“We been here” creating a pipeline for women of color in gaming
- Lillian Stephens
- Apr 30, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 24
Rachel Davis doesn’t remember when she first played video games. According to her, they’ve always been around. Her mother “grew up in an arcade” and she distinctly remembers always having a gaming system in her home. They often played games together as Davis didn’t have siblings.
“I remember seeing a home video of me crawling up to the game system and then preparing to play Mario,” said Davis followed by a short laugh.
Davis, known as “SheIsBoogie” — “Boogie” for short — is a Black woman gamer, esports coach, cosplayer and chief operations officer (COO) of Sista Shootas — a gaming collective of Black women in esports who specifically favors first-person-shooter games.
The gaming enthusiast said she’d been playing games since she “could hold my neck steady.” While video games are part of Davis’ earliest memories, they’re also a key part of her online presence as an “influencer of content creation” today.
“You hear all these stories of women playing video games and the first thing that a man says is, ‘Oh my gosh, you a girl?’ or ‘How long you been a girl [gamer]?’ I’ve been a victim of several of these conversations,” said Davis. “A lot of women are scared to be in an environment — or a community — where they feel like they’re not wanted. I wanted to break that stigma of just ‘oh, this is a boy’s thing’. ”
The stigma of which Davis spoke is the same stigma that Keshia Walker, founder and chairperson of the Black Collegiate Gaming Association (BCGA), desires to overturn — which is the reason she began planning and holding the Women Got Game summits in 2020.
Since Physicist William Higinbotham created the first video game in October 1958, society has embraced video games as a largely, if not solely, masculine phenomenon.
Video games became popular in the 1970s and since then, have become a permanent part of a modern landscape. In an article written by Rebecca Davnall, a lecturer in game design at the University of Liverpool, the marketing practice of gendering products in the ’80s and ’90s — which gendered video games as a boy’s product then — created and reinforced the stigma of video games being for boys.
In the United States, 227 million people — approximately ⅔ of Americans — play some form of video game according to a 2021 Entertainment Software Association report. In the same report, forty-five percent of gamers identify as female. However, while women and girls are nearly half of all gamers, they represent only 5% of the gaming and esports industry.
Walker said the disparity amongst women, and particularly women of color, is due to a lack of access, encouragement and mentorship, but Women Got Game (WGG)— a gaming and esports summit specifically for women and girls of color — means to change that.
“We have a Women Got Game initiative that helped women of color and girls of color, from middle school to college, to have communities and also create brands, properties, experiences,” said Walker. “They can build mentorships and receive scholarships and also compete in esports tournaments.”
The founder said she began BCGA and many of the programs that have spurred from it when she realized how few opportunities Black people and other people of color had when they attempted to pursue a career in gaming and esports.
“I’m a woman of color and less than half a percent of the industry — the gaming industry — is represented by women of color,” explained Walker. “I’m talking about Black, Latina, Native American and Asian women — [we were] less than half a percent of the industry in 2023.”
Its purpose is simple: to give young women of color a way to enter the gaming and esports industry, network with peers and leaders as well as find mentors to guide them in their journeys.
As Women’s History Month closed, the BCGA planned two Women Got Game summits: the Game Developers Conference on March 22, 2024, and the Women’s Final Four on April 5, 2024.
Both summits included an esports tournament; a keynote presentation from a woman of color in the gaming industry; a panel discussion; a networking mixer; and scholarship and award presentations following the tournament.
“I wanted to make sure … that young ladies know as soon as possible that there other girls out there that game, that it’s okay to game and this can be a successful industry for them,” Walker added.
Twitter user Shanice Smith attended the Women Got Game Game Developers Conference on March 22 and said she left “feeling energized” and inspired, plus a bit of fatigue.
In a video, several of the attendees at the Women Got Game Game Developers Conference shared how the experience inspired and motivated them to join the gaming and esports industry while being able to learn different methods of overcoming the challenges they may face.
According to Davis, the biggest trial she has faced thus far is being a Black woman in gaming. She said she suspects some of the brands that have contacted her didn’t expect to see a tall, Black, boisterous and bubbly woman before them.
“Some brands just want the token Black person,” she explained. “Some brands genuinely want diversity.”
Davis’s journey began in streaming and then branched into content creation and esports coaching. She said an organization like Women Got Game would have helped her as a younger woman.
“It would benefit me more now than it would back then because back then I wasn’t thinking as where I am [thinking] critically now,” she said. “I love the idea though, I think it’s really dope.”
Davis and Walker have taken steps to cultivate women and girls’ continued participation in gaming and esports. Walker continues her work in the Black Collegiate Gaming Association and Davis through her resilience and continued presence.
“This is the space that we’re looking for,” exclaimed Davis. “To the young women, don’t let nobody tell you, ‘you can’t do it.’ ”
This article was first published in "We Have Thoughts" on April 30, 2024; We Have Thoughts is a collection of articles written by students at Morgan State University.
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