Why aren’t more black kids going pro in esports?
Why aren’t more black kids going pro in esports?
With multibillion-dollar gaming industry, there is a pronounced and growing racial gap in the player pools
Chesnot/Getty Images
By Latoya Peterson @LatoyaPeterson
March 27, 2018
The professionalization of sports changed the math for millions of young African-Americans, both male and female, providing careers, scholarships and a pathway to fame and further fortune.
Now esports is quickly rising to become the next iteration of big-stakes competitive play. Boasting a digital-first, broadly global audience, the esports marketplace raked in $696 million in 2017, with projected revenues to exceed $1 billion by 2020.
But within the esports juggernaut, there is a pronounced and growing racial gap in the player pools. African-American representation on the major teams and in the highest-profile events is abysmal. There are high-profile players of color, such as Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black and Dominique “SonicFox” McLean, but why are there so few other black players making it to the top of the various leagues?
The answer may lie in the foundations of esports — the actual video games many of us played growing up. PC games, such as Dota, League of Legends, StarCraft and Counter-Strike, grew into their own ecosystems. Over time, spectators gathered, communities grew and funding started to flow. But for console games such as Call of Duty, Super Smash Bros., Halo and Street Fighter, the communities grew but the same funding and opportunities didn’t materialize. As esports matures, one thing has become crystal clear: The PC/console divide has inadvertently become a racial divide, with white and Asian players featured most heavily on the PC side and African-American and Latino players on the other.
This divide isn’t sacrosanct — clearly there are black and Latino players who have found their home in PC-based esports and white and Asian players who prefer joysticks to mouse clicks. But the prevalence of the divide should give any fan of esports pause. As we create this new world, what exactly are we building? With the levels of investment pouring into esports and the rise of an entirely new field of play, it’s important to ask deeper questions about these dynamics before they codify. Especially if those dynamics have deeper racial implications.
From what we know about race and esports, there should be a lot more diversity reflected in the pro ranks. Nielsen is one of the few outlets publishing demographic data on esports fans, and a demographic breakdown was not made available in its 2017 market report. (Pew Research Data, which is often cited, tends to blend video games into console, computer and mobile device and often looks at attitudes more than specific play practices.)
An ESPN Fan survey of the esports landscape conducted in 2017 does provide a breakdown of both casual fans and avid fans by racial background. African-Americans are 19 percent of those who identify as fans and 22 percent of those who identify as avid fans. (African-Americans are 13 percent of the U.S. population overall.)
If esports fans are fairly evenly distributed by racial lines (at least in the United States, and assuming that the “other” category includes Asian-Americans), why are we still seeing such a disparity in who goes pro?
Preferences around hardware is one potential cause since it influences the ways a player chooses to pursue a career.
Betsy DiSalvo, a researcher at Georgia Tech, began trying to identify these trends with her first-year computer science students after noticing low African-American participation. Her research, which eventually became the Glitch Game Testers program in partnership with Morehouse College, revealed some fascinating dynamics about African-American men and preferred modes of play:
A study of play practices suggests young African-American men play in specific ways that differ from the groups who do tend to leverage gaming interests in to computing interests [3].
African-American men tend to:
Most research on esports currently focuses on defining the field or considerations in gambling and legal rights — race is not a primary consideration. And even if African-American players currently prefer consoles (a preference also shared by other esports fans), there are a few reasons that the PC ecosystem around esports is more robust than a console/arcade background.
From a technological standpoint, there are issues with console latency — many professional players also prefer the higher frame rates (the number of frames or images that are projected or displayed per second) possible with PC play and do not consider themselves competitive unless their gear is up to the highest standards. On the console side of the aisle, the release of a new console every five to eight years means that decades of practice can be undone by the release of a new controller.
