Women in Games Argentina, an organization dedicated to creating a more inclusive space for women in gaming in the country, has picked up three male VALORANT professional players to play with voice changers and raise awareness of how badly women are treated while playing online video games.
The experiment worked perfectly. The three players joined a lobby and used a gadget to sound like women. The pros were trolled and called sexist slurs while playing VALORANT and received the average experience women have when they use voice chat in multiplayer games.
“This experiment went exactly as you would think it would go,” Tiktoker Kristabyte said in her video about the topic. “As these guys turned on their voice changes any semblance of cooperation – seriously, [it went] out the window.”
Sexist slurs aside, which are already a terrible thing to go through, women also have a worse gaming experience because misogynistic men refuse to cooperate and relay information. One of the male pros in the experiment got 15 frags and just two deaths in one game, but his performance took a big hit once he turned on the voice changer to sound like a woman. He finished the next match with 16 deaths because no one wanted to play with him.
Alfredito, one of the male players who participated in the experiment, said playing with a voice changer took away his desire to continue playing VALORANT. “It’s something you do not want to do anymore. I don’t want to imagine having to live an experience like this on a daily basis,” Alfredito said.
It’s up to society to do a better job of educating men and for the developers of video games to create a safer space for women.
