University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Rally the heroes: the (in)visibility of women in gaming

(USC Thesis Other)

Rally the heroes: the (in)visibility of women in gaming

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content RALLY THE HEROES: THE (IN)VISIBILITY OF WOMEN IN GAMING

by

Cynthia Park

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS

August 2019

Copyright 2019
Cynthia Park

ii
Dedication

To those who had to abandon their passions because no one believed, and to those who are about
to because the future for us as women, people of color, and LGBTQ folks is only a flickering
beacon of light. In the words of FAKEGRIMLOCK, the robot start-up dinosaur:

IF YOU LET SOMEONE ELSE BUILD TOMORROW, TOMORROW WILL BELONG TO
SOMEONE ELSE.
THEY WILL BUILD A BETTER TOMORROW FOR EVERYONE LIKE THEM.
YOU CAN HOPE THAT INCLUDE YOU,
OR YOU CAN BE THE ONE THAT BUILD A BETTER TOMORROW WITH YOU IN IT.

iii
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my family for allowing me to explore gaming -- and by extension, thank you to my
siblings for introducing me to games like Super Mario Bros., Rayman, Heroes of Might and Magic II and
Diablo II when I was but a wee lass.

Thank you to my male friends (and friends of friends) who never thought it was weird that a girl
liked and wanted to play games, and who always talked to me normally, both online and offline.

Thank you to the countless female friends I’ve made in this industry, and to organizations like
Women of Esports for fostering such a strong, welcoming community that I hope we can spread to
the darkest corners of our industry.

And of course, thank you to everyone who told me they were excited to read this. Your support
means everything, and I’m so grateful.

iv
Table of Contents

Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures v
Introduction: Welcome to the Server 1
Chapter One: Women in Tech & Gaming 7
Chapter Two: Gender in Gaming, A History 16
Chapter Three: No Girls Allowed/The Boys-Only Club 34
Chapter Four: You’re Making It Up 40
Chapter Five: Pro Tips 49
Conclusion 66
Bibliography 70
Glossary of Terms 73
Appendix 74

v
List of Figures

1. Figure 1. Screenshot of the TwitLonger post from Second Wind as an official statement about “Ellie.”
2. Figure 2. Statistic from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)’s 2018 study about the computer
and video game industry. Demonstrates the gender and age breakdown of gamers.
3. Figure 3. Screenshot of a tweet from @kchironis, who is a senior game designer at Riot Games and a writer
for the game Elsinore, from February 25th, 2019.
4. Figure 4-9. Screenshots of a tweet thread from @delaneykingrox about their experience in the industry as
male versus as female and what exactly has changed.

1
Introduction: Welcome To The Server

Who knew that upon deciding on this topic for my thesis, that an expose would be written about
game publisher Riot Games and its largely sexist and harassment-filled workplace? Definitely not
me. And yet, it’s such quality research material for this very paper. This article written by Cecilia
D’Anastasio at Kotaku, a game journalism website, was personally a fairly difficult read for me.
While I have been lucky enough (until I began to conduct my research for this very thesis) to not
have suffered through intense harassment at work and to have gaming friends who have never
disparaged me online or over voice chat, that unfortunately does not mean that that is the reality for
all other women in this industry. I have, however, been witness to the kinds of behaviors you will
read about in this paper. For example, an older white man at CES 2018 who, when my friend asked
at a booth that had a mockup of a bedroom to demonstrate a portable projector if she could lie on
the bed, told her she had to undress before she could do so. After an uncomfortable few seconds of
complete silence from my friend, the nearby saleswoman in the middle of selling him the product,
and me, along with a couple of wary looks, he made a hasty exit.

One may wonder why someone would say that or do that, and for some people who don’t see the
aforementioned as an issue, reasons like “that’s just how it is” or “it’s just a joke; stop taking it
seriously” are enough to dismiss the incidents. What gives these people, predominantly men, the
right to treat us in this way and to address us as such? What or who is encouraging this behavior,
and how can we stop it?

2
It’s an old argument, that women deserve rights and that women deserve equality, with old
polarizing opinions. And yet the conversation continues to pop up, making its rounds before it dies
down in the midst of other global news, with no solution or actionable items in sight.

It is my goal, in writing this paper, that we bring this idea back one last time. Let’s sincerely talk
about how to make things better. And if someone wants to tell me that this is unnecessary, they can
explain to me why at the very beginning of 2019, the gaming industry was hit by a male esports
player’s idea of “a social experiment” – pretending to be a girl on the Internet and opting out as
soon as the harassment got to be too much. As a reply I saw on Twitter said, “where is my opt-out
button?”

You can view this thesis as a guide, or a game walkthrough. Chapter One tackles the history of the
female experience in tech and gaming, and how those industries – and the women involved in both
– are examples of the discrimination some choose not to see. Chapter Two then delves deeper into
the major gender-related discriminatory events in the history of gaming, along with the proposed
solutions for gender-based discrimination in gaming. Chapter Three walks us through how “gamer
culture” evokes a “no girls allowed” policy, and can be perceived as a “boys-only” club. Chapter
Four is a series of common counterarguments oft cited by those who believe that discrimination in
the gaming industry isn’t real or who believe that women don’t belong in gaming. Chapter Five dives
into the survey I conducted and the analysis of said survey results; it also is a sounding board for
suggestions and recommendations going forward. And to conclude it all is, I hope, a powerful call to
action that resonates with whoever decides to read through to the end.

3
I know what you’re thinking. Another piece of literature about diversity in STEM, another attempt
at a poignant plea at increasing diversity in tech and gaming.

I know. Because I feel the same way.

Why do we have to keep having this conversation? If you don’t identify as female and you’re tired of
hearing the same arguments over and over, try to think about it from a female perspective. We don’t
like it any more than you do, and yet – we’re often expected to be the ones making the biggest push
for equality. As Adrienne Shaw writes in her book Gaming At The Edge, “even more broadly, the
push toward insisting on representation via demonstrating a group’s viability as a market requires
marginalized groups to articulate their representability to the industry” (Shaw, 143). Essentially,
what we’re asking marginalized groups to do is to prove that they’re being treated unfairly, despite
plenty of superficial evidence, like a wage pay gap or simply not seeing many people of a certain
demographic in leadership positions in an industry. At first thought, this might sound like a good
idea – after all, only the marginalized groups can give a voice to what they’re experiencing, right?

But upon further consideration, how can these people “articulate their representability to the
industry” and educate those who (whether knowingly or unknowingly) oppress them when their
voices are either ignored or unheard?! This sound piece of logic is based on Audre Lord’s idea that
to require marginalized groups to “demand that the center acknowledge them is a displacement of
responsibility” – in other words, the responsibility should actually fall on those who are in power,
who have the spotlight, and who are at the center of everything to speak up for those who are not in
power, who don’t have the spotlight, and who are pushed to the edges because we’re considered
outsiders who don’t belong. But to require the latter to ask for acknowledgment and validation just
4
emphasizes that the former have so much privilege, they can pretend like it’s not their problem. In
Shaw’s research, she found that the sentiment of “it’s nice when [representation] happens” from her
interviewees actually turns that aforementioned responsibility not on consumers, but onto cultural
producers (Shaw, 224-225). Therefore the argument that marginalized groups need to prove their
representable and visible worth is turned on its head, and the solution then turns to companies
needing to provide representation in-game and in its workforce.

There is also the market-logic argument for representation – that companies can make more money
by offering diversity in their products, whether it be anything from notebooks to video games
(Shaw, 222). After all, they can’t afford to miss out on an opportunity to target other audiences and
demographics that have the ability to spend money. This brings us to a big “so what?” accompanied
by a massive shrug. Companies want to make more money; big deal. We all knew that. But
representation in media is not an issue that can, or should, be shrugged off as unimportant. We’ve
seen a rise in demand for accurate representation in Hollywood; why not in video games? In 2018,
The 70
th
Primetime Emmys boasted the most diverse group of nominees, and Crazy Rich Asians ruled
the box office with its all-Asian cast. There was an uproar about casting racially accurate actors for
the live-action Mulan and Aladdin, set to release in 2020 and 2019 respectively. And yet when it
comes to our not-so-little corner of entertainment, a place where nerds are cool for once in our
lives, tolerance and representation along with equality are severely lacking. This is probably the part
where accusations of me being a feminist SJW (social justice warrior) insert insults and profanity here
start to flood in. “We don’t need equality!” “Nothing’s wrong with the industry!” “Stop trying to
make up issues that don’t exist!” These are all opinions that I have now both experienced and heard
that others have experienced. I do want to clarify that the opinions written in this thesis have
nothing to do with “man-hating” and I certainly believe that “not all men behave this way.”
5
However, my counterargument to these statements is that if you haven’t experienced any injustice
yourself, if you have never heard of anyone experiencing any inequality, even if you are so skeptical
about everyone who comes forward to report harassment or actual discrimination based on gender –
does not mean that it does not happen. Let me make this clear: just because you don’t have any
personal experience with it, does not mean that it does not happen to others. And to follow up:
what’s wrong with trying to make the world a better place by improving the quality of life for some
people?

However, and this should go without saying, simple representation at face value shouldn’t be the
goal to improve the state of diversity and equality in the gaming industry. It isn’t pluralism that we’re
looking for; “diversity in video games necessitates that all audiences are confronted with different
types of characters” (Shaw, 225). It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about representation in-game with
female characters that aren’t oversexualized and objectified or if we’re talking about representation
in the workforce. The solution is not as simple as “just add women!” although that does help to an
extent. Adding people of an underrepresented demographic is not the simple, one-off answer
because “representation in popular media does not correct the lived experiences of oppression, nor
does it necessarily reorganize the structures of power that have maintained inequality” (Shaw, 148).
Women, and by extension other groups that are historically underrepresented in media, are honestly
not the people in power that can make much change on their own. This ties back to the
aforementioned argument that marginalized groups need to request attention – even demand
validation that “being represented in media demonstrates a public, often corporate or state,
acknowledgement that differences exist, that ‘we’ exist” (Shaw, 147). In order for change to take
place, those who have the power to make a lasting difference – who are the ones currently
benefiting to some degree from the injustice that is currently at hand – need to step up as well.
6

The answer in the end – our goal – should not be to simply increase the number of women in the
industry; the real goals in writing this thesis are to (a) point out that women still aren’t visible as
equals in the industry and to the larger general public (b) demonstrate that the reported experiences
of women in the industry are real (c) reaffirm that the solution to real diversity lies in a united effort
to culturally normalize the concept of women in gaming, and not just in adding more women or
making games that cater to women (whatever that means) or making more female characters in-
game. This is not the post-racial or post-sexist era we might think it is. What I aim to do with this
thesis is to effect cultural and systemic change, which is certainly not an easy feat. But if, at the
end of the day, I can give those with dissenting opinions a reason to think about what was wrong or
disrespectful of their mindset and their behavior, then I think I will have at least planted the idea of
powerful and positive change into their minds.

7
Chapter One: Women in Tech & Gaming
“You’re tired of hearing about this ‘women in tech’ stuff, and we’re tired of living it, but there are some big issues here,
and we’re not going to solve them by pretending they don’t exist because we’re bored or afraid of them.” -Katy
Levinson, Sexism in Tech

Tech and gaming are quite inseparable, and beyond the simple fact that there is a sort of symbiotic
relationship between the two industries, there are a number of parallels between the lived
experiences of women working in tech and those working in gaming. For one, both the former and
the latter toil and exist in a predominantly white male industry where the issues of harassment and
inequality in tech are just as real as those in gaming. For another, whistleblowers or anyone,
particularly women, who try to call attention to injustice in the industry are labeled more often than
not as a “liability,” if not just a straight-up “attention whore” (Levinson and Shevinsky, 50). And a
third commonality: the culture surrounding the industry that prevents women from succeeding and
finding true equality in their respective industries.

In her article “What It’s Really Like To Be A Young Woman Of Color in Tech,” Eda Yu describes
part of her experience as two sides of a predictable coin – predictable in the sense that the industry
was indeed filled with an “excessive number of men and their overwhelming sense of privilege” but
unpredictable in the sense that allies in the form of other women of color were easier to find than
originally thought. However, the negative parts of working as a young woman of color in tech often
outweighed the positive:

The less fantastic parts, however, really were difficult to weather. Practically every day that passed,
older, married men stared at my body. Meetings were dominated by white males droning on and on,
8
often talking over their female counterparts or ignoring them altogether. White women sometimes
seemed to feel like they were competing against you, rather than working with you. Older co-workers
would chalk up my success to the fact that I was young – ‘It’s because she’s from another generation’
was a phrase I heard often, one that felt like it was used to belittle my work. (Yu, Huffington Post)

This kind of harassment mirrors what we see and hear happening to women in the gaming industry,
and she isn’t alone in the experience she’s had in the tech industry. As for Yu’s experience with
white women in the space and feeling competition rather than cooperation, Leigh Alexander’s
account adds to this sentiment as she also writes about other conflicting feelings that come up when
two women in tech are introduced to each other by men:

There’s this dance two women in a male-dominated field will do when men introduce them. At first
you feel resentful: does he want me to meet her just because we’re both women? And then, it’s like, who’s she, and
has she paid the same high cost as I paid, or is she just in here because she’s pretty? You shake hands
with her, hard, and you smile a lot because you’re supposed to support other women. But privately
you watch her out of the corner of your eye, inexplicably a little bit threatened—even after you’ve
learned and you know better. You can’t undo your mistrust so easily. Your colleague becomes an
emblem of a flawed system. Is she a good feminist, or one of those scabs? Is she better than you, do the
men like her better than you? (Alexander and Shevinsky, 42)

Alexander’s point about wondering if another woman is just here because she’s pretty is something
that echoes across both industries. According to the culture that pervades both tech and gaming, a
woman can either be conventionally pretty but faking her interest and her success OR a woman can
be not conventionally pretty and be found somewhat credible, but some men will still complain that
9
there aren’t any pretty girls who share their interests. Apparently, we can’t have both beauty and
brains. :thinking emoji:

