Gender Disparity in eSports
Hi All,
Disclaimer
First of all, I would like to declare that the views in this post are my own, and no one else's. I would also like to say that this post is to spark a debate rather than a war. What I am going to say in this blog will (with no doubt) upset and offend some people. Please remember that this is not my intention, but rather to gain different insights into the world we live in. Debating topics such as these are healthy and I believe these type of conversations are the only way of getting things out there!
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Intro
I have actually been thinking about this topic for quite some time now. I live in South Africa and we have a thriving (albeit very small) eSports community. We have multiple tournaments offering cash prizes as well as sponsored goods for the victor of each of them. Granted, in my country there still isn't any real way of making a living out of the sport, although some organisations within South African eSports have revealed that their teams do receive international grade coaching as well as salaries.
In our community, there is one major championship every year called the VS Gaming League Championship (recently re-branded from "The Telkom Digital Gaming League Championships). This league is open to any team that wants to join, with no entry fees required, no previous achievements are taken into account accept your team's seed into a certain "rank" or division as we call them. No team can pay-to-win with a "premium" offering in exchange for money or sponsorship. So in essence this tournament is run throughout an entire year, is open to anyone that wants to join, and doesn't require and previous achievements or entry fees. This league almost exactly mirrors the implementation of the ESEA open league. Truly a fair breeding ground!
In recent months (maybe years), it has become increasingly more attractive to organisations and tournament hosts to host female-specific leagues and tournaments. The first time I came across this was when I watched CLG Red (American team) play against another team in the grand finals of a tournament with similar structure and teams of commonplace, male-dominant leagues. I believe the tournament was IEM Katowice 2016. I personally don't believe it's a bad thing having exclusively female-attended events, or female orientated content. If the scene isn't promoted it won't grow.
Seeing this made me question a few things... Firstly, equality (at least in my mind) means that everyone is equal. Everyone needs to start at the bottom and work their way up. Everyone needs to earn their keep. Yet, these teams that were competing for a substantial prize pool (granted, not as big as the male-dominated teams), were not at all on par with the skill brackets of their male counter-parts. All of these things got me thinking... why is it so different? I mean, intellectual sports such as gaming and chess is the only place where men don't have a physical advantage over women. Would it be unfair to expect both sides of this rift to compete against each other, and if the female teams aren't qualifying for tournaments, we just accept that they aren't on par with the other teams?
Females in Gaming
I have been gaming casually and competitively for around 14 years. I am 23 years old at this stage, and I have been active in a competitive setting in at least 1 game for the past 6-7 years. I have joined a team that worked hard for over two years, and we are finally in the top 16 in my country. With pride I can say that I have been a part of a major emotional bond between 5/6 players, and I have a huge amount of (newly gained) respect for teams that stick together through hard times.
Looking at the female scene, I don't see any of the players that have been in the scene more than 3 years. This means that even if you're good, people won't respect you, because chances are you haven't established yourself as a knowledgeable player in the community. This is one point where I do really agree with most female gamers. There is a major stigma in the gaming community about women not being good at gaming. Everyone always just assumes they are there to manipulate someone into buy them online gifts, or they are there because their boyfriend is playing games and they wanted to give it a bash. Its like the average (read: male) gamer doesn't posses the mental capacity to "give a girl a chance".
This type of mentality is hindering real talent from coming forward and rearing its head. If I were someone that was constantly made fun of or harassed just because of my gender I would be very discouraged as well. I don't blame any of them for that. Unfortunately there is no other way to combat this than to open up a spot in the community specifically for the female gaming generation. Think of it as affirmative action, but for women instead of racial minorities.
Conclusion
Now, looking at it from the perspective of a man. I believe this is unfair. It undermines the hard work that myself and hundreds of other people put into the game that they love. It makes us look like we're not rewarded or mentioned even though we are better than the female teams. The female teams are receiving sponsorship's from big IT and gaming-orientated companies within South Africa and we're just stuck here because our competition is so overlooked that companies can't afford it to sponsor even the top 5% of our community. When you're in the "male" leagues, only the top 0.5% of teams are lucky enough to get sponsors.
Having said all of these things, I do concede that if these exclusive leagues for the females competitors were not created, they would definitely never make it to any height in the community because of the way they are treated online. I believe most gamers are misogynistic and would never give these girls their time in the spot light.
All in all I would love to see the two scenes integrate and learn new things off of each other. But sadly, I don't believe it will happen in my lifetime. Things are too edgy and sensitive at the moment. No one really accepts the other as a counterpart, but rather an inferior being. It's truly sad to see things take this path.
I am torn between the perspective of a competitive player and the perspective of a man. I'm not too sure which one I like more. But I would definitely like to hear your opinion!
Luckily we're on the road to recovery and soon all will be well.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!!!
Regards
-M
(Please let me know if I can improve on anything from writing style right through to document formatting and markdown tools. I'm still very new to the blogging thing and I'm trying to pick it up along the way.)
The reason is very simple. Much less girls play competitive games then males. And no, you cannot cite that one study that shows females make a substantial amount of gamers, because that study focused on all games, including very casual stuff.
As for so called misogyny in the gaming sphere, that's just bullshit. Just because someone uses a gender targeted insult towards you doesn't mean it's misogynistic. If anything, I'd say girls get very much preferential treatment when it comes to games, but I'm not gonna claim that's a fact, that's just my opinion based on anecdotal evidence.
The reason why tournaments that feature only woman get lesser prize pools is also simple, they don't have as wide of a reach when it comes to audience, so the sponsors make less money out of sponsoring them (yes, sponsors make money out of sponsoring - it's called marketing), it has nothing to do with being overlooked.
And the last thing - most females just aren't as good in competitive games, I'm sorry, but that's often a fact. On average man will for example have faster reaction times Source and that's just one factor.
So please, don't bring gender politics into this. It's just as simple as this:
TL:DR
Less women tend to play competitive games.
Women are worse in competitive games on average.
I share some of the views with you, and Im glad we have sparked an open-minded conversation.
I am by no means a misogynist, neither am I a feminist. I am way to busy with real world shit to police myself with who's offended by what, and the wage gap and so on.
But consider this, in our world, the esport route of making a living is still unchartered territory. Very few people (in the grand scheme of things) have made a success out of competitive gaming. Do you not think that what I said about the promotion of female esports is important, not only to even the playing field, but also to branch out? To bridge the gap between certain walks of life that wouldn't otherwise be exposed to this type of thing?
As I said in the post, I have my own views, some of which I did not share in the original for fear of causing a comment war.
But thanks for your reply, I really appreciate it!
No, I do not think the promotion of specifically female eSports is important. But nor do I think promotion of specifically male eSports is important. Also, there is no such thing is specifically male eSports for the most part. Any woman can go and train and become the best in any eSport and just compete in the "regular" leagues/tournaments. Many do and in games like for example Hearthstone they tend to do quite well. There it's again just a matter of how many females vs males are there in total and I would guess that the numbers probably represent the percentages of the genders pretty well.