Boise State esports coach Doc Haskell and player “N3rdybird.” Photo: AP Photo/Otto Kitsinger.
I started playing games when I was very young. There were those cheaper Tiger Electronics systems, but I usually count my first love for gaming as the time my dad brought home a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was sometime in the early 90’s, I believe I may have been 4 or 5. That’s when I first started playing Super Mario Bros. and many other classics. My love for gaming was instant. Games would eventually get me into software development, something I made a career out of.
This isn’t that abnormal. In fact, about half of all gamers are women. Maybe you didn’t notice us?
Part of it is the toxic nature of online gaming. Rather than speak up, we often don’t play competitive online games due to the toxicity, or we leave our microphones muted. Despite loving competitive games in my younger years, I’ve since grown tired of them. Now I mostly play single player games with strong stories and excellent gameplay.
Sadly, this is true of many female gamers. That toxicity is one of the reasons that women just aren’t playing competitive esports. But there’s another problem. Despite about half of women playing games in esports categories, esports teams in college are made up of nearly all men. Only 8.2% of college esports players are women. As schools give out more scholarship money for esports players, women are missing out from a very serious gap caused largely by sexism, intentionally or accidental.
In This Article:
Women Game
Horizon Zero Dawn, a popular single-player (non-esports) game featuring a female protagonist.
Women play games at around the same rate of men. On top of that, 48% of all women play games that belong in the “esports” category. When looking at more college-aged players, those between 18-29, 57% of women are playing games that qualify for esports. Women don’t just play games either. They’re also spending, on average, about 15 hours a week watching games on Twitch. 11 million women watched a Twitch stream in 2019.
Women are playing games. Not only do they make up about half of all gamers, but they’re engaging with esports content while playing esports games themselves. Based on this, the number of women we see in esports in college esports programs should be around the same as male players. Instead, men are drastically over-represented, making up around 90% of esports gamers in colleges that AP News surveyed.
The AP News Study
AP News conducted a study into the people playing games in college. They found esports gamers in college are overwhelmingly men. AP News looked into 56 of the 192 schools that participate in the National Association of Collegiate Esports Schools. Of those schools, rosters averaged around 30 players, and just over 90% of those players were men. The vast difference in gender was enough for the AP News to report their findings. Only one school had an even breakdown of male and female players.
Competitive gaming is a growing market. Over the last year, the esports audience hit 495 million viewers, a 12% bump over 2019. The pandemic pushed many people inside, and that lead to a boost in interest around gaming and competitive gaming. Colleges are giving out scholarships to egamers, and nearly 90% of those are also going to men, with the average amount around $1,910.
Half of gamers are women, and a majority of those women of typical college age are playing games that qualify for esports. Why isn’t that translating to more women in collegiate esports leagues?
Harassment and Toxicity
In a study done by the Anti-Defamation League in 2019, women were the largest group reporting harassment while gaming online. Women often don’t want to reveal their gender online. When they do, they face derogatory comments, harassment, stalking, and doxxing, that is, the publishing of their private information. As a result, women will avoid practices that would help them in esports. They often won’t use their voice chat, which can leave them out of planning and discussion of plays, important for team-based games. Furthermore, they don’t want to reveal their actual names. Entering tournaments or creating a following on Twitch would lead to their real names inevitably getting out. Women avoid potentially dangerous situations, and leagues, like collegiate esports leagues, are not doing enough to protect female players.
Colleges are also choosing games that women tend to avoid. For example, one of the most popular games for esports leagues is Riot’s League of Legends. Riot is infamous for allowing toxicity on their platform and in their workplace. The company has been sued by their own employees for a culture of sexual harassment. Other games that frequently involve more umoderated toxicity also see fewer female and minority players.
It’s not just games with a reputation for toxicity either. Other esports games that are popular include sports games like Madden, a popular football franchise with less interest among women. Grace Collins, CEO and founder of Liminal Esports, put it another way. They compare it to a movie club that only watched “Die Hard. “That’s not to say that girls on your campus don’t like to watch movies, it’s just saying that they don’t like to watch ‘Die Hard.'”
