The Female Player Experience

Michaela Goden

December 2022

Abstract

The female player base in online competitive play is continuing to grow alongside the video game industry itself. Despite this growth in female player count and their appearance in the media and streaming services such as Twitch, Youtube, and TikTok, there is a lack of presence of female players in competitive online matches. Anthropological research has been performed on existing video game communities’ specified culture; however, there is a lack of research analyzing the female player’s experience in a noticeably male-dominated space. Furthermore, there is a lack of research concerning competitive online play and the labour opportunities presented by the growth of the video game industry. I use an empirical, methodological, and theoretical approach in my research, compiling data from my own participation in online competitive play, the participation of my interviewees, and existing theories in order to illustrate the female player experience. Contrary to the rise in female player count, female players are actively being discriminated against in the video game community. My research findings demonstrate the unequal positioning and rejection of female players in their community and labour opportunities, often generated by the men in their community.

Introduction

“It's never... Oh, like you're playing bad because you're just a bad player. Or you're doing good because you're a good player. It's like, oh, you're a woman you're going to be bad no matter what.” When asked what type of toxicity Angel runs into during her competitive multiplayer experiences, she explains that “...it's a blame game most of the time.” Especially in competitive games where communication is key, a chat feature is in play- accessible to anyone to say anything. Angel explains that “people that are toxic when they play games have for lack of a better word, anger issues. Or they use video games as an out in a sense to release some stress or some things that they might have from their day-to-day lives... especially since it's easier to argue or get upset with people online as... compared to in person.” When I asked about Angel’s negative experiences with male players in her games, she laughed: “This call might be like two hours long.”

The subjects of my research can be defined broadly as members of the competitive gaming community. Specifically, I am interested in the women who comprise a small but growing part of this community and their experience within it. The topic of my research is the female player experience in competitive online games. “Experience” in this case covers a multitude of different factors such as mental and physical experience while gaming competitively, and the experience of competitive games as labour, all of which are essentially gendered experiences. Through understanding the female player experience, I am hoping to understand why it is that women today are drawn to competitive gaming and how gaming impacts their lives in either a positive or negative way. Due to the nature of online platforms, my research is not limited to a specific city. Instead, I have been introduced to the experience of female players living in Canada, the United States, and Scotland. In order to inform my research, I will be drawing from the recent history surrounding the climb of video games as an industry and also its presence in pop culture platforms such as TikTok. Not only has the gaming industry been gaining revenue even greater than Hollywood and the music industry combined, but it has also become much more prominent in pop culture over recent years as social media and technology become more prevalent in the lives of the younger generations. This work is significant to me as a member of the community myself. I have experienced my fair share of the “female player experience,” however, I want to learn about the experience of other female players since no experience is necessarily the same although it may be similar and provide patterns to analyze. My goal in doing this research project is not only to understand the female player experience but to use that understanding in order to enact positive social change within the gaming community. Furthermore, I aim to raise awareness for women in the community and stand in solidarity with them. I am motivated by the perspective of my participants that competitive gaming creates a community, and that community should not be exclusive to gender but accepting of all those who enjoy the games. If this is the case, the ability to form positive connections with others online will be more accessible to both male and female players. I will be presenting my research and findings on the topic of the female player experience. In this case, the female player experience will be in relation to competitive online multiplayer games such as Valorant, League of Legends, and Overwatch to name a few. Although the games differ somewhat in nature, I have found the experience of female players surrounding these types of games is consistent with some personal differentiation. I will be using empirical, methodological, and theoretical knowledge to advance a theoretical position on this subject. But first, why should you care about this?

