The playing experiences of esport participants: An analysis of treatment discrimination and hostility in esport environments

Abstract

The eSport industry has seen rapid growth over the previous decade with additional opportunities for participants to compete in competitive and casual environments. As such, the sport industry has taken notice of this increase in popularity and exposure for eSport. A recent call to arms by sport management scholars suggests that the field of sport management needs to broaden research endeavors to include analyses of eSport and eSport spaces. To that end, this investigation serves as one of the first that investigates the playing experiences of eSport participants with a particular focus on the presence of discrimination and hostility in playing environments for men and women competitors. Previous events within the eSport industry, such as the now infamous harassment of female gamers known as Gamergate, suggests that female eSport players may experience discrimination and hostility at higher rates than their male counterparts. Guided by the frameworks of hegemonic masculinity and treatment discrimination, this investigation gauged the experiences of men and women eSport participants with discrimination and hostility in eSport playing environments. Results indicated that female eSport participants reported experiencing instances of treatment discrimination more frequently than their male counterparts, while male participants reported experiencing hostility more frequently. Results aim to assist the eSport industry as well as sport management scholars in guiding new policy to create inclusive spaces for eSport enthusiasts and career hopefuls.

Of Time Gals and Mega Men: Empirical Findings on Gender Differences in Digital Game Genre Preferences and the Accuracy of Respective Gender Stereotypes

“…Furthermore, we did not explicitly include, for instance, eSports (i.e., playing digital games in competitive tournaments and the like), as we wanted to focus on classical digital gaming. However, future studies on gaming preferences should also consider eSports as one growingly important part of gaming culture (for more information on eSports, see Cunningham et al, 2018 ; Pizzo et al, 2018 ; Darvin et al, 2020 ). However, our research might have some implications for eSports as well.…”

Breaking the glass monitor: examining the underrepresentation of women in esports environments

“…Sport, traditional or electronic variety, has been considered a highly masculine institution organized by and for men (Cameron, 2019;Darvin et al, 2020;Ruvalcaba et al, 2018), so it is a fertile area to examine the experience of women. Through the framework of hegemony, where cultural dynamics are shaped by a privileged group of people (Dellinger, 2004) coupled with the power relations between men and women, hegemonic masculinity surfaces.…”

“…While previous work has been informative on harassment and the subsequent experiences of women in traditional sport (e.g., basketball, hockey: Fasting et al, 2007;Hindman & Walker, 2020;Taylor et al, 2018), this occurrence has not been previously expanded upon in nontraditional sport spaces (i.e., esports). Further, to our knowledge, only a small number of studies within the esports industry have identified the existence of hostility and discrimination for esports participants (e.g., Cameron, 2019;Darvin et al, 2020; J.T. Ruvalcaba et al, 2018), and as such our study sought to uncover the career experiences of professional women within the esports workplace.…”

“…Three decades post Cockburn's (1983Cockburn's ( , 1985 revelation that masculinity was congruent with technology, electronic sports, also known as esports, were mainly developed and administered by the dominance of men (Grindstaff & West, 2011). Similar to traditional sports, the industry of esports is male-dominated where fans, employees, participants, and leaders are overwhelmingly men (Darvin et al, 2020;Interpret, 2019;Walker & Sartore-Baldwin, 2013). Similar to the U.S. pre-Title IX era (a United States federal policy that forbids discrimination on the basis of sex in school sponsored extra-curricular activities) of traditional sports, women and girls remain highly underrepresented throughout the esports industry as either competitors or executives.…”

“…Opportunities to compete within esports are limited and often met with additional barriers for women and girl participants (Darvin et al, 2020;Ruvalcaba et al, 2018). As a result, when it comes to participation, there are extremely low rates of women involved within the major esports titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO: 24% girls/women), DOTA 2 (20% girls/women), Hearthstone (26% girls/women), Rainbow 6: Siege (23% girls/women), and Overwatch (26% girls/women) (Interpret, 2019).…”