The world of gaming, like many other things in life, has been mainly a male dominated thing. The work industry, the gaming industry, and even many fields of sports, the male and female ratio has a wide gap. But more recently, the trend is changing. There are now far more females playing games and being public about playing games than ever before. But one thing that apparently hasn't changed is the skewed male expectations of what a female gamer shouldn't and should do, and can't and can be.
For being in 2017, it's surprising that these situations still persist.
In an article published by the LA Times, a female student at the University of California at Irvine, by the name of Jenny Song, was told by her older brother not to tell anyone she was playing with that she was female. That, if she wanted to have a good and fair online gaming experience, she should pretend to be male.
Why does it have to be this way?
The online gaming community, like anything else that exists on the Internet, can be home to a vile group of people. Yes, there are fantastically nice people to play with and you can find them, but there will always be those that ruin it for the rest of us.
Song, who enjoys gaming, often faced absurd comments such as "go back to the kitchen. We're going to lose. We have a girl on our team."
The remarks that Song receives is not uncommon in the gaming scene, especially when things get competitive. Even fellow male players get harassed or insulted by other male players.
The fact of the matter is, we've seen exceptional female players, and just exceptional females in general. Whether they're students, or fellow work colleagues, the women can do just as well and even better than the men do.
Thankfully, the gaming community as a whole, is on a more positive trajectory. There are more participating games from both genders, and more of players are being vocal about negative behavior. For all its unfortunate sides, the Internet as a whole has allowed a more collaborative movement on all fronts.
Being nice isn't difficult to do, and what goes around comes around. A nice gesture and an ugly one can both have lasting impacts. Which one would you rather have?
Our team at Vertagear is full of passionate gamers, and we're a diverse mixed of men and women from all sorts of different backgrounds. That's precisely what makes us strong. It's precisely what drives our creativity—it's because we don't all have the same points of view that we can move forward and be innovative. One person contributes to another person's improvement. This is what makes us stronger.