Why are there no women in the competitive?

General Discussion
101

Women typically (there are always exceptions) prefer living balanced lives rather than going all in on one aspect of it. Where as Men have a higher tendency to investment into one aspect at the cost of others (once again there is always exceptions).

Which makes it far more likely for men to put in the time to practice and invest inordinate amount of times playing and learning Overwatch.

Clarification though. I am not saying women CAN’T play games as well as men do. I know some that kick my butt in various games on a regular basis.

I am just talking about the typical preference’s that influence the number of male and female professional gamers.

1 Like
102

How about a crazy idea: we actually LISTEN to what women want.

This would mean commissioning a study and asking the women who play or did play Overwatch about what they want when entering competitive games. This is something Blizzard could do and probably do in collaboration with other publishers and the results publicised for everyone.

We don’t have to go into this blind, The World Chess Championships have had segregated championships for almost a century now and it’s worth considering how there’s gender segregated Chess Championships and look into how and why that is.

This is a GREAT model to look to this is a “gaming league” with real provenience, it’s been doing it for a LONG time across borders, through a world war and a cold war.

I think we need to give real options for women and girls, not just “well why aren’t these existing status quo enough?”

1 Like
103

They’d blame her for every fight that her team lost. And whenever she made a mistake, they’d make fun of her far more than the others. That woman endures a lot.

4 Likes
104

But you’re saying a woman can’t have a male role model to look up to. That’s not true. Anyone can be inspired by anyone.

2 Likes
105

The simple truth is that there are no women that are as good as men in this particular case, so they can’t compete. Teams want to win, if a woman is as good or better than a man the team will signed her in a heartbeat, because it’s not about gender it’s about skill.

106

Repeat slowly after me:

It’s not about gender. It’s about skill

107

As I said in another thread, the easy way to actually open the path to more pro female players is to simply requires at least one hired female player per team.

It will have some backlash, for sure, but they can’t argue on lack of fairness (all teams have to meet the same requirements), and just the process to select their players will inject more women into the field. They will get connections and the possibility to make a name for themselves. Some teams might even find out there are multiple good players and hire two or more women to their team because they were skipped in the process before.

When someone is hungry, you don’t just offer them a job. You give them food, and then offer them a job. A mandatory quota of one might be just enough to start out something in the long term.

108

Women are too smart to put up with the absolute insanity that is OWL

6 Likes
109

you can’t be serious, this will just open up the debate that will lead to massive backlash against women in the league overall and delegitimize the entire league.

you can’t quota in people into a profesional setting, there’s lots of players that might be better that won’t get the chance just because of giving charity to women.

hell is paved with good intentions.

you don’t simply give a starving person a fish, you teach them how to fish so that they may feed themselves.
is another thing you could say, but i don’t think these kinds of random scenarios apply to the situation at hand at all.

1 Like
110

I am serious, and I fully believe every word I wrote.

If the point here is to increase representation, that is the EASY way. I never said it was the ONLY way, but it would see results very fast, and open the door to long term representation as those women get more connections within the industry.

My point is mostly that big companies like to pay lip service, but don’t want to really change the status quo.

Interesting that you said that when my last paragraph is literally pre-countering this very same adage. :rofl:

111

Harassment at the low levels and starting point cuts off women at the knees and so start the race behind. Climbing they’re continued to be harassed and threatened. Becoming a public figure as a woman in a male dominated field is inviting yet more harassment and terror. Becoming a public figure as a woman in general is seen as an invitation for harassment.

then there’s the other side, where women aren’t seen as interested in the field anyways, or they’re only casual and expected to do other things. If being a professional gamer isn’t a respected field entirely for men, why would it be seen as a respected field for women? This is true no matter what level you’re looking at. The amount of times there’s a man on a microphone in the game and you can hear his female partner making dinner or struggling with a small child in the background is astounding.

There are likely many top female players in the game who simply put, don’t put themselves through the transition because of the price it would have on them, their safety and their mental health.

2 Likes
112

No one should be given preferential treatment.

Want to know something that is unfair? Getting passed over despite being more qualified for a spot on the team.

Any self respecting gamer would not want to be chosen as a token player to meet some equality of outcome (as opposed to equality of opportunity m) prerequisite.

