The World of esports is Not Inclusive

The video-gaming industry has a really bad diversity problem and it shows. But, there's a lot more to it than lack of Black or Brown players on pro esports teams. How do we fix it?

Joel S. Brown | Learn4Life CLMI Fellow

If you’ve ever watched an esports game or wandered around video game content creation you might have noticed how limited the people of color are in this field. But that disparity in diversity is no greater than what we find at the top of gaming: Major League Gaming (or what we gamers call “MLG”) has a majority Asian and Caucasian player base at the top level of gaming - and it hasn’t shown any signs of changing anytime soon. The lack of diversity, in fact, is so bad that Entertainment Software Association President & CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis (who is Black) commissioned a study on it.

So you might then wonder: well, if the majority of players are Asian and Caucasian then they must only be playing in Asia and Europe, right? Well, not exactly. More than half, or 11 of the 20 global Overwatch League teams are based in U.S. cities, where they are currently finding or building stadiums for their respective home teams. These teams can play home games, of course. During the 2021 season, the Overwatch league flew their teams out to Hawaii for tournaments. And if that’s not enough proof that the U.S. holds MLG tournaments, the world-famous EVO fighting game tournament is held in Las Vegas every year. So, it can't be that they only play overseas. 

There Are Black esport Teams

The truth, however, is that there are a number of good esport teams for Black, Brown and Indigenous people to play on. There are even 67 Historically Black Colleges & Universities (or “HBCUs”) with gaming teams. Still: why don’t they go pro more often? Well, that’s complicated, and we have to understand the typical process of going pro before we can get to the point of understanding why more people of color don’t.

Most people have no idea that it takes years for gamers to develop the highly advanced mechanical skills necessary for entering the professional gaming space. “Mechanical skill” simply means the sheer ability to pull incredibly difficult technical moves that most of us can only dream of doing as easily as the pros do. These skills are evolving the entire time they’re struggling in competitive mode through their entire journey to their respective top 500. Not every gamer is the same nor were they all born with innate top 500 mechanical skills.

In reality, that’s only a third of the skill they need to develop for finally going pro. The next skill is positioning. This skill is what separates casual players from advanced, hardcore ones. Positioning is the art of always being in the right place at the right time, all while balancing the risk vs reward of aggressive and defensive positions respectively. What’s most important is never being caught out of position at the wrong time. Because a single misstep can always spell defeat, in games where the difference between winning and losing is as simple as who made fewer mistakes.

The final core skill set required to play any of the esport games is called game sense. That skill also separates the amateur players from the more experienced ones. Game sense is a bit weird because it’s not one thing - it is, instead, a few things rolled into one. The first is getting to know every nook and cranny of every competitive map. The second is to know the heroes and or items and how they interact with each other. The third is to understand the core game strategies and how to apply them mid-game.

The Cost for Diversity

Finally, it's taking all of this information and performing all three core skills with that intel simultaneously. You first use your knowledge of counters to shut down your enemy. Second is using your knowledge of what they’re playing to understand their strategy. All while abusing game-play mechanics to mix up how they expect you to play.

Which brings us to the broader issue of diversity. In the gaming world, it's not about the number of U.S. teams or non-U.S. teams - it’s the opportunity for people of color to join these teams as peers. Consider the fact that almost all pro esport games are held on a “PC” or personal computer. When you take into account that it costs on average about $1,300 for a competitive set of gaming equipment, the investment adds up. This doesn’t even include the high-speed internet plan, router, modem, and giga-bit LAN cables. It becomes pretty clear that being a gamer is an expensive endeavor …. and a rather cost-prohibitive one at that if you’re from communities where social and economic mobility is a major challenge.

But we're missing something here. You're probably thinking that all gamers play on PCs. A deeper look would show that’s not the case: Most low-income gamers play on consoles, simply because it’s more affordable. A new Play Station 5 has a retail price of $500 at the moment whereas, on average, a decent gaming PC will cost upwards of $900. Don’t forget that with a gaming PC you still need to buy a mouse and keyboard, with a pro-grade mouse costing upwards of $70. A pro-grade keyboard costs about $100 or more. Don't forget that the gaming monitor can easily run about $150-$210.

So you might be wondering how much does it really matter if someone plays on PC or console? Well, actually, it matters a lot. I’ll use first-person shooting games as an example. Consoles before the latest generation were capped at 60 hertz (or “hz”) of memory, the bare minimum for gaming. Now they can go up to an impressive 120hz for consoles. But pros often play at 240hz which can only be achieved on a PC. “Hz” or “fps” stands for how many frames per second you see. And the higher your frames, the easier it is to notice faster-moving things on your screen.

This feeds into the routine “why pros play on PCs over consoles” conversation. Generally speaking, consoles are slower than PCs. But for first-person shooting games, cost is one of the main reasons - if not the top one - why the Overwatch league refuses to let controllers in pro games participate.

This means that because low-income families can't afford to buy their gamers gaming PCs they’re less likely to enter the professional gaming space. As Pew Research showed in 2021, Black and Hispanic adults are less likely to own more expensive desktops or laptops, anyway. Yet, they are more likely to own much less expensive (and smaller, more agile) smartphones. Cost is the biggest factor …

As a result, these communities of potential gamers are not building up the muscle memory needed on mouse and keyboard to go pro. Instead, there are building muscle memory on the controller. This is creating a situation where they will have to re-learn almost all of the built-up skill they had on a controller. Being forced to completely re-learn a game you were good at from scratch is discouraging for most people.

Who Wants To Go Pro?

What’s the solution? First: We need to identify kids who are eager to become pro players. Second, we need more options for younger players to get their feet wet in competitive gaming. Maybe those HBCU gaming teams can help by creating preparatory leagues in underserved Black communities, as an example. Third, we need more parents to learn how to support their kid's gaming careers - and to perceive it less as a game and more of a serious career path.

The first two can be handled by opening so-called “gaming cafes” throughout the United States and, perhaps, creating recruitment channels in community-based institutions. Support can come in the form of public and private partnerships, with some public funding from federal, state and local sources (for example: why not redirect some monies from the Biden administration’s $65 billion “Internet for All” initiative into this effort?). Metropolitan market pro esports teams can help create talent pipelines in conjunction with video-gaming companies who can provide some funding or underwriting. By having gaming cafes you can allow students to play for a discount. These cafes can also host bi-weekly tournaments, which can give younger players a chance to know what being a pro is like. Tournaments at this scale can also turn into major marketing tools for the gaming industry, thereby giving them the incentive to invest in these programs. This can gradually evolve into making more jobs and making room for mentors to at-risk youth or “gaming coaches.”

The last point requires parents to inform themselves about the mental and financial burdens of playing at high levels, as well as creating or maintaining practice routines for their children. That can help prospective and up-and-coming youth gamers have a proper support structure. This will also help lower the severe mental strain in esports that’s very prevalent while lowering the training time needed to become a pro. Ultimately, this scale of community outreach, preparation and training can set our youth up for success.