Conceptualization

“The blockage created by diminished opportunities to study cultures untouched by cosmopolitan markets and states has left contemporary anthropology somewhat unsettled. It is not surprising, then, that some turn to what appear to be new cultural forms emerging in virtual worlds” (Nardi, 2010). This is a quote drawn from the book My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft written by Bonnie A. Nardi. Bonnie argues that all “primitive” cultures have already been examined through an anthropological lens, leaving contemporary anthropologists with the need for new domains. Video games and their communities are creating new cultural flows in which we as anthropologists can examine. For this reason, I believe that the topic of the female counterpart and their experience in video game culture is pertinent as a subtopic of new media in Anthropology. But in order to understand the female player experience, we first have to define the concept of experience itself. I propose “(i) knowledge gathered from past events, whether by conscious observation or by consideration and reflection; and (ii) a particular kind of consciousness, which can in some contexts be distinguished from ‘reason’ or ‘knowledge’” (Williams, 1985). This definition of experience is found in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Raymond Williams. He uses a couple of examples in order to help us understand what this means. In the case of the first sense of experience, Williams explains the relationship between experience and experiment. He uses the example of the french revolution as an experience in which a new kind of politics was put to trial, essentially experimented and then observed. So then, we can consider the french revolution as experience past. The second sense of experience that Williams describes is experience present. Experience in this case is the fullest, most open, most active kind of consciousness, and it includes feeling as well as thought. Williams explains that present experience is often active in the aesthetic discussion. I have found this as well while doing my research, that experience is often studied in reference to art. In Aubrey Anable’s “Playing with Feelings” (2018) we can see how art enacts this open, active kind of consciousness that includes feeling as well as thought. Anable also argues that Video Games enact this same exemplification of experience. Therefore, present experience is how I will define experience, and how I will consider it relative to my research.

Participant Observation

As a female player who often indulges in online competitive multiplayer, I feel a sense of fulfillment and belonging while playing video games. This made me ponder if other women play to experience this same feeling of satisfaction. However, as I turned outwards to observe the women I was playing with, I realized there was nobody there. Out of the 10 games I played during my active observation period, which take approximately 30 minutes, I didn’t encounter one female player on my team. I had this observation, despite the fact that the home page of the Valorant client displayed an advertisement for the all-female competitive tournament (see Figure 1). Furthermore, I have been playing Valorant for approximately 2 years and have noticed an increase in the female player count despite my experience in the games used for my research. In my overall experience, it is undeniable that women are becoming more prominent within the gaming space. Therefore, I took to community-oriented platforms such as discord to reach out to fellow female players and learn about their experiences with competitive online multiplayers. The analysis of these interviews gave me further insight into why it is so hard to find other female players in one’s games, and why they may feel apprehensive about speaking out and essentially, making their presence known in games.

Interview Analysis and Findings

For this project, I had the opportunity to interview Angel, a competitive female player who will be referred to by a pseudonym. Additionally, I interviewed Kaela and Roo, two competitive female players who have experienced video games as a form of labour and who will be referred to as their online personas. The beginning of the interviews began with an exploration of the female player’s past experience with video games, including their first games which for all my participants, included the Pokémon franchise. Angel adds that in the gaming community, “these types of games (single-player) are not even seen as games.” Furthermore, they are generally associated with younger or female audiences which dismisses the authenticity of female gamers. Since then, my participants have moved on to online competitive multiplayer games such as Valorant, Overwatch, and League of Legends. I asked my participants how they became involved in the competitive gaming space. Roo explains she: “just saw it on TikTok and stuff a lot. So it just looked like fun. And I like games where... it's a social game, like talking to teammates and stuff a lot.” Many players are drawn to multiplayer competitive games for the cooperative aspect, and in Angel’s case, it is easy to find a “sense of community and belonging in talking with other people online”- a recurring theme during my interviews. Roo explains that she has “met a lot of different people... it's cool to hear from different walks of life. That's the biggest thing to [her]... we're all very different people, but we have the same hobbies.” I was intrigued by my participant’s emotional and physical experiences within the game, motivated by video game company Electronic Arts’ (EA) advertising campaign where they asked: can a computer make us cry (Anable, 2018)? Is it fun, or stressful? Both? Angel explains that “when you're playing with friends, it's more on the fun side. As compared to when you're just playing multiplayer by yourself, sometimes it can get very aggravating or stress-inducing.” Additionally, Angel explains that when she “first started playing League of Legends, actually, the stress from it, or the adrenaline that [she would get] would physically make [her] shake.” She describes a scenario to me: “if you're the last person alive... you have your teammates watching you. So it's the adrenaline of, you know, trying to kill the rest of the bad guys or the enemy team. But also the anxiety of, if you screw up... your team's gonna flame you...” Considering the intensity of competitive games and their dependency on team players communicating, it could understandably be more enjoyable with a group of friends that one is familiar with as opposed to strangers with whom one may have difficulty communicating. However, in Angel’s experience some of the best games are in the company of strangers who communicate well, have the same goal, and overall just have fun. ”...we're all just, we're all strangers, and we're just, you know, we're communicating and we're not raging or anything at each other. We're just giving callouts and stuff. And we're just having a good time.” When I asked my participants what draws them to competitive games, their responses all centered around the concept of community. Kaela replied: “Because... I love meeting new people and making friends and being able to play with people across the globe... it's like a big thing for me. I just really enjoy playing multiplayer games for that reason." Angel seconds this notion, while introducing us to the toxic side of competitive gaming: “I think just like connecting with people, even though there can be times when like, it's pretty toxic. For the majority like you can meet some pretty cool people and make new friends.”

