Ready Player One: Girls - the leading and pro-player on the wrong side of eSports
Cybersport has long been turned into a serious industryeven though it still looks like a ghetto for geeks. Millions of fans, prize and advertising contracts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and overwhelming ambitions that are incalculable are the reality of modern eSports. Women in it, despite the ingrained sexism and inequality of fees (the top pro-gamer as of 2018, Sasha Khostin, in the overall rating of earnings takes only two hundred and seventy-seventh place), start to play an increasing role.
In the footsteps of the Dota 2 Epicenter XL tournament finals held in early May (one of the biggest and most representative eSports tournaments of the major series this year), we talked with ex-player and commentator Mila Aliyeva and leading cybersport channel Maria Yermolina about what weekdays, professional players, about the internal misoperation of eSports and why in related professions within the industry it is easier for women to realize themselves today.
I have always loved chess. And Dotu is not just called modern chess, it is a million times more complicated: it requires the ability to work in a team, find a common language with partners. And the Doty community is quite specific and toxic. And when I was told a long time ago that I would never learn to play DotA, because it’s too complicated, I accepted the challenge. That I will not learn? I like challenging tasks. Now, of course, I play better than the person who told me that - I played better in a month. But to study "DotA" had a long time.
It is believed that girls develop faster and enter the age when they are supposed to think about their family. I look at it completely differently, I am sure that everyone should make their own choices. In eSports, girls can achieve success, can play along with guys, there is nothing unreal in this. But often girls are scared away by the fact that you need to give it too much strength. And in “Dotu” you will not learn to play for a year or two. At least three years you need to play constantly, sacrificing your social life - not everyone is ready for it. And frankly, I am skeptical of those who began to play DotA when it became popular. This is a sport, and I would like the attitude towards it to be more serious.
Attitude towards girls is biased, one hundred percent, but I believe that girls themselves contribute to this. Go to the twitch and look at the number of streamers that dress frankly. Although serious gamers do not like it, there is a demand for it: a girl who plays quietly and does not make a show will be watched by ten people. Where there is a show business, pure cybersport fades into the background. Many of the girls I watched simply do not really believe in themselves. They lack a bright example. But I am sure that high-level pro-players will appear, and when they appear, they will have no problems getting into the team.
In "DotA" the most toxic community among all games, it is not a secret for anyone: it is enough to open YouTube recordings of matches to be convinced of this. Situations when you play with someone from a fake account and find out that a person doesn’t know how to behave at all happens all the time. And it seems that you would like to invite him to your team, but after such a check you will not become.
A good player is not a pro player, professionalism is needed in everything: in the ability to communicate, and in the understanding that if you play in a tournament, you need to go to bed on time. If a player is constantly rude and spoils the atmosphere in the team, they will call him only if he has transcendent talent. Far outweighing all its toxicity and its relevance. In reality, this happens very rarely. It is also necessary to develop as a person - this is almost more important than how you play, and this will surely bear fruit in the future.
It is clear that now a dismissive attitude towards cybersport is: "Ah, toys." And if we talk about DotA, now it’s seventy percent of the sport and thirty percent of the show. When she becomes a hundred percent sport, she can enter the program of the Olympic Games. Although I understand that viewers need a show, I hope that we will outgrow it.
I have never had a serious relationship with games. My classmates played in Dota and Counter Strike, but I rather played games that do not become competitive - the same Diablo. From the tenth grade I was engaged in journalism. She studied at the PR and press agent.
After moving to Moscow, I started working on a music channel and made my own program about interesting communities: I could spend the day with motorcycle customizers and cook old Harley with them or hang out with streetball players and talk about streetball venues in Moscow. With eSports it was the same: I really wanted to make a program about it. But at that time, a person who was not involved in the field at all was difficult to communicate with people from this industry. Now it is easier, but then eSports was still quite closed, there was simply no person who could call and say: "I want to make a program about your excellent organization."
A classmate suggested that I send a resume to ESforce(eSports holding, now part of Mail. Ru Group. - Ed.) and take part in the casting. I didn’t have a goal to go through it, but it was the only way to the industry: I just wanted to get inside, shoot something, talk to people, get contacts. As a result, casting for a hundred people, I inadvertently won, after which I was sent to Boston. From there I didn’t return to my usual journalistic life - I stayed in eSports. I have been in it for a year and a half and do not want to go anywhere, because it is a constant feeling of celebration.
People of different ages come to eSports - from teenagers to family people over thirty. Fixed wages are usually not disclosed, but the winnings are in the public domain: an athlete can win up to a million dollars by the age of nineteen. They hunt these people - at parties, at tournaments and personal meetings. As in other sports, there is a transfer market and transfer windows.(the time when a player from one team can move to another. - Ed.). Players are bought, sold and traded.
Cybersport is a job. Professional players often get up at eight or nine in the morning and spend ten hours at the computer: they train, they hold matches — sometimes not one, but two or three (there are such tough days). Then - debriefing matches.
All this is very exhausting, and cybersportsmen have almost no time for themselves. Recently, the guys and I went to the kebabs, one of them said that he had never chosen for the city, the other - that he had been chosen three times in his life. Departure on the nature they perceived with delight. This is something that they usually have no time for. Recently, I did a program about a streamer, which in the past was also a cyber sportsman, and asked him what he was spending money on in his twenty years. He did not know what to spend on them.
Players burn out, it happens all the time. I and managers have to work with them psychologically - someone has to do it, and you are always with you, you know everything about them. Players may have depression, they may not get enough sleep and just physically burn out when they participate in tournament after tournament. They do not have enough rest, silence, unloading. For them, each autograph session is a huge stress.
You don’t need to invite people to the official channel of the organization Virtus.pro, which has a huge fan base around the world: it’s enough to say that the channel has appeared and it will immediately have a lot of subscribers. They watch everything, and this is a much more responsive audience. With our own channel, which my husband and I are doing entirely, a little differently: you must somehow call people there. The public is spoiled, it requires a certain level of quality: very stupid people do not play Dotu.
At the same time, there are a lot of caustic comments on Virtus.pro, and there is almost no such thing on my channel. Why - it is not clear. Probably, there is a difference - to write nasty things of a big organization or in person. But we must remember that these are only commentators, and the community as a whole is much broader, and those who like everything, most often do not write anything.
In the industry itself, I almost did not come across sexism, but I’m rather lucky because prejudices remain. There are male commentators who frankly speak badly about female commentators. Male analysts are about female analysts. Pro male players are about female pro players. Women's eSports community, in truth, is developed so-so, and this is primarily their problem. There are bright players, but they often go into analytics, become good leaders and commentators - it’s easier for women. Professionals everywhere will find their use.
When I just started to run the channel of Virtus.pro, kilometer letters came on the topic “How could you take this woman? She doesn’t understand anything in DotA”. But a year and a half passed, and it was all over. Players from the team at first just looked at me as an alien: "Why does she follow us with a microphone?" But it was the first week, until they passed the stress. Now we, of course, are friends and celebrate holidays together. I spend with them almost every day - out of work, out of business trips.