eSport is the short term for electronic sport, and now you are probably thinking, “What the hell is an electronic sport?” Well, we can explain it to you. eSports are video games’ championships, in which real professional video games players compete against each other.
It is believed the first eSport competition took place in the United States, in 1972, when lots of students organized an Spacewar championship. After that, games’ developers and publishers started to pay attention to this new world and biggest championships emerged. Tournaments like League of Legends Worlds 2017 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ESL One Cologne had millions of viewers online and thousands in person.
Even with lots of great numbers, sadly the female professional scenario isn’t so good because of prejudice – which comes from the education girls have, always listening since youth videogames are a “boy thing” and to men who refuse to train with them “because they are girls”. Even so, women have conquered more and more space as pro players, narrators, commentators, developers and many other functions.
Below, you can find five great women who have been inspiring other girls and breaking the market barriers:
1. Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn
Image Source: IEM Extreme Masters
Scarlett is a StarCraft II pro player. Known as Korean Kryptonite, the canadian girl already defeated several korean players, considered the best video game nationality in the world.
Recently, she won a big Premiere StarCraft II championship, the Intel Extreme Masters Pyeongchang, which was part of the Winter Olympic Games.
2. Indiana “Froskurinn” Juniper
Image Source: @froskur1nn
Froskurinn is the chinese league League of Legends english commentator. She works in Shangai since 2015, when she left the coach career to commentate the games.
Froskurinn has an incredible knowledge about League of Legends and her favorite champions characters are Ashe, Alistar, Janna and Nidalee.
3. Nicolle “Cherrygumms” Merhy
Image Source: @nicollemerhy
Cherrygumms is one of the most successful brazilian woman in eSports. At first, she used to be a Rainbow Six Siege pro player for Black Dragons, but then she left this position to be one of the team’s owners.
Cherry is always accompanying the R6S team at the championships, and she has a Youtube channel with lots of videos about Rainbow Six Siege, backstage tournaments scenes and vlogs.
4. Amanda “AMD” Abreu
Image Source: @amdcsgo
AMD is a Brazilian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player for BootKamp team. She plays Counter-Strike since she was very young. In 2017, she and her team represented Brasil at an international championship in Sweden.
AMD is one of the most active players in the fight against sexism on the Brazilian eSports scenario and was one of the first pro players that participated of My Name My Game Project, which supports girls and tries to pressure the gaming industry to take more effective measures against sexism.
5. Nayara Sylvestre
Image Source: @nayarasilvestre
Nayara Sylvestre is a brazilian Hearthstone narrator at Blizzard. Before pursuing a career with this profession, she was a lawyer. When she realized she was unhappy with her work, she started to record videos for Youtube.
Growing up in the card game community, she has risen to the role of narrator and currently gives voice to incredible plays of national and international pro players.