It stands for woman grandmaster. Despite chess being a non-physically demanding activity, they still separate men and women in their own divisions. This system was designed to enable more women to feel comfortable participating in a largely male dominated field.
Does a game like overwatch have the same issue? With the new champion rank about to be released, very few players will be able to obtain it, and even less of whom are women. Is it feasible to suggest that the requirements for higher ranks should be lowered for women as it is in chess?
For example a male chess GM starts around 2500 elo. But you can become a WGM at 2300 elo. They have similar qualifications for lesser titles such as IM/WIM (international master) and FM/WFM (fide master).
Despite this, some women chess players have managed to reach the title of standard GMâs. Since the âmenâs divisionâ is actually an open division consisting of both men and women. Whilst the womenâs division is exclusively for women only.
Currently there are no women in the top 100 officially rated chess players. But in the past there have been a few. Most notably, the brilliant Judit Polgar, who at her peak was among the top 10 players, both genders included.
If overwatch were to adopt a similar rating system, letâs say with GM starting at 4000 SR. And champion at perhaps 4500. Would it encourage more women to compete for these titles if the requirements were lowered to accompany their smaller player base? So a WGM could begin at 3500, and a WC at 4000. Even master could be lowered to 3000 for a WM.
You might ask, but how would the game know who is a man or a woman? I believe you can already choose this in your Blizzard profile. If not, it would not be very difficult to implement such an option for players to choose which gender they identify as.
That just ruins the rank and it would be impossible to know if someone is actually a woman or not, its not physically demanding and we already have female top500 players I donât see the point.
Some of the top players in OW have been women. Geguri comes to mind. She was an actual pro. The reason they introduced female GM titles in chess is because there were literally no or barely any high ranking women players at the time.
You people would just lie, heck I would lie to get a higher rank if I turn out to be hardstuck GM1 when champion comes out.
There is no womenâs division in OW so this is a very complicated thing to implement in a team game like OW compared to a single player game like chess.
Realistically, no. It canât. It would be impossible to enforce short of having every Competitive player (or at least the WGM ones) upload ID to prove that they qualify.
This is something this is doable in Chess because of in-person tournaments. Itâs not possible to do in Overwatch where the majority of gameplay is anonymous and online.
Sucks, but thatâs the nature of the beast.
To compensate for shortcomings like this, tournaments like Calling All Heroes are an attempt at showcasing underrepresented groups within the Overwatch Esports scene instead. Itâs not a perfect solution, but itâs a decent one.
You know, it is literally sexism to make a separate rank for just women in anything that isnât physical, right? Women donât have it harder in video games. Therefore, making a separate rank for them is essentially saying âHey, we donât think a female can be good at games, so hereâs a handout.â
Itâs insulting to women, and more insulting to women that are good at the game. No.
At this point, might as well ask for a separate rank for every minority. Iâm black and gay. Whereâs my colored GM? Whereâs my queer (is queer even offensive anymore? Lmao) rank?
