{"id":6650,"date":"2020-03-25T16:30:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T14:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playlab.uta.fi\/?p=6650"},"modified":"2020-03-25T16:30:07","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T14:30:07","slug":"merit-above-all-else-reception-of-all-female-esports-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/merit-above-all-else-reception-of-all-female-esports-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"Merit above all else: Reception of all-female esports teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miia\u00a0Siutila\u2019s\u00a0and Ellinoora\u00a0Havaste\u2019s\u00a0article A pure meritocracy blind to identity: Exploring the Online Responses to All-Female Esports Teams in Reddit<\/em> shines<\/a> a light on the online gaming community\u2019s perception of the relation of gender and esports. The article was published in July 2018 in Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The authors studied comments on two Reddit posts, which were links to news concerning the announcements of all-female teams in League of Legends<\/em> (LoL) and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive<\/em> (CS:GO). Each was posted on their respective subreddits: r\/leagueoflegends\u00a0and r\/GlobalOffensive. Both teams were founded by Team YP<\/em>, the esports branch of the pornography site\u00a0YouPorn<\/em>, in November 2015 and June 2016.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both comment sections indicated that esports is and should be purely meritocratic, meaning that the only relevant thing should be the player\u2019s skill. This was contrasted with the lack of female players in major tournaments, even though the number of casual female players was on the rise. Inherent differences in biology or other traits between genders weren\u2019t agreed upon as the reason for the skill-gap. The comments also pondered on the idea that professional female players and female players, in general, get special treatment because of their gender. In conclusion, all-female teams were seen to cheat or ever danger the supposed meritocratic esports because of this special treatment. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The solutions proposed for professional female players were quite uniform. Hiding one\u2019s gender\u00a0was seen as\u00a0a way to combat the special treatment and harassment, even if it hindered the use of aspects of the game such as voice communication. Some comments suggested that if women revealed their gender while playing, they had\u00a0some kind of ulterior\u00a0motives such as publicity. Because all-female teams weren\u2019t seen as viable options, female esports players were encouraged to play in mixed teams or solo.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The article found that jokes, and especially sexual ones made up a large proportion of the comment sections. Blatant sexism was shunned with downvotes, but casual sexism was much more tolerated. Commenters also poked fun at previous failed attempts to establish all-female esports teams. A few self-proclaimed women talked about their own experiences with gaming and gender. Their stories were largely those of resentment towards \u201cgamer girls\u201d who used their gender for personal gain.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A discussion of the motives of the sponsor was limited but present. Some were worried about the reputation of female gaming being harmed. Others pointed out that\u00a0YouPorn\u00a0was likely sponsoring the teams only for quick publicity. Neither teams could compete in the more prominent leagues because of the indecent nature of their sponsor, even though they weren\u2019t aiming to do so.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The authors conclude on remarks that negative stereotypes concerning female players can affect the participation of women in gaming.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The image was taken from Pixabay.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research suggests online gaming communities don\u2019t feel too keenly for all-female esports teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":6652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[1065,1018,345,905],"class_list":["post-6650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-research-highlights","tag-csgo","tag-esports","tag-game-research","tag-league-of-legends","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuni.fi\/playlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}