Although toxic industry culture and double standards are both points I will elaborate on further into
this paper, it should be mentioned here to emphasize that it isn’t a pipeline problem that we can
attribute to the lack of women in tech (or gaming), and culturally, tech hasn’t been the most
encouraging. Despite efforts to be more inclusive, like Women Who Code (a group whose primary
purpose is to attract more women to the tech industry) and BuildUp (a start-up that seeks out
companies founded by women and minorities) – all of which are wonderful efforts – qualified
women still leave the tech industry because of “hostile work environments” (Lien, LA Times).
Tracey Lien cites a Harvard Business Review study from 2008 that found that “as many as 50% of
women working in science, engineering and technology will, over time, leave” because of reasons
such as “a ‘hostile’ male culture, a sense of isolation and lack of a clear career path” (Lien, LA
Times). Even the updated 2014 study found much of the same result. The women interviewed
noticed a pattern of being passed up for no apparent reason, and being taken off projects or
dismissed. The sexist microaggressions included being treated like they “didn’t know what was going
on, or excluding [them] from conversations and not trusting [their] assertions.” Though sensitivity
training, mentoring and workshops all support women in tech to a certain degree, trying to address
the issue as if it were the pipeline that were the problem is similar to trying to fill a leaking bucket –
adding more women, only to find that women keep quitting. It would be an endless vicious cycle.
Lien provides the example of women working at Google: they were promoted less often than men
due to having to nominate themselves, because when they did, they met resistance. Tech isn’t ready
to accept qualified people who don’t fit the stereotypical mold of white heterosexual cis-gendered
males who thrive in Silicon Valley. Lack of women or people of color as employees must mean that
10
there just weren’t any qualified candidates, right? “Meritocracy” is what tech is built on – or so they
say, despite the origination of the term as British satire that was meant to warn us of where society
was headed (Wachter-Boettcher, 174). Venture capitalists consistently fund start-ups based on
characteristics of a past success, not necessarily on true merit, which mirrors itself in hiring practices;
tech companies say that they’re looking to hire diverse employees and that they want to make them
more visible, but in the end, they only care about “diversity numbers, but doesn’t want to disrupt its
culture to get or keep diverse people” (Wachter-Boettcher, 184). However, it takes disruption to
innovate – even if women start coding before they’re 16 or even if they major in computer science-
related degrees, “if people can’t imagine themselves working in a field, then they won’t study it… it’s
hard to imagine yourself fitting into a profession where you can’t see anyone who looks like you”
and by extension, even if you do see those people, it’s hard to think you could be a “culture fit” if
the people who look like you are unhappy or leave these professions in droves (Wachter-Boettcher,
182). Again, taking us back to trying to fill a leaking bucket analogy: why encourage young women to
work in the tech industry when their older counterparts aren’t even considered as equals and end up
taking their skills elsewhere?

It’s difficult enough to get others to believe when people say that being a woman who works in tech
or gaming comes with its own trials and tribulations, but the culture surrounding these industries
makes it so that women are faced with consequences when they do, even if they aren’t in outright
violation of OSHA – that clause saying that an employer can’t take action against an employee for
reporting a workplace issue. Whistleblowers, as those calling out wrongdoings are called, are often
labeled as either a liability or simply an attention whore because they’re calling attention to an issue
that others didn’t want to be exposed or because they just don’t believe what they have to say. But
women or anyone else who speaks about any injustices they faced know that there are potential
11
consequences; they and “every single person who has ever complained about an act of sexism loudly
enough for the public to notice: they worry that they will be seen as liabilities for the rest of their
career” (Levinson and Shevinsky, 49). Personally, I also had this fear when I began writing this
thesis. I have, so far, been lucky enough to work with companies whose core values aligned with
mine, and who genuinely sought out diverse employees, but I knew that any primary research I did
might threaten my status as a fairly unknown online personality. And truthfully, even though I
believe that I’m doing the right thing by writing about this issue so we can put it to rest, I too had a
fear that any potential backlash would threaten my career and it’s barely started. In her essay
“Sexism in Tech,” Katy Levinson highlights this common fear:

Any whistleblower on any topic risks everything, hoping they can prove both the actual wrongdoing,
and that they aren’t doing this for personal gain. People who don’t believe you will consider you an
enemy and call you ‘traitor’ or ‘attention whore,’ but never whistleblower, and people who haven’t
bothered to research enough to form an opinion will call you a ‘liability.’ … What I fear instead is
being labeled a liability. When somebody calls you a liability, it means they don’t care whether you
were doing something noble or just exploiting the system for personal gain. They just know there
was some controversy around you. This is the horrible default bucket any woman who tries to speak
up falls into. (50-51)

Despite efforts to reassure whistleblowers that they shouldn’t be afraid of speaking out, we are – and
I say “we” because, in writing this thesis, I am a whistleblower on my own industry. I’m calling out
wrongdoing as I see it, not for personal gain – again, because I have been lucky enough until doing
my primary research to have not endured the kinds of awful overt sexism and misogyny in both tech
and gaming – but for the betterment of our industry cultures. As society gets more and more
inclusive (which is a good thing, by the way, for the haters who think otherwise), our language and
12
culture both have to adapt. In regards to language, I’m not naive – we are leaps and bounds away
from where we used to be, but there are still those who scoff at the idea of identifying as a gender,
who sneer with derision from behind their anonymous avatars at those of us who correct them
when they say something rude, inappropriate or disrespectful. Language is linked to culture,
however, and that’s where the most lasting change will occur. Because there is a currently a
connection to immediate scandal from whistleblowers, it seems like a slight trepidation exists when
it comes to dealing with potential issues in the workplace. But as Levinson succinctly points out,
behaving and reacting with fear towards the actual issue at hand causes more harm than help:

If your reactions to the issues of sexism in tech are crafted out of fear that a scandal will rock your
safe place, if you only threaten punishments to your would-be harassing-employees and never
educate them, point to a diversity hire, or point to a position you have created for this purpose and
haven’t touched in years, you are keeping the status quo rather than actually tackling our societal
problems. (54-55)

Diversity training, sensitivity training, every workshop that has come about and is part of most
companies’ onboarding process for new hires is useless without proper education. Simply saying “x
is not tolerated here” doesn’t do anything to help the situation; it only helps to stagnate it; pointing
out what’s wrong and saying that it’s wrong isn’t educating the aggressor – it’s like pointing at a 404
error page and saying “there’s an error” without explaining the possible reasons why it happened in
the first place. Likewise, by letting people off the hook when they say they won’t do it again without
educating them on what was inappropriate is only teaching them that that specific action or behavior
is wrong; we can’t assume that they’ll know everything that could be inappropriate from just that
13
one example. Therefore, it’ll take some bravery on not just the whistleblowers’ parts, but from
companies within the industry as well, to actually tackle the issue at hand.

What this all leads to is a need for systemic and cultural change. In 2018, computer science as a
degree was increasing in popularity with young women; in fact, young women are 33% more likely
to study computer science compared with women born before 1983. The gender gap when it comes
to age when they learned to code is shrinking (20% more men who started coding before the age of
16 versus 7% more men who started coding before the age of 16 than women), and women know
the exact programming languages that are most in-demand. Even though it seems like the pipeline is
in great shape, more women of all ages are in junior positions – in fact, over 20% of women over
the age of 35 are still in junior positions. Whether it’s due to women starting their careers relatively
later in life or are generally stuck in junior positions, there is still room to improve. Celebrate and
encourage the women already working in tech, and don’t punish them for trying to aim higher. Make
it okay to call out inappropriate behavior because seeking respect from one human being to another
shouldn’t be so hard or difficult to achieve.

In tech as it is in gaming, it is up to the culture surrounding the industry to change in order to
effect lasting positive change. What’s more is that time and time again, studies show that diverse
teams actually perform better, which from a financial standpoint is much better for the industry. A
2014 report for Scientific American by Columbia professor Katherine W. Phillips demonstrated that
“the simple act of interacting in a diverse group improves performance, because it ‘forces group
members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching
consensus will take effort’” (Wachter-Boechtter, 184). Other studies she did showed that “diverse
groups were more careful with details than were homogenous groups, and more open to
14
conversation” – white participants didn’t make as many mistakes and cited more facts than opinions,
and in a separate study, all-white groups were “significantly less likely to [share all the information
they collectively possessed in order to solve a murder-mystery exercise], and therefore performed
significantly worse in the exercise.” As for the reason why the quality of work was staggeringly
different in homogeneous groups versus diverse groups, Phillips wrote that “when we work only
with those similar to us, we often ‘think we all hold the same information and share the same
perspective’ … which stopped the all-white groups from effectively processing the information, is
what hinders creativity and innovation” (Wachter-Boechtter, 185). And when it comes to the
bottom line, a study done by business professors Cristian Deszo of the University of Maryland and
David Ross of Columbia found that female representation in top management led to an increase of
$42 million in firm value (an assessment derived from the ratio of the market value of a firm’s assets
to their replacement value) – this came from a review of size and gender of senior management
across the Standard & Poor Composite 1500 list, and comparing that with financial data. Deszo and
Ross also found that firms with a higher ratio of research and development expenses to assets were
more successful financially when top leadership included women (Wachter-Boechtter, 186).

Despite all this, the tech industry still seems to be averse to implementing measures that will ensure
the retention of their diverse employees, and this aversion can be attributed to the lack of education
around diversity and gatekeeping around “the triumph of nerds” (Cross and Shevinsky, 74). This
concept of nerd triumph that Katherine Cross writes about is “a gendered one; however many of us
as women, LGBT/queer people, or people of color might have experienced bullying (and actual
discrimination atop it), the vision of who gets to be a nerd, a geek, or a gamer, remains defined by a
classic image … of the Big Bang Theory-style pretentious, perpetually adolescent, young male nerds”
(Cross and Shevinsky, 73). In other words, despite our similar interests, because we don’t match the
15
typical description of a nerd – young, white, presumably heterosexual and male – we don’t get to call
ourselves nerds and we don’t get to share in this triumph that is expressed in tech and gaming,
because that celebration of geekdom doesn’t belong to us.

16
Chapter Two: Gender in Gaming, A History
“This sexism is not necessarily institutionalized in the company; rather, it is institutionalized in the game complex as
a whole.” -Jennifer deWinter & Carly A. Kocurek, “Aw Fuck, I Got A Bitch On My Team!”

Usually, video games are associated with boys and men, but have you ever stopped to think about
why? Were video games originally intended to be marketed to only boys? The answer, dear reader, is
actually no – games were not originally targeted towards men and boys; in fact, they were never
originally targeted to anyone. Early games like Pong were meant for family play, and arcades were
meant to be social places that weren’t necessarily gendered. It probably wasn’t until Super Mario Bros.,
where the objective of the game is to rescue Princess Peach, that a gendered aspect of games was
introduced, which might have been that element of foreshadowing that video games were for meant
for masculine audiences (Chess, 9). This insertion of “masculine undertone[s]” was also not due to
the resurgence of video games or the rise of home consoles; as Carly Kocurek argues, “these
historical inequalities emerged through public discourse and public practice that accompanied the
rise of video gaming’s early commercial success” – mainstream media and popular culture inevitably
color the gaming industry, and that is still true to this day. Chess further summarizes how “home
console gaming moved from the domain of being a family system to one primarily marketed to men
and boys” in 1989 with the release of the Sega Genesis, and game companies continued to target
men and boys into the 1990s with computer games such as Doom and Quake. The mid-to-late 1990s
also ushered in a period of video games made specifically for young girls, because research pointed
to the possibility that targeting this group might help create more interest in STEM careers (Chess,
10).

17
Games nowadays are usually categorized by AAA titles and mobile games, creating a rift between
“hardcore” and “casual” gamers. Many AAA titles, which are often categorized as “hardcore,” seem
to have been designed for a primarily male target audience – particularly first-person shooter (FPS)
games like Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, Activision’s Call of Duty franchise and Bungie’s Halo
franchise – while casual games have become synonymous with “games for women” (Chess, 11).
Mobile games like Candy Crush, Bejeweled, and celebrity-backed games like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood all
are thought of as mostly games for women because we don’t have to invest huge amounts of time
into them since we’re busy with life and, as frequently assumed, mothering. If you think about it,
games tend to be viewed as leisure activity for men, and for women, they tend to be viewed as
“something we can fill our time with” – and Chess points out that the games that currently target
women “draw a very specific picture of what an idealized woman gamer might look like and how
that woman should play” (5). Apparently, women don’t have the time to sit down and play for hours
like men do, and apparently, these games are definitely what we’re interested in, not the likes of the
gray-toned, militaristic style of so-called “masculine games.”

Most of the gaming community – and industry, in a broader sense – break down “hardcore” and
“casual” like so:
• Hardcore games → expensive, difficult to learn and master, time-consuming
• Casual games → cheap, easy to learn, and can be played for variable amounts of time”
(Chess, 13)
This creates the illusion that AAA games (that hardcore gamers stereotypically play) cannot be easy
to learn, and cannot be played for variable amounts of time, and that mobile games and indie games
(that casual gamers stereotypically play) cannot be difficult to learn and master and cannot be a
serious investment of time. What this doesn’t account for is that some people will play AAA titles
18
casually (for example, playing Diablo 3 for a couple days during a season) and others invest hours
upon hours into mobile games or indie games (for example, practicing speed-runs of the indie game
Braid – without a walkthrough!). The dichotomy of “hardcore vs. casual” has created such a rift
between the two groups that it doesn’t allow for a blend between the two, effectively leading us to
the exclusivity of gamer culture that we know of today.

