
Randomized Trial on Gender in Overwatch - bjornstar
http://danluu.com/overwatch-gender/
======
colossal
It's somewhat pointless without a female voice though. I don't think most
players will assume you are anything but male unless you speak...

~~~
soneca
That doesn’t make it pointless. Specially since the results did not show equal
treatment (which would be one thing that the assumption of being male until
proven would explain)

~~~
aledalgrande
Not pointless, but calling out misbehavior and giving education on the matter
would be more helpful long term.

------
fish45
In the past few weeks I've been a bit more conscious of this since I've been
playing games with voice chat. In csgo the majority of women who used their
mic were treated terribly. On the other hand, in valorant, which I've played a
lot more of in the past weeks, I haven't noticed a single instance of extra
toxicity because of gender. I'm not really sure why that would be as the
communities are theoretically pretty much the same, but the biggest difference
is that in Valorant I'm usually 3 to 5 stacking with friends whereas in csgo I
was only 2 stacking. Regardless and without any numbers to back me up I feel
like valorant is much friendlier to girls

------
tmpz22
I took the time to read the full post and it does a good job mentioning flaws
in its own methodology.

They played 339 games total. 58 games of competitive mode. 281 games of quick
play mode.

Roughly half (184) as a female user and (155) as a male user.

Most games were played in 2018 when quickplay mode did not lock players into a
2-2-2 role queue to keep teams more even.

They did not use voice chat.

"My mechanics are pretty much as bad as it's possible to get."

The male account had a higher competitive rank (~2000 ish? placing in the
middle tier of player skill) then the female account (~1500-2000?).

\---

With 2k+ hours in the game this study could go a lot further with better
control groups, but is still interesting due to Overwatch's position as a very
culturally diverse game that had been lauded for its ability to attract and
maintain a large female playerbase in a genre that is notoriously masculine-
dominated (competitive FPS games).

My top 3 controls I'd like to see are:

* Having a larger data set evenly distributed across major skill rankings (gold, plat, diamond, master, etc)

* Having a larger data set evenly distributed across characters (main-tank, off-tank, main-support, off-supprt, roles)

* Have each player engage in voice chat with a neutral tone

My anecdotal prediction based on my own experiences would yield:

* Women who talk in voice receive a flood of friend requests and sporadic sexual harassment (1/8 games?)

* Players of low impact heroes receive a larger set of criticisms across genders

* Both male and female participants inject toxicity into their own games during the study

* Certain ranks (silver, diamond) inject more toxicity then others

Finally, though these are my predictions and I do regularly play with a group
of friends who are majority female, I have nowhere near a "full woman's
perspective" on playing this game and my predictions could be way off across
the various controls (or all controls).

EDIT: A soundboard with male and female voices would solve for the voice chat
problem very well.

------
saagarjha
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199715)

------
oh_sigh
Why don't these games just let users report abuse like sexism and racism and
then permaban the abuser? Overwatch is apparently $20, how many people are
going to keep paying $20 a pop so they can call one woman something horrible?

~~~
fpgaminer
They do, and I found Blizzard's moderation to be better than most. This is
especially true of hate speech. But as the linked article finds the bigger
issue is that discriminated groups are disproportionately the targets of
criticism. That's much harder to police and the end result, making the game
less fun for those targeted, is the same.

~~~
oh_sigh
I don't know what to do about the mansplaining or whatever that might happen
more often to women, but the sexualized messages were bad enough IMHO to
deserve a permaban, even if they spell it "dicc".