The Right Game
“I didn’t do anything special, like, ‘Oh, I need to make sure I meet this quota or anything specific.’ But I made sure that we had an open and appealing program to everyone and anyone.”
– Kris Weissman, Coach of University of South Carolina-Sumpter Esports Team, the only gender-balanced team in AP News’ study.
Could game choice really make that much of a difference? Of all of the schools that AP News looked into, only one had a balanced gender ratio. That one didn’t have to work hard to create a balanced team. They simply added Overwatch as one of the games. Overwatch features a diverse cast and its cover art character is Tracer, a lesbian. Female players have been more drawn to Overwatch for its fun twist on the standard first person shooter and its inclusivity. Each character brings unique abilities and skills to the playing field, making it a varied and exciting game. One that stands out among the copies of “realistic” gruff shooters.
Women aren’t as interested in sports games or Call of Duty-style shooters. They’re more likely to enjoy games with a variety of gameplay, even if it’s competitive. Mario Kart, for example, would attract more women than the latest version of Call of Duty. Fighting games also are more likely to draw a more balanced crowd. Who doesn’t love Super Smash Bros?
Schools have majority male leadership, teams, and the games they choose appeal largely to male players. That results in an absurd discrepancy like 90% of your players being men.
What Can Be Done?
As one school learned, the first step can be as easy as adding games women are more likely to want to play. Simply adding Overwatch took a team that was all men and brought it up to 50-50 over a few years. But there are other measures schools can take. Reflecting the player gender gap, coaches are overwhelmingly men. A whopping 96% of college esports coaches are men. Female coaches would understand why women aren’t joining and would be able to recruit more women. One drawback women mentioned was that they didn’t want to be the “token woman” on a team, or the only female player. However, a female coach can help soften that blow.
Coaches, schools, and leagues could work better to eliminate toxic behavior as well. Coaches could have strict policies against “locker room talk,” while leagues could give a sort of “red card” to players who engage in abusive behavior in competitive events or personal streams.
Other aspects could make gaming for women safer in general. Game developers have to do a better job of banning toxic players permanently and immediately. They could even work with publishers and other developers to share ban lists across games, so players who are toxic in Call of Duty can’t just jump over to Overwatch to harass players there.
Tournaments and colleges could also protect users’ identities. Gamers are accustomed to playing with gamer tags or screen names online anyway, so this would just involve allowing players to go solely by their username or gamer tag, protecting their private information. Women worried about stalking or harassment out of the game would feel more comfortable playing if they could do so without broadcasting their identity. This isn’t unprecedented. Many streamers and professional gamers are known by their online handle first, and their actual names second, if at all.
Finally, colleges could stop trying to dodge the issue. Currently, schools aren’t putting their esports programs under their sports programs, though they’re giving out scholarships for it. This could be a violation of Title IX, which is supposed to create an equal opportunity for both women and men in college sports and scholarships. By intentionally dodging Title IX enforcement, schools are admitting they know of a problem, but are dodging the issue. Legislation could force colleges to fix their programs to make them welcoming for female gamers by categorizing egaming with other sports and activities.
Egaming Misogyny at Large
Sexism and misogynistic harassment is a plague online. It’s hurting female gamers, limiting their game choices, and now costing them thousands of dollars in scholarships. That can also keep women out of esports entirely, a field that has its own sexism to deal with. Esports top-earning man has made roughly $7 million during his career. The top-earning woman, a champion Starcraft II player, on the other hand, has received only $300,000 over her career.
Esports are far from equal, but colleges have a unique opportunity to fix the problem on a much larger scale than their own institutions. We know there’s a problem, and we have the solutions. Now we have to hope colleges take action.
Sources:
- Celilia D’Anastasio, Kotaku
- Lindsey Darvin, The Conversation
- Tom McKay, Gizmodo
- Jake Seiner, AP News