Toxic individuals are a common occurrence in the video game community, similar to every large community. However, the people who experience this toxicity in abundance seem to be female players. My participants were kind enough to share their stories with me surrounding their toxic encounters with male players. Kaela describes an encounter she had with a young teen boy while playing Valorant: “Like I don't know where these kids are learning such horrible things... But yeah, it was just... it's just not nice stuff. Like, typical, I'm gonna r-word you and I'm gonna find out where you live and kill you and this and that.” This experience struck me. Specifically, the use of the word “typical” insinuates that this type of behaviour is expected by female players. Roo explains to me that the “usual” is “you belong in the kitchen. You're never gonna get anywhere. You don't belong in this game.” Roo follows this up with a description of an experience she had playing Valorant: “He was like arguing over something that I hadn't even done wrong. And he was like, oh, this is why bitches shouldn't play video games.”

Furthermore, many women opt for more supportive roles within their teams. Although the supportive role is often integral to the team’s success, the female players who choose this position are often harassed. This has led to the overarching idea that women and their associated roles are useless. However, if a female player chooses to play a more aggressive role, they are met with even more resistance. Roo explains that she has “definitely had that happen when people are like, oh, you shouldn't be playing this agent because you’re a girl.” There is no option for discourse in these matters, as the male players in the community have already made up their minds. They dominate the space, therefore leaving female players with two options: leave or comply (Nardi, 2010).

My participants’ stories and experiences suggest that the reason for this harassment towards female players is their gender in a male-dominated community. One significant response is for female players to take it upon themselves to try to fit in with the male demographic, which can mean replicating the harassing behaviors. These female players are known by the community as “pick-me girls”, a term popularized on TikTok. Angel explains that pick-me girls “aim to get the attention from these guys. So she will attack another female to try to seem like one of the bros...there's definitely... some toxic women out there too, that have that internalized misogyny...” Kaela shares her feelings towards this topic: “Like, you do not need to impress this guy by like, belittling other women and saying such harmful things. In such a male-dominated space, why would a woman who also has probably experienced the same things, like, treat another woman the same way that she's been treated before?” Pick-me girls are a powerful example of how women are positioned and shaped due to their gender. Pick-me girls want to be picked, want to be chosen – specifically by the men in their community. Therefore, they choose to comply with and participate in toxic game behaviors, alongside the male players. Although it is beyond the scope of this study, it is evident that men are also positioned and shaped by such experiences. In regards to both the male and female players who participate in the harassment of female players, Roo explains: “you need to have a thick skin. [I am] not intimidated by them. They're just insecure.” Both Roo and Kaela have mentioned that they have had no choice but to grow a thicker skin through their experience of gaming, both as a form of leisure, and especially labour.

