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(Why) Girls don’t play videogames : experiences of Finnish female competitive Overwatch players

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(Why) Girls don’t play videogames : experiences of Finnish female competitive Overwatch players

Overwatch is a first person shooter game developed by Activision Blizzard. It has often stated that community and environment in gaming is toxic and abusive towards female gamers and they are often lost when moving from normal competitive gaming to tournament gaming. Task was to find reasons for this and to collect experiences of Finnish female competitive Overwatch players. For that there was four individual interviews and supporting literature. Interviews and literature were analyzed thematically and looked through intergroup contact theory and women’s empowerment framework (Longwe framework). It was found that experiences of respondents were largely different to literature. Respondents mostly felt that environment in game was safe and that it has gone to better during the years. Their absence from higher tiers of esports were due conflicting timing and other hobbies. Toxicity was not seen as an issue in larger scale but more as singular mishaps.

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