#GamerGate (2014)
One of the critical moments in gaming history that proved to be extremely influential in shaping
gamer culture was 2014’s #GamerGate. This infamous movement polarized the industry between
those who believed it to be about the ethics of game journalism and those who believed it to be a
movement of hate speech “wherein young, primarily male gamers have attacked, doxxed (publishing
personal information about an individual), and threatened women in and commenting on the video
game industry” (Chess, xii). Many GamerGate advocates could be culturally identified as Chess’s
description of the “Player One” identity -- white, heterosexual, cis-gendered males who have
historically benefited from the odds being in their favor and who have historically been celebrated in
popular culture:

There has long been a sense that this character -- the misunderstood white geek male -- was an
underdog who would use his smarts to gain access to and ultimately reign triumphant against the
perceived bullies of his youth. Recent criticism of this character, though, highlight how the geeky
white male perpetuates similar kinds of sexist, heterosexist, and racist undercurrents. This white
geeky guy has been idealized (and monetized) in popular culture to the extent that he is now the focal
market for the primary video game industry -- the console and PC gamer. Culturally and
capitalistically, he is Player One. (8)

19
Chess compared Player One to the “designed identity” of his counterpart, Player Two: “The
designed identity of Player Two, like Player One, is a fiction, an amalgamation of many hybridized
images of who should play, how they should play, and what that play looks like” (Chess, 6).
Unfortunately, Player Two -- no matter how she is fictionalized -- regardless does not belong in the
ideal world that #GamerGate advocates wish for.

Chess’s ideas of Player One and Player Two also relate to Katherine Cross’s idea of fictive ethnicity
and who gets to call themselves a nerd. Though the term “nerd” is a chosen identity, there is still an
implied and unspoken requirement to be a true nerd – you must be a part of this group of “formerly
bullied and derided social outcasts” who not only are performing a special kind of masculinity that is
unique and better, but this masculinity is “slighted and not fully recognized for its superiority,
especially by women” – which reinforces a heteronormative definition of masculinity as well. This
kind of masculinity based on “technical mastery, one’s intellect and mental acuity, rather than on
physical strength, was imagined to be superior, and latter-day nerd identity is the most recent
reification of this kind of masculinity” (Cross, 74, 76-77). Notice how self-identifying as a nerd
implies not just heteronormativity, but a self-identification as male. Although women for sure can be
nerds (yours truly included), we aren’t allowed to be included because by definition, according to
Cross, nerds have to have experienced rejection from females -- which doesn’t work for the
heteronormative definition of “nerd.” Whether in gaming or in tech, these spaces have been a place
where “boys could be boys,” and now that those of us who don’t fit that Player One mold have
threatened their bubble, “some boys -- grown boys -- … are fighting to keep it this way. The
struggle for cultural control is messy and we are smack in the middle of it” (Shevinsky, 66-67).

20
GamerGate started gathering its strength around cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian and her Kickstarter
campaign to fund a video series called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games which would investigate
gender roles in games. She had already launched Feminist Frequency in 2009, which “produced a
series of YouTube documentaries investigating video gaming’s history of propagating misogynistic
tropes and advancing a broadly patriarchal view of society,” and this video series was going to be a
new project for Feminist Frequency. Her work has influenced games to “[increase] the number of
“positive women and minority protagonists and [to decrease] the tropes she discusses, such as weak,
sexually attractive ‘damsels in distress.’” (Campbell) However, Sarkeesian’s work, for all the good
that it has done, also enraged numbers of young (some right-wing) men, who have sent her death
and rape threats, as well as slurs and insults scattered all over her social media.

It wasn’t until the abusive ex-boyfriend of indie game developer Zoe Quinn posted a series of angry
manifestos and blog posts filled with accusations about Quinn sleeping with journalists to gain
positive reviews for Depression Quest, painting her as nothing more than someone who slept her way
to her success, that the #GamerGate movement gained frightening traction. Quinn, who had
become known for her game Depression Quest which explores the reality of depression and was meant
to reach “people who didn’t understand depression or who had it and thought they were alone”
(Quinn, 41), was also subject to intense online harassment by angry male gamers, much like the ones
who attacked Sarkeesian -- perhaps even the very same crowd. Any woman in the industry who was
critical of sexism in gaming was thrown into the mix, and they were “condemned as not true gamers
and were subjected to death threats and incessant bullying and harassment on social media” which
included being doxxed -- having their private information released publicly:

21
“Every account, every photo, every bit of my past became a new data point as the mob developed a
detailed file on me, like freelance private investigators, and began targeting anyone in my life they
thought worth harassing in the same way. Working backward from the assumption that I was
deserving of everything horrible they could throw at me, they skewed every personal fact they could
find through a filter that proved my guilt. This kind of investigation goes by many names: the cringe-
inducing ‘90s term is ‘cyberstalking’; GamerGate’s preferred term is ‘digging’; and Alex and I referred
to it as ‘GamerGate’s Free Background Check.’” (Quinn, 81)

Ultimately, the gaming industry realized that women were an ever-increasing consumer audience and
in fact, had been there this whole time. GamerGaters stood by their claim that they were fighting
against bad games journalism, but it was clear that they were really fighting against diversity and
equality in gaming -- “those who associate with the GamerGate movement have illustrated that
Player One is not interested in making room for diversity, either in game content or in the larger
video game culture” (Chess, 13).

Riot Games exposé (2018)
In the summer of 2018, I was blissfully unaware of the bombshell that was about to be released
upon the gaming world. But on August 7th, Cecilia D’Anastasio published an article on Kotaku, a
popular game journalism website, exposing the bro culture at game developer Riot Games, known
for their popular MOBA game, League of Legends. She highlighted examples of women who had
managers asking them “if it was hard working at Riot being so cute” or implying that “her position
was a direct result of her appearance.” One woman even conducted her own experiment:

“After an idea she really believed in fell flat during a meeting, she asked a male colleague to present
the same idea to the same group of people days later. He was skeptical, but she insisted that he give it
22
a shot. ‘Lo and behold, the week after that, [he] went in, presented exactly as I did and the whole
room was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing.’ [His] face turned beet red and he had tears in his eyes
… They just didn’t respect women.’” (D’Anastasio)

Though there were a few female employees who reported not having experienced any discrimination
at the company, many described incidents such as:
• Seeing unsolicited and unwelcome pictures of male genitalia from bosses or colleagues (from
both male and female sources)
• Email threads about what it would be like to “‘penetrate’” a specific female employee, “in
which a colleague added that she’d be a good target to sleep with and not call again”
• Informed of being on a list getting passed around by senior leaders detailing who they’d
sleep with
o This was apparently intended as a compliment
• Feeling pressure to leave after making their concerns about gender discrimination known
• One of Riot’s male senior leaders regularly grabbing a male employee’s genitals
Riot has been known to emphasize hiring its core audience to prove that player focus is the
company’s number one priority. However, that means that Riot’s “core” gamers will largely consist
of a hiring pool of men -- as League of Legends is a MOBA, and only 10% of MOBA gamers are
female. D’Anastasio also cited several examples of former Riot employees who had been asked
gatekeeping questions in their interviews, and though ultimately hired, heard from other employees
that the interviewer or executive didn’t think they had “the grit” to be working at Riot. However,
even female Rioters (as employees are generally called) who, on paper, aligned with Riot’s values,
were criticized in ways that their male counterparts were not:

23
“A current Rioter who joined the company in 2016 … said she was excited to finally work
somewhere with values that aligned with hers. She described herself as candid, direct, and
comfortable in environments with open communication policies, like Riot’s. After nearly three years
at the company, however, she said she has not advanced. ‘When it comes to my growth,
development and advancement, the reason why I am not advancing has been explicitly told to me,’
she said. ‘I tend to be very direct. I tend to give open feedback. I tend to challenge other Rioters.
Those are Riot’s on-paper values, but the way it translates culturally is that, often, important
stakeholders, senior peers or my peers will feel that I am too direct.’ She said her manager has told
her she’s too emotional. ‘It’s more difficult to be a direct female than a direct man,’ she said. ‘I try
really hard to be that on-paper Rioter, live up to those values … I observe male Rioters acting that
way and being pretty successful, promoted to leadership positions, treated as leader. I don’t see
female Rioters able to be leaders in that kind of way.’ She added that roughly two-thirds of her
performance feedback is not about her work, but her personality.”

Two things caught my attention in re-reading D’Anastasio’s article for this thesis. One, that a current
Riot employee (at least at the time of publication) argued that “[blaming] people who don’t confront
the sexist behavior for the continuation of the sexist behavior … the ethical duty should lie with the
organization and not with the marginalized people to solve that problem.” Two, that most
employees interviewed for her article agreed that the underlying theme was that “this is a cultural
problem.”

It is certainly a cultural problem that women are being passed up for promotion despite filling that
higher role for a significant period of time and proving that they can handle the workload. It is
certainly a cultural problem that women are being gaslighted -- manipulated via psychological means
into questioning their own sanity -- and met with resistance when they try to explain certain
24
gendered microaggressions to their male colleagues. It is certainly a cultural problem that women are
targeted with highly specific game-related questions in interviews as if those interviewers are trying
to find ways to exclude them. Riot ended up being sued in November 2018 for the gender
discrimination D’Anastasio reported on, but since her article was published, the company has
publicly announced steps to reforming the company culture, including hiring the first Chief People
Officer and a new Chief Diversity Officer. These are important baby steps towards implementing
that systemic change that needs to happen in order to make the workplace feel and truly be
inclusive.

The Ellie “social experiment” (2019)
In terms of esports, professional female players are a rare find indeed. Using the Overwatch League
as an example, Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon was the first and only professional female Overwatch player,
and she was welcomed with generally open arms. I say generally because in 2016, which was one
year before she joined the Shanghai Dragons in Overwatch League’s inaugural season, she was
accused of cheating because her aim was too good to be true. Despite Blizzard Korea confirming
that Geguri wasn’t using any cheats or hacks, eventually she played live on stream to prove her skill
to people who still thought she was cheating -- her accusers, who had bet their entire esports careers
on her cheating, had to make good on their promises and they retired after seeing the stream (Chalk,
PCGamer & Ashcraft, Kotaku).

January of 2019 brought the coldest weather SoCal has ever experienced, but it also brought news of
a possible second female pro, Ellie, who was rising through the ranks of the North American
competitive Overwatch servers. The Contenders team, Second Wind, announced Ellie’s signing, which
seemed to spark hope that we would soon have a second female pro Overwatch player, and that the
25
glass ceiling for women in esports would crack even further. But as with Geguri, rumors that Ellie
was a fake account started circulating, doubting someone who rose so quickly under the radar, and
who didn’t speak much on voice comms -- or if she did, her voice was delayed (Erzberger, ESPN).
After thorough doxxing and much controversy over Twitter and Reddit, female Cloud9 streamer
Becca “Aspen” Rukavina revealed that Punisher, a male player on the North American server, had
made all of this up and played as Ellie as “some sort of ‘social experiment’ and show how the
esports and video game community as a whole reacts to a female professional gamer” (Erzberger,
ESPN). Second Wind also confirmed that Blizzard had notified them that Ellie was “not who they
claimed to be” and via a press release, “[apologized] to the community as a whole for not handling
this situation better than we should have, and we will aim to do better.”
26
Figure 1.
Those who doubted “Ellie” celebrated with gleeful and smug tweets, bragging to people who had
shown support before it was revealed that she was not actually real. Though Punisher gets to “opt
out” of the harassment he faced as “Ellie,” that’s not the case for other women in esports. There
have been a good handful of other successful female pro players: Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn who plays
27
StarCraft II; Seo “ToSsGirl” Ji-Soo, who played Starcraft: Brood War; Marie-Laure “Kayane” Norindr,
who played fighting games but whose claim to fame is Soulcalibur. But Punisher’s “social experiment”
found nothing new -- women face harsh discrimination in esports -- and in fact, sets our progress
towards inclusion and diversity back because now, all we’ll remember about female professional
gamers is what happened with “Ellie.”

How have we tried to make things right?
There have been various attempts at addressing the issue of normalizing the concept of “women in
gaming” and integrating true diversity and equality in the industry since it has largely been proven
that “people who do not fit the norm (i.e. the popular and marketing construction) of the U.S.
heterosexual, white, cisgendered male, adolescent gamer stereotype do in fact play these games”
(Shaw, 42). Lisa Nakamura points out in “Racism, Sexism, and Gaming’s Cruel Optimism” that two
strategies repeatedly come up to address these social issues. Some suggest that we have to diversify
game makers to address gaming’s racism and sexism. Others say that gaining respect by proving skill
with a female character or while being open about being female is the way to achieve “the freedom
not to be harassed while playing games.” But this makes freedom from harassment appear to be a
privilege, not a right (Nakamura). Four popular solutions have been suggested in the history of
trying to address sexism in gaming: (1) encouraging young girls to go into tech and gaming in order
to solve the “pipeline problem” (2) making more games catered to women (3) adding more female
characters into games (4) creating all-female organizations/teams/leagues.

Proposed Solution 1: Encouraging young girls to go into tech and gaming.
Target the young ones and they’ll be more interested and become the women in STEM that we say
we’re looking for. Sound familiar? Because it’s exactly what tech is trying to do -- recall the leaky
28
bucket analogy. No matter how many young girls we send to coding camp, no matter how many
women we encourage to pursue game development or engineering, there will be no real solution or
fix to our diversity issue if we don’t retain the women who are already here -- and I don’t mean this
in a “Hotel California/you-can-never-leave” way; retention is important but so is job satisfaction
and a healthy work environment. This solution basically says that if there are more women in the
industry, other women will be encouraged -- a common argument from academics and popular-
media critics, “[tying] the lack of portrayals of marginalized groups in video games to the fact that
there is little diversity in the game industry’s labor pool” (Shaw, 21).

Fun fact: there is no pipeline problem. This solution also assumes a lack of interest in tech and
gaming from young girls and from women, when women make up almost 50% of the gaming
public (Chess, 5). Despite all the efforts of #GamerGate advocates, adult women represent a greater
portion of the video game-playing population (33%) than boys under 18 (17%) (ESA study +
Malkowski and Russworm, x). In fact, according to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2018
study about the computer and video game industry, the proportions of average gamer by age group
are so close between male and female.

