Just like sports is a male dominated industry, so too is esports — competitive video games on a professional level. Luckily, female leagues and equal representation in both kinds of sports are slowly becoming more mainstream. Some of the biggest esports games like Fortnite and Valorant have female leagues and women-only tournaments, and there are more and more female esports athletes making a name for themselves like Alixxa and Slysssa from Alienware’s Team Liquid.
Alixxa plays Fortnite for Team Liquid and Slysssa is a top Hearthstone Battlegrounds player. We spoke to them about playing games professionally, how they got signed to Team Liquid, what they think about women-only tournaments and how esports is becoming more inclusive.
POPSUGAR Australia: Hi guys! Can you walk us through the process of getting signed to the team?
Alixxa: My stream started popping off, and they reached out to me. We spent a couple of months going back and forth. They were trying to learn more about me because I feel with Team Liquid it’s more about getting the right people to be part of the team rather than just picking the most clouted person, which is something that really stuck out to me. I really liked the fact that they tried to get to know me before giving me a number or a contract. After a couple of months, we came to an agreement and I signed.
Slysssa: I’ve been streaming and playing since 2017, and I think they discovered me through my wins and tournaments, and just my consistency of streaming. It’s really important to be both a really active streamer and then good in the competitions to be signed to a team. When they reached out to me, I was in shock. I thought it was like a meme email. I was like, ‘Oh, they’re messing with me’.
PS: What does a typical day look like for you?
A: I wake up around 8 or 9am, and do my morning routine. I get coffee and food, and then start getting ready to stream. Once I’m ready, I go live and stream for around eight hours, depending on what I’m doing or if any events are happening that day. After my stream, I hang out in a few other friends’ streams on Twitch and then I turn off my PCs around 9pm and read or play on my Switch. Then I sleep and repeat the day over again tomorrow.
PS: Slysssa, you’re a former maths teacher so you’ve had quite a big career change! Why did you decide to start streaming? Do any of your teaching skills come in handy in-game or in chat?
S: I have an autoimmune disease, and if you’re familiar with them you might know they can really flare when you’re stressed, and teaching is a really high-stress job. I ended up in the hospital and my husband was just like, ‘This isn’t worth it. Your health is super important … We need to find something better for you’. He introduced me to streaming. He thought it was something I’d be good at and had a lot of my skill sets from teaching like talking to an audience and making people happy. I started doing it over the summer and after a month of doing it, I was like sold.
PS: What do you think the gaming industry, and e-sports specifically, needs to do in the next few years to be more welcoming and inclusive for women?
S: One thing which I’ve been seeing a lot more is just women supporting women. I think we’re kind of bred to treat each other like rivals. When in actuality, we could be lifting each other up and helping each other get there. I know I’ve been doing my part to help other women and I see that a lot in others.
A: I think it comes down to the bigger male creators, and the people who are at the top and have a voice to talk about sexism. Because the little kids who don’t know any better are gonna just follow the crowd, and if their idol is telling them to be kinder to women and to not be sexist, I feel like that’ll help. The other thing is running more women’s tournaments.
PS: What do you think about women-only tournaments?
A: I think they’re really good because they give a lot of women the confidence to go in and compete. But at the same time, it adds a divide between the men and the women. I think at the moment it’s necessary, because there just aren’t a lot of faces at the top of the scene for women. But in the future I want them to mix and have equal men and women in tournaments.
S: That’s kind of how I got really popular. There was one called WSOE — it was 16 women, including Hafu and Alliestrasza. And I got top four in that and it doubled my viewership and got me a lot of credibility.
PS: What’s the biggest benefit of women-only tournaments?
S: I think they’re important at first to help people recognise there are women who are just as good. They can help get women comfortable with competing — just in a safer space.
A: There’s a lot of stigma around women being good at video games, and I think it creates a lot of self-doubt when it comes to women trying to show they’re good at the game, so a lot of them are held back. That was me for the longest time. I was holding myself back because I constantly heard “Oh, you’re a girl. You’re not good at video games.” And I was like, “I am good at video games and I’m gonna prove it to them” because my confidence level increased. I feel like the women tournaments caused that increase in confidence.
PS: What advice do you have for girls who want to get into esports?
S: A lot of women just believe when they’re told they’re bad. And you’re not — you’re good! I’ve been told I’m bad so many times — I’m still told I’m bad. I’m one of the best tournament players in the game and I’m being told I’m bad. You’re gonna get told that but don’t listen to them, and don’t listen to yourself if you start to say that. Just do what you can to get better. And find good people to play with so that it’s fun.
A: Don’t listen to anybody other than yourself. If you fully believe that you can do something then no matter what anybody else says, you can do it. And listening to people who are telling you things like “you’re not good at video games” isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you let them win, then you’re letting yourself lose.
