User:Spatel137/sandbox

Sexism in Video Games
One reason why sexism exists in Video Games is because of the way women are treated in video games. In terms of job occupancy, women occupy about 22% of the game developing community. This means that a majority of the game developers are men. With men dominating the video game industry, this leads to misrepresented views on female characters. Female characters are designed to be eye-candy to the audience. Female characters are deisgned with small waists, wear revealing clothing, and overly-large physical features. A study found that female characters were 10 times more likely to be partially or fully nude than their male counterparts. Female characters are also more likely to be supporting characters or have no influence in the game. A study found that 16% of video game characters are females in the bestselling video games.

A study found that females are likely to face sexual harassment from other players after playing a sexualized game. In this study, participants played a game that sexualized female video game characters by making them wear little to no clothing. After playing the game, female and male participants were prompted to send sexist or nonsexist jokes to another person that is the same sex as the participant. The results of the study showed that women were more likely to send sexist jokes to other women after playing a sexualized game.

Examples of sexism in the Video Game community

 * An Overwatch player, SeYeon Kim, was harassed by the casual and professional gaming community because there were accusations that she was cheating by using illegal programs to help her perform. To prove her innocence, Kim had to Livestream her performance, with the camera aimed at her keyboard, to signify that she was the one playing. Blizzard, the company behind Overwatch, stated that Kim was not using any illegal program to help her play. With the evidence from her Livestream and Blizzard intervening, the accusations died down.
 * In a study, different people were interviewed based on their experience playing the video game, League of Legends. A female participant did not enjoy the game because of the pressure and verbal harassment she was facing from playing. Her team would always force her to play the support role, the least impactful role. Eventually, the participant had to quit playing League of Legends due to her negative experiences. Another participant also faced sexual harassment when her teammates found out that she was a female gamer. This participant had to start acting more aggressively in her matches to hide the fact that she was a female.
 * A study conducted found that talking in a female voice in a shooter game, Halo 3, made you more 3x more likely to be targeted for harassment than talking in a male voice.

Additional Countermeasures

 * Pandora's Might Solider's Clan, a competitive league, provides an enivornment where women can compete in tournaments without facing harrassment from the gaming community.
 * Dames who Game is a podcast available on Apple Podcast where an all-female cast talk about gaming or geek related stuff.
 * Fat Ugly or Slutty is a website where female gamers can post any sexual harassment they face. By doing so, female gamers can bring attention to the gaming community of the things they have to go through, as well as accomplish their main goal of the site, which is to laugh off those harassments and don't let it bother them.
 * Gamerchix is a community of female gamers that play games and talk about gaming-related things.
 * Frag dolls were a team of gamer girls that were employed by video game company, Ubisoft, to promote and play competitively in tournaments. The frag dolls were later disbanded in 2015.
 * Valkyrie Challenge, a tournament organization in South Africa, features an all-female league that plays CSGO with a six-figure prize pool.
 * Gamer girl is a subreddit with a community where female gamers discuss the issues they face, as well as talking and playing video games with one another.

Esports
Esports is a competitive environment where professional gamers compete in tournaments. The Esports scene is dominated by males. In popular esports games like CSGO, a first-person shooter, sports games like FIFA or NBA, and overly sexualized games like Street Fighter all adhere to the male fantasy. This can make female gamers feel intrusive since the majority of pro gamers are males. As more and more females don't participate in Esports, the competitive scene will continue to be male-dominated, making the situation progressively worse. In terms of the community, since the majority of the community of esports is online, users get a safety net when they trash female players because there is no identification with that comment. This means that there are no repercussions to trash female gamers. A study found that professional female gamers face more discrimination than professional male gamers. The data also found that professional male gamers were less likely to acknowledge the discrimination professional female gamers went through.