"Their teamwork was great their communication was great their strengths and weaknesses balanced off one another. "When we started looking at some of the female gamers, we noticed that they were better than some of the guys," said Sherman. He noticed the way Epic had cultivated a solid mix of male and female players and saw an opportunity to make a statement with the South Korean organization's first esports team based entirely in the United States. Gen.G Head of Partnerships Jordan Sherman knew exactly what he was doing when he signed an all-female duos team. Multiple major esports teams, including Team SoloMid and 100 Thieves, have signed women to compete for them in Epic's blockbuster title. Tina “TINARAES” Perez is one half of the all-female Fortnite duos squad that Gen.G Esports signed earlier this week. The hire comes amid a flurry of female Fortnite player signings by major esports organizations: Maria "ChicaLive" Lopez with Team SoloMid, Rachel "Valkyrae" Hofstetter with 100 Thieves, and both Tina "TINARAES" Perez and Madison "maddiesuun" Mann with Gen.G Esports. In that same vein, Kittyplays recently accepted a position with Gen.G as head of new gaming initiatives, where she'll be responsible for expanding Gen.G's involvement in new gaming frontiers like Fortnite.
Fortnite proplayer pro#
Those are all things that are really important to me, and I think it's something you see these pro players having to give up in order to scrim 10-12 hours a day." "I realized that I want a blend of family and friends, the business side of my stream and travel. "I did the two years of 12-to-14-hour streams to build my Twitch to what it is, and that burned me out," she said. So does Kittyplays, who despite being the winningest female player in competitive Fortnite (she finished third at the Pro-Am with actor Chandler Riggs and ranks first in winnings with $25,700), is reluctant to give up the life she currently lives in order to grind scrims for hours on end. Fortnite hasn't gone stale, but at this point in her career, FemSteph sees herself less as a pro player and more as an influencer helping games along their path.
Fortnite proplayer series#
I'm so proud and excited to be a part of that."įemSteph hasn't been involved in the Fall Skirmish Series despite being drafted by the Dusty Dogs, choosing instead to explore other games like "Assassin's Creed: Odyssey," "Red Dead Redemption 2" and "Fallout 76" for her 215,000-plus followers. It's really inspiring as a female to see the turning of the tide, having more people be involved in something so male-dominant. "Even on the Pro-Am side, when hosted this giant tournament on this big, live stage, over 5 million people watching, there were pros that were female, but there were also celebrities that were women too.
"To see so many female gamers involved, it was incredible," FemSteph said. It's difficult to overstate what it meant to an industry veteran like FemSteph to see men and women competing on the same playing field.
In 2015, she became a full-time variety streamer on Twitch, and this summer she played in the Fortnite Pro-Am and Summer Skirmish Series. Stephanie "FemSteph" Driscoll has been in the games industry for over a decade, working her way up from a college job at GameStop to years in the communications departments of Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. A Western showdown at worlds: Cloud9 vs.The effects are only just beginning to materialize. No other game of Fortnite's size has ever integrated top male and female talent to this extent, skirmish after skirmish, LAN after LAN. Epic Games' purposeful insistence on featuring popular, skilled female players at the highest levels of its esport is unprecedented. Development of aspiring professionals existed solely through the emulation of older male gamers, who transferred their beliefs and biases to the next generation like hereditary traits.īreaking open this closed tradition has been a long time coming, and it's Fortnite swinging the pickax. Boys will be boys because there have only ever been boys to learn from. Where will they learn better, and from whom? The highest level of competitive gaming has always been a boys club whose teachings and cultural norms are set by its insular, monolithic membership.
With the internet these days, I don't think it's something you can avoid. "They don't even know what it means they just heard one of their friends who's coming of age say it.
"It's for the reaction, for the rise," Kittyplays said. He was reciting by rote a word he was too young to fully understand. That's how long it took for one of Kristen "Kittyplays" Valnicek's Fortnite squad mates to call her a "p-y" after she first spoke in voice chat.Ī full-time streamer since 2013, Kittyplays wasn't surprised by the harassment as much as its source: an 11-year-old boy.
0 kommentar(er)
