Piloting my way up – Being a competitive woman In gaming

[Music] [Music] very nice to see so many of you here thank you for steel games for inviting me as a speaker for steel Midea sorry good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between my name is Coty Kirk Kenan I'm 30 years old I'm a producer and also visual artisan I do some streaming as well I'm also a competitive gamer for ninth

sanguin Tigers in MechWarrior Online and also I play in renegade squadron in star citizen I've been playing competitively now for almost two years total but I think some could say but you're a girl women don't like big stompy robots or space simulators or first-person shooters it's a very common assumption and if you were expecting me to talk about harassment against women in eSports I'm sorry to disappoint you it's still a very important topic but I have a different kind of story for you today I want to tell you about the support I've got towards my each eSports journey and to hopefully encourage some others to join the arenas as well I started my

career online one and a half years ago my boyfriend had been playing the game competitively for almost well I guess five years I enjoyed watching him play and compete I actually fell asleep often to the sound of lasers and ballistic older cannons and ghost rifles and I got to know the voices of ninth sanguin tires really well although already through voice comms after a year of that I finally did the tutorial on the game and on the same session I actually played my first ever game with nine STS a month later they took me in there B team because they needed more players I had been playing for three months before I started my competitive play at first

and the first time was in Macquarie online World Championships I took it all very seriously my boyfriend even made me flash cards of the enemy mix so I could recognize them better to provide better scouting in for for my team well obviously you can may imagine that I was very nervous but the encouragement and constructive criticism that I get got from my teammates really helped helped me overcome some of that well the battle with my own my own mind seemed to be the biggest challenge for me how I really got the skills to compete after just a few months of gaming well what if I fail and let my team down how would they treat me after what can I do really to

relieve myself of these fears I actually I ended up creating this Word document of all the great comments that I got sometimes when I had failed I reminded myself of all these good comments to get over the anger that I felt towards myself because of failing and just to keep on practicing as well I want to point out some things I think might be the reasons to why women are still not a common sight in eSports some of it goes far beyond the harassment of any individual gamer even though that surely is one of the reasons why women decide not to take part in competitive gaming I think the reasons are also partly

cultural and built into our upbringing and environment there was actually this one video that really caught me thinking of this topic it was about some text or guys that were trying on a headset and they were asking a female co-worker to give it a try at first she was really hesitant to try it on and she was like nah I don't know I'm probably really bad at it but decided to give it a go anyways well you can imagine the colleagues were pretty surprised when she started cursing and shouting like die die die to the opponents in the game and got all immersed in the gaming experience and she was obviously enjoying it a great deal the thing that I think made that

specific video funny was the fact that women are usually not perceived as aggressive and seeing behavior like that can be something people aren't really expecting this attitude goes back far into our cultural values and characteristics and traits we perceive being gender-based according to this article that was published in New York Times some behavioral scientists say that such traits are actually heavily influenced by the children's child's social learning according to dr. mcgaubey Maccabee due to testosterone there is a big pile of biological basis for the expression of traits such as aggressiveness however assertive and competitive behaviors are not directly connected to

gender if women are less competitive or less aggressive what they have learned is acceptable behavior from family other adults and peers is of great importance and also especially right this bit here while boys can be taught that aggression is not always a bad thing dr. Kaplan says that girls are taught to suppress aggression because of their role in child-rearing well as I said women are still not a frequent sight in eSports I was trying to figure out some reasons for this I think some of the reasons might be that women don't embrace their competitiveness and aggressiveness as they don't consider them as typical female traits there could be some fear to fail fear of losing face and the fear

of showing sensitivity within the gaming community where expressing vulnerability is uncommon individuals react based on how they perceive competitiveness and aggressiveness that are typically considered masculine traits that can sometimes leave lead to toxicity as well than alienate some women as you can see here in this research done by bian Leslie and Symbian on 2016 perceiving some traits as gender-based might affect our choice of games as well or the play styles we might prefer the study observed childrens gendered believes about brilliance and its effect on their interests both genders were

equally represented in the study the children were told of two games once it said to be for children who are really really smart and the other one for children who try really really hard well the results were kind of surprising to me um girls were less interested than boys in the game for smart children but preferred the game for hardworking children one should really analyze what why we choose certain types of games could it be that you gravitate towards the games that have been marketed to your gender or are the reasons cultural you really shouldn't let a bit of a steeper learning curve scare you away from games either that's actually where the sense of accomplishment lies in

