment sections accompanying live streams of Renegades matches were flooded with sexist and transphobic harassment. Fans disputed her gender identity, wrote critically about her appearance and bashed her abilities” (Seiner). When you see tens of thousands of people hating on you live and it’s happening 2 times a week, it’s a mood wrecker to anyone and not just to women. Once again, all the sexist comments are coming from the male community, enforcing the idea that males are trying to hold on to the culture of women doing feminist things and not intruding on what males would call theirs.

 

Teams

One of the other main factors in the equation are the teams since they are the ones who displays the inequalities in the first place. They are the ones who decide who they want on their teams and are the deciding factor in if they want women on their team. When Geguri joined the Shanghai Dragons, the media went and asked Overwatch teams regarding incorporating women into their teams. Many teams had different answers but the overall message were the same and clear; ‘we want women on our teams, but they don’t fit our current goals’. It’s all excuses and no action. The way some teams responded to the media has a tone where it implies a saying where ‘do what I say, not what I do’. Scott Tester was part of the assembly of the New York Excelsior team stated that, “Geguri is a talented player. She plays off-tank, which I think is a really important role to have chemistry with the rest of your team. We were trying to find someone who already meshed well with their team.” (Grayson). Blaming chemistry on something that can be developed overtime is a lame excuse to a problem bigger than that. It’s a value teams don’t prioritize; they’ll rather prioritize victory over gender neutralization. Another instance is with the London Spitfire team where Coach Beom-joon stated that,“he only wanted free agents for the team and was “not sure” if Geguri qualified. However, Spitfire ultimately ended up mashing multiple formerly successful Korean teams together” (Grayson). Again, another instance of ‘do what I say, not as I do’. He wanted free agents but yet he took players from Korean teams. The ideology of what teams should be needs to be changed and the league needs to be more easily accessible to more women players can be drafted to these teams.  

 

Women Themselves

Not only are these other factors causes for the lack of women in professional eSports but also the women themselves are at fault. There aren’t many women in professional eSports and when you join the field and being the minority group, there are high expectations of you to do well and the pressure then becomes a burden for you as you have to meet these expectations every time you hit the stage. When asked whether Geguri wanted to be female role model; Geguri responded with a translator by stating, “Being the icon or being looked up to because I’m female — I’m grateful, but I don’t really have any thoughts about it. That’s not how I want to be known” (Seiner). Women don’t want to be in the spotlight as being in the spotlight will cause more eyes to gaze upon your every move. Women just want to be treated like any other player and don’t want to be representatives of a movement that will only draw more attention to them which they don’t desire.

If a woman was to become a professional player, they are expected to be very skilled at the game. However, there aren’t many skilled women out there that are ready to become professional players. In a study researching the similarities and differences between genders in gaming, In a study conducted by Melissa Terlecki, she discovered that, “Twenty-eight percent of men and only 4% of women felt very skilled at playing video games, with 43% of men and 19% of women feeling they are of moderate skill. Less than 10% of men felt they had very little to no skill at video games while 26% of women felt the same” (Terlecki). If women lack confidence in their skills, they’ll won’t be joining professional eSports anytime soon and somewhat explains the shortage of women in the professional scene. Not all of the women in the 4% will want to become professional players and can be seen through the lack of women in the professional scene.

 

Gender Roles

The overall belief behind the lack of women in professional eSports is due to gender roles. In the past, the gender role of women were being part of the household and is one reason why we see women get verbally abused. In an interview with my friend who wishes to remain anonymous and plays eSports related games regularly, he said that, “we have centuries of gender roles that we have only recently begun to break down. Many are down because they’re females others are just flat out terrible, which in either gender role is bad” (Anonymous). This problem is bigger than eSports, it’s a problem that affects the workspace, social interactions, and behavior. We learn gender roles as we grow up and we keep those thoughts with us unless we reeducate ourselves to promote neutrality. Most of the viewers and playerbase are teens and they’re naive and incentivized to criticize due to the notion that girls shouldn’t be playing video games and instead should be worrying about their looks. This factor is one that will be difficult to revert as it’s within generations of people who pass down their views to their offspring.  

The male playerbase of these games often see women as pretty bad at the game, but there is always research displaying the reason why women are bad and in fact, could be as good as male players. In Jay Ingram’s report, he discovered that, “males typically play more genres of games, play for longer periods, more often, and will be more likely to identify with the subculture of gaming compared to females” (Ingram). Women are seen to play for shorter periods of time and if they were to play as often as men, they would “tend to reach similar levels of success within the game, discouraging the belief that women are less skillful at gaming. However, they also noted that female players tend to play less or stop earlier than their male counterparts, which they argued was due to gender expectations and peer community, e.g., game play was viewed as male dominated” (Lopez-Fernandez). Women can be as good as men, but yet they still have difficulties achieving that level of skill due to all of the factors mentioned throughout this paper. However, there are ways to mitigate these factors preventing more women from becoming professional eSports players. 

 

What is Being Done Right Now to Increase the Number?

