Stand by Your Man

Abstract

Although video gaming is becoming a more widespread activity beyond its historically core demographic of young males, participation in competitive gaming remains largely male dominated. Addressing this issue, this research examines the experience of female players in one of the world's most popular games, League of Legends. Two studies-one qualitative (with 15 participants) and the other quantitative (with 16,821 participants)-confirm that although female players accrue skill at the same rate as males, there remains a dearth of female players in this community. Moreover, those females who play with a male partner are less confident in their skills and often focus on supporting their partner's advancement, not their own. This work suggests that one way to address the gender gap in gaming is to better understand and improve the social dynamics within popular games.

How passion and impulsivity influence a player's choice of videogame, intensity of playing and time spent playing

“…Results show that men prefer MMORPGs (Collins et al, 2012;Fuster et al, 2012;Li et al, 2013), sports games, and competitive online videogames, (Ratan, Taylor, Hogan, Kennedy, & Williams, 2015). Women tend to play for entertainment and to pass the time (Ko et al, 2005) and prefer videogames involving simulation, strategy games and mini-games.…”

What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture

“…For all other games listed, female participation was even higher. The lowest estimate is provided by Ratan et al (2015) who found that only 4% of participants in their study on League of Legends were female (N = 18, 627).…”

“…To our knowledge, only two studies have assessed play time more directly, namely the works by and Ratan, Taylor, Hogan, Kennedy, and Williams (2015). In both cases, the authors assessed play time or number of game sessions using direct access to the game servers (Everquest 2 in the former case and League of Legends in the latter).…”

“…Brown, Hall, Holtzer, Brown, and Brown (1997) found that men outperformed women in Pong but that both genders showed significant performance increases in the course of the study. More recently, Ratan et al (2015) surveyed over 18,000 League of Legends players. They utilized the skill measure devised by the game's developers and reported that men, on average, had a significantly higher skill level than did women.…”

I’d rather be a cyborg than a gamerbro: How masculinity mediates research on digital play

“…Th e specifi c subject under consideration here is me, and my own qualitative fi eldwork; the specifi c domain I engage is intensive and competitive gaming, which remains heavily male-dominated (Harper, 2014;Ratan et al, 2015;Taylor, Jenson, & de Castell, 2009), even as the broader landscape of digital play has seen some recent tendencies toward greater inclusivity, however precarious (Chess, 2017;Shaw, 2015).…”