Female students' participation (over the years) in esports and its implications on psychological conditions, communication, and virtual gaming risks

• Published in: Retos (Madrid) 2025 (62), p.682-690
• Main Authors: Sutresna, Nina, Blegur, Jusuf, Elfanni, Dandi, Firdaus, Ivan Rivan, Berliana, Berliana, Maharesti, Ayuning, Ardiyansi, Yuski
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: communication; comunicaciones; deportes electrónicos; eSport; Gender; Género; psicología; psychology; riesgos de juegos virtuales; virtual gaming risks
• ISSN: 1579-1726; 1988-2041; 1988-2041

eSport is a sport of choice and is quite popular, especially among young people, including women. This virtual sport has been developed entirely with various ways to play. At the same time, there is a negative paradigm of eSport games for women in Indonesia, including damaging vision, causing numbness in the hands, forgetting to eat, being introverted, and using harsh language. From a cultural perspective, women who play eSport are considered to violate the nature of women because they reflect masculine characteristics. This study uses quantitative research with a causal-comparative design to examine the effect of female students' partic-ipation in playing eSports on psychological development, communication skills, and the risks of virtual games. The research data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially (Multivariate Analysis of Variance). The analysis results prove a simultaneous influence between eSport participation (duration of playing) and female students' psychological conditions, communication, and virtual game risks. In partial testing, eSport participation only significantly affected the communication skills variable of female students, whilethe other two variables did not. Future research needs to conduct qualitative investigations to explorethe clinical experiences of female gamers that help them train their communication skills. Given the existence of various gender discriminatory behaviours in eSports, female gamers may have good communication to protect themselves from the threat of discrimination, or vice versa. El eSportes un deporte preferido y bastante popular, especialmente entre los jóvenes, incluidas las mujeres. Este deporte virtual ha sido