Today I stumbled upon a disheartening Article for the Call of Duty Scene. This article was Called "‘Call of Duty’ Remains the eSport That Says: No Women Allowed" This piece of "journalistic writing" not only sickened me because of it's bias, but because of the gross ineptitude of the writer. I don't want to link the article, because I don't want to give it any more page views than it deserves. Also, because I don't want you to go out and harass the writers, or any of the writers I have mentioned here. You can go looking for it if you wish.
Here is one paragraph from that article:
Video games has always been seen as a bland safari full of white males running around shouting at each other between fist bumps, windmill high-fives and "slightly jokey, but not really joking" sharing of YouPorn links. But the demographic expanded from those out-dated perspectives quite some time ago. More women play than ever before (stats, here), and gaming is growing up, diversifying its content, extending its reach and maturing its demographic.
And another:
"CoD is a shooter, and "girls don't like guns", but there are top female players on Halo: Reach (spacey alien guns), Counter Strike: Global Offensive (cartoony mad-cap guns) and surprisingly even Dead or Alive 4, one of the most barely clothed beat 'em ups you can find today. (I know when I get into a scrap my clothes always get in the way. But, annoyingly, if you do strip off, it usually ends the fight by calming the other person down, a bit like putting a towel over a budgie cage.)
And this:
"I know, I know, it's really the fault of us women for having dispositions jovially stitched together out of kittens and macramé owls. A "real" man would have known that kittens and string-like things don't go together"
I know this website that publishes these click bait articles (for example, everything you want to know about transplant penises and more is linked on the side of this article) rarely even skim the works, but I thought it is worth mentioning that this wasn't from some outsider. This was someone that has worked in Call of Duty Scene. A fluff piece or not, this shows a total disregard for the readers having brain cells.
The article, even though small and overshadowed by the silly writing, has a point. The writer is trying to say how hard it is for Female's interested in Competitive Cod to actually compete without being looked at as the girl. She could of presented it in this format:
Several esports are sparse with women contributors.
Even if the women practice as hard as men, there may not be enough female participants to find someone with true skill.
They aren't treated the same way online, so finding teamates is fairly hard.
It's a guy thing. There is a stigma around women and video games in society. The term Girl Gamer or E-girl gets thrown around too often. Limiting their perceptions.
There have been very few Successes for the most talented girls. Top Esport athletes are full of men. The best Cod women have never come close to placing at a Major event. Dreamcrazy being one of the few to do so. Therefore, there is no leadership.
The author comes close to hinting at these problems, but derails herself time and time again. What sounded like a great article and premise was flooded by tangential moments deflating and muddling her point.
Now, this was just one simple example of esports in journalism that is lacking, and probably an extreme one at that. The next major problems are the lack of people that do this as a job or a side job. Lets face it, there are few people out there with the writing capibility to produce New York Times quality writing that know enough about Call of Duty Esports. The writers are frequently unpaid, getting pennies, or being given free items like Gamma energy drink samples. And you get what you pay for. (yet again do not go and harass some of these writers they were just producing content) Here are a list of articles that I clicked on and why they don't get any interest:
http://esports-nation.com/advanced-warfare-ascendence-dlc-announced/ This article is basically a copy and paste from the official announcement.
http://esports-nation.com/drift-from-havoc-dlc-added-to-cod-champs-map-rotation/ this is a twitter feeed with a paragraph attached.
http://esports-nation.com/this-week-in-european-esports/ this is good content.
This is a twitter feed: http://esports-nation.com/tcm-buys-aware-gamings-league-spot/
This is quick, at a glance standings: http://readyupgaming.com/2015/03/call-of-duty-championships-eu-regional-finals-day-two/
This is a good write up on TCM: http://readyupgaming.com/2015/03/tcm-gaming-buys-awares-season-2-spot/
However this is their headline news: http://i.imgur.com/d9YSRiP.png 6 days ago was the last post
I went to check out OpTic intel, but for some reason my twitter handle is blocked from them. It wasn't that way before, and I have never interacted with them with this name. However members of that team were banned from this subreddit for vote manipulation. However, OpTic Intel is not banned from here.
After telling the author all of my criticism's of the first article: I was called a faggot by one of the ESN writers. http://i.imgur.com/fala2jC.png
MLG has no content that I can find, CodPedia put up there last article on January 10th, Gfinity has frequent content where about half matches the writings found about. @cod_stats have stuck to just stats.
Now the solution:
These pages have to invest a little more into their writing staffs. I've seen complaints from the owners of these websites that they lack page views to give money.
They need to be consistent. Putting out daily articles about league matches, 2k's 5k's, interviews with pros, breakdowns of teams. There is SO MUCH YOU CAN DO. Do it daily.
Multimedia is key: In this day and age and our relative age group having a video embedded in the article would be a great way to get people to click on it. As long as it isn't just a DLC trailer and your own video content.
Figure out how to be unique in your presentation and participation in community. Try to innovate it.
Conclusion and final thoughts: Journalism in Cod Esports is severely lacking, but I do believe that the websites listed above have the potential to provide top quality content consistently, like the few that you can find interspersed throughout their websites.
