Girls and Starcraft: The obvious topic

Girls are a joke in competitive gaming in general, and Starcraft in particular. I make no excuses. Between Tossgirl's mediocre career and the lack of any other notable female Starcraft players, the conclusion seems foregone. Hell, many top World of Warcraft guilds have banned girls from even joining their guilds at all (when you're not good enough for World of Warcraft, you know you suck at gaming). The question I have is: why is this the case? Is there anything that can be done to remedy the situation? Should anything be done?

A 2009 study by the Entertainment Software Association finds that approximately 40% of gamers are female, including 43-45% of online gamers. Despite this, female representation in the upper tiers of competitive gaming is virtually non-existent. Now, the simplest answer would be to simply say the girls are terrible at competitive gaming. While I will leave open the possibility that this could be the case, I don't think that the evidence necessarily points to that as the most reasonable conclusion, as there are several mitigating factors.

The biggest of these factors is the types of games which dominate competitive play: first-person shooters, real-time strategy, and sports. War and sports have traditionally been the province of men, and, whether through genetic disposition or through societal expectations, this has carried through to video games. None of the gametypes played competitively are particularly appealing to the majority of female gamers, which would directly contribute to low representation. Studies show that female gamers value strong plots, character development, open ended gameplay, and immersive game worlds (which would explain the relatively high representation of females in the MMO and action-adventure genres). Strong competitive gameplay ranked relatively low in comparison. Furthermore, girl gamers were much more likely to prefer casual games.

The second factor is the general lack of interest in women's competition because of inferior performance. Just look at real sports: men's basketball is magnitudes more popular than women's, and some sports don't even have female leagues (football, for example). Female Starcraft leagues have not existed since 2005, and for good reason--they didn't draw enough viewers because the level of competition was so low. The result of all this is that girls who might otherwise have found interest in playing professionally are discouraged by the lack of successful female pro gamers. After all, where is the motivation to become a pro Starcraft player when the peak of Tossgirl's career is winning a few rounds at the GomTV classic or placing third in ESWC? In a sense, it is a self-perpetuating problem.

Ironically, the small presence of girl gamers in competitive gaming, in my opinion, mostly worsens the problem. With each mediocre girl gamer that shows up, negative stereotypes are reinforced. However, they are coddled because everyone likes the idea of a girl who can keep up with the men (and because no one likes a sausagefest). In truth, as long as a female gamer can get by with sub-par performance, there is no incentive to keep reaching forward.

So what can we do about it? How do we increase female participation in competitive gaming without resorting to some kind of inappropriate affirmative action? My first move would be to institute female leagues. "Separate but equal" jokes aside, as long as these leagues are conducted with the same professionalism of the normal leagues, we can encourage aspiring female gamers with having to baby them. However, I think this is a temporary fix, a bandage, until we can integrate the leagues together. At some point the girl gamers are going to have to compete with the men, lest they be condemned to the fate of women's basketball (in 2008, WNBA games averaged just 413,000 viewers, compared to 1.46 million viewers on ESPN and over 2.2 million on ABC for NBA games). Fortunately, in competitive gaming, girls suffer no measurable genetic disadvantage.

Or do they? Traditionally, women have been seen as more disposed to cooperate than men, who are theoretically more confrontational and competitive. Studies have generally proven inconclusive, but the possibility exists that women are, for the most part, simply not biologically predisposed to compete in this manner. I personally don't think so. Rather, I think that millenia of society's traditions have geared men and women into these respective roles. Women just might be less competitive, but, if it is simply a result of society's norms, this can be changed. However, I have no evidence to support this claim.

Now, the final question is: do we really need to do anything? Though competitive gaming is a male-dominated field, this tends not to be because of discrimination, unlike, for example, politics. Rather, female gamers tend to be excluded because they genuinely lack the skills and often the desire to compete. So, no harm, no foul, right? If girls don't want to play competitively, why bother changing anything? And, honestly, I think I can live with that line of reasoning. Gender equality is a touchy and controversial subject in many areas, but this need not be one of them. Going back once again to real-life sports, no one seems to mind that there is no female football or hockey league, or that the WNBA is a joke, least of all women. While it is probably inevitable that some girl somewhere dreams of being a pro gamer and likely will have her hopes crushed, I would wager money that situations like that are extremely rare.