Two essays peer reviews

Rough Draft

In today’s society there are still many issues around gender and how it should be solved. One of the biggest problems that people faced throughout the years is about the gender representation, treatment, and pay gap between males and females. With the internet growing at exponential rate so does jobs in that sector begin to grow. One of the most popular careers people have started on the internet is within the entertainment world. Sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. My main focus will be on Twitch, a internet platform people use for streaming or watching someone stream. During its first years of development Twitch as just an platform for fun and then later in the years became a business and an career for people. As Twitch changed so did the treatment for males and females who streamed on their site. People saw it as more a male only site and females on that site would be critizened or harassed for doing the same things male did.

To understand the problems about gender and Twitch one must know what is Twitch. Twitch was a subsidiary company of Justin.tv which was about streaming. Steaming is the act of doing a live broadcast of anything a person wanted usually at home. Justin.tv was more of an general place to stream anything a person wanted, while Twitch was more of an focus on video games. Justin.tv was created in 2006 and Twitch was created in 2011 (Geeter). After 2014 Justin.tv was shutdown and all resources went to growing Twitch as it was more popular with the people. With that Twitch became a site where about 30 million people go to everyday to seek entertainment (Geeter).

-maybe add more things about Twitch on how people use it.

-Find source on amount of males to female streamers/viewers

-Explain the service more so non-computer savvy people can understand.

With that information now one knows about the basics of Twitch and what they are about. That brings in one of the problem the site has even to this day. One of the problems people have are females using this site as a streamer. There seems to be a connection with the idea of video games and females do not mix or go together. Even myself who has played many types of video games had this idea that females don’t play video games. I do believe that some females play but always thought the ratio was more men than women playing games. Based on a research paper by Benjamin Paaßen, Thekla Morgenroth, and Michelle Stratemeyer they have found that the amount of males and females who play video games are actually approximately equal in numbers (Paaßen 421). Even with amount of gamers be equal, why do people still see video games as a male thing? “A common justification for this stereotype is that, although women might play games, they should not be considered “true” or “hard-core” gamers because they play more casually and less skillfully compared to their male counterparts (Paaßen 1). In gaming culture there exist and divide on what one calls a “true gamer” vs a casual. This is what is called “toxic gaming culture” (Paaßen 421). Gamers in general label females as casual gamers. The term “casual” means that one plays a certain type of video game that usually requires simple skills such as pushing one button to play. “Casual” would be considered a negative term in the more extreme groups of gamers.

-Expand on Popular games such as Chess,checkers, etc..

-talk more about male and their experiences.

Another aspect of the differences between a “true gamer” and a “casual” is the amount of time one plays games for. People who play games for more than 10 hours a day would be a hardcore or “true” gamer while those who play less would be a casual. While this definition does really matter or work today, in the past this would be a high achievement. A study of done by Williams, Consalvo, and colleagues show that Females play games longer than males do but males have more play sessions than females (Paaßen 423). This study was done with about 15,000 people playing the same game taking data from the game itself provided by the company. The conclusion showed that with females playing longer and males playing more often there isn’t definite answer if females play more than males do as the data showed that there is not much different in total play time between the average male and female (Paaßen 423). While I found this data helpful remember that this is just one game and playtime varies from age.

-put an MMO example of double standard.

So with the types of games and play time being so similar why is there a double standard between male and females? One big reason is that companies that create video game lean more towards a male audience than female audience. Companies tend to make masculine male leads with females being a poster girl, only there as eye candy to sell the game (Paaßen 422). They do this do to the belief of males only playing video games. The marketing even today is centered with the idea only males will be buying an playing their games. Another reason they see that only males play these games are due to the most elite among gamers. These elite gamers are usually called professional gamers or pro-gamers for short. Pro-gamers are people who play a certain game at the highest level competing in tournaments for a cash prizes. According to Stefanie Fogel who writes for the Variety says that out of 100 male pro-gamers only about 2-3 are female pro-gamers (Fogel). She says while this industry is growing every year females are not really taking any part of this. While there are female pro-gamers most gaming organizations use them more for marketing than so for their skill which degrades their image. That also in returns makes more females hesitant in joining a organization to go pro, fully knowing that these people might not even let them play.

