Opinion: Hearthstone tournament controversy shows the folly of eSports’ ambitions
by Ozzie Mejia, Jul 02, 2014 11:00am PDT
Related Topics – PC, eSports
Update: I had previously reached out earlier in the day to fighting game commentator and video game law advocate David Philip Graham (a.k.a. Ultradavid). His response was put so eloquently, that his concurring views have been added. For more on Graham’s qualifications and resume, visit his website.
Video games are among the most prominent mediums struggling to shake off an undesired “boys-only” stigma. It’s an issue that continues to grow uglier, as new social conundrums pop up by the day, often leaving women marginalized and men under a shameful spotlight. However, the latest controversy spells out a more recent folly for video games, particularly in the competitive realm.
Reddit’s Hearthstone community had recently discovered a qualifier for an upcoming Finland Assembly Summer 2014 tournament would be open to male players only. There is no ambiguity in this statement. The tournament organizers clearly expressed that women would not be allowed, with their justification being that they’re aiming for this tournament to be on par with legitimate sports. This is an argument that trivializes the idea of video games as a “real sport” and one that competitive gaming should move away from.
To be clear, the organizers of this Hearthstone tournament know exactly what they’re doing in segregating their events by gender. The tournament’s head admin confirmed all of the details toPC Gamer earlier today. To double down on their intentions, the International e-Sports Federation (IeSF) replied to a Facebook comment, “The decision to divide male and female competitions was made in accordance with international sports authorities, as part of our effort to promote e-Sports as a legitimate sports.”
If that has become the case, then why continue with this charade that video games are legitimate sports? The argument of what constitutes sport has grown more complex over the years. Golf is a sport. Bowling is a sport. However, those are measures of athletic prowess, in which there can be a divide between men and women. Olympic sports like Marathon and Pole Vault are likewise segregated for this reason.
The difference is that video games are not a measure of physical athletic ability. While more physical, contact-based sports may require gender segregation due to body structure differences, none of that matters in gaming. Video games are a measurement of the mind and reflexes and, in this arena, men and women can participate on an even playing field. To try and place video games on the same pedestal as sports like golf and bowling is flawed, simply because there is no visible evidence as to why the two genders cannot compete equally. Is there a difference between two men, two women, or a man and a woman competitively playing Hearthstone? To the average viewer, there isn’t. For the most part, their observational focus is on the monitor, not necessarily on the players themselves.
Adding to this view is someone that’s been a big part of the competitive gaming scene for many years. David Philip Graham, known to fighting game fans as Ultradavid, concurs that the comparing video games to other sports, like golf, bowling, and even poker, is a particularly unfair one.
“We’re not poker or chess, or soccer or football for that matter,” Graham said. “What happens and what has happened in those different competitions doesn’t have any compelling or even persuasive authority with respect to video games. I’m a big hockey and football fan myself, but I’m not going to conflate video games with them. I’m not willing to put up with what I see as problems regardless of appeals to chess or whatever else. We are our own scene! We don’t need to parrot existing examples. We should learn from them, but part of what that entails is learning where they’ve screwed up so we can avoid it. To the extent that any other competition enforces needless separation of genders or sex, well, I think they’re screwing up.”
The galling part of IeSF’s stance is that the Hearthstone players themselves don’t have any sort of antipathy towards allowing women to compete. Male competitive gamers often do not express these chauvinistic tendencies during actual competitions, because the focus is on competing and winning. I’ve been a fan of the competitive fighting scene for a while, having seen female fighters like Evil Geniuses’ Chocoblanka or GamesterGear’s Sherry Jenix display the same gaming prowess as their male counterparts. Not once have I seen male competitors cry foul for their participation and, in fact, they welcomed their inclusion. And it’s unfortunate, because the IeSF’s position serves to add an unfair perception to the video game scene and how it portrays both men and women.
Who cares. Women don’t play video games anyway.
Actually in the StarCraft 2 world a Canadian female who goes by the handle Scarlett is considered one of the top players in the world and regularly beats some of the top players (all male) in the world.