Girls and gaming: students host all-female esports tourney
PETALING JAYA: It is often assumed that video gaming is a male-dominated activity, and that the people you meet online while gaming are likely male.
Lately, though, the trend has started to change, both internationally and locally. Case in point – a team of diploma students from IACT College here are giving girls the chance to prove their mettle in the realm of esports.
“Rise of Athena: All-Female Valorant Tournament 2021” is open to female players between age 13 and 30 from Malaysia and Singapore. Sixteen teams will compete against each other in single-elimination brackets for a grand prize of RM3,000.
Besides encouraging more girls to participate in gaming, the tournament – which will be live-streamed – is aimed at encouraging Malaysians to stay home while providing them with an entertaining virtual event.
“Rise of Athena” is being organised as the final-year project for The New NRML, a student group led by Thomas Koh.
“My group and I share a mutual passion for esports, and we wanted to use this opportunity to make a difference by having our event tackle a current issue – the under-representation of females in esports,” he tells FMT.
As most gaming events are dominated by male participants, Koh says it gives the impression that women are uninterested in video games, despite statistics proving this to be untrue.
“With ‘Rise of Athena’, we strive to encourage and normalise female gamers in the competitive scene, and hope to inspire fellow tournament organisers to do the same.”
Valorant, which was released in June last year, is a first-person shooter featuring an assortment of weapons and playstyles. In addition to many members of the student group being ardent players, Koh says it is the game of choice as it is one of the top-ranked titles this year and last.
Bridging the generation and gender divide
According to Koh, the way older Malaysians view video gaming and esports is largely attributable to the generation gap and underexposure.
“New habits that form from technology are foreign to most of the older generation, and it is completely understandable that they don’t see the point in staring at a screen,” he says.
He believes that by providing an incentive for gamers to take the activity seriously, older Malaysians might start seeing its merits. But the toxicity and sexism prevalent in gaming communities are also issues Koh hopes to bring to light.
He says anger, frustration and tilt – when losing causes a gamer to get increasingly enraged – are part of the gaming experience, and not every person is able to hold their temper.
“This, plus a virtual wall to cover their identity, means toxicity and troll comments are inevitable,” he says.
As it stands, the ratio of men to women in esports is nearly equal, yet competitive female players are not given the same attention as their male counterparts.
“The lack of representation discourages females from competitive gaming, insinuating that they aren’t worthy of the big stage,” Koh says.
“Gaming has never been exclusive to gender, and the industry should relieve its dominant representation of male as the mainstream.”
On that note, Koh hopes “Rise of Athena” will attract at least 200 viewers. “Each tune-in is one step closer towards the normalisation of females in competitive gaming,” he says, “and an extra leap in the representation of females within esports in the long run.” - FMT
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