Unconfirmed: this talk is still being reviewed and does not appear in the public programme or speaker directory.
About the talk
Esports engagement across mega-events in Australia are becoming widely popular to attend. Societal configuration of the esports ecosystem has come with a cultural stamp, due to the persistence of masculine sporting cultures infiltrating esports communities. Sporting culture cannot be ignored when engaging with esports events, as the field itself produces similar pipelines present in sporting culture. Alongside esports, an important parallel to consider when understanding the formation of videogame communities and their longstanding marginalisation of women and gender diverse individuals in this space. Hence, the importance that esports engagement at mega-events has particularly with a focus on gender, can help us understand why videogame and esports engagement at mega-events is struggling to support women and gender diverse individuals in the space, but culturally how we can dismantle the current culture and the persistent issues when playing games, such as identity-based exclusion and harassment whether participating at physical events casually or online and LAN tournaments (Taylor, 2012; Witkowski & Harkin, 2025; Zhu, 2025). In hopes to illuminate the possibility of how esports events can encourage a new generation of players, research focusing on marginalised perspectives will greatly benefit the industry's understanding of how these spaces can come with better practices to create equal opportunity for society and create cultural change in a historically hetero-masculine and cis-white male space.
Speaker
Chrysanthe Liontis
PhD Candidate · RMIT University
Chrysanthe is a PhD candidate at RMIT University focusing on esports production through the lens of socio-phenomenology and queer ethnography. Chrysanthe currently works for the Australian Esports League, as a production team member. They are a graduate of RMIT Games and completed Honours in Media and Communications at RMIT. Chrysanthe’s research interests include sports, esports, videogame cultures, gender, mega-events, motorsport, esports production and broadcasting. Chrysanthe’s current PhD project focuses on how gendered socio-structural systems and event-making practices are currently being perpetuated in esports production ecosystems.