For one study, players pretended to be women via voice distorter. The whole experience was not a pleasant one.
Sexism and misogyny are still a big problem in gaming. Now male Valorant pros got to feel this first hand. For a study, they pretended to be women in the game and had to endure numerous hostilities and sexist comments.
Takes the fun out of playing
The experiment was conducted by the organisation (Women in Games Argentina), which advocates for an inclusive video game industry and community. They invited three professional Valorant players, had them play and turn on a voice changer in the middle of the match to make their voices appear female
What followed was a very unpleasant experience for the players. No sooner did they report to voice chat with their female voice
than they were met with sexist slurs, insults and other disrespect. They were told to uninstall or leave the game, not to play male games
and stay in the kitchen
When one of the players celebrated a kill, he was even told that he (or she) deserved the ‘kill’ like all the other women.
The (original video) of the action is only available in Spanish, but an English-speaking streamer also summarises its results:
Why don’t things like THIS get more coverage? Women in Games Argentina posted an experiment with 3 male Valorant pros using voice changers to show the harassment women go through in gaming. Full vid linked in tweet under this. pic.twitter.com/VuDAnieDcy
– Lulu (@LuluLuvely) December 3, 2022
Exactly how many times the players had to deal with such behaviour is not entirely clear, as these are edited together clips from the experiment. However, they all state that the behaviour of their fellow players took away their enjoyment of the game. For example, one of them states:
The experience really robs you of the pleasure of playing. […] I don’t even want to imagine what it’s like to have to go through such an experience on a regular basis.
The other players also found playing as a woman
quite frustrating. Thus, their fellow players also often refused to cooperate with them. The additional difficulties were then also evident in their performance. While playing with the voice distorter, they performed significantly worse than before, got fewer kills and died more often.
The other players were also more frustrated with the voice distorter.
A pervasive problem
Women in Games Argentina’s action shows how utterly pointless and harmful prejudice and hatred towards women is. The fact that some people behave so disrespectfully under the protection of anonymity on the net is unfortunately nothing new. The video game community is also part of society and reflects its problems.