But there’s also the financial aspect to the PC/console divide that contributes to a growing disparity in esports: the sheer dollar amounts involved. For PC-dominant games such as Dota and League of Legends, the prize pools involved reach into the millions. Part of the money is normally fronted by the publisher to seed initial interest. But much of the pool can also come from competitor or fan contributions. And while there is a major pot for PC-based prize pools, in the console-based world the top prize pools barely reach the hundreds of thousands.
All of these individual decisions by publishers are currently examined in the context of just one game. But if we broaden the lens to the full landscape for esports, the scope of the problem is clear. Currently, if a player loves Dota, there’s a sponsored path toward a career in the industry and the potential to net up to $10 million in the current prize pool. It can become a lucrative career if a player can reach the highest levels. But if a player loves and puts his or her hours in on Street Fighter, at best, the highest individual take would be $50,000.
These dramatically different outcomes based on the games you love sets up a pernicious cycle in esports — the players who were drawn to more lucrative games have the chance to continue to compete and to live off their earnings. Players who love games that do not find publisher support and audience support simply will not have the same opportunities for advancement in esports, regardless of how good they are.
There is an argument to be made that esports players who want to go pro should go where the money and support are. While that is antithetical to the love of the game that has taken esports this far, the changing landscape may require examining opportunities within the game.
But even if one were to push young black players into the more lucrative PC-side gaming, would they be welcome?
John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images
Every few months, there’s been a new discussion of racism in the esports community. There is the long-standing issue of racial slurs as a part of overall toxicity in online gaming communities, which has already claimed the careers of a few pros. There’s the tongue-in-cheek-but-not-really adoption of the “PC Master Race” framework, which becomes more disturbing when you compare the broader demographics of PC gamers and the so-called “console peasants.” There are the dust-ups over the use of Pepe imagery by professional players and the racist applications of the TriHard emote.
And then, there’s what happened to Terrence “TerrenceM” Miller in 2016 while he was playing Hearthstone.
Miller was playing for Gale Force esports and doing his best to compete against Keaton “Chakki” Gill. While he finished a respectable second place, his performance was marred by the Twitch stream, which was flooded with racial slurs. As most African-American gamers will attest, racism on streams and through chat is nothing new. But the vitriol was so bad it shocked the community and led at least one moderator to speak out against bad moderation practices.
After the incident, Kotaku quoted Miller as saying:
“I think it was huge for my career,” he said. “As
s—-ty as it is to say, something that bad was really good for me actually. It got me tons of exposure. I was just joking with some friends. One was like, ‘Oh, racism was really good for you.’ I was like, ‘I mean, kind of?’ I don’t really know how to respond to that.” […]
At the same time, though, it means that the spotlight isn’t really on Miller’s skills. He’s not very happy about that. “One joke I also made was, one friend was like, ‘Oh, you haven’t been playing as well [since Dreamhack],’ and I said, ‘Oh, they don’t really care how I play anyway. It’s just about race.’ It was surreal to think about, but there’s some truth to that. People didn’t care as much about my play as that I was someone different or just a person of color in a space where there wasn’t as many people of color.”
This story could have been seen as triumph — after all, Miller played well despite the abuse and prompted both Twitch and Blizzard to address the controversy.
But the story has an unfortunate postscript: After rising to prominence for the incident and finishing second, Miller is currently unsigned and has a pinned tweet saying he is looking for a team to represent in the 2018 Hearthstone season.
On March 22, Miller retweeted a ranking where he was listed as one of the top unsigned players.
Best Teamless players (according to @GosuGamersHS ranking) + Tournament Winrate
@Naiman_HS 61%
@pokrovacHS 58%
@Virtual_HS 69%
@TerrenceM_HS 59%
@DocPwnHS 57%
@AstrogationHS 63%
@Th3raT 57%
@DrHippi_VP 54%
— HS mercato (@HsMercato) March 21, 2018
Why aren’t more black kids going pro in esports?