29

Figure 2.
Chess cites a 2007 poll that reported “only 11% of those working in the video game industry were
women. In recent years, this number has doubled, but only after years of critics (both inside and
outside of gaming culture) pushing for industry change” (Chess, 11-12). These numbers look
promising if they continue to increase as years go by, but how can we ensure that we are making the
workplace as inclusive as possible to retain a diverse workforce? How can we show younger girls
that their older counterparts aren’t regretting their decision to work in tech or gaming? How can we
fix that leaking bucket once and for all?

Proposed Solution 2: Making more games catered to women.
There are too few women in the industry because we don’t have games catered to them. The
reasoning goes: make more games for women and they’ll feel more welcome to work in gaming.
Well, I hate to break it to you, industry, but you might want to think about what that means. What
30
do “games for women” actually look like? Are we really only limited to match-three games and
striped candies and games in which Kim Kardashian becomes our BFF? The answer is no -- because
as Chess emphasizes time and time again in Ready Player Two, the games that are allegedly made for
women target the idea of a female gamer, and not the reality of how a woman games (15).
Identifying as a female gamer, and identification in general, isn’t as simple as “add x, y and z and
you’ve got a game for women!” Identification “is about seeing ourselves reflected in the world and
relating to images of others, both of which are critically tied to arguments for representation that
focus on media’s ability to create possible worlds” (Shaw, 70-71). Gaming is often touted as an art
because of its ability to take us away to worlds we couldn’t begin to imagine, and even though men
are often represented in nuanced ways that they are in real life, we can barely say the same for
women.

The goal for representation -- equal and accurate representation -- isn’t about adding 16 different
customization options for one facial feature, but it is about creating and making games that “reflect
more modes of being in the world” (Shaw, 143). Understanding that girls and women often play the
exact same games that boys and men do should lead to a shift in “how marginalized groups are
imagined and represented”; having “girl games” only emphasizes the distinction between male and
female gamers, which effectively places women as “the other,” which does not necessarily lead to
equality (Shaw, 169).

Proposed Solution 3: Adding more female characters into games.
Solution 2 is actually a great segue into solution 3: put more female characters in those bigger-budget
AAA titles so women can identify with them, because that’s what women want. Right? What
Adrienne Shaw actually found in her multiple studies of representation in-game, first with LGBT
31
gamers and then in investigating when and why representation matters to players, was that people
didn’t care about representation in-game. It wasn’t about seeing themselves in the games they
played; it was about correcting the culture around them. In Shaw’s LGBT study, addressing the
homophobia in gaming communities took precedence over just seeing queer characters in the games
they played, and across the board with the broader representation study, the “ambivalence” of the
interviewees was “a coping mechanism of sorts, which pushed back against discourses that sought to
make them responsible for their own exclusion” (ix-x):

If the logic goes that I need to make myself knowable as a market in order to be represented in a
medium I wish to consume, it is easier to not care than it is to articulate what I want, particularly
when I have never had the experience of getting what I want from representation. (x)

There are some pundits who think that “change will happen in the representation of minorities in
games when marginalized groups are seen as plausible markets for games” but this doesn’t mean
that women proving that they are a valid market for games -- which, as we’ve already mentioned, is
problematic because that shouldn’t be their responsibility -- will lead to equal representation in
mainstream games (Shaw, 169).

Female characters have long been viewed as “[commercialized] … for a heterosexual, male gaze,”
which doesn’t help with our attempts at shifting focus away from objectification of female gamers in
real life (Shaw, 21). Unfortunately, using a female avatar in some role-playing games means other
players may try to flirt with you, as one of Shaw’s interviewees pointed out:

32
“When he played the online avatar-based game World of Warcraft, he would not play as a female
avatar: ‘Picking a female avatar just has way too many random issues associated with it...There’s
always fourteen-year-old boys playing out there, and they see the avatar as female, and even if they
know psychologically that 90 percent of the people that play these games are male, they are still going
to, you know, hope that that’s a female and try to interact with you in that way.’ Here, [Shaw’s
interviewee]’s choices were not solely shaped by his own desire to create an avatar with which he
could best identify but rather by the structural misogyny of the online game space in which female
avatars were often sexually harassed.” (Shaw, 137)

Another even more cringe-worthy example comes from Jennifer deWinter and Carly A. Kocurek
and one of their interviewees:

“My 8-year-old loves Minecraft [2011, Mojang] … Occasionally we let her play in multi-player if one
of us is nearby. One day she was [playing] around and she said, ‘someone said they want to have sex
with me.’ I looked at the computer and sure enough, someone had written, ‘(her name), I want to
have sex with you.’ I got on the keyboard and wrote, ‘She’s 8. Say that again.’ They then
disconnected.” (deWinter and Kocurek, 69)

Adding more female characters into games won’t necessarily change anything, but portraying female
characters with more nuanced traits and correcting culture in-game might.

Proposed Solution 4: Creating all-female organizations/teams/leagues.
One of the reasons the title of this thesis is formatted as “(in)visibility” and not just straight-up
“invisibility” or “visibility” is that there are indeed women who work in gaming and that there are
indeed women who play games. We just don’t see them highlighted as game developers or as pro
33
esports players. It seems only natural that, following the logic that more women in the industry
would encourage others, all-female or female-only organizations would be the answer to furthering
the goal of diversity in gaming. Though gaming leagues like “the PMS Clan and the Frag Dolls
helped to form a point of gender resistance and persuade gamers and game companies that certain
women did want to play,” it helped to an extent (Chess, 10). The Frag Dolls were an awe-inspiring
group of women recruited by game publisher Ubisoft who broke the stereotype of girls not being
good at competitive games by being the first all-female team to win first place at a mixed-gender
Rainbow Six Vegas tournament in 2006. They were unfortunately -- and perhaps even prematurely --
disbanded in 2015, because Ubisoft deemed the group unnecessary seeing as how “women had
found their footing in the games industry” (Ballou).

By no means am I insinuating that none of these efforts have helped. They have -- but again, I
would say only to an extent. A mixture of these efforts has propelled the issue of diversity and
tolerance in the gaming industry to where it is now, teetering on the brink between falling back to
where we were around #Gamergate and a time of greater acceptance where it isn’t just women who
are actively fighting against everything that prevents us from succeeding. It was the premature
abandonment of these efforts that led to their short-lived success; if we nurtured and encouraged
the growth of organizations like XO Academy, an intensive training program that focuses on
helping female fighting game players up their game (no pun intended), The Supergirl Gamer Pro, a
competitive female video game tournament focused on supporting women in gaming, and Troy
Ladies of League, a high school all-female League of Legends team based out of Troy High School in
Fullerton, California -- if we helped these groups find success and once and for all disprove the
assumption that girls can’t play, we’ll be underway to finally being seen as equals.

34
Chapter Three: No Girls Allowed/The Boys-Only Club
“The danger and isolation women feel doesn’t have to do with whether women are good at their jobs; it has to do with
whether they are in the workplace at all. Their presence is at best an anomaly, leading to isolation, or is interpreted as
an invasion, requiring forceful defense.” -Jennifer deWinter & Carly A. Kocurek, “Aw Fuck, I Got a Bitch on
My Team!”

After the events of #GamerGate, the world got a good taste of what “gamer culture” was like; it’s a
space where racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia often go unchecked. “Toxic” is how this
culture is described, one that’s “exclusive” and full of “in-jokes and brand worship, rituals to
establish whether the participants are in or out of the tribe” (Shaw, 38). Let’s remind ourselves of
Katherine Cross and fictive ethnicity -- where the term “nerd” by definition (as a male who felt
superior to traditional sports bros and who was also rejected sexually by females) can’t include
women -- and we can see that it is applied here as well, with the term “gamer”:

“This setup, wherein big-budget console gaming made games for a primarily targeted masculine
demographic, created a culture of gaming that has been referred to by many as ‘toxic.’ Male-
dominated gamer culture is often exclusionary. Multiplayer systems and games (e.g. Xbox Live)
involve racist, sexist, and heterosexist language that has long alienated new players. Mia Consalvo,
Adrienne Shaw, and Amanda Cote have illustrated that gamer culture is problematically constructed
in exclusive ways and that the very terminology of ‘gamer’ should be questioned.” (Chess, 12)

Some of these same “gamers” are YouTubers or streamers (who shall remain unnamed so we don’t
give them views they can monetize) who make a living off of, for example, outlining strategies for
harassing girl gamers. According to them, “feminism is the blight. Women are manipulative and
sadistic. Oh, and they are weaker both in-game and out of game” (Malkowski and Russworm, 67).
35
Toxic gamer culture is also often fueled by an anger and clear discomfort at the idea of sharing the
gaming space with women, which “seems to be based on at least two factors -- sexist (as well as
racist, homophobic and ageist) beliefs about the abilities and proper place of female players, and
fears about the changing nature of the game industry” (Consalvo). These beliefs and fears manifest
in the kinds of harassment so many women have spoken up about -- the worst of which include
rape and death threats and doxxing to encourage other men to treat women in this malicious way.
Some features and functions of games, though, “[maintain] toxic environments for female players”
by “[forcing] players to reveal their identities via voice chat” -- something so incredibly useful when
it comes to team-based strategy, but certainly uncomfortable if you didn’t want your gender to be
revealed (Chess, 11). For this reason, a lot of women and young girls say they avoid using voice chat
-- the odds of harassment over voice are so high that it’s difficult to say that the benefits outweigh
the costs.

I want to emphasize that what I’m highlighting here about gamer culture is the worst of it -- there
are, of course, people who don’t engage in this kind of behavior and do their best to correct it when
it happens. But complacency and settling for “well, it’s better than it was a few years ago” is not how
we get true visibility in the gaming industry as equals. Correcting the false stereotypes and
generalizations about being a woman in gaming is important because “our identity is partly shaped
by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of
people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to
them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves” (Shaw, 147). The gaming
and tech industries have long claimed they want to be more inclusive, and gaming -- especially since
#GamerGate -- is particularly “concerned about hate speech in online gaming,” but nothing can
truly change unless, both in-game and outside the game, representation is normalized and
36
integrated naturally into games, and is “one avenue for change for which … [the video game
industry] should be held accountable” (Shaw, 207).

I say naturally because “how stereotypes are used matters more than that they are used” but “how
they are used is made meaningful through consumption” -- if stereotypes are used to disrespect and
disparage marginalized groups and make that distinction that these groups are the “other,” the
cultural and systemic change that we need to be seen as equals will not occur; “how identities are
signaled is important but why they are signaled is crucial” (Shaw, 179-180). There are ways to
represent marginalized groups without relying and capitalizing on a history of oppression, and there
are ways to focus on developing diverse characters in-game without thinking too much about
labeling or categorizing them to check off boxes. In the end, it is less about marginalized groups
being able to see themselves in the industry, and more about everyone else seeing and acknowledging
diverse identities in the space (Shaw, 191-192).

Everyone who plays games is a gamer, but the negative associations with the term lead to the simple
fact that not everyone will self-identify as a gamer. This screenshot of a tweet that came across my
timeline demonstrates how loaded the term “gamer” is, considering the industry is still recovering
from the incidents of #GamerGate.

Figure 3.
37
The reality is that while we are all gamers, the industry has divided us between “hardcore” and
“casual” gamers. Hardcore gamers are usually thought of as the main marketable audience for video
games because they are often players who “[have] preference for science fiction, zombies, and
fantasy fictions, has played a large number of video games, will invest large amounts of time and
resources toward playing video games, and enjoys difficult games” (Chess, 13). You know, some
unshowered white bearded dude yelling through his headset and downing energy drinks while he
plays some horrifyingly graphic shooter – that’s who most people think of. Casual gamers, on the
other hand, are the opposite -- they “[like] ‘positive and pleasant fictions,’ [have] not played many
games, and [are] willing to invest only minimal time” (Chess, 13). In Shaw’s interviews, the
distinction between hardcore and casual was made evident in how her interviewees chose to identify
as a gamer: “gamer as a term meant something more to them than someone who plays games …
gamer identity was described in relation to the amount of time, money, and socializing they spent on
games, the genre of games they played, and their knowledge of gaming subcultural references”
(Shaw, 43). Self-identifying as a hardcore gamer often involves a little internal gatekeeping; because
“genres meant for men tend to get taken more seriously than do genres intended for women
audiences,” the label of “casual gamer” or playing a “casual game” is often discussed with a tone of
contempt or disdain (Chess, 15):

“It is easy to dismiss feminized gaming, or games created specifically for female audiences, as being
unimportant. Their topics and themes are often small, and their scope does not carry the weight of a
hardcore, AAA video game. Yet these games are changing the market dramatically and rapidly,
forming a new kind of industry and a new kind of player. ‘Casual,’ the terminology as well as the
technology, has politics. The term itself implies a group of dilettantes who do not require the
dedication or the skills to necessarily be real gamers. Similarly, the GamerGate movement suggests
that the advent of casual gaming (in some part) has created a giant, industry-wide rift.” (Chess, 15-16)
38

Even the high-school girls referred to in the tweet above probably didn’t count themselves as
gamers initially because games like Candy Crush, The Sims and Minecraft are considered “casual games”
often with “negative (read: feminine) connotations” (Chess, 14). However, as mentioned previously,
hardcore games can be played casually, and casual games can be played in a hardcore manner -- why
then are these categories of games (and in turn, gamers) still so gendered?

