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Brazilian fighting games reveal desire to see more women playing
Sarah (Shangraf) and Bealank (Beatrice) playing in Treta 2019 freeplay Daniela Rigon
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16:35
Daniela Rigon
Chun Li. Mai Shiranui. Sonya Blade. These are just some of the many female characters we have encountered in fighting games since their inception in the 1980s and 1990s. However, it is not just within games that we find women fighting. In my EVO 2019 text, I praised the diversity of the competitors - and found the same diversity, on a smaller scale, on my way to the Treta Championship 2019.
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In the 'Brazilian Evo', there were women present at competitions, in the organization and even in the narration, and I talked with some of them to know more about female participation and representation in the national scene.
The first one I talked to was Beatrice, or Bealank, with whom I had been tweeting for a while. A resident of Curitiba, she told me about her passion for fighting games since childhood and her dream of helping more girls get into the competitive landscape.
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"I started playing Street Fighter in 1992 on Super Nintendo," she recalls. "I basically asked my parents to give me a Super Nintendo and it had to come with Street Fighter. At the time, I was obsessed with what magazines posted. I started playing and it was love at first sight with fighting games. Since then, I couldn't stop anymore. " Bea remembers that it was up to his brother and his friends to go home to play, because as a girl she couldn't go to the arcades. "I lived in a small town, so there were no championships there, it was a matter of the arcade and the group of people who would play all afternoon at my house.
So we would take turns playing four, six, sometimes eight hours straight. The rare times I went to the arcade, I was able to play well and get several chips from my opponents, "she says proudly. She also said that she was a King of Fighters fanatic and played until 2013, although she didn't know about tournaments at the time. However, his passion for the competitive had to be put aside by life issues such as college and work, and was recently resumed in 2017.
"I became interested [in the competitive] in 2017 when a friend of mine from Canada said he was having an event, the Canada Cup, and had a very good Zangief player," he says. "I always played Zangief and was interested. I took Street Fighter V to try it out and started playing Zangief. "
The return, however, was not easy. "Rusty," Bea went after coaching to help her get the dust off her control and cheered up when she started to make good results in online tournaments. After changing character for goal reasons - from Zangief to Falke - she began participating in face-to-face tournaments to test skills and improve. "The offline tournament is where you can get better," says Cravo, who finished 1-2 at Treta.
Moving on to the female scenario, Bea explains that he's "incredibly good." "Twitch chat you don't look because it's toxic, but when you arrive in the community, she's extremely receptive. Players are not caring who you are, they want to know that you are there to play. Then they will welcome you, treat you well, respect you if you can win and play at the same level as you. They don't think, 'Ah, a girl, I'm going to get my secondary character, I'm going to play worse.' No, they will be serious, "he says.
From the great experience she has with the community, Bea wants other girls to know this and live the same. "I want to give a little more visibility [to the community] so more girls can know that this fighting game option exists, because there may be very young girls who can be very good at fighting games without knowing they exist" says Bea.
In her plans for the future, Bea jokes that "she's already on the old age curve" and that her goal is to retire soon and start another business to engage in fighting games and help the women's community grow. "Bringing more women, coaching, making them play, women-only championships. Bring visibility to them, "he comments.
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Moe: Back when I was Gorgeous, everybody wanted a piece of me. But somehow, I just never made it to the big time.
Homer: Why not?
Moe: 'Cause I got knocked out forty times in a row. That, plus politics. You know, it's all politics.
Homer: [glaring] Lousy democrats.