With multibillion-dollar gaming industry, there is a pronounced and growing racial gap in the player pools
Chesnot/Getty Images
By Latoya Peterson @LatoyaPetersonMarch 27, 2018
The professionalization of sports changed the math for millions of young African-Americans, both male and female, providing careers, scholarships and a pathway to fame and further fortune.
Now esports is quickly rising to become the next iteration of big-stakes competitive play. Boasting a digital-first, broadly global audience, the esports marketplace raked in $696 million in 2017, with projected revenues to exceed $1 billion by 2020.
But within the esports juggernaut, there is a pronounced and growing racial gap in the player pools. African-American representation on the major teams and in the highest-profile events is abysmal. There are high-profile players of color, such as Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black and Dominique “SonicFox” McLean, but why are there so few other black players making it to the top of the various leagues?
The answer may lie in the foundations of esports — the actual video games many of us played growing up. PC games, such as Dota, League of Legends, StarCraft and Counter-Strike, grew into their own ecosystems. Over time, spectators gathered, communities grew and funding started to flow. But for console games such as Call of Duty, Super Smash Bros., Halo and Street Fighter, the communities grew but the same funding and opportunities didn’t materialize. As esports matures, one thing has become crystal clear: The PC/console divide has inadvertently become a racial divide, with white and Asian players featured most heavily on the PC side and African-American and Latino players on the other.
This divide isn’t sacrosanct — clearly there are black and Latino players who have found their home in PC-based esports and white and Asian players who prefer joysticks to mouse clicks. But the prevalence of the divide should give any fan of esports pause. As we create this new world, what exactly are we building? With the levels of investment pouring into esports and the rise of an entirely new field of play, it’s important to ask deeper questions about these dynamics before they codify. Especially if those dynamics have deeper racial implications.
From what we know about race and esports, there should be a lot more diversity reflected in the pro ranks. Nielsen is one of the few outlets publishing demographic data on esports fans, and a demographic breakdown was not made available in its 2017 market report. (Pew Research Data, which is often cited, tends to blend video games into console, computer and mobile device and often looks at attitudes more than specific play practices.)
An ESPN Fan survey of the esports landscape conducted in 2017 does provide a breakdown of both casual fans and avid fans by racial background. African-Americans are 19 percent of those who identify as fans and 22 percent of those who identify as avid fans. (African-Americans are 13 percent of the U.S. population overall.)
If esports fans are fairly evenly distributed by racial lines (at least in the United States, and assuming that the “other” category includes Asian-Americans), why are we still seeing such a disparity in who goes pro?
Preferences around hardware is one potential cause since it influences the ways a player chooses to pursue a career.
Betsy DiSalvo, a researcher at Georgia Tech, began trying to identify these trends with her first-year computer science students after noticing low African-American participation. Her research, which eventually became the Glitch Game Testers program in partnership with Morehouse College, revealed some fascinating dynamics about African-American men and preferred modes of play:
A study of play practices suggests young African-American men play in specific ways that differ from the groups who do tend to leverage gaming interests in to computing interests [3].
African-American men tend to:
- Use fewer cheats and mods; value good sportsmanship
- Play on console systems
- Place a high value on competition
- Play in multigenerational family settings
Most research on esports currently focuses on defining the field or considerations in gambling and legal rights — race is not a primary consideration. And even if African-American players currently prefer consoles (a preference also shared by other esports fans), there are a few reasons that the PC ecosystem around esports is more robust than a console/arcade background.
From a technological standpoint, there are issues with console latency — many professional players also prefer the higher frame rates (the number of frames or images that are projected or displayed per second) possible with PC play and do not consider themselves competitive unless their gear is up to the highest standards. On the console side of the aisle, the release of a new console every five to eight years means that decades of practice can be undone by the release of a new controller.
