eSports Gender, Race and Culture

eSports Gender, Race and Culture

Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 24
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-1538-9.ch006
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Abstract

Gaming culture has often courted controversy, whether for its association with sloth, its violent content, or sexist depictions of female characters. In the narrower context of eSports, instances of misogyny, racism, and homophobia remain an ongoing concern. Despite the fact that women and racialized groups make up a significant proportion of the gaming public, eSports viewership among those groups is proportionally much lower. Moreover, analyses in this chapter show that women and people of color comprise a fraction of the top streamers on Twitch, as well as the broadcast face of eSports media coverage, the casters. Despite efforts to educate users and regulate the conduct of players and streamers, the eSports community continually runs into controversy. While the industry grapples with its image related to social justice and equity, the clear lack of diversity in eSports excludes a large and important demographic, and thus limits its economic growth. Reforms have been slow to come, and some argue have had impact.
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Background

The Masculine, White World of Twitch

The global gaming community is huge, as indicated in previous chapters, and almost half the population of the world plays video games. In North America this means high rates of participation for both men and women, as well as racialized groups. On the gender front there seems to be fairly consistent data estimating female gaming at about 45 per cent of the total in the United States (Entertainment Software Association, 2018). In Canada, the most recent analyses suggest an even split (50%) between male and female gamers (Entertainment Software Association of Canada, 2018). Statistics on the racial breakdown of the gaming demographic are much harder to come by. One report cites data from a 2017 ESPN Fan Survey in which African-Americans make up 22% of total “who identify as avid fans (African-Americans are 13% of the U.S. population overall)” (parenthesis in the original, Peterson, 2018). Hispanics in the United States comprise 21% of the “avid fan” group. Though eSports is an emerging social phenomenon, there has not been much research dedicated to measuring racial diversity and inclusion, whether in audiences, professional competitors, media personalities or streamers. The perception, given the volume of writing around misogyny, homophobia and racism in the gaming world, is that eSports is not very diverse at all. Moreover, if, as Chapter 4 suggests, Twitch is the face of eSports, then it fails to reflect its broad fan base. An analysis (below) of the top 100 most followed channels on Twitch for this volume highlights the lack of diversity among eSports broadcast crews, eSports competitors and well-known streamers.

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