Gamer Psych: Why Don’t Girls Play Video Games?

Okay first of all, that’s not entirely true. Ever since the early 2000s, the ratio of males to females in the video game community has been relatively close. In fact, there have been instances where female gamers actually outnumber males within a given population. Despite this however, the professional gaming stage has seen little to no participation from the female population. In almost every competitive gaming tournament — DotA 2 and Call of Duty for example — the top professional teams never have any female players. In League of Legends specifically, only last year (2015) has a female been given the chance to compete in the professional scene. Even then, this player — Remi Creveling — is a transgendered female.

Are ‘gamer girls’ not as skilled as boys?

This leads to the idea that maybe females just aren’t as skilled as males in the competitive scene; a statement that has draw a lot of criticism from feminist advocates around the world. And why shouldn’t it? Females and males have separate sports leagues because males typically have a greater capacity to physically exert themselves than females. In e-sports however, this is not the case. Gaming is more of a mental battleground than physical, and so females should be just as skilled as males, plus or minus a few differences in areas of thought.

Well the idea is that it boils down to personal preference. The “professional” scene of e-sports is built mostly on competitive games; media where players go head to head to see who is better. This is mostly a genre attractive to males. The female gaming community is mostly attracted to more constructive and progressive media such as The Sims, HayDay, World of Warcraft, and other similar titles.

Now don’t get me wrong: this does not mean we don’t see female players in competitive games. Case in point, Remi Creveling. I myself have a few female gamer friends in roughly the same tier as me, and sometimes even better. I’m saying the reason why we have very few females in the upper tiers of the competitive scene is simply because females do not generally view it as something to strive for.

Competitive ‘gamer girls’

Statistics is only part of the explanation though. What about those females who do in fact, play competitive video games? Why don’t they ever reach the top? From experience, I have two theories. First is that males play more than females. It isn’t that females are naturally less skilled than males. It’s just that the competitive nature of males makes us spend more time training and developing skills than females do. If females spent the same amount of time doing so, naturally, the skills develop to an equal level. The perfect example is Sasha Hostyn; a professional Starcraft II player widely regarded as the best in North America.

The second theory brings us back to the nurturing and constructive tendencies of female gamers. Even in games like League of Legends, females tend to play the role of support. The job of a support is not so much to directly fight against the lane opponent; rather, it is to make sure the role’s lane partner builds an advantage of their own. What is Remi Creveling’s main role? Support.

Gender Discrimination in competitive video games

It is the nature of any competitive sport to have a certain degree of toxicity. Why? Because on the battlefield, you are out to prove you are the best. If anything or anyone becomes a hindrance to a competitive gamer, negative perception of that stimulus becomes inevitable. Sometimes however, that toxicity just gets so out of hand, and so uncalled for. And oftentimes, this aggression is directed towards the female gaming community.

There is an interesting explanation for this.

In 2015, a study was conducted into how males and females interacted in the first person shooter Halo 3. Researchers found that females were frequent targets of hateful speech when playing with lower-skilled males, while high-skilled males treated females with more constructive speech. It was concluded that unskilled male players feel threatened by females because they “stand to lost the most status,” while better-performing males who can identify and admit any flaws in their play style do not.

“P***** ina mo! Naglaro ka pa, babae ka pala!” (Son of a b****! You bothered playing, when you’re a girl!)

“Useless ka naman. Wag ka na maglaro. Pa****** ka na lang!” (You’re useless anyway, don’t bother playing. Just let a guy f*** you!)

“Babae ka siguro ano? Halata sa galaw mo.” (You’re probably a girl, right? Your skills give you away.)

That’s right. If you’ve ever said anything similar to these, I’ll tell you myself you fall under the label “unskilled.”

In conclusion

The idea that women do not play video games is a fallacy at best. Too often have I witnessed girls taking flak from other players just because they are girls.

Girls are naturally a rare occurrence in competitive gaming. And yes, currently, the fact that we have few to no women in the professional leagues might suggest that at the moment, males are better at it than females. However, this is the result of training in a very specific niche. It is not in any way predetermined by being male or female. As good as you are at League of Legends, the odds are, there’s a girl out there on a comparable performance level in Warframe or World of Warcraft.