Popular free to play collectible card game Hearthestone: Heroes of Warcraft has come under fire in it's Finnish tournament last week when it originally announced that it would be gender exclusive and would allow male players only to participate. After what seemed like immediate backlash, IeSF (International electronic sports federation) released a response addressing the controversy and the official website for the tournament changed it's banner logo to show that the tournament is now "open to all." The real question is, why did this happen in the first place?
The IeSF league is making it's bid to become recognized along side other popular sports. As such, their notion is that by separating gaming competitions by gender, they will achieve that recognition. As noted above, the controversy with Hearthestone stemmed from the rule that no female player would be allowed in the finale, thus making it pointless to allow female players in the Hearthestone competition on the possibility one might eliminate a male player. As IeSf continues it's journey to full renowned recognition, its important to realize that they can also change the definition of "tradition sports." E-sports is by definition different and there is no argument that a male player can be better than a female, especially considering hearthstone doesn't require fast reaction time like a first person shooter would or League of Legends which requires quick reaction speed and lots of mouse clicking. The only argument IeSF has to stand on is that "other people have done it before us, we should do it too so we can look like them," but they don't have to and hopefully come November for their World Championship BAKU 2014, they'll open up the competition for both females and males as well. (you can see some of the angry games reactions on the facebook page) As it stand now, the males will have the option to enter competitions for Dota 2, Star Craft 2, Hearthestone, and Ultra-Street fighter 4 and the females will only get to choose between Star Craft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Hopefully IeSF will learn from this backlash and that there is no viable reason girls can't compete and play alongside the boys.
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