“Of this negative connotation, John Vanderhoef writes, ‘When casual gamers are denigrated as
feminine, and therefore ‘trivial,’ and traditional video games are celebrated for their seriousness and
authenticity, both of which are qualities nested in masculinity, a power hierarchy is created that places
the masculine in the superior position and the feminine in the inferior position, the result of which is
the reproduction and perpetuation of gender inequalities.” (Chess, 14)

How the industry imagines female gamers and male gamers is a result of “the industry’s construction
of the hard-core gamer as the ideal market, resulting in a lack of adequate attention paid, for
example, to casual-gaming fans” (Shaw, 45). Despite the fact that women and young girls do actually
play hardcore AAA titles, “they have often been considered outliers, marginalized, pushing their way
into a space not originally intended for them” -- which doesn’t quite make sense, given that the
history of video games began without making this distinction in target audiences by gender (Chess,
4). This rather heinous misconception by the gaming industry is one reason why the idea of the
female gamer is oftentimes inaccurate, because there is a “strong distinction between the real, lived
experiences of women players as opposed to the perception of women players as they are
constructed, designed and managed by the video game industry” (Chess, 5). It is up to the industry
as a larger whole to deconstruct this idea that women don’t play the games that men do and when
39
they do, they aren’t as good at it. Women play games, period. It’s time to see that women defy all
expectations in gaming, and that we are truly equals.

40
Chapter Four: You’re Making It Up
“You can find annual diversity reports from most of the big companies now, highlighting shifts in employee
demographics and glossy profiles of staff from underrepresented groups. Whenever a new one comes out, though, it …
strike[s] the same tone: hopeful, confident, maybe even … inspiring. But meanwhile, their actual numbers? They
barely shift.” -Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Technically Wrong

As with any sort of call for social change, there has been resistance from people who believe that the
industry is fine as it is. They see that women exist in gaming, and they’re either indifferent or are
vehemently against the idea of women invading what is stereotypically a men’s space. Yes, female
engagement and viewership in gaming and esports are on the rise, but sheer numbers don’t
necessarily mean that women are visible as equals, and it certainly doesn’t mean that harassment and
discrimination have been eliminated. Ahead are the counterarguments towards making the gaming
industry a more inclusive space and why they are invalid.

“If you can’t handle the jokes, leave”

This is a classic one -- people who criticize women and others for reporting harassment like to say
that everything is just for fun, that it was only a joke, calm down, stop being so sensitive, don’t bring
politics into gaming, etc. The list goes on and on.

The thing is, the kind of humor that depends on throwing others under the bus is hurtful from an
objective standpoint. Demeaning others to raise yourself up is deplorable at best -- and this tears
down the idea of meritocracy in gaming and tech. If you are a man who heavily engages in bro
41
culture, and you disparage and disrespect women and people of color and LGBTQ people in order
to make yourself look better, did you truly earn your position on your own merit?

Let’s turn the tables, shall we? By this counterargument’s logic, if hostile men can’t handle the
women being in gaming with them, shouldn’t they leave? :eyes emoji:

Demanding that women leave if they “can’t handle it” assumes that if women left the gaming
industry, they wouldn’t encounter the harassment/discrimination/all-around inequality that we say
we do in gaming. However, that would be completely false. We don’t live in a post-sexist, post-racist
world. Sure, we’re making slow progress, but sexism and racism still exist. Politics are not something
easily separated from gaming either, especially when games are still marketed as for specific genders
and plenty of racist and sexist language is brought into in-game chat.

There is also the implied assumption that changing behaviors and attitudes to be more inclusive is a
waste of time because we just consume games and play them -- how do we contribute to the culture
around them? According to T.L. Taylor, we aren’t just “passive audience members”; we are “active
co-creators in producing it as a meaningful experience and artifact” (Shaw, ???) By participating in
gameplay, in conversation around the games, in fanart and cosplay and fanfiction, in competition, in
marketing the games, in development, and in so many areas, we as game consumers shape the
culture around games and the loudest voices have been the most toxic -- thereby shaping “gamer
culture” to be exclusionary. But without the women who help make the games you love playing and
who help put those games out there, you wouldn’t have anything to be enjoying in the first place.

“Inequality doesn’t exist in gaming”
42

If it isn’t outright sexism and attempts to exclude women everywhere you turn, people like to claim
that the gaming industry is past all of this and that we live in a post-sexist/post-racial world. I will
concede that the industry tends to lean leftward, and that things have certainly improved over time --
but we are not past the racism and sexism that still very much exists today. People who claim to not
have seen the inequalities, discrimination, harassment and all around injustice that many women
describe also perpetuate this idea that we’re just making it up:

“Things are not fair for you. Things have never been fair for you. The words that will be used on you
will be different, worse. The way your audience treats you will suddenly infuriate you in a million tiny
ways that seem unreasonable to men, because, like, dude, they’re not saying you’re lying or something, it’s just,
they’ve never seen it, and so maybe you should be less sensitive and more community-minded.”
(Alexander and Shevinsky, 42-43)

Although the gaming industry is, in a broad sense, forgiving and accepting -- casual dress codes at
the office, tattoos not being taboo, fantastically colored and dyed hair perceived as very normal -- its
“persistent racial, gender, and sexuality problematics seem particularly disarticulated from our so-
called post-racial, postfeminist, and post-civil-rights existential imaginary, also known as the Age of
Obama” (Malkowski and Russworm, x). In an era where it seemed like discrimination was on its way
to being a thing of the past, it certainly is odd that an industry that is usually pretty accepting actually
continued to be just as toxic, racist, sexist and homophobic as it had been -- all of which can be
attributed to the culture surround gaming as a whole. What community efforts were made to
celebrate and include the people of color in the industry? Our LGBTQ friends? Our women? Did
we make a united effort to crack down on hate speech and disrespectful language? Probably not as
43
much as we could have. Organizations like Black Girls Code and Girls Who Code were founded in
2011 and 2012 respectively, but even so the majority of gamer culture continues to be fairly
intolerant towards anyone who isn’t a cis-het white male.

If we look at our industry culture with an intersectional lens (as we should), it is also interesting to
note that there is a “unique brand of double oppression [in gaming]: demeaning and victimizing
women of color (WOC), especially in gaming’s action narratives, and excluding WOC designers
from the games’ development process altogether” (Malkowski and Russworm, xii). For anyone who
says that discrimination and inequality don’t exist in gaming, this is unfortunately not true. In order
to make this statement true for everyone, we have to make sure that in our efforts to point out good
eggs in the industry, we aren’t invalidating other people’s negative experiences.

Susie Kim, general manager for Overwatch League team London Spitfire, suddenly found herself
under fire for a tweet she posted a year ago in response to someone else saying: “I’m a woman AND
Asian - and I agree with [Frodan] 100% - in the last 10+ years I have never felt that I was
discriminated against due to my ethnicity or sex/gender; I have always been hired for my abilities
and merits.” While these experiences are certainly valid and have happened to a lucky few, messages
like this can be misconstrued as “these problems don’t exist because I haven’t experienced them!”
Again, her experience is valid and should be seen as a celebration of sorts -- that there are good
human beings in this industry and that it’s not all bad.

But we shouldn’t let experiences like this justify complacency -- if anything, this should fire us up
and say, “Hey, look how cool it is that this is normal! Diversity hires, who?” Our goal should be to
44
normalize women in gaming as a matter of fact, and perhaps we really will be on our way to a post-
sexist world.

“Women have an easier time getting hired and signed because they’re girls”

A new argument that surfaced after the “Ellie” incident was that women in gaming actually have an
easier time getting hired and signed onto professional teams because they’re female -- essentially the
“diversity hire” argument.

What might, at a superficial level, seem like esports is opening up to the idea of women at the
professional level, is actually a perfect foundation for dissenters to “justify” doxxing anyone who
seems remotely female. This sets our progress back; after all, accusations of being “another Ellie”
are bound to spread like wildfire should another women rise to the top in any competitive scene, but
especially in Overwatch.

Women shouldn’t be “diversity hires” or hired to “fill a quota.” Hire us on our accomplishments
and our skills -- there are so many of us. There isn’t a problem with the pipeline; there’s a problem
with the culture surrounding our industry of automatically thinking a women is inferior or “won’t be
a good culture fit.” There are plenty of highly skilled and frankly, probably overqualified women out
there; let us decide for ourselves whether or not a company is a good culture fit.

“Women don’t want to be visible; they have no interest in games”

45
I have only encountered the argument that women don’t want to be visible twice: once, when I was
discussing my thesis topic with a friend and it was brought up as a devil’s advocate counterargument,
and only one more time from a survey respondent.

Either (a) it’s true, and we’ve never given a voice to it or (b) it’s false, and we haven’t heard this
argument for a reason. The phrase “women don’t want to be visible” could be followed by:
• … as players (and in turn, as professional players)
• … in the workplace
• … as being on equal footing with men
The argument itself is vague, as is the idea voiced by it. While it may be true that some women don’t
feel comfortable with high visibility in the gaming industry, it’s worth exploring why that is, beyond
simple extraversion vs. introversion hypotheses. There has to be an external reason why women
don’t want to be visible, and I believe that stems from (1) knowing that harassment is a very real
possibility if they were highly visible, (2) being under the assumption that gaming isn’t a welcome
environment for them -- all of which manifest in the defense mechanism of avoiding voice chat, and
a predilection of choosing professions that are mocked for being feminine (see marketing, public
relations, communications, community management, etc.). Again, this is not to say that women don’t
pick professions like engineering and development and don’t succeed -- they of course exist and they
succeed at what they do (hats off to you ladies). This is to say that the idea that women don’t choose
these kinds of jobs because they don’t want to be known for it -- they don’t want that visibility -- is
false. It is the lack of early education and a reluctance from parents (which is changing now) and
society (which hasn’t changed) to tear down gender barriers when it comes to play.

46
From the research that’s been done both by myself and other game studies scholars, it isn’t that
women don’t want to play games. We definitely do, and we like to. It’s that games have not been
catered to us -- and I don’t mean this in the sense that there are no “games for women,” because
that’s just nonsensical. Chess speaks to this in Ready Player Two, but while men play games as leisure,
women play games as a way to fill their time; “the themes and genres of gendered gaming …
illustrate strange and compelling patterns and draw a very specific picture of what an idealized
woman gamer might look like and how that woman should play” (Chess, 5). While games like Candy
Crush and Diner Dash and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood may appeal to women, they also appeal to men
and everyone in between. Likewise, games like Call of Duty, CS:GO, and Diablo may seem like “guy
games” but the truth is, plenty of women and nonbinary people play them too.

“Women just aren’t as qualified or as good as men are”

The argument that women just don’t have the skills when it comes to work or in competitive play is
simply a matter of gatekeeping.

Last year, I wrote a piece for the Relevance Report (USC Annenberg’s annual publication containing
essays about emerging issues and forecasting trends and topics impacting society, business and
communications in the coming year) about how gatekeeping in the gaming industry is very common.
Gaming and esports have enormous online communities that rally around a common passion, but
some members take it upon themselves to decide who does and does not have a right to identify
with these groups. Women are often the target of these gatekeepers (who tend to be male). The
women are asked very specific questions to “test” their knowledge of the very thing these two
parties have in common.
47

Why purposefully exclude people from enjoying something that you also enjoy? In his book Good
Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports, Roland Li writes that the reason could be twofold. First that it’s “a
backlash by a hardcore...fan base dealing with the popularization of the industry and exposure to
more groups,” because “there’s often contempt for newcomers in gaming, an environment where
expertise and experience are lauded.” Second, some people are insecure, which fuels harassment.

Many women avoid voice communication in-game because of the harassment they end up enduring.
Just ask streamer AnneMunition, who made a video compilation and blog post with proof of male
players making sexist and derogatory comments towards her despite her gaming skill. In competitive
games like Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, voice chat is integral to synergy and effective
teamwork. But when your teammates are making crude comments like “you’re shit at the game”
when only you make a mistake, or calling you a bitch for not accepting their friend request, how
likely are you to use voice comms? (Park, 2018)

This idea that girls can’t game or aren’t “real gamers” doesn’t just exist in the gaming industry; it’s a
part of mainstream culture as well. One of Shaw’s interviewees expressed a need to “prove herself”
when it came to playing against male opponents, which I also found in my own survey:

“[interviewee] got more absorbed when playing against men because she felt she had to prove
herself. She was a very skilled player. … She indirectly related her expertise and absorbed play to
gendered dynamics. They motivated her because, she said, ‘When I’m playing a guy, I get fully
absorbed because I really have to win. Because he just expects me to lose anyway, because I’m a girl.’
… Her mother walked through during part of the gaming interview and actually insisted that I should
48
really talk to her son, who was the ‘real gamer.’ Upon watching Sasha play, however, she said, ‘But
she’s doing alright,’ and left the room. Sasha seemed annoyed by the exchange.” (Shaw, 81)

Because the idea that games aren’t for women is so entrenched in society, it reflects in even day-to-
day interactions with people who are not actively involved in the gaming industry. If game
companies say they want to include and recruit more women, (1) they should be looking at talent
and skill, because women are just as good at men, if not better at some things (2) they should be
taking more of a stand to show the rest of both the entertainment industry and society as a whole
that women are considered welcome and equals (3) they should not be hiring women and people of
color and LGBT folks just for the sake of being “diversity hires.” The only way to normalize the
existence of these marginalized groups in the gaming industry is to act accordingly, that it’s a matter
of course that these people are here.

49
Chapter Five: Pro Tips
“Let’s stop saying that women aren’t here, or that they aren’t skilled. Let’s instead look at why we’re not
seeing/hiring/promoting/funding/respecting the women who are.” -Elissa Shevinsky, “The Pipeline Isn’t The
Problem”

In conducting a survey of those working in the gaming industry and those who don’t but want to, or
are involved in some way as a player or fan, I hoped to get a sense of what the climate in the
industry is like. The survey, sent out as a link via Twitter, was geared toward gaming industry people
and other methodology included focused interviews of certain respondents that allowed me to talk
with them further, as well as an in-depth literature review, the results of which you have read
through up to here. Because I’m aware that most of my network is on the same page as I am about
pushing for the visibility of women in the gaming industry to be on equal footing with our male
counterparts -- which actually leans more into pushing for this visibility to signify that we are equal
-- I was expecting some responses to refer to solutions that have been thrown around, like
increasing support for women in gaming, having companies take a stand against toxicity, etc. I did
also expect to see responses from those who disagreed, and the extent to which they aggressively
attacked me as “one of those whiny cunts” and this topic actually proved my point -- that
harassment of women in gaming still exists, despite some loud voices that attest that that’s not true.
A couple of respondents also complained that my questions were leading -- I did this for two
reasons: (1) to make the survey as accessible as possible to potential female respondents who have
experienced inequality in the industry (2) to get dissenters to reveal how they really feel. These
dissenting opinions have been left in their original, unedited form -- I did not fix grammar or
spelling errors, and I have not censored any profanity because I think it’s important that whoever is
50
reading this understands how severe some of this harassment can get. The survey questions can be
found in the appendix.