learning and in succeeding the two games I play competitively our games that Harbor a lot of ex-military guys War veterans and actual fighter pilots many games that I play our own average very male-dominated well some could ask how am i dealing with that the answer is by being myself no special treatment I just want to be treated as equal there were still those people who assumed that I got the spot in the team by having a relationship with one of members I told them they could achieve just the same by attending practice and showing their skills in the duels I was

training four days a week and on top of that some extra training sessions to earn me the spot in team a it took a lot of hard work hard work for me to get to where I'm at there are always people who want to believe the reason that they're not advancing is something external one of the first things I decided on was that I would ask twice ask advice from more skilled players than me so I could keep on developing in the game I was constantly asking what I could do better here you can see some traits that are commonly seen in successful career women according to Business Insider 2015 these women are not just born with these

traits they can also be learned by anyone who wants to get to the top whether it's at work or in gaming they found six personality traits that were associated with higher performance ratings assertiveness aggressiveness empathy ego strength stress tolerance and energy also resilience and being able to handle stressful situations I remember my first ever competitive match my hands were shaking my heart was thumping I could barely hit the buttons that I was supposed to push you can imagine that like the rush of that moment all of these traits really apply for eSports but also as general advice in life whether its upbringing of

children or something else well what does this really mean for those women in eSports understanding where the stereotypes challenges and assumptions stem from helps overcome them you should really think about what makes you choose a certain type of a game as I said how about picking one you wouldn't normally choose you might get surprised train hard prove your skill in a male-dominated field although it is unfair sometimes women must put in more effort to actually convince others of their skill but you shouldn't give up

here's my advice for people interested in playing eSports first thing set goals where what are you aiming for with your practice play against more skilled players and ask what you could do better if you ever get angry use the anger as fuel for learning and get over your ego I know that can be hard at times when you could get bad comments from somebody or whatever but it's something that really drags you down in the long run when you're trying to learn find a team that has a supportive atmosphere I can't even count the times that somebody told me that Dober you were doing great that actually takes you quite far don't let nasty comments bring you down just focus on

the positive you could do the same as I did just create a Word document or whatever it is that makes you feel confident in your gaming do the research watch and learn as we heard in some of the previous presentations as well watching videos of high high skill level gameplay could be useful because you can see what you are doing wrong or what could you improve on there is really just one more thing I want to say when MIT men and women finally reach equilibrium we might just discover untold synergies in playing together thank you very much for your time [Applause]

thank you thank you very much indeed Kathy that's fantastic thank you um do we have any questions from the audience I think we've got it I got a time for certainly for a couple of questions from from the audience today thorough if there are any oh there we go here I come hi thanks for the talk do you have any any general understanding of where female eSports is going like all together do you know if there's any effort in organizations to start or kickstart these all women teams or are the the leagues that we're currently it's mainly just males playing together are those leagues do do they have any efforts into bringing more diversity into the leagues in forms of recruiting women or things like this if you have any general general knowledge it would be cool to know cool to hear I don't have actual knowledge of that but I know that there have been more all women

tournaments and I think that is something that really we really need to think about like what what can we do as a community as well to support those women also get into the mixed tournaments with men to play because I think when if you think about women and their role in like FPS games or whatever I think most of the women might get into those FPS games later on in life I mean like older than some of the male and that could actually affect their skill level as well somewhat so I think it's an important step for to encourage more women to get into those eSports and those tournaments whether it's all-female or not but I think you should definitely aim for getting those mixed tournaments and not just the all-female

thank you any further questions for can see here oh I'll come straight back there thank you does your eSports persona meerkat like a different personality than counting yourself mm well in a sense just slightly though I think what is different is that when I'm dealing with those military guys or whatever sometimes I get some hazing and I might have to say some harsh stuff back in order to reach the balance but otherwise pretty much the same right thank you thank you oh we still have a minute or two if there's one final question maybe anymore

anymore for anymore I have a question actually just that regardless of a vendor I noticed that one of the things you pointed out was you went very quickly from playing the game for the first time it seems to me to being in the a-team in protectively and how you it seems it was that people pull you down to the amount of will effort you put into it who seems like you were training than the amount of hours is like a professional athlete trains for absolute for it so my question is is is that unusual for someone to go so quickly from a being a beginner to being in a in a professional team and what advice do you have for someone who wants to head into a game well I think for me it was easier because my boyfriend had already been playing the game competitively for years and I actually was also playing the same make weight class as him so it was easy for him to teach me the competitive thought process behind those tactical moves so it was

kind of expedited in a sense and I think the best way still for anyone who is interested in is just talking to people who are more skilled and learning from them you can always ask find a mentor find a team member that knows better ask I think that's the best advice for that great thank you very much thank you a random floor speak [Music] [Music]