From livestreaming to e-sports: Witness the rise of female gamers in Singapore
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From livestreaming to e-sports: Witness the rise of female person gamers in Singapore
Information technology's game on! Women are making inroads in the world of gaming – long regarded as the den of male players – from running businesses to live streaming.
Cheryl Allison Lim and Katherine "Kimiko" Ho are merely ii of a growing number of female person gamers in Singapore's gaming scene. (Photo: Cheryl Allison Lim, Katherine Ho)
19 May 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 11 Aug 2022 x:39AM)
Gaming equally an industry has always been a tough nut to crack for many women, both effectually the earth and here in Singapore likewise.
Toxic behaviour stemming from its perception as a "boy'southward club" has oft led to gatekeeping actions – attempts to control access to gaming for "coincidental players" – including sexist remarks and verbal abuse.
This firewall of toxicity has proven to be a hurdle for many women who enjoy games and who work in the industry but who are often turned off by a hostile reception.
In recent years, however, gaming seems to take softened its difficult, unwelcoming shell, cheers to trailblazers who just wouldn't accept "no" for an reply – women who are stepping into the spotlight and taking their place alongside male counterparts.
READ: Flaming, sexism, trolls: The toxic side of online gaming and how to deal with it
Behind THE SCREEN
To reach such a promising outlook, withal, was no mean feat. This was especially so behind-the-scenes, where prejudiced behaviour was often subconscious.
Marjorie Poon, the deputy CEO of Emerge Esports, a local talent management company, said that being a woman in the gaming industry does present different difficulties.
"East-sports is very male-dominated in the first place, so existence a woman in the manufacture ways that nosotros take to prove ourselves in a unlike way," said the 27-yr-old. "There are perceptions that we accept to overcome and they are normally negative."
The co-founder and managing managing director of Eliphant, Elicia Lee, recalled instances where she had to ship male colleagues to business organisation meetings as the other party did not want to deal with her. Although such incidences were rare, this was still the case despite Eliphant being one of the largest east-sports marketing and events management companies in the region.
"Obviously, it's non ideal. What you want is not to fifty-fifty accept to deal with things like this. But that's unfortunately how it is. It's very annoying and unnecessary. Only if you still want to practice concern with that company and then sometimes that's what you take to practice," said the 39-year-old. "You just have to have it as information technology comes, and when there's an opportunity to educate people you accept it," she continued.
Lee describes herself equally a "massive" World Of Warcraft thespian, although the rigours of running a business have left her niggling fourth dimension for gaming nowadays. Withal, despite some sour experiences equally a woman in the gaming manufacture, Lee said that she has been seeing an encouraging uptick in the number of women trying to enter the gaming sphere.
She noted that in recent years, Eliphant has seen more women applying for job positions in the visitor. Eliphant also recently hired its starting time woman to make full the position of projection manager, which Lee said has helped the company to bring a "new perspective and way of doing things".
READ: Nerf battles and banana costumes: Welcome to piece of work at this Singapore gaming visitor
The aforementioned goes for Emerge Esports, said Poon, who has hired female talent managers for their roster of content creators and other e-sports personalities.
"There are problems we want to address as a company," she said. "I exercise desire to make a deviation in female leadership and empowerment."
Camera-READY
The incredible growth of online streaming, in particular, has made gaming even more accessible to a female audition, many of whom take to streaming themselves, diving headfirst into the lands of shooters and battle arenas.
A report by Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet published in April this twelvemonth showed that video live streaming service Twitch'southward viewership has more doubled in merely a yr, from 3.i billion hours in the first quarter of 2022 to 6.3 billion hours in the showtime quarter of 2021.
Women streamers are enjoying their slice of that growing pie. Co-ordinate to the same report, pinnacle names such every bit Rachel "Valkyrae" Hofstetter and Imane "Pokimane" Anys drew 12.ii 1000000 hours and 6.viii one thousand thousand hours, respectively, of viewership duration during the first quarter of 2021.
With streamers like Valkyrae reportedly earning around The states$170,000 (Due south$225,000) each month through her three.3 one thousand thousand subscribers, it's no wonder that some local players are looking to pursue the camera-facing life as a career.
Take, for instance, local Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) player Silverish Chen. In 2018, the 31-yr-quondam admin executive began her outset attempts at streaming on Youtube, before moving to Facebook equally she felt that the platform had better potential for viewership.
Today, the MLBB streamer has more than 8,000 followers on her Facebook page. Although she has a total-fourth dimension day job, she said that she tries to stream every day, with each session lasting roughly three hours.
"While streaming is a hobby for me, I hope to become successful also," she said. "It's brought me a lot of fun and enjoyment, and it'due south helped me to improve a lot. Sometimes I get feedback from my viewers telling me what I should and shouldn't do."
And although Chen seems happy to take advice, it doesn't seem like she's in desperate demand of it herself. She'due south reached the rank of "Mythic", a designation reserved for the top tier of MLBB players.
Chen also noted that mobile games such as MLBB have helped more women enter gaming due to their ease of access, as they merely require a mobile device as compared to an entire PC set-up. A report by mobile advert company Jun Group in 2022 showed that women mobile gamers outnumber their male counterparts, with 63 per cent of mobile gamers being women.
