Sexism and misogyny are still a big problem in gaming. Male Valorant professionals have now felt this firsthand. For a study, they pretended to be women in the game and had to endure numerous hostilities and sexist comments. Incidentally, Carolin Kebekus recently reported on similar experiences on ARD:
World of Mencraft
Carolin Kebekus targets sexism in games on the ARD show
That takes away the desire to play
The experiment was carried out by the organization Women in Games Argentina, which is committed to an inclusive video game industry and community. They invited three professional Valorant players, had them play, and turned on a voice changer mid-match that made their voices appear female.
What followed was a very uncomfortable experience for the players. They hardly answered with theirs female voice
in voice chat, they were treated with sexist slogans, insults and other forms of disrespect. You should uninstall or exit the game, none Play games for men
and stay in the kitchen
. When one of the players celebrated a kill, he was even told he (or she) deserve the ‘kill’ like all other women.
That Original-Video The promotion is only available in Spanish, but an English-speaking streamer also sums up the results:
link to Twitter content
Exactly how often the players had to deal with such behavior is not entirely clear, since the clips are edited together from the experiment. However, they all state that the behavior of their teammates took away their enjoyment of the game. As one of them states:
The experience really takes away the desire to play. […] I don’t even want to imagine what it’s like to have to go through such an experience on a regular basis.
The other players felt that too Play as a woman
as quite frustrating. Their fellow players often refused to cooperate with them. The additional difficulties were then also reflected in their performance. While playing with the voice changer, they got significantly worse results than before, getting fewer kills and dying more often.
A pervasive problem
The action of Women in Games Argentina shows how utterly senseless and harmful prejudice and hatred towards women is. Unfortunately, the fact that some people behave so disrespectfully in the protection of anonymity on the Internet is nothing new. The video game community is also part of society and reflects its problems.
Nevertheless, we have a responsibility to keep hatred and hate speech out of our favorite hobby, as we also find out in the podcast about right-wing extremism in gaming:
link to Podcast Content
As has been known for years, there are also major problems with toxic work culture and sexism among game developers. In our large report, women report on the experiences they had at their workplace in the games industry.
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