I am especially interested in women for whom video games have gone from a form of leisure to a form of labour, and how the video game community integrates this transition into their sociocultural world. And I believe it is through understanding the video game space and its community as its own sociocultural world, as Nardi argues, that we are able to examine it. Drawing from Making Mobiles African (Odumosu 2017), "constitutive appropriation” is defined as “[t]he process whereby one or more users makes a technological artifact or system theirs, integrating it into their sociocultural world and in the process transforming said artifact or system to serve the user’s ends.” Video game labour is a perfect example of this transition, in which a culture integrates a technological artifact into its own culture flows, and uses the artifact to serve them. Furthermore, it is important to consider that “Consumption and production should not be viewed as opposite ends of a continuum; there is much to be gained by seeing them as operating simultaneously” (Odumosu 2017). We see this exemplified through the experience of video games as a form of labour. Players will consume the video game on stream, and produce their stream content simultaneously. This constitutive appropriation has created many opportunities for female players. Roo is paid to play both casual and competitive matches alongside her clients through the e-pal community-oriented service. The pros of working as an e-pal are similar to that of being a part of the video game space–community. She mentions that one of the biggest cons of working alongside e-pal constitutes experiences with clients asking for “not safe for work stuff.” Additionally, she shares: “I did have a message from someone. And he was asking if I was single... And he was like, well, I'm gonna be paying you. I want to see if there's any possibility for anything in the future.” Kaela is a twitch streamer, and shares how she initially became interested in streaming as a side job: “I think the main reason I started was because I wanted to find more people to play video games with and like, more people to share, like an experience with.” Kaela explains that “one of the biggest cons though, is after stream anxiety... as soon as I hit the stop recording or streaming button, I will sit there and I’ll be like, oh my god, I regret every single thing I said for the past six hours.” Furthermore, she adds that she “couldn't imagine what it's like for people who get like, thousands of views.” The article “Sexual Harassment in Female Twitch streams” acts as an introduction to analyzing chat logs in order to interpret a female streamer’s reaction to sexual harassment during their live streams. The article hypothesizes that “a female streamer’s number of concurrent viewers positively relates to the amount of sexual harassment in the chatlog” (Kampel et al., 2020). This quote exemplifies that as a female streamer continues to experience success and growth in their field, they are met with more and more harassment from men in the space, further gender positioning them.

Conclusion

Taking into consideration the experiences of the female players that I had the opportunity to interview, as well as my own experience as a female player, I argue that the female player experience is largely shaped by the male-dominated space in which it is situated. I argue further that in a field that is continuing to grow, women are being rejected simply for being women. We can see this through their positioning in labor opportunities, where the more they grow the more they are met with resistance (sexual harassment) from men. We can see this through pick-me girls and their internalized misogyny. They desire to be accepted and this leads to overall compliance with gendered ideologies. We can see this through the female players’ positioning in the community, their lack of an option to initiate discourse, and the expectation that they either leave or comply. Whether it be community engagement or labour opportunities, women are constantly being positioned within and by the male-dominated space in which they are situated.

A limitation of my research is the minimal knowledge it adds about the male counterparts in these scenarios. Only so much can be examined without speaking to the people themselves. Nonetheless, this research focuses on female experiences as important in their own right. Another limit to my ability to make claims about the female player experience is the subjectivity of individual experience. This is something that is also mentioned by Williams in his definition of experience. He acknowledges that: “experience permits radically different conclusions to be drawn from diversely gathered and interpreted observations” (Williams, 1985).

Regardless of the constant backlash that female players receive during their online experience, the female player count is continuing to rise. Angel explains the current situation for women in gaming: “The community so far, like recently, has been more accepting of women. [It] mostly has to do now with I think, individual players. I want to say that the community itself and the video gaming society has been a lot more accepting towards women...” My research exemplifies that in a world where the digital age is continuing to grow, female players are being presented with new labour and community-oriented opportunities. On the contrary, we also see that female players are continuing to suffer an inherent disadvantage when participating due to gender-based violence in the gaming space.

References

Anable, A. (2018). Introduction: Video Games as Structures of Feeling. In Playing with feelings: Video games and affect. essay, University of Minnesota Press.

Kampel, Sonia & Koban, Kevin & Bornemeier, Julian & Ohler, Peter. (2020). The downsides of being a female streamer. An automated content analysis approach to sexual harassment in female Twitch streamers' chatlogs. 10.13140/RG.2.2.30265.49764.

Nardi, B. A. (2010). An Ethnographic Investigation of World of Warcraft. In My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft (pp. 27–36). University of Michigan Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv9nw.6

Williams, R. (1985). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press.

Toluwalogo Odumosu, "7 Making Mobiles African," in What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? , MIT Press, 2017, pp.137-150.