Though I closed the survey a week earlier than I intended to due to fears expressed by my family –
the aggression in some of my responses made them feel unsafe -- I was still able to get enough
responses (252 in total) to see that the majority of women still experienced (not just saw or heard or
found, but experienced) discrimination and harassment in the industry.

When asked about the top misconceptions about women in gaming, among the top responses were:
1. Women aren’t as good as men when it comes to playing the actual games.
2. Women are faking their interest in games and just want attention.
3. Women have a “significant other” involved in the industry and that’s how they get here.

The fourth top misconception about women in gaming was the free text response, which was
intended to allow respondents to cite other stereotypes they’d heard or seen that I hadn’t included in
the multiple selectable options since I can’t claim to have heard all the stereotypes and
misconceptions in the world about women in gaming.

Out of the 41 free responses for misconceptions, 10 were neutral and negative sentiments -- neutral
being indifferent or saying they didn’t think women faced any issues in the gaming industry and
negative being aggressively so, telling me things like:
“What a stupid question. Not a single person I have ever gamed with parroted that nonsense. Are
you just trying to make an issue out of something that isn’t an issue?” (female)

51
“Nobody cares. So stop shoving it down our throats.” (prefer not to say)

“Women ruin video games and are attention seeking thots.” (male)

“These are literally all bulshit. Ive been ganing since I was 5 years old, have been in competitions, and
played PvE and PvP in MMORPGs and never once have I ever faced a single one of these or been
discriminated against. Stop playing the victim in every part of your life and youll find that life is way easier.
News flash NOBODY CARES YOU HAVE A VAGINA” (female)

“Literally never heard a single of this bullshit selection and i am part of various gaming communities
for few decades (started by TTRPG, first console, moved on to newer designs ended up with PC) IF i ever
heard something that might or might not be true (i cant read their minds) its that women are on average
uninterested in gaming as whole and thats the reason why they are so rare in gaming community. Oh and few
my friends complained that whenever they reveal they are girls whole chat/VOIP etc. will instantly be
flooded by ‘grill omg its grill’ or ‘send nudes’ Though this happen only in more ‘mainstream’ games like CoD
with community that have average 15 years old members. When its game with more mature community,
people generally dont really care she is girl and just play with her normally.” (male)

All of the above proved my point that the gaming industry is not entirely an accepting or welcoming
environment for women, and the hostility doesn’t just come from men -- it also comes from other
women. The issue of pitting women against their fellow women is not isolated to the tech industry,
as we’ve seen, but it also blends into the gaming industry. Again, both are male-dominated spaces,
which doesn’t mean by a long shot that there are no women there. One respondent didn’t think
there were any obstacles for women in gaming because “there are a lot of successful women in the
industry”; this misses the point that room still exists for equality and having a truly diverse
52
workforce who is not hired for their demographic characteristics, but rather on their merit and skill.
I of course believe we should celebrate the women who are successful in this industry; that should
go without saying. But in order to increase visibility of women as equals in the industry, we can’t be
complacent by seeing women in gaming who are successful and think that that’s the end of that.

As for the biggest obstacle(s) for women in gaming, an overwhelming number of responses cited
some form of sexism (52 responses) or harassment (72 responses) as a barrier, but another obstacle
that was named was “not being taken seriously” -- most respondents related this generally
throughout the industry as both professionals and as consumers. They reported that women were
not taken seriously when they expressed interest in gaming or when they showed skill in playing
games, which were both additional themes in the responses for this question -- the assumptions that
women lack both the skills and the interest in gaming to succeed or even allowed to be present in
the industry.

Opinions on whether sexism/bro culture/boys-only club was prevalent in the industry or not again,
leaned mostly yes, and placed the blame on (1) education growing up and (2) society’s gender
standards. The respondents argued that children are taught that video games are for boys, so when
they become adults, they don’t go into gaming because they were taught that that wasn’t “their”
space. Likewise, men who lash out at women in or trying to get in to the industry do so because they
see it as an invasion of “their” space -- “many men don’t like to feel challenged, and women
challenge them.” Though not referred to in so many terms, gatekeeping was something mentioned
throughout the majority of these responses. Respondents reported being told that they weren’t
“good enough because [they were] a woman” or feeling like they had to “prove [themselves] to be
even considered an equal sometimes.”
53

Asking what steps respondents believed were necessary to achieve gender equality in the gaming
industry led respondents to be more split in their opinions -- these were the most frequently
suggested steps:
• Get the gaming community comfortable with reporting disruptive behavior and calling each
other out
• Have more serious consequences for people who are reported
• Encourage more women to speak up about the harassment and discrimination they face
• Have more frontrunners that are women, both in-game and out, with accurate portrayals
• Encourage girls from a younger age that video games are for them
• Encourage men to stand up to people who engage in disruptive behavior

Respondents ranked their answers for who they think should be leading efforts for change as:
1. Other (39%)
2. Game companies (30%)
3. Those who identify as female (14%)
4. Those who identify as male (12%)
5. Journalists/media (5%)

Out of the free text responses for “other,” 72% of respondents said efforts for change should be led
by everyone because the responsibility does not rely on one group alone due to the issue being a
cultural one. Even the negative responses that told me “the problem doesn’t exist except in your
mind” or “no one shit up and play the games cunt” make it clear that the problem with the visibility
of women in gaming stems from the surrounding culture. As another respondent said: “Everyone.
54
Literally all of the above and anyone else we missed. This is also bigger than gaming. This all stems
from certain people’s belief that women can’t do the same things men can.” This overwhelming
response of an “everyone should do their part mentality” gives me hope that the cultural and
systemic shift is already underway.

Although there will always be resistance to change, I believe that the change in attitude is already
underway. Whether people like it or not, efforts like the Girls in Gaming Summit that was presented
by LA Valiant, an Overwatch League team, and groups like Women of Esports that highlight and
celebrate the women already in the industry, are the first steps towards this shift towards a more
accepting and welcome culture. The responsibility does not just lie on women, however; it also relies
on those who don’t identify as female to step up, report disruptive behavior and call people out
when they make inappropriate remarks or are disparaging to women, and it relies on game
development and publishing companies and studios to crack down on players who engage in this
type of behavior. By demonstrating that the games these companies make are for everyone and not
just a single demographic, attitudes will start to shift even more to normalizing the concept of
“women in gaming” in a positive way.

Our current problem doesn’t just fall between a binary male and female distinction; we have to think
about how this separation and inequality are affecting the LGBTQ gamer community as well
because the discrimination doesn’t just end at cis-gendered women either. Note in the following
screenshots how Delaney King shared her experience on Twitter, contrasting how she was treated
before transition and after when searching for a job within the industry:
55

Figure 4.
56

Figure 5.
57
58

Figures 5 and 6.

59

Figure 7.
60

Figure 8.

Figure 9.
61
We can’t isolate gender in gaming as one category, and isolate race or sexual orientation as others,
and examine the industry as such. We have to take an intersectional approach both within and
outside the industry, since as much as we like to think gaming and esports is taking over (which it
eventually will), we’re still a little bubble in the larger scheme of entertainment.

The following are suggested courses of action for all of us, in order of importance according to
survey respondents:

Game companies
When designing and developing characters, thinking of how the female characters are portrayed and
thinking of how the male characters can be portrayed might both add new layers of creativity to
games and a new way of seeing reality. Perpetuating stereotypes like damsels in distress or
differentiating “male” armor from “female” armor by taking away 80% of the armor for female
characters won’t give women any power or agency in real life. Because games are a direct link to
creating culture, a broader cultural change toward celebrating and highlighting women as equals
won’t happen unless games start doing it too. This was a suggestion made by Shaw as well:

“If designers would rise to the challenge presented by a sociology of the body and a more
complicated understanding (and rendering) of gender, the possibilities for evocative and immersive
environments might begin to truly draw in a diverse gaming population and legitimize those already
playing.” (Shaw, 223)

Acknowledge your female audiences; we’ve been here all along, playing and enjoying and supporting
the games that have generalized as “for boys.” Humans are full of nuances; we are complex
62
creatures and demonstrating that in game character representation will open doors to so many
possibilities.

Crack down on accounts and players who are reported. A number of survey respondents expressed
disappointment and resignation regarding reporting disruptive behavior, saying that nothing came
out of it and reporting resulted in no real consequences.

Those who identify as female/nonbinary
As tiring as it can be to keep reinforcing what is and is not appropriate to say to us, we need to
speak out more and be more vocal. So many of us avoid using voice chat because of the potential
harassment we can get, but using it will actually help normalize the concept of women who game.
We can do this together.

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to not experience any harassment or
discrimination, don’t join in and put down other women in order to be “one of the bros.” Don’t
mock other women for how they choose to perform their femininity. Women who game come in all
kinds of shapes and styles and forms -- but we all share a love for gaming.

Align with a common goal. Respect each other. Understand that your actions as a non-male in
gaming can and will be used against you and everyone else who doesn’t identify as male. Lift each
other up. As Leigh Alexander wrote: “You can improve the climate of women’s spaces, of
professional events where we are present, by remembering how far you’ve come and how far you
have to go. … Remember who and what the real enemy is. It is never the other woman in the party
with you.” (Shevinsky, 46)
63

Those who identify as male
Be good allies. Stand up to people who disparage your female teammates and are disrespectful.
Understand that most women don’t play games for attention -- most of us are here to unwind and
relax and just play, much like you.

If you are someone who agrees with the idea that women should leave gaming and that we’re all
making it up -- frankly, I’m surprised you made it all the way here. But while you are reading,
consider this.
Learn what kinds of discrimination and harassment women in tech and gaming face. Read books
about it. Don’t dismiss the idea that inequality exists, and don’t dismiss it as something that’s
“given.” Don’t dismiss whistleblowers.

Dismiss your disdain and condescension towards women and LGBTQ people who are telling you
time and time again that there are problems with gender equality in the tech and gaming industries.
Open your mind to new perspectives.

Gamer/player communities
Whatever game you play, welcome all females. Don’t ask them to prove their value or worth; don’t
automatically assume they’re terrible at the game. They could be and it could be their first time, but
that doesn’t mean it’s okay to rage at them and drop them from teams.

64
Learn that toxicity, disruptive behavior, whatever you want to call it is not acceptable. Trash-talking
is not harassment (we love some good banter!) but it is harassment when you bring in someone’s
gender into it and when you start making sexist jokes. They’re not funny, by the way.

Don’t be afraid to praise your female teammates for something awesome they did. Be genuine about
it, and you’re not white-knighting if you understand that they’re playing the game for much the same
reason as you -- which is most likely not to find love, sex or attention.

Mainstream society + media
Know and understand that games aren’t just for boys -- they’re for everyone. If you know any young
girls who express an interesting in gaming, encourage it and cultivate their curiosity. Let them
explore gaming as a career, whether in communications or marketing roles or as an engineer or
designer.

If you have friends or significant others who game and you don’t, understand that this is something
they’re passionate about. You’re probably a nerd about something too, whether that might be films,
music, fashion, architecture, business -- you name it. This perception of “gamers” as “neckbeards
isolated in their parents’ basements” as one of my respondents described is no more. Being called a
nerd isn’t even an insult anymore.

We all have to work together in order to effect positive, lasting change. Cultures and behaviors don’t
shift easily; I am well-aware. But if Shaw wrote in 2014 that “rather than call upon groups to demand
representation or display their need to be heard, … the impetus is on everyone to acknowledge and
celebrate difference” -- five years later, the message is the same because gamer culture has to change
65
to be more inclusive and because behaviors encouraging harassment and sexism need to stop (Shaw,
222).

Work together to increase the visibility of women in gaming as equals and not just in sheer numbers
in the workforce and player community.

66
Conclusion
“LOOK AROUND. THIS NOT WHAT WORLD COULD BE.
THIS NOT WHAT WORLD
SHOULD BE. THIS NOT WHAT WORLD MUST BE.
YOU WILL FIX IT.” -FAKEGRIMLOCK

My goal in writing about this topic was to make the gender-based discrimination women in the
gaming industry face -- and in so doing, to make the need for our status as equals to be seen. In
doing so, we would need to achieve a greater cultural and systemic shift towards acceptance and
celebrate the women who are already here. This change would have to start with everyone, not just
an isolated demographic -- studios and companies need to take a stand against toxicity and
harassment, those who identify as male would need to do so as well, and those who identify as
female would need to make it clear that we support our fellow women in their choices in the
industry. Our LGBTQ community should not be shunted to the side either -- the best way to
achieve the cultural and systemic change is to take an intersectional approach, which means not
isolating it by one demographic. Intersectionality is a concept explored by Kimberle Crenshaw in
1989, in which she demonstrates how being black and being a woman are different from being a
black woman, because being black was automatically linked to being a black man and being a
woman was automatically assumed to being a white woman. Her theory has informed the majority
of studies on diversity and feminism since then. Using intersectionality as a lens means “trying to
understand systems of oppression” by seeing these different factors (like gender, race, sexuality,
class, etc.) interdependently instead of independently (Chess, 19).