But there’s also the financial aspect to the PC/console divide that contributes to a growing disparity in esports: the sheer dollar amounts involved. For PC-dominant games such as Dota and League of Legends, the prize pools involved reach into the millions. Part of the money is normally fronted by the publisher to seed initial interest. But much of the pool can also come from competitor or fan contributions. And while there is a major pot for PC-based prize pools, in the console-based world the top prize pools barely reach the hundreds of thousands.
- Dota 2 International = $24,787,916
- League of Legends = $4,946,970
- Capcom Cup = $380,000
- Street Fighter V = $100,000
All of these individual decisions by publishers are currently examined in the context of just one game. But if we broaden the lens to the full landscape for esports, the scope of the problem is clear. Currently, if a player loves Dota, there’s a sponsored path toward a career in the industry and the potential to net up to $10 million in the current prize pool. It can become a lucrative career if a player can reach the highest levels. But if a player loves and puts his or her hours in on Street Fighter, at best, the highest individual take would be $50,000.
These dramatically different outcomes based on the games you love sets up a pernicious cycle in esports — the players who were drawn to more lucrative games have the chance to continue to compete and to live off their earnings. Players who love games that do not find publisher support and audience support simply will not have the same opportunities for advancement in esports, regardless of how good they are.
There is an argument to be made that esports players who want to go pro should go where the money and support are. While that is antithetical to the love of the game that has taken esports this far, the changing landscape may require examining opportunities within the game.
But even if one were to push young black players into the more lucrative PC-side gaming, would they be welcome?
John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images
Every few months, there’s been a new discussion of racism in the esports community. There is the long-standing issue of racial slurs as a part of overall toxicity in online gaming communities, which has already claimed the careers of a few pros. There’s the tongue-in-cheek-but-not-really adoption of the “PC Master Race” framework, which becomes more disturbing when you compare the broader demographics of PC gamers and the so-called “console peasants.” There are the dust-ups over the use of Pepe imagery by professional players and the racist applications of the TriHard emote.
And then, there’s what happened to Terrence “TerrenceM” Miller in 2016 while he was playing Hearthstone.
Miller was playing for Gale Force esports and doing his best to compete against Keaton “Chakki” Gill. While he finished a respectable second place, his performance was marred by the Twitch stream, which was flooded with racial slurs. As most African-American gamers will attest, racism on streams and through chat is nothing new. But the vitriol was so bad it shocked the community and led at least one moderator to speak out against bad moderation practices.
After the incident, Kotaku quoted Miller as saying:
“I think it was huge for my career,” he said. “As
s—-ty as it is to say, something that bad was really good for me actually. It got me tons of exposure. I was just joking with some friends. One was like, ‘Oh, racism was really good for you.’ I was like, ‘I mean, kind of?’ I don’t really know how to respond to that.” […]
At the same time, though, it means that the spotlight isn’t really on Miller’s skills. He’s not very happy about that. “One joke I also made was, one friend was like, ‘Oh, you haven’t been playing as well [since Dreamhack],’ and I said, ‘Oh, they don’t really care how I play anyway. It’s just about race.’ It was surreal to think about, but there’s some truth to that. People didn’t care as much about my play as that I was someone different or just a person of color in a space where there wasn’t as many people of color.”
This story could have been seen as triumph — after all, Miller played well despite the abuse and prompted both Twitch and Blizzard to address the controversy.
But the story has an unfortunate postscript: After rising to prominence for the incident and finishing second, Miller is currently unsigned and has a pinned tweet saying he is looking for a team to represent in the 2018 Hearthstone season.
On March 22, Miller retweeted a ranking where he was listed as one of the top unsigned players.
Best Teamless players (according to @GosuGamersHS ranking) + Tournament Winrate
@Naiman_HS 61%
@pokrovacHS 58%
@Virtual_HS 69%
@TerrenceM_HS 59%
@DocPwnHS 57%
@AstrogationHS 63%
@Th3raT 57%
@DrHippi_VP 54%
— HS mercato (@HsMercato) March 21, 2018
. They don't even have to win the whole thing, just make it 
.
