Most well-known women in e-sport –- performers instead of players
Recently, K/DA released a new song More and performed it at the opening ceremony of the 2020 League of Legends World Championship. K/DA s a virtual band girl group developed by Riot Games, the company behind the game League of Legends. This group consists of five themed versions of League of Legends characters, and with the VR technique, these game characters can dance and sing on the stage while being voiced by actual female pop stars.
This girl group went viral on the internet, since the new song More released, the music video has been watched around 20-million times in the past 3 days on its YouTube channel. As a band consists of the game character, its fans are most taken up of the fans of this game. Most game players and e-game audiences have a very positive opinion toward the prospect of this girl group, after all, these female characters are sexy fighters in the game, and when they become performers on the stage and move like real people, they become even sexier.
If comparing the e-sport to the physical sports, the girl band is almost equal to the female cheerleaders on the playground. They are gazed at as subjects for the pleasure of the players, or to be more precise, male players. E-sport as a rising form of sport competition seems to largely target at teenager guys. When we watch the e-sport games, we will find the most famous players are male. And different from other sports that require physical conflicts like football or basketball, there are just virtual conflicts in video games, so the e-sport championship is not divided into women competition and men competition. But still, we see very few women in front of the computer in the competition.
The dilemma of female players
E-sport is still a young form of sport, so far, the e-sport tournaments have been all about fighting games that were generally thought to be played by boys, such as Dota 2. According to interpret’s 2019 report, female e-sport watchers have a 30 percent share compared to all e-sports watchers, and casual gaming (defined as those who log many hours on mobile and few on PC/Console) is dominated by females, accounting for up to 66 percent. In a word, the female involvement is extremely low in major esports titles like Rainbow 6: Siege and CS: GO (but even in these game the percentage of female gamers are above 20 percent).
Female gamers are confronted with many difficulties in they are the minority in the games. For instance, even when they are players, they will be judged according to their appearance and be asked to look beautiful. And when women are participating in these famous games, they are often pressured to play as female characters — female healers in particular. Further, many female gamers have complained that during the games, their male teammates usually lack trust in them and ignore their suggestions or strategy, so that they are unable to play an important role in the teamwork.
Although if we have to name a few, we can find famous names of female e-sport players, such as the Korean player Tossgirl (titled “Queen of Terran”). However, the numbers of female e-sport players are still too low concerning the e-sport induces the physical difference between the men and women. Or it is even can be said that the e-sport probably is supposed to be the only sport in which the men can truly have a fair competition with women disregarding the difference between male and female bodies.
Sources:
E-sports: Where are the Women Players? https://www.animationxpress.com/latest-news/esports-women-players/
Female esports players facing routine Sexism and Toxicity: “I No Longer Have Power” https://nypost.com/2019/01/03/female-esports-players-face-routine-sexism-and-toxicity-i-no-longer-have-power/
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