67
For this thesis, I started by investigating the parallels between women in tech and women in gaming.
Both groups are minority groups in male-dominated spaces who have spoken out about their
experiences and who have demanded representation and equality. The fact that these stories exist
means that there is a social distinction between genders -- and not just in a binary sense, which most
people don’t acknowledge or recognize, which “is indicative of and helps to perpetuate social
disparities” (Shaw, 149). The representation these women sought wasn’t something that can be
solved by adding more women into the pipeline; what they were seeking was something more along
the lines of a more accurate representation, a representation of the diversity found in real life. The
same sentiment was echoed in tales of lived experiences from women in gaming. Shaw’s interviews
revealed that “‘good’ representation was believable representation, and believable representation
drew on the diversity interviewees saw in themselves and their world” (Shaw, 164). What stemmed
from these stories from real women was this skepticism and doubt from people who didn’t believe
them: why was there a need for change? If women wanted change so bad, they should prove that
diversity was necessary. Efforts to add more female characters in-game and more “women’s” games
created more of a barrier between male players and non-male players because of the distinction
between an “us” versus “them,” meaning this wasn’t the “representation” or “diversity” that was
being asked for. Revising female game characters from being oversexualized and for the
heterosexual male gaze to being more realistic and for the sake of this elusive representation helped
a little, but not enough -- as Shaw found, “although counterstereotypical representation is not the
secret weapon to eliminating social inequality, recognition and, in turn, representation remain
important, nevertheless” (Shaw, 149).

Examining gender in gaming is not new or groundbreaking at all, but the incident that made gender-
related issues known -- not just to the gaming industry but also to mainstream media and general
68
society -- was Gamergate in 2012. Although it’s been seven years since and the situation has
improved, gamer culture still hangs onto a few prevailing attitudes about women in gaming --
mainly, that we don’t belong here, that we are all faking our interest and skill, and that we’re all
whores who just want attention. The bro culture in gaming that is also heavily prevalent in the tech
industry also found itself exposed in August 2018 when an article detailing the incredibly sexist
environment at Riot Games rocked the gaming industry, and the community was yet again divided
into two camps: those who supported people who didn’t fit the white cis-het male mold and those
who cheered on sexist bro culture as loudly as they could. In January 2019, a male esports player
pretended to be a girl online and when his “Ellie” persona got signed to a team, gamers rioted in the
way that they do -- doxxed “Ellie” to dig up evidence for what they believed to be true: that “Ellie”
was a fake account run by a dude. They turned out to be right, “Ellie” gave up the ruse and they
mocked everyone else who had voiced their support for “Ellie” as a potential pro female esports
player. This summary of a timeline should demonstrate that we haven’t solved the “women in
gaming” issue; we’ve only put a big Band-Aid over it. Efforts like Girls Who Code and Black Girls
Code and a Girls in Gaming Summit all help to an extent, but when the problem of accepting
women in gaming stems from culture, it is significantly more difficult to pinpoint solutions.

Fingers can point in any direction you like, but the responsibility for addressing the cultural
reluctance to accept women into the gaming industry and normalize the fact that we’re here and
thriving lies on everyone -- everyone has to acknowledge difference and celebrate it. No more
gatekeeping, no more feeling like your space is being invaded.

Diversity is a positive thing; it encourages creativity and success. Shaw poses the question: “Does a
powerful impression of agency created within a game reinforce broader cultural/ideological notions
69
of agency--or does the pleasure involved lie in some level of acknowledgement of the fact that such
agency is, precisely not available in the outside world?” (Shaw, 57) In other words, does having the
freedom to make your own choices in-game support cultural ideas of that freedom? Or does the
pleasure that comes with having this freedom in-game acknowledge that it doesn’t exist in the real
world? I believe it’s the latter. All of my survey respondents expressed that gaming was a way to
escape real life, which leads me to believe that the “powerful impression of agency” found in-game
was a breath of fresh air for those of us who, in the real world, are robbed of this freedom to be
who we want and of the power to be acknowledged for anything except the fact we are not the same
gender as those in power. Just because there are a lucky few who do not have to deal with this lack
of agency does not mean that the inequality doesn’t exist.

This is our space. We all live and breathe games.

See us for who we are. Not threats, not invaders, but fellow fans and players and teammates.
Women in gaming are visible, yes, because we exist -- but we are invisible when it comes to seeing us
as equals in skill, interest, passion, etc.

We are (in)visible and invincible.

70
Bibliography

“2012: Your Year in Gaming Misogyny.” World Class Villains, 31 Dec. 2012,
worldclassvillains.com/2012/12/31/2012-your-year-in-gaming-misogyny/.

“2018 Women in Tech Report.” By HackerRank, 30 Jan. 2019, research.hackerrank.com/women-in-
tech/2018.

Ashcraft, Brian. “Korean Woman Kicks Ass At Overwatch, Gets Accused Of Cheating [Update].”
Kotaku, Kotaku.com, 22 June 2016, kotaku.com/korean-woman-kicks-ass-at-overwatch-gets-
accused-of-ch-1782343447.

Ballou, Elizabeth. “The Rise And Fall Of The Frag Dolls, A Group That Blazed Trails For Women
In Gaming.” Kotaku, Kotaku.com, 1 Mar. 2019, kotaku.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-frag-dolls-a-
group-that-blaze-
1832991370?utm_medium=Socialflow&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_campaign=Socialflow_
Kotaku_Twitter.

Campbell, Colin. “Anita Sarkeesian's Astounding 'Garbage Human' Moment.” Polygon, Polygon, 27
June 2017, www.polygon.com/features/2017/6/27/15880582/anita-sarkeesian-garbage-human-
vidcon-interview.

Chalk, Andy. “Riot Games Sued for Gender Discrimination.” Pcgamer, PC Gamer THE GLOBAL
AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES, 6 Nov. 2018, www.pcgamer.com/riot-games-sued-for-gender-
discrimination/.

Chalk, Andy. “Teenage Overwatch Player Accused of Cheating Proves She's Just That Good with
Zarya.” Pcgamer, PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES, 21 June 2016,
www.pcgamer.com/teenage-overwatch-player-accused-of-cheating-proves-shes-just-that-good-with-
zarya/.

Chess, Shira. Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity.

Consalvo, M. (2012). Confronting Toxic Gamer Culture: A Challenge for Feminist Game Studies
Scholars. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 1.

Cooney, Bill. “Female Overwatch Contenders Player Ellie Confirmed She Wasn't Actually the One
Playing [UPDATE].” Dexerto, 6 Jan. 2019, www.dexerto.com/overwatch/overwatch-streamer-
claims-ellie-was-a-social-experiment-274076.

Dockterman, Eliana. “How Using Sexy Female Avatars in Video Games Changes Women.” Time,
Time, 14 Oct. 2013, healthland.time.com/2013/10/14/how-using-sexy-female-avatars-in-video-
games-changes-women/.

Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. Entertainment Software Association, 2018,
pp. 1–17, Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry.

71
Fogel, Stefanie. “Esports Is Getting Bigger Every Year - So Where Are All The Women?” Variety,
Variety, 1 Nov. 2018, variety.com/2018/gaming/features/women-in-esports-1203016379/.

Fouad, Nadya A., and Romila Singh. Stemming the Tide: Why Women Leave Engineering. University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2011, pp. 1–64, Stemming the Tide: Why Women Leave Engineering.

Goodling, Luke. “Ladies of League: How an All-Female High School Esports Team Is Preparing for
a Historic Season.” Dot Esports, Dot Esports, 27 Jan. 2019, dotesports.com/league-of-
legends/news/ladies-of-league-how-an-all-female-high-school-esports-team-is-preparing-for-a-
historic-season.

Hawkins, Barry. “The Story of Why I Left Riot Games.” Barry Hawkins, 27 Aug. 2018,
barryhawkins.com/blog/posts/the-story-of-why-i-left-riot-games/.

Hutt, Rosamond. “Women in Video Games: 'Accept It, or Don't Buy the Game'.” World Economic
Forum, 27 June 2018, www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/women-in-video-games-accept-it-or-
don-t-buy-the-game/.

“‘I Have Never Felt Discriminated against Due to My Ethnicity or Sex/Gender’‘but Also I Will
Hide My Marriage Because There Is Sexism in This Industry’ Https://T.co/ZMqNs5MHuw.”
Twitter, Twitter, 3 Dec. 2018, twitter.com/gatamchun/status/1069715191984726018.

Kimes, Mina. “Esports Is Dominated by Men. Can a 17-Year-Old Korean Girl Change That?”
ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 15 Sept. 2017,
www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/20692051/how-teenage-gamer-became-reluctant-icon-
south-korea-feminist-movement.

Lewis, Helen. “Gamers Against Bigotry Is Hacked... by Gamers in Favour of Bigotry.” America's
Current Affairs & Politics Magazine, 24 July 2012, www.newstatesman.com/blogs/sci-
tech/2012/07/gamers-against-bigotry-hacked-gamers-favour-bigotry.

Li, Roland. Good Luck Have Fun: the Rise of ESports. Skyhorse Publishing, 2017.

Lien, Tracey. “Why Are Women Leaving the Tech Industry in Droves?” Los Angeles Times, Los
Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2015, www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-story.html.

Malkowski, Jennifer, and Treaandrea M. Russworm. Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality
in Video Games. Indiana University Press, 2017.

Nakamura, Lisa. “Racism, Sexism, and Gaming's Cruel Optimism.” Gaming Representation: Race,
Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, by Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Indiana
University Press, 2017, pp. 245–249.

“Overwatch Esports.” Overwatch, playoverwatch.com/en-us/esports/.

Quinn, Zoe. Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight
Against Online Hate. Perseus Books Group, 2017.

72
“r/Truegaming - Why Don't We See More Women in the Competitive Gaming Scene?[Serious].”
Reddit, 2016,
www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/3thc4y/why_dont_we_see_more_women_in_the_comp
etitive/.

Schrock, Andrew. “The Dark Side of DIY - Gatekeepers of DIY?” Civic Paths,
civicpaths.usc.annenberg.org/the-dark-side-of-diy-gatekeepers-of-diy/.

Shaw, Adrienne. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. University of
Minnesota Press, 2015.

Shevinsky, Elissa. Lean out: the Struggle for Gender Equality in Tech and Startup Culture. O/R - OR Books,
2015.

Tassi, Paul. “Overwatch's Fake Female Player 'Ellie' Scandal Is The Mess That Keeps On Giving.”
Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Jan. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2019/01/06/overwatchs-
fake-female-player-ellie-scandal-is-the-mess-that-keeps-on-giving/#3c29802f28a0.

“Toxic Gamer Culture.” GameQoL, www.gameqol.org/toxic-gamer-culture/.

Wachter-Boettcher, Sara. Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic
Tech. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018.

Yu, Eda. “What It's Really Like To Be A Young Woman Of Color In Tech.” The Huffington Post,
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Nov. 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/woman-of-color-in-
tech_us_5bf44547e4b0a7286a0e3992.

73
Glossary of Terms:
• Esports
o Games with a competitive aspect have the potential of becoming an esport. Popular esports
titles include but are not limited to Overwatch, StarCraft, League of Legends.
• Gatekeeping
o In terms of the gaming industry, challenging others to know or understand a certain amount
of gaming-related trivia or knowledge. Often manifests in the form of men quizzing women
on their knowledge of video games and/or game history.
• White-knighting
o Men are usually accused of this by other men when they stand up for women and call out
misogynism or sexism or other harassment. Being called a white knight suggests that a male
stood up for the woman in order to gain favor.
• Gamergate
o An incident in 2014 that resulted in a predominantly male faction accusing gaming
journalists of being unethical because they published articles about sexism and harassment in
the industry. Two women that Gamergate centered around were Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe
Quinn.
• Twitch
o A popular live-streaming platform where users stream a wide range of content, from “just
chatting” to competitive gameplay.
• Streaming/streamer
o Someone who broadcasts live on a streaming platform.
• The “Ellie” situation
o A male Overwatch player pretended to be “Ellie” and managed to climb up the competitive
ladder as this “Ellie” persona. “Ellie” got signed to an Overwatch Contenders team
(Contenders is one of the steps to becoming a pro Overwatch player and becoming a
candidate for the Overwatch League) but it was then revealed after harassment by male
gamers that this player assumed the “Ellie” identity in order to perform a “social
experiment.” He revealed his identity because he had gotten too much harassment. There
was a lot of backlash and outrage that men felt a need to perform a “social experiment” in
order to believe that harassment of female gamers, especially those trying to go pro, actually
exists.
• MOBA
o Multiplayer online battle arena. Also known as action real-time strategy.
• Riot Games
o A game developing/publishing company whose claim to fame is the MOBA League of
Legends. Under investigation currently due to claims of harassment and gender-based
discrimination.
• Blizzard Entertainment
o A game developing/publishing company that has made Overwatch, StarCraft, Heroes of the
Storm, and World of Warcraft as notable esports titles, and is also known for the Diablo
franchise.
• Doxxing
o Searching for and publishing private or identifying information about someone on the
Internet, especially with malicious intent.