Nevertheless, there are downsides to being put in the spotlight. Most streaming services come with a chat function for viewers to collaborate with the streamers themselves. While this can exist used to promote fun discussions or a style for viewers to react to the streamer's gameplay, the flipside is that it also provides an avenue for toxic behaviour similar misogynistic or objectifying comments, a trouble faced past many women streamers.
A study published past researchers from Indiana Academy in 2022 showed that women streamers on streaming platform Twitch were more than likely to receive chat comments related to their looks, compared to male streamers where viewers focused more on their gameplay. This sentiment was echoed by Poon, who noticed the aforementioned tendencies among the talent roster of Sally Esports.
She said: "For female person streamers, people focus on whether they are entertaining or equally an opportunity to see an attractive woman playing games."
READ: Game (all the same) on: Why e-sports is surviving in the age of quarantine
Across external interactions through streaming, in-game interactions besides present a hurdle for women gamers, who might not be seen equally playing on an equal skill level equally their male person team mates.
"Sometimes because y'all are a female player, they will expect down on you," said Chen. "Even if I showed my win rate in games, they would think that it's nothing because you lot're female person and you lot can't play also as a guy."
"But I volition always try to evidence them wrong," she continued. "I retrieve that nosotros shouldn't compare male and female gamers, because I think female gamers can perform too equally male gamers. I just try to do my best in both streaming and gaming and put in attempt."
GUNNING FOR THE Elevation
With such an intimidating temper for women gamers, even fewer of them end upward taking the less beaten path of condign a professional competitive role player.
Tammy "furryfish" Tang, 37, who started off competing in games like Counter-Strike and DOTA, founded one of the region's first all-female competitive teams, Team Asterisk, in 2005.
She recounted an anecdote told to her past the female person captain of Team Asterisk'due south League of Legends team that suggested why women gamers might not be interested in joining mixed-gender teams equally they could become scapegoats for poor results.
According to her, when the squad did well, information technology was often attributed to the male players in the team "conveying" them to a win. In gaming terms, "carrying" oft refers to a player outperforming others in his squad in gild to win the match for them. Nonetheless, when the squad lost games, female person players were blamed and accounted "a burden".
To provide a "safe infinite" for women gamers who wanted to experience a competitive environment, Tang created the Female person Esports League (FSL) in 2012. According to her, the FSL sees nearly 2,000 participants each year across the various titles that it holds competitions for, such every bit MLBB and DOTA 2.
"Our aim at FSL is to reach out to female gamers who might want to try competitive gaming and haven't gotten a chance but would love to do so," said Tang, who is still in charge of running the FSL today.
To do this, the FSL allows players to sign up individually for competitions and matches them with other players to course a full team.
"I see ourselves as a stepping stone for them to transit into beingness pro gamers, function of gaming organisations or mixed teams, wherever they desire to go," She added. "But for those who feel like this is all they want to accomplish and this is where their infinite is, nosotros tin also be that for them."
In 2019, Katherine "Kimiko" Ho joined the FSL to participate in MLBB competitions with a group of friends, with the team somewhen placing 2nd. Ho, who works as a nurse at a full general practitioner's clinic, said that she liked playing in the FSL as information technology was "more than comfy to play with other girls".
The 29-year-quondam also makes sure to railroad train hard past watching recorded replays and learning from videos on YouTube, which frequently have hours out of her schedule. This, she said, is because she believed that women can outperform men if they are willing to grind out the hours in preparation, which also served as a motivation for her to bring together competitions as well.
Recently this year, Ho joined an open competition organised by Moonton, the publisher of MLBB. Her team managed to win a hard-fought second identify, fifty-fifty against other teams that consisted of all-male person players.
Despite the promising advancements made in the gaming manufacture to get more welcoming towards women gamers equally a whole, Tang believes that there is still room for the sport to grow when it comes to gender equality.
In order to interruption this "invisible barrier", she said that ane way forward was for women gamers to become more common and normalised, in gild to minimise gender existence a stand-out feature of being a gamer in the start place.
READ: Alien language? Shoutcasters like Daryl Lim are the voices of e-sports tournaments
SILVER LININGS
All the same, there's plenty to cheer for for women in gaming. Cheryl Allison Lim, 25, a local streamer and social media executive, said that streaming has helped shift perceptions towards women gamers. More skilled women taking to streaming means that viewers are at present able to run into outset-hand how good women gamers tin be.
"They respect (them) because they can see their skill level," she said, citing examples of highly-skilled players similar Jiadota and Kohaibi.
Lim, who counts the grapheme of Disruptor in DOTA two as her favourite 1 to play as, added that men could play their office in supporting women gamers likewise.
"In-game, if you come across a daughter being scolded or looked down on, yous can stand up for her," she said. "If a guy stands up and tells off another guy, it will make him accept a step back and think. I really respect these guys who do this for women out at that place."
But more than than that, more women getting into gaming also means that there is also strength in numbers.
"Women are already at a disadvantage because people won't take you seriously. A lot of women don't have the conviction to pace out there," she said. "When you come up together to support each other, we are a lot stronger every bit a community."
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/women/female-gamers-singapore-gaming-esports-258141
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