Novice Women Players Have Better Outcomes in Women-Only Versus Mixed-Gender Esports Tournaments

Abstract

Competitive video gaming or esports is a field with the potential for gender-equal competition. However, esports is dominated by cisgender men at both the casual and professional levels. When a field is highly gender-imbalanced, gender minority groups tend to perceive the field as unwelcoming, which reduces interest in the field and further perpetuates unequal participation. One potential pathway to encourage interest and participation is the creation of gender-specific spaces, such as women-only tournaments in esports. To study the group effects of gender on tournament experience, we recruited cisgender women who were novice gamers for in-laboratory, one-on-one esports tournaments under two conditions: in women-only tournaments or mixed-gender tournaments with equally novice cisgender men. Our results show that in matches between men and women, women underperformed against men regardless of whether her opponent had played more often, less often, or equal to her in the past year. In addition, women who played in women-only tournaments gave more accurate estimates of their skill and reported greater task importance than women who played in mixed-gender tournaments. In practice, women-only tournaments may aid recruitment and retention of women in esports as a supplement to gameplay in mixed-gender competitive spaces.