In the current state of the world, there is only so much we can do to increase the number of women in professional eSports. Some teams have taken some steps to make sure that harassment and negativity towards women are nonexistent in the team houses. Gen.G and Immortals are teams doing just that. Stefanie Fogel reported that, “Gen. G recently brought in former NBA star Chris Bosh as a player management advisor, while Immortals regularly invites organizations like You Can Play and GLAAD to come speak with its teams and teach them how to deal with different social issues” (Fogel). Both teams found success with these educational moments as seen by their players’ change in how they interact, talk, and present. Although these teams had taught their players how they should act, these are only the teams and the fans have to change how they act and will take a lot of time for the fans to be accepting of women in eSports.

Another way we can introduce women to the eSport scene is to by hosting women tournaments. By hosting women tournaments, it prepares women if they were to join a major eSports league as they adapt to the scene. Although the hosting of women tournaments will seem beneficial, there are some who take it a little too far and promotes a women only tournament where gay and transgender people aren’t able to join. This happened with Garena eSports League of Legends tournament where they ruled that their women only tournament would only allow teams 1 gay/transgender woman for each day of the tournament citing those who were concerned that they had an unfair advantage. As we noted earlier, being a man or woman has no impact on how they play the game. You’re only good in eSports if you’re strategic and have good teamwork skills. These people who host these tournaments have a good goal in their mind but their execution needs to be less controversial.

This leads to our next solution to the problem and it’s getting the developers involved with these issues. In response to the Garena eSports tournament, “League of Legends developer Riot Games provided a short response to the escalating controversy via Twitter, stating, “LGBT players are welcome at official LoL tourneys. We’re working with partners to ensure consistency with our values across all regions.” (Stuart). Only if the developers of these games notice these issues is when change will happen. The developers of League of Legends also are, “supporting university and school leagues, hoping to bring in a more diverse user-base at an earlier stage, while the Electronic Sports League has pointed toward the need for more women in leadership roles” (Stuart). With the introduction of eSports leagues in schools, the developers are opening the world of eSports to a bigger audience and hopes to bring in women interested in eSports into a space lacking their kind.

To ensure a future of professional women in eSports, we need to find those who are talented in the game and train them so by the time they’re old enough, they’re more experienced and ready for the scene where women are looked at being bad at the game. In order for women to be successful, they need to be ready and be able to match all the male players in these leagues and if they’re not, they end up pushing the movement back another year as they cause an image to be portrayed where women are bad at the game and shouldn’t be playing eSports.

 

Having women in professional eSports is a challenging thing to do as they face many barriers. They have to overcome the community’s harassment, sexism, and threats and teams need to change where they’re more open and willing to include women on their teams. Women also need to overcome themselves, as if they aren’t prepared for what’s to come and are expected to do, they’ll end up withdrawing from the scene like many others who join eSports. A barrier that requires the world to change is the idea of gender roles; where it’s necessary for everyone to be accepting of women being in areas previously dominated by men. To increase their number, we need to change how other people act, promote eSports as a sport open to everyone, and to grab talent and train them to be ready to the scene. Although having women in professional eSports is going to be an uphill battle, it can be done.

 

Work Cited:

Alexander, Julia. “Blizzard Clears High-Ranking Teenage Overwatch Player in Cheating Scandal.” Polygon, Polygon, 22 June 2016, Web. 21 October 2019. www.polygon.com/2016/6/21/11996752/blizzard-overwatch-zarya-cheating.

Anonymous. Personal Interview. 20 October 2019.

Fogel, Stefanie. “Esports Is Getting Bigger Every Year – So Where Are All The Women?” Variety, Variety, 1 Nov. 2018, Web. 21 October 2019. /2018/gaming/features/women-in-esports-1203016379/.

Grayson, Nathan. “No Overwatch League Team Signed The Game’s Most Notable Female Pro To Their Roster.” Kotaku, Kotaku, 10 Jan. 2018, Web. 21 October 2019. /no-overwatch-league-team-signed-the-games-most-notable-1821968992.

Ingram, Jay, and Joseph Cangemi. “VIDEO GAMES: MOTIVATION, EFFECTS, AND CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS ON SELF-ESTEEM.” College Student Journal, vol. 53, no. 1, 2019, p. 1+. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A584328131/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=2295b460. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019.

Lopez-Fernandez, Olatz, et al. “Female Gaming, Gaming Addiction, and the Role of Women Within Gaming Culture: A Narrative Literature Review.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2019. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A603465212/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=749d94f1. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

Seiner, Jake. “‘You’re a Girl, You’re Being Targeted’: Women in Esports Navigate Toxicity, Other Barriers.” The Denver Post, The Denver Post, 3 Jan. 2019, Web. 21 October 2019. www.denverpost.com/2019/01/03/esports-women-navigate-toxicity-barriers/.

Stuart, Keith. “Pro-gaming tournament attempts to limit gay and transgender players; Southeast Asian pro-gaming organiser Garena eSports ignites controversy by attempting to limit number of gay and transgender competitors in all-female tournaments.” Guardian [London, England], 4 Feb. 2015. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A400138167/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=7f771ff8. Accessed 20 Oct. 2019.

Terlecki, Melissa, et al. “Sex differences and similarities in video game experience, preferences, and self-efficacy: implications for the gaming industry.” Current Psychology, vol. 30, no. 1, 2011, p. 22+. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A360863649/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=cf879974. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.