A Call for Support and a Glance at League of Legends
Who we are and a closer look at how women are displayed in blockbuster game League of Legends
The esports and gaming industry is a magical place. There are stories you would think only exist in fairytales. Former professional Fortnite player Issa Rahmin for example had an incident that injured his hand leaving him unable to work. Out of boredom he took to Epic Games‘ blockbuster Fortnite and earned several hundred thousand US-Dollars, creating a new career for himself. There is Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, who has been kicked out by his parents due to his dream to become a professional player. He was homeless, staying at friend’s places, having to move week after week. Today, Doublelift is one of the most famous League of Legends players of all time.
The charm of esports
Most importantly, esports offers the unique opportunity for men and women to compete side by side - not held back by any physical differences. Instead, they are held back by outdated beliefs. According to a 2021 report by Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), 47% of European video game players are women. Yet, the esports and gaming industry does not reflect that. The majority of professional players are white men and even behind the scenes you can barely find any diversity. According to a study conducted by the trade association for UK’s games industry in 2021, 90% of UK game workers are white. 28% identified as women, only 2% as non-binary.
Thus, it is even more important to highlight and amplify the voices of the amazing diverse folks of the industry - which is exactly what we want to do with this newsletter. Every week we share helpful resources and point out important initiatives and research projects about diversity in esports and gaming. Our goal is to build a library that includes guides, how-tos and more. We don’t want to compete with other projects, we want to support them in order to create a more inclusive and welcoming space.
Who we are
The newsletter is brought to you by Kristin Banse and Chris Hana. Kristin is a former esports journalist, who published for several outlets such as German football magazine kicker or ProSiebenSat.1 Media. She now works in tech and leads several different diversity initiatives in the esports industry, such as the first esports mentoring program in the DACH region. She has her own career podcast called “GLOWTH” and is obsessed with Animal Crossing as well as Formula 1.
Chris is the founder and CEO of The Esports Observer, the source for esports business news and insights. He works in esports full-time since 2014 and besides founding TEO held leadership positions at esports team Fnatic, esports agency Level99, and sports publication Sports Business Journal. He recently joined the executive team at Kolex, an NFT infrastructure provider. Chris is active as a mentor for Stadia Ventures, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, and the ESBD. As a hobby, he runs a German speaking podcast called “im Spielekeller” with Dennis Gehlen.
Both Chris and Kristin are passionate about diversity and inclusion topics as well esports, which led to the creation of this newsletter. For Chris this is also a new opportunity to engage with diversity topics on a more frequent basis and a more conscious level.
Bachelor’s Thesis League of Legends
To give you an exact idea of what to expect from this newsletter, we want to highlight two pieces of work by Milena Imgart. Milena is a lecturer at the University of Applied Science Esslingen–Germany, a master's student in social work, and a mentee in an esports diversity mentoring program, who is passionate about approaching equality and diversity in esport from an academic perspective.
Did you ever take a closer look at female characters in video games? For her Bachelor’s thesis, Milena looked at available champions in Riot Games’ blockbuster game League of Legends, the number one global esports title. Milena assessed female characters based on standardized characteristics. She conducted her analysis in December 2021.
The outcome? Most of them may have “an extremely narrow waist, and oversized breasts” in common while they are “dressed in tight clothing (and often times not very much of it)!” Does this surprise you?
Source: LinkedIn Post
Female Representation in Esports
In April 2022, Milena published an op’ed piece with Sports Business Journal / The Esports Observer titled “Representation isn't enough for women in esports and gaming”. The article leads with the following thought: “Women make up nearly half of gamers worldwide: about 46% of 2.7 billion players in 2020 were female. So when we think about gamers, why do we most likely picture a young male teen (who is probably white)?”
As part of the article, Milena looked at the official websites for League of Legends’ top European and North American league organization, the LEC and the LCS respectively. How many to you think list female employees on their website, and how do the different regions and organizations compare to each other?
Source: Milena Imgart
How can you help us?
Get in touch if you are interested in us discussing your initiative with you. You can contact us on LinkedIn (Kristin Banse | Christopher Hana) or contact us via Email here. Help us spread the word. Help us to find and share interesting studies, research, artists, or projects you have been working on. Are you currently working on an initiative? We would love to hear more.