I have over 10,000 hours of playing games putting me in the category of an elite gamer due to amount I have played, but in reality I do not consider myself as an elite or hardcore player but as a casual. How I see myself is one of the problems females face when identifying as a gamer or not. A study of 2,000 young teenagers in 2015 asked if they saw themselves as a gamer. About 69% of the males in that study showed they believe they were gamers and only 35% of females thought of themselves as gamers (Paaßen 424). The main reason why females did not say they were gamers was due to the culture of not meeting the requirement of what it means to be a “true gamer”.

With all that knowledge, A female gamer who tries to show the world what they like to do with people that have similar interests gets harassed or put down just because they are a female. In the beginning when the site first started there is not enough records to show any big problems. These issues about gender started to become a bigger issue once Twitch launched their partnership program around 2014 which certain people called content creators would have a contract with Twitch being the only platform they can do their broadcasting in exchange for money. Soon this program that Twitch was offering sparked the interest of all types of people and a huge influx of creators began to start streaming in hopes of creating a career. First major problem started around 2016 when Twitch introduced a new system for people to interact with their audience. They created a system where one people from the audience can donate one dollar or more to the person they are watching and also leave a message. That’s when people of the platform started to say this was the rise of the “Cam Girls”.

The term Cam Girl on the internet can mean many things but within the community of streamers it usually means a female streamer who focus on getting their audience to donate money by showing off their body in a sexual way instead of playing a video game. From back then to today this term has an extremely negative connotation on those who are labeled this way. Twitch back in 2016 was what some people call a grey zone due to the rules being very loose. What females did back then wouldn’t be against the rules since they did not show any nudity or promote any harmful acts. Some say this problem was caused due to the overwhelming amount of males on the platform promoting females to do these types of things by donating money. A trendy thing to do for many streamers is to post the top ten users who donated them most money to them for a month. On average these females got people who donated 3000$ to 8000$ usd just by showing cleavage or doing exercises in tight clothing. This type of action lead to an infamous rant by a user named “trainwreck” who on his stream talked about how females who do this are ruining this site and they should be banned. While many people do not agree on how he said those things due to him being infamous for being misogynist, one point people did seem to agree on is how these females get away with this type of stuff without any repercussions.

Many people males and females included showed their concern about the direction Twitch was taking at the moment. These “cam girls” stated that what they are doing is 100% alright since it was their own body and they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. They felt that by males forcing them to cover their bodies while males can go shirtless is unfair double standard. While both sides had their fair points whatever or not it was ok, in the end the biggest factor that lead to a change was the fact that Twitch was created for the purpose of streaming video games. Cam girls when streaming would have 2 screens for people to watch. One screen would have the game play while the other screen would focus on the girls body part. The aspect ratio would be 1 to 9 where the 1 would be 10 percent of the screen would be the video game while the other 9 would have a camera of the streamers body. Many of these females argued that males were allowed to do the same thing but the only difference is that no male would watch another male do these things. They have said they these people were jealous on the amount of money they made doing these things compared to those who just play video games (Bernal 1).

Females who are against the idea of cam girls and wish for these types of female to begone from this site expressed their dissatisfaction on these types of streamers. Merritt Kopas wrote an article based on two female streamers their views on this. It states that these two streamers strongly dislike cam girls due to the fact that is makes it harder for females to actually play games or do the things they like. At the time this article was written Twitch has evolved in to a streaming platform that host not only videogames but real life stuff such as talking to your audience or live drawings. These two streams said that due to the actions of these cam girls females have a hard time growing if they do not do the same things those girls did in the past. It made it so that all girls must do these things or they are nobodies. This in return gave people the image that all females only do these types of cam girl things and most people tend to avoid that now (Kopas 1).

