Aalto University: Women imitate masculine traits to be taken seriously as gamers. “Women working in the gaming industry feel required to imitate stereotypically masculine personality traits if they want to gain recognition in gaming communities, reveals new research from Aalto University School of Business.”
Brookings Institution: Video game censorship is authoritarians’ latest tool to muzzle speech. “In October of 2019, the professional esports player known as ‘Blitzchung’ was being interviewed on a livestream discussing a match he had just won in Taiwan as part of a tournament for the game Hearthstone. Wearing a gas mask and goggles and speaking to the official Taiwanese Hearthstone stream, Blitzchung repeated a popular slogan of protesters in Hong Kong who had recently taken to the streets to protest China undermining the island’s independence: ‘Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.’ Blitzchung, whose real name is Ng Wai Chung and who hails from Hong Kong, quickly found himself in the crosshairs of Activision Blizzard, the company behind Hearthstone.”
Ars Technica: Excel esports on ESPN show world the pain of format errors. “The Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) hosts regular international competitions, both invitational and open to anyone, in which Excel pros strive to solve as many questions as possible from a complex task. You can download all three of the tasks used in last weekend’s battle for free. ESPN showed a 30-minute edited version of the full two-hour-and-48-minute all-star battle between previous champions.”
Bing Blogs: Esports livestreams, news, and more – all in one place. “We are proud to announce the launch of the MSN Esports Hub, a one-stop destination for information related to top esports titles! The data is powered in part by a combination of Microsoft Bing web-scale aggregation and cutting-edge machine learning courtesy of Microsoft Research.”
Motherboard: US Army Reinstates Twitch Commenters It Banned for Asking About War Crimes. “After a pause from streaming, the U.S. Army esports team is returning to Twitch and reinstating accounts it had previously banned. ‘The U.S. Army eSports Team is reinstating access for accounts previously banned for harassing and degrading behavior on its Twitch stream,’ the Army told Motherboard in an email.”
CNN: Twitch is aiming to build an esports league specifically for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. “Streaming giant Twitch is partnering with Cxmmunity — an Atlanta-based non-profit focused on increasing minority participation in esports and the gaming industry — to offer the first-ever esports leagues geared specifically for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).”
Kotaku: Amid Backlash, U.S. Army Retreats From Twitch. “The U.S. Army has dealt with sustained backlash over the past few weeks against its recruitment-oriented Twitch channel, which has banned viewers for asking about war crimes and hosted supposed giveaways that just dumped people out onto a recruitment page (which the Army has since claimed did enter viewers into a competition through other means, but which Twitch nonetheless forced it to stop running). Now, in response to this, it looks like the Army is putting a halt to all Twitch activity—at least, for the time being.”
Vice: The U.S. Army Twitch Channel Is Banning People for Asking About War Crimes. “The American military is getting big into esports. The U.S. Army has launched its own Twitch channel where members of its team stream Call of Duty: Warzone and interact with users on the site. The channel has videos going back two months, but things got spicy in the chat on Wednesday night when viewers started asking questions about U.S. war crimes.”
Techdirt: More Than A Game: The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Turned Esports Into An Economy Of Its Own. “One of the dangers when we talk about esports and its rapid growth, particularly during this pandemic, is that those not in the know can see this as hobbyists touting their own hobby. It’s understandable to some degree, what with this industry being both in its infancy stage and growing exponentially in speed. Still, while we’ve had several posts lately focusing on how esports is happily filling the void of traditional live sports during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is worth remembering that this isn’t just a hobby any longer. It’s an economy in and of itself.”
Autosport: WEC News: Virtual Le Mans 24 in association with Motorsport Games announced. “Organised by the FIA World Endurance Championship, Le Mans organisers the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and Motorsport Games, the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual will feature a 50-car entry consisting of LMP2 and GTE machinery, with four-driver teams made up of a mix of professional drivers and Esports racers.”
BBC: Coronavirus: Serena Williams among stars to compete in Mario Tennis tournament. “Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Maria Sharapova are among the tennis stars who will compete in a live-streamed tournament of Mario Tennis Aces. Top tennis players will partner celebrities and play as characters from the game on Nintendo Switch.”
The Verge: Formula E launches a virtual racing season, joining NASCAR, F1, IndyCar. “All-electric racing series Formula E is launching a nine-week sim racing competition after having to put its sixth season on pause due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The series joins the likes of NASCAR, Formula One, and IndyCar, all of which are already leaning on the robust software and community of online sim racing to keep fans and drivers entertained and occupied in the absence of real-world racing.”
Road|Show: Broadcasters buy in to air Torque Esports virtual race series. “We don’t know when we’ll see real life motorsport return to the track as the world works to control the coronavirus outbreak. Even though the hope is racers take to the grid sooner rather than later, plenty of organizations are starting to look at esports more seriously.”
Engadget: Facebook’s new tool lets gamers plan their own esports tournaments. “Today, Facebook Gaming is launching Tournaments, a new feature that lets users create, join or follow virtual game tournaments. The tool offers everything from registration to seeding, bracket management and score entry. You can host single elimination, double elimination or round robin tournaments, and best of all, it’s open to anyone.”
CBS Sports: NBA 2K Players Tournament bracket: How to watch online, live stream, TV channel, start times, dates, results. “The tournament will be played on the Xbox One console and the winner will be crowned the ultimate NBA 2K20 champion and receive a $100,000 charity donation in their name to support coronavirus relief efforts. The seeding is determined by the player’s 2K rating and tenure. The first slate of games tipped off Friday night with No. 1 overall seed Kevin Durant losing to 16-seeded Derrick Jones Jr., while third-seed Hassan Whiteside lost to No. 14 Patrick Beverley.”
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