I was watching the NA Challenger Series for LoL last week and was surprised to hear team Renegade had a female member! We live in a society which openly accepts women's participation in male dominated virtual sports, but still, where are they all? I remember once hearing about a female gamer in a competitive Dota2 match that was really controversial because an enemy team's member tweeted sexually harassing things about her, but other than that the only "professional girl gamers" I hear about are team Sirens (who are basically a joke).
Can someone tell us why there is still a lack of female representation in competitive gaming? (The only reason I can understand is that in LCS, LoL teams live in a house together and male/female residents might get complicated?)
I remember asking a girl when I was very little if she liked Nintendo. Her response was 'Most girls don't like Nintendo.' So... I've been wondering this same thing. Part of the problem will be the male dominated games out there. It stats with Mario, a man who rescues a Princess, which once again serves the role of man rescuing damsel. Link, same thing (though apparently, they're changing this.) The only exception is Lara Croft in Tomb Raider and I guess the problem there is the male dominated cast around her. – SpectreWriter9 years ago
I feel like for me, someone who is a girl, a gamer, and likes Nintendo, I identified more with being the hero for once. I am in the process of starting a game review/let's play channel on YouTube, and while I'm not sure if this answers your question, I am personally concerned about thoughtless comments just because of my gender. I'm reminded of a professional gamer from Australia who went to the commentators' mothers to stop the harassing. The incident is available for researching on YouTube. – BethanyS9 years ago
I play video games myself and I have friends who are girls that love to play games themselves too and they're quite good! I think the problem can probably stem to either there is not enough coverage on professional female gamers as the media specifically seems to focus only on the male demographic, only strengthening the stereotype that only boys play video games. And also most likely that those harasses you mentioned are one of the major reasons that female gamers are scared off. Which can be either that many of the online community that are male, for some reason feel threatened whenever a woman participates in their activity. That even happens when a product that was intended for girls, gets popular with boys, and yet certain boys scare off the girls while claiming it was never for girls. The mindset is almost territorial to an extent. Also, and this one might be a weak reason for your article, but most people online could just spout crap to anyone cause they can. They hide under the guise of the internet, which I compare as to wearing digital masks, so they can be anybody else or nobody and get away with such vile bullying and sexist remarks because no one knows who they are and find them. – Ryan Walsh9 years ago
The fighting game scene actually has a fairly diverse community of men and woman, although there is still a definite uneven ratio. It would also be interesting to look at Ricki Ortiz, a transgender fighting game professional as well as some of the other woman that are prominent in the fighting game community. – DullahanLi9 years ago
One interesting tidbit from my experience is that in the Counter-Strike scene, there is actually an all-female pro league for CS:GO. While it doesn't generate nearly as much prize money as the main ESL circuit, they are still just as competitive. – marknm9 years ago