A recent incident involving Australian Twitch streamer Taylor Morgan has shed light on one of the major reasons women turn away from online competitive games, following a violent and abusive outburst from a male participant.
During one of her livestreams, Morgan was playing a game of ‘Valorant’. During a match, she ended up in an argument with a male teammate whom she accused of being “all talk”.
In response, the teammate said to her: “be honest with me, do you know what rape feels like?”. He continued: “you’re heading on the right path for it” and “it’s not rape if I like it.”
Morgan, disturbed by the statements, abruptly ended her livestream. She later talked about the incident on X (formerly Twitter) with the video attached.
I have never made a more desperate plea that what I am about to say right now. @riotgames @RiotSupport I need you guys to fu….. do something. I am an incredibly strong person and I have been streaming for a very, very long time. But absolutely nothing prepares you for someone…
— TaylorMorgan (@TaylorMorganS_) May 13, 2024
The tweet gained traction and as of June 5 it had 91 thousand likes and 40 million views. Morgan largely saw support, however a large number of replies also claimed she was being overly sensitive, suggesting what the man said amounted to “trash talk”, and telling Morgan hat the ability to mute people exists in the game.
One of X’s more recent features is that those who pay for the platform’s premium features have their replies prioritised over others. A slight majority of replies to Morgan’s original tweet by premium accounts were ridiculing her. Of those where a clear stance on the incident could be discerned, there were 33 supporting her and 44 against.
Bot Sentinel states on its platform: “the higher the score the more likely the account engages in targeted harassment, toxic trolling, or uses deceptive tactics engineered to cause division and chaos. We analyse several hundred tweets per account, and the more someone engages in behavior consistent with problematic accounts, the higher their Bot Sentinel score is.”
Supportive accounts for Morgan displayed an average score of 8.85 per cent, while the negative reactions showed accounts with scores of 31.6 per cent, with none of them below 7 per cent.
Gaming has stereotypically been viewed as a male domain, however data has never supported this perception.
In recent years the audience for video games has been almost evenly split between the two, with women representing noticeable majorities in certain facets.
Market research company Circana released a report last year that showed 52 per cent of Nintendo Switch owners are women, and 54 per cent of mobile gamers are women.
Circana and other research organisations have found a roughly even split between men and women who game on PC. Only in certain types of game, such as competitive PC games, is the perception of fewer women gamers true.
Since the 90s researchers have been observing this pattern, with Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell’s 1998 book, “From Barbie to Mortal Kombat” notable for starting many aspects of the modern conversation around gender and gaming.
Competitive PC games have less women participants. These include games such as, Valve’s ‘Counter-Strike 2’, Blizzard Entertainment’s ‘Overwatch 2’, and Riot Games’ ‘Valorant’ and ‘League of Legends’.
Valorant’s Studio Head Anna Donlon directly responded to Morgan’s tweet. She wrote: “Taylor, I’m so sorry you had to experience this. We’re taking actions against this account, but I also know that’s not enough. Our teams are always working on our behavior tools, but we have room to improve…and we will.”
After the tweet Valorant released an official developer update on May 31. In it, Ms Donlon addressed the issue of player behaviour.
“We have no room for these types of behaviour[s] in our game or in our community,” she said.
“[Valorant] is a team game.
“When you tell someone to “just mute” comms to avoid harassment, you are essentially putting the harassed person in a position to not communicate – to compromise how they want to play the game to accommodate you.
“If you need to make truly evil statements under the guise of regular shit-talk to enjoy gaming, then please play something else – we won’t miss you.”
In the update, Ms Donlon announced that hardware bans will be used as punishment for extreme forms of “harmful player behaviour”, a punishment previously reserved for cheating.
Hardware bans recognise a person’s computer, meaning the player can’t evade the ban by using someone else’s account or creating a new one.
The issue of making online competitive video games more accessible to women is an important economic decision for developers, as each year more funding money is invested into underrepresented gender esport leagues.
Of these four esports, Overwatch is the only one where women participants have successfully played in the normal division at the highest levels of competition. Most notably Se-Yeon ‘Geguri’ Kim who was on the Shanghai Dragons for the first two seasons of the Overwatch League. Since then, Yunhee ‘Aniyun’ Chi and Haley ‘Halo’ Hamand have also competed.
While Overwatch also has a league for underrepresented genders called ‘Calling All Heroes’, Valorant’s ‘Game Changers’ is the current premier women’s league in esports, with the largest prize pools, budgets, and direct investment of numerous endemic esports organisations. Valorant itself is the closest to closing the gap of women playing competitive PC games, as Riot has claimed 30-40 per cent of the player base are women, the closest any game of this kind has come to an even split.
Perth resident Alyssa Seow has been playing online PC games for more than a decade.
“Those typical, ‘are you a girl or a 13 year old boy?’ kind of comments – I’d get those and it actually developed into a phobia of me not wanting to speak at all,” she said.
“But [now] it’s so normal to jump on Overwatch and hear females on comms.”
However, Ms Seow said it was a different experience to be a woman in online gaming,
“I think there’s still a little bit of hostility but it depends on what game it is,” she said.
“If you’re not playing well, other players might hone in on the fact that you’re female, and [use that] as ammunition against you.”