During the conflict between what Twitch should do, they finally made a rule change stating that the main focus should be video games and not just the person. They made changes to the rules and to the partnership program to enforce this new rule. They make it so that males and females must always wear clothing to cover as much skin as possible, any off topic gaming things must not last more than 20 consecutive minutes, and their second camera many people had must always show their face as the main focus and no other part of their body. While these changes were for the positive side of things, the amount of time it took was too long and the damage done by these cam girls would last till this day. Today even if a male and female play the same game and had a similar audience size, the female would still get harassed because they are a fake gamer or just a cam girl forced to play games. These stereotypes are still deeply ingrained in many people's heads and with this platform being on the internet many people are free to harass others with no consequences due to being anonymous.

Another thing to consider is the fact that one of the biggest names that represent the platform Twitch Ninja whos real name is Richard Tyler Blevins stated on an interview that he will not play with other females at the moment (Frank 1). Ninja works on average about 10 hours everyday streaming to at least 30 thousand live audience members. What he says or what he does has a huge effect to his audience and by saying he won’t stream with other females reinforces the idea that females aren’t gamers. One reason why he doesn’t stream with females is due to the fact of unnecessary drama (Frank 1). While he has no problems members of his audience would go and ask personal questions such as “Are these two seeing each other since they play so much together”. While both people can say no, others will always want to dig deeper and start to harass people until they get a solid answer which leads to some damage that cannot be repaired. Ninja does not wish for that to happen to someone else just because he plays games with them.

With these you can see many problems but not all of them can be solved due to the limitations of what the problem is. Some of the biggest problem would be Twitch itself policing on who can stream what and deciding on the punishment on those who break the rules. Twitch in recent years has expanded their website for streaming more than video games solving the problem of those who want to stream different types of content to people. While only Twitch has the power to ban users from streaming it is up to the users to help find thoses who break the rules by reporting them. On the website TwtichTracker is provides data on the site as a whole has 30,000 different channels one can watch and that's only those who have a partnership with Twitch. The site doesn’t include those who stream without one increasing the channels to maybe 50,000 based on how many live channels that are currently on.

Seeing how many channels there are it is up to the users of the site to help out to stop bullies, racist, and ignorant people who use the site to promote negativity. I am not saying that users have to actively go to as many people as possible to see if they are good or bad but to simply watch out while viewing people. If you see a person you enjoy and promote good try to tell others about that person. If one sees a bad streamer or audience member report them using the tools Twitch has provided. Giving positivity to a female streamer goes along way for them as not only does it say they what they are doing is good but gives them confidence to continue what they are doing without using their body or doing sexually questionable actions to attract people. These small actions might not seem much but with Twitch Tracker website saying there is at least 1 million live users on Twitch on average, all those small things add up to one big thing.

One nice way to help or promote others is using money. By donating or doing a subscription to them they will earn money. This is probably the most helpful thing when helping a steamer but not everyone has the money to do these things. So the next best thing is to leave nice comments when interacting with the streamer. One thing Twitch offers to streamer is after they stop steaming for the day they can send their current viewers to another channel as a way to help out others in the same community. Ninja while he may not play with females he does send his audience to female streamers after he is done playing. A sudden increase of viewers to a streamer who only has an audience of 10 people could make someone day. When 40 thousand people suddenly start watching you and give you positive comments it gives the streamer the impression of what they are doing is right and validated. Especially females streamers who usually see comments from their viewers asking to show more skin or they suck at playing this game because they are female which has no logical reasoning.

Overall my solution of doing small things to help stop discrimination against female streamers is the only good solution. While it is a good solution it will take a long time before it might show any good results due to the deep stigma of female gamers not being real gamers. This stigma was pretty much created when video games first came out and to this day still exist. While Twitch itself has to take care of the problem of Cam girls and equality on the platform, it is up to the users to change the overall mindset of females not being gamers. Some people might see my solution is simple, but usually simple is the best and easier answer. There is no immediate solution that will somehow fix 50 years of prejudice but people can slowly destroy the barriers it has created and in time it will fix itself. There already small results showing that females can do streaming as a full time job showing that there are people who accept females as gamers and know that this prejudice is wrong.

Add journals to list later.