Women in gaming feels like a topic we are continually dragged back onto every other day. It seems as though everybody in the community knows women are obviously present, and are quite frankly sick of discussing it, and yet a large portion of institutions within the gaming industry seem to be missing this fact almost entirely. Hearthstone, or more accurately the International e-Sports Federation, has been the latest agent of blatant misogyny thrown in our faces for no real reason whatsoever.
Yesterday, a post was made on the Hearthstone community Reddit simply linking to a screenshot of the IeSF 2014 Hearthstone Qualifier info, with one interesting detail included. Reddit user “Karuta” accurately and concisely put many of our feelings into words, simply saying “Is this really where we stand?”. The screenshot featured one singular highlighted sentence “The participation is open only to Finnish male players.”
To state the obvious here, it seems a little ridiculous to restrict a card game tournament based on gender – and by a little ridiculous, I mean utterly senseless, childish and petty. The statement acts as a sloppily written “no girls allowed” sign slung across the bedroom of an 11 year old boy. It is important to note that it isn’t Blizzard or those at Hearthstone that have made this decision, but rather those that lead the IeSF and you better believe it’s not just on this game the rule is enforced.
In a statement to PC Gamer, head admin of the Assembly Summer 2014 Hearthstone IeSF Qualifier Markus “Olodyn” Koskivirta said,
“The tournament is open to Finnish male players only. In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation’s (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only. This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things.”
I’m sorry, what?
Essentially the argument put across is that allowing women into the qualifying round runs the risk of a woman winning, and then not being able to proceed on to IeSF finals. That would make perfect sense if the entire premise wasn’t so absurd to begin with. It turns out the International e-Sports Federation are seeking to be recognised as an official sporting institution, and so have been conducting themselves accordingly. Men and women are given separate divisions in many sports, a well known and generally accepted fact, so of course a potential sporting institution would seek to reflect this?
Is that a woman? Uh-oh!
Except that physical sports usually involve some act of strength and/or stamina. For example, gendered divisions make perfect sense in terms of boxing as men generally have a greater capacity to build muscle. The issue is that I don’t believe a single person has ever deemed a card game to be a physical sport, or Starcraft, Dota or Street Fighter for that matter. So what possible reason could they have to exclude women from any of these tournaments?
The rule comes across as an act of total desperation from the IeSF. Gendered divisions for non-physical strategy games explicitly implies a greater tactical capacity in men than in women – it suggests that it simply would not be fair to pit the genders against each other as a male would have a natural advantage. It would be laughable were it not so hurtful, distasteful and factually incorrect.
Since the initial backlash of the controversy, the IeSF have responded and touched on an excuse slightly more common in the industry, stating
“We know that e-Sports is largely dominated by male players and females players are actually a portion of the overall player base.”
To make this perfectly clear, women are very much present in the gaming community, we are all over the place. If one particular segment of the industry appears to be heavily male dominated, attracting only a fraction of female players, it’s not because women are just inherently incapable of playing, appreciating or taking part in that game. It is because that game has been explicitly marketed towards men.
It’s an absolute insult to the community that the IeSF expect us to believe that gendered divisions is a way in which to promote the ‘sport’ to women. If their end goal is to be taken seriously, not just by the sporting industry, but by anybody on the planet, perhaps their first move should be to stop insulting 50% of it’s population.