74
Appendix
Survey questions:

75
76

77

78

79

Transcript A (iLuffhomer):
C: first of all, i did want to ask you to perhaps elaborate more on how you said it should be a mix of
everyone leading efforts for change. is there a certain way you imagine it going/happening?
iL: I think it has to start a bit from the top down. I know I mentioned in another answer that logical
consequences are important and don't really exist in a lot of games (like how if a lot of people report
you in some games you're banned, even if it's just the enemy team trolling you with reports).
I think then there's a certain level of responsibility on the average player to confront problems head
on, whether that be calling out perpetrators or supporting the people they play with
Media needs to do a better job of portraying women in media. The Ellie controversy really showed
how poorly gaming media can handle a volatile situation and make it worse for sexism. Additionally,
the coverage of harassers needs to stop. The fact that we give people platforms when they do
something wrong just doesn't make any sense...it's almost how all these people started catfishing
each other after the show Catfish came out just to see if they could get on TV.
If any of the cogs in this don't participate, it won't really reach people in a meaningful way. All
participants in gaming have to be apart of it.
C: that's a great point you make about media -- to sort of play devil's advocate, does the cost of
giving harassers their 15 minutes of fame outweigh the benefit of i suppose exposing what they did
wrong?
iL: I think it depends. Unfortunately, without logical consequences a lot of these harassers gain more
fame from it. Look at someone like Tyler1, who was notably toxic and awful to people, but his
presence as a streamer ultimately led to an unban that I'm sure people of a similar caliber would not
have received.
C: and i think it makes total sense what you said about it starting from the top down. in a time when
consumers/players have this voice on social media platforms and forums, etc etc, i wonder if the
larger game companies/development studios/publishers have as much power as we might hope? i
know this is a very difficult question to answer, but how do you think we might be able to reach
those who disagree to the extreme? and by logical consequences, do you mean -- like in the case of
Tyler1 -- a ban for life? or what kinds of consequences do you think would be most effective?
iL: That's something I'm not sure if I have a good answer for without research. I think people
deserve second chances, but the game could have a system that builds people back up (extended
80
ban, followed up allowing them to play while silenced/no ranked and watching if they spam pings or
anything else, etc)
C: makes total sense! i would also like to ask you about /r/GirlGamers :x i have to admit, i'm trying
to build up being on reddit more, so i'm not entirely familiar with the subreddit (?)
iL: Sure! What would you like to know? Just a general overview?*
C: i guess? i guess my main ... question or one thing that i'm curious about is how often trolls come
in trying to pick a fight? because being called a "girl gamer" or a "gamer girl" -- personally, i totally
own it because that's who i am, but i'm aware that there's some iffy connotation around it. i was
reading "ready player two" by shira chess and she was discussing how "casual" is often connected
negatively to women who play games. anyway, does it happen/what happens if they do? and i
suppose i should follow that up with how my experience with reddit and gaming has been mostly
seeing how toxic it can get? (esp diablo immortal announcement at blizzcon lordy)
iL: We get a fair number of trolls. It's definitely down a lot since the onset of gamergate, but we get
a few people a week. We kinda poke fun at the name's existence too. In our sidebar we call it a
"delightfully polarizing term for women who game". I've gotten some pretty bad shit. Rape and
death threats, I know some mods have had pictures of their homes sent to them, people contacting
their jobs.The Blizzard stuff can definitely be a struggle, since we aren't Blizzard employees but get
the brunt of responses to these moments.
C: ooof. were you a mod during gamergate too? i can only imagine how... that must have
been. :\ i'm so sorry that's happened to you. :( then does the responsibility fall onto some of these
media platforms as well? to make change? reading "we are the nerds" which, i don't know if you've
heard of it or not, is a book about the founders of reddit and how it got started, makes me think
reddit might not take action against people like that? even though they're making some very serious
threats?
iL: I luckily was not a mod during gamergate, but enough of our mod team was that we all know the
stories. Reddit is horrible at how they treat their moderators. I often feel like contacting their admins
is a waste of my time because nothing will happen. We have a chronic user in /r/heroesofthestorm,
for example, who tells other users to 'die of cancer'. He's made almost 300 accounts in the past 2
years and all they do is ban the old ones 1-2 weeks after I message them.
C: wow. so i wonder then, if media platforms like reddit should also be up there starting us off with
making change in the industry? seems like since they place a lot of power in the users' hands, it
would make sense? what do you think?
iL: Oh definitely. Reddit has also been a beacon for a lot of people who have hateful ideas. There are
lots of subreddits that promote the "SJWs are the worst" kind of mindset and they often come to
GirlGamers from links in those subs to harass us.
C: i also wanted to chat more about how you were saying one of the biggest obstacles to women in
gaming is a lack of representation and support for younger girls -- i feel like when it comes to efforts
like all-female tournaments for example, people are pretty divided on whether that helps or hurts.
personally, i see where both sides are coming from, but what's your opinion on efforts like that
where (i think) it's pretty clear they're trying to provide that early support?
iL: I think those efforts are meaningful and important. With a lack of teams willing to take on
talented female players (for whatever reasons they may have), it's important they have a way to
pursue their dreams and compete to show their talent.
C: makes total sense! tying it to esports then, what do you think would be some good
solutions/ways of supporting younger ones who say they want to compete? / what are some
resources you think we lack now that we should have?
iL: Players union for one to help with these, as well as counselors of some type to help them
navigate the system.
81
C: ah yes. system as in like a path to pro kind of system?
iL: Yep!
C: okay gotcha. i think that's all i wanted to follow up on right now -- is there anything you didn't
mention in your survey response or during our chat right now that you wanted to get in?
iL: I think we hit a lot of my big points that I like talking about :D
C: okay cool! thank you for chatting with me :)

Transcript B (Contrast):
C: so i saw that you mention gatekeeping a lot -- not in so many words, but the descriptions are
there. and i know i was asking about the industry, which includes game development and not
necessarily esports, BUT since esports is one of the areas we don't see a lot of women at the
forefront being pro players, i wanted to know if you see gatekeeping happening a lot in esports as
well?
Con: waaaait gatekeeping? o_O hmm I don't remember my answer exactly but gatekeeping does
tend to happen in esports quite a bit
Not as much as before but when it comes to women and being part of the field, there are a lot more
hurdles that we have to jump through in order to show that we're capable of performing well in a
particular position, which I think sucks
so for instance, pro players - it's uncommon for women to be a professional player when we have so
many naysayers saying things like "men are just better than women at video games and I don't think
they'd work well in a team/solo because they're emotional" or whatever nonsense people make up
Geguri, for instance, had to go through being placed in a room with cameras and a spectator JUST
to prove that she was really good at OW and was not using an aimbot
But then we have players like Pine who have ridicuously good aim and no one bats an eye
No one questions men when they're really good at games, but we have to deal with the ridiculous
trivia sessions and unnecessary tests?
It boggles my mind LOL
Looking also into the number of all female rosters or rosters with females vs all male rosters, there is
definitely a huge gap in the outsider's perspective
Dignitas Female started out as Karma Gaming waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back about 5 years and they had
stellar results as a team, so I was really happy when Dignitas finally invested in them (after they
switched to Selfless LOL)
I babbled a lot but that's a slightly deconstructed answer I suppose xD
C: (LOL) yeah so in your responses you actually mentioned pretty often "having to prove to others
they are capable," "'trivia moments' where my gaming knowledge is tested" -- all of which falls under
gatekeeping
could you elaborate more on the gap you mentioned? regarding number of all-female roster or
rosters with female vs all-male rosters? are you talking about the number of people on the teams or
the number of all-female teams? or?
Con: It's more like the number of opportunities offered and the way employers handle issues toward
women vs how they handle issues toward men
Dividing them respectively:
- It's easy for male teams to entire a competitive scene because they're already perceived as regular
contenders. The criticism and hate comments that are dealt deal more with how bad their gameplay
is, which is easily fixable. For women however, if they enter the competitive scene, they too also deal
82
with the same backlash, but additionally also have to deal with harassment based on factors outside of
competitive gaming, such as their looks (which I, again, also hate LOL) and their personal life.
- under esports organizations and employers, the difference in the way issues are resolved with
women vs. men is daunting. With men, if they're hired, they have the privilege (for the most part) of
receiving praise without being illogically questioned about how they got there. With women, it's the
opposite. It's "She did this for him to get the job" etc etc. If workers are being laid off, with men it's
about needing to improve their skills. With women, it's "This is just not the right industry for you".
And this is the message that discourage women from pursuing a career in esports: because people
don't think women have the mental capacity to execute as well as their male counterparts
(the second point is referencing pro players but it obviously also applies to roles outside of that too)
C: hmmmmm. you make some very good points! and this is definitely a hard question to find an
answer to, but how would you envision eliminating that kind of thing happening to female esports
players?
Con: The obvious approach would be to have women take precautions and just "ignore" the people
that do this to them, right?
To me, I think it goes beyond that
I disagree with that to an extent because while that does temporarily solve the issue at a microlevel
It's not solving the core problem. It's like taking medication to alleviate yourself of the symptoms of
a disease but not actually going to the actual cause
Holding people responsible (more specifically men) by encouraging them that speaking up for
others is okay and reconfiguring the definition of what it means to be "manly" or having
"manlihood" (whatever the fucking lingo is nowadays LOL) will certainly make gradual changes
Creating events centered around celebrating women in gaming is also fantastic as well. It doesn't
have to be exclusive to only women at the event, but it can have a central theme of women who are
successful at what they do
content centered around them as well, through things like the mentorship program at WoE or
podcasts or ANYTHING
Can prove to people that if you involve those who are seen as the "other", they are just as capable (if
not more imo) of performing well just as much as their male counterparts
C: so re: holding men responsible and changing the definition of what it means to be manly LOL --
what are some ways we can do that? and i bring this up because "white-knighting" (or when men
stand up for women and other men assume it's to win the woman over) tends to be seen in quite a
negative light, and i think that's one way the idea of a "masculine" gamer would change?
and re: creating events centered around celebrating women in gaming -- so things like the LA
Valiant women in gaming summit last summer? what would you say to those who think we
shouldn't be making a huge deal about us being FEMALES in gaming? like as in we shouldn't be
emphasizing our gender identity and just interact as if it's not an issue?
Con: 1) To be honest, we can only do so much on our end before it becomes their time to tackle
the issue. They don't necessarily have to be very "white knight" in the sense of them having to praise
women for what they do, but they can definitely normalize standing up for women by instilling the
harmful effects behind harassment in general (e.g. asking "why are you wasting your time saying
these kinds of things?" or "it's really uncool to do that"). Making it socially unacceptable to be
disrespectful and rude is a major way we can tackle the issue without having to carry the weight
ourselves.
83
2) There was a summit? xD I'm not in the LA area so I don't know LOL but I assume it's one
example. As for those who say we shouldn't be making a big deal, those people need to understand
(and acknowledge) that they probably are privileged to a certain degree. If you're a man in gaming, I
understand that you're not immune to toxicity and hate, because that applies to everyone. But they
do not fully understand first hand what it's like to receive the same treatment + more and
emotionally comprehend it the same way women do, so they have that privilege.
They don't have to deal with the trauma of having to mute their microphones because of their voice.
They don't have to deal with people inconveniently speaking to them about things outside of the
game (e.g. flirting).
It's especially worse with online gaming because there's the additional offense of hiding behind a
female guise (like the Ellie situation). Women can't stop being women (yes there's technicalities to
this but you get what I'm saying) when it comes to games. Men can easily mute their mics, use a
female name, and "see" what it's like to be a woman, and then go back to being their own selves.
That in its own context is absolutely ridiculous.
So, it's not really us emphasizing our gender and promoting gender diversity, so much as it is these
ridiculous men for emphasizing that we suck at games on the basis of us being women
and as a response to that, we're simply showing that we can game and we just so happen to be these
women that they like to ridicule
C: what about women who have the same idea as the men who say we shouldn't be making a big
fuss/that there's nothing to fix in the industry?
Con: If they have been personally affected by this kind of treatment then that needs to be the fire
that lights up inside of them to look out for themselves and to realize that there are solutions to this.
providing them with adequate resources such as female-focused programs and events will certainly
help for sure
If they have not, just because they havn't personally experienced it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen
right? There's always an opportunity for someone to be an advocate for something. They don't
necessarily have to preach it 24/7, but simply acknowledging that it does still exist and bringing up
awareness of it should still be encouraged
My response to "there's nothing to fix about [issue]" is "If there's nothing to fix, you're probably not
looking in the right places". Because there's always going to be something that either needs to be
fixed or can be made better.
And this extends of course to issues beyond female representation but for the sake of your research
I'm keeping it to just women xD
hell, the same thing I said about what men should do can apply to these women as well: normalize
the idea of sticking up for people when they need it

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Equity. Diversity. Inclusion: the future of women in S.T.E.M [pdf]

PDF

The potential towards change: stereotypes of females in Hollywood films and the #MeToo Movement

PDF

Traditional and social media in modern crisis communications

PDF

One more thing: experiential economies and the future of public relations

PDF

Public relations in the music business: how publicists continue to improve a changing industry

PDF

The search for authenticity in influencer marketing

PDF

Effective Messaging in the LASIK Industry

PDF

The Digital Revolution and its impact on the beauty industry

PDF

The impact of social media on the diabetes industry

PDF

Social media's role, utility, and future in video game public relations

PDF

Experiential public relations: the importance of strategic messaging, understanding target audiences, and analysis of successfully curated brand-consumer interactions

PDF

Black in fashion: how PR is the thread of lasting racial diversity in the fashion industry

PDF

The women’s rights movement of today: how social media is fueling the resurgence of feminism

PDF

Mexican-Americans & higher education: understanding cultural appeals as an effective recruiting tool for first-generation students

PDF

The elemental rhetoric of performance

PDF

Doing the hard work: including diversity and inclusion in your public relations tool kit to build stakeholder relationships

PDF

Digital discourse in the fashion industry

PDF

Why we follow influencers: the role of Asian female fashionistas in Los Angeles

PDF

Creating the brands we trust: how organizations in the lifestyle category build consumer trust through effective branding and content marketing in the 21st century

PDF

The C word: managing crisis in the modern media landscape

Asset Metadata

Creator Park, Cynthia (author)

Core Title Rally the heroes: the (in)visibility of women in gaming

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 08/12/2019

Defense Date 08/09/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag esports,gaming,OAI-PMH Harvest,tech,video games,women in esports,women in gaming

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Floto, Jennifer (committee chair), Plocek, Keith (committee member), Tenderich, Burghardt (committee member)

Creator Email cynthiep@usc.edu,park.cynthia.e@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-210720

Unique identifier UC11663188

Identifier etd-ParkCynthi-7764.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-210720 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ParkCynthi-7764.pdf

Dmrecord 210720

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Park, Cynthia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA