Female pro gamers will struggle at the top level of competitive League of Legends because they aren’t yet as good as male players, says Team Paria’s UK mid-laner Victoria “Vicksy” Doman.
She recently joined Paria’s first-team roster and will compete in this weekend’s promotions tournament to qualify for season three of the ESL UK Premiership.
When asked why she thinks League’s competitive scene is male-dominant, she replied: “Honestly, just no female is good enough. Males tend to play video games competitively and females mostly tend to play games for fun. You rarely see a group of girls wanting to go and play some video games together, there’s a slight stigma around it.”
Team Paria contacted us after we published this article to state that Vicksy is not calling female players bad, but just that males are better at the game in general in her opinion, and that there should be more better female players.
At DreamHack London last year, eSports News UK interviewed all-female CSGO team, Team Property, who said that they do experience gender discrimination but it’s not as bad as it was.
“I don’t really get discriminated against because no one knows I’m a girl, unless they visit my stream or I get to know them personally,” Vicksy added.
“If anything, I think I get more praise, because I’m highly ranked AND I’m not a support main, and that’s something you don’t see often from a girl for some reason.”
Vicksy started playing League of Legends in season three after Elise’s release, where she started off as an Ahri main, before switching to the support role when playing with her friends.
“I enjoy playing the very best I can and hard carrying games, rather than supporting team mates, so I went back to playing mid as it’s such an important role.
“With Team Paria, i played a normal game with Tendanas [Paria’s coach – check out our interview with him here] with me on first time Veigar support, trying it out with Targons haha. Since then, he asked me to be on the academy team, and after a while I was able to be a part of the main roster of Team Paria.”
Vicksy has some impressive gameplay videos on her YouTube channel, including a Jhin Pentakill and this one-second Katarina Pentakill:
Can we expect to see some surprises from her in the ESL UK promotions tournament this weekend, or the Premiership if Paria qualify?
“I can easily say that I have tricks up my sleeve… you will have to see for yourself.
“I’m pretty excited [to be playing with Paria in the promotions tournament]! I’ve always wanted to play on a larger scale team and this is the perfect opportunity.”
Team Paria added on its Facebook page: “We hope that more women on this level will step out of the shadows as well. We believe there’s a lot more female talent in the eSports scene, but a lot of them are being held back because of stigmas or are only interesting for orgs in female-only teams.
“We have held extensive tryouts and Vicksy was actually the best player for her role, which to us simply meant she would be on the main roster.”
Check out our preview of the promotions tournament here and an interview with Team Paria’s coach here.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
