| Description |
Esports and gaming as a whole is a historically male-dominated space. Gaming is notorious for its sexism and toxic atmosphere toward non-men, and a historical analysis of video game and esports marketing indicates that video game companies' choices to brand games toward men play a crucial role in this disparity. Through a combination of expert interviews and survey data, this thesis seeks to demonstrate that the gender disparity in esports is an issue of marketing, and that better promotion and branding for marginalized gender esports events will help to close the gender gap between male and non-male professional esports players. Survey data collected shows the impact of strong advertising for marginalized gender esports via the disparity in respondents who watched the video game VALORANT's marginalized gender esports circuit, which is heavily regarded as one of the most successful examples of these events, compared to other popular esports titles and their marginalized gender events, and it also demonstrates the importance of branding as a major factor in viewers' motivations to watch or not watch these events through free response data given by respondents. When synthesized with interviews from experts in the field and other viewership and demographic data, the need for better branding in esports toward women becomes clear. This paper is intended as a documentation and explanation of the process behind my final thesis documentary, which can be found here. |