113

A lot of korean teams refuse to hire female players in general because they don’t want to distract the male players. :confused: That’s part of the reason why Geguri wasn’t signed on for so long in spite of the fact she was the top Zarya player in the world at a point.

How’s that for fairness and equality? Being passed over because of your sex, in spite of your skill.

5 Likes
114

Funny thing is that this happens with a lot of minorities, all the time, in many fields.

Heck, Geguri herself wasn’t hired at the first draft of OWL because team owners were arguing that they would be required to make separate dorms for her. Everyone knew she was a great player and dismissed her with flimsy excuses.

Also, this would not be a lottery. The teams would still filter through all applicants to find the good ones. The ones that skip this process to rush through the mandatory requirements would be the ones that will have a weaker roster because of it.

2 Likes
115

Literally it’s like they don’t stop to realize that the reason marginalized communities need a foot in the door is because of the fact that even when they’re qualified they’re glossed over for the dominant group…

3 Likes
116

that’s why i’m saying it’s not relevant
because we’re talking profesional play here, not starving homeless people who can’t get a job.

but yeah representation if they wanted to force it, they could do it that way but i just don’t see it ending well.
and the thing with this

it’s kind of odd to say when all you have to do is be really good at the game and be scouted essentially.
this isn’t a job application where anyone with half a wit can get the job, this is top performance play which kinda means that leaderboards are more helpful than connections.

however i guess you’ll argue the chipsa thing where he had connections within the league and got in, but he’s been benched since he got in and he’s an outlier it seems.

what i honestly think is the main issue is the legitimacy of e-sport and the overwhelming odds of having pro female players.
if the game had 50% being female players there would probably be a lot more female pros as a consequence.

there’s also this thing to consider, viewership and participation in e-sport events.
guys are overwhelmingly there to watch those things and as such gives money and legitimacy to it.

but guys serve their own interests, why would they watch women play?
there probably would be some for just the love of the sport.

but there’s plenty of guys that watch because it’s guys playing, because of the weird fantasy of “that could be me”,
but with women they simply don’t resonate with them the same way.

which is a roundabout way of saying that women need to also participate in watching matches and going to events to lend legitimacy and support to female players to the same degree men are.

and as we can see, women are just behind, but e-sport as a product wasn’t built in a day. it took a long time, and i think it will take a long time before women gets intergrated into that or have their own version of it or whatever that may happens.

like i think you can shoe-horn in women, but it might set them back in terms of legitimacy as a whole when you do it that way and i don’t want them to fall behind just because of “good intentions”

117

Well it matches my personnal experience. I’ve known lots of girls playing MMO and RPG but indeed very few of them played FPS games like Overwatch.

And even those who liked Overwatch didn’t like to play competitive.

By the way, there is already lot of literature explaining the issue(s)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games

118

Depends on where you set up your “ending”.

We got a lot of women playing in our league. Happy ending.

We got a lot of backlash from bigots which is making the league lose public. Sad ending.

Five years from now the league is still going, and team gender split raised up because more women are willing to invest the time to hit the big league. Good ending.

Two years from now the league is cancelled because people said the “competitive integrity” of the tournament was tainted since they require all teams to hire a “bench warmer”. Bad ending.

There is just too many twists and turns to declare anything about this what if scenario. But it would definitely make headlines, give the league some publicity, and allow them to publicly brag about their path to inclusion.

But as I said…

119

I’m also outraged that there are so many more men than women in prison! Clearly the system is sexist. And there are way more women than men in nursing, so again the field is sexist!

No. It just so happens that more men than women happen to play video games. If you try to force a female in, then its going to not work out.

With way more men, there are bound to be more of them that are good.

That isnt to say there cant be a good female, but there arent that many and of those few even less desire to be pro.

Essentially to force a girl in, youd be declining many others because of smething they cant control (whats between their legs).

It happened with that girl in the shanghai dragons.

She was good sure, but there were other people who were better and happened to be guys that got declined. I’d be pissed if I found out I was declined an opportunity just because of some affirmative action that worked against me and I would be just as pissed if I found i got an opportunity because of affirmative action and not because of my own merit. You’d be taking a spot from someone that earned it and you didnt.

120

Because there are other players that are better than her. Just like I’m sure shes better than the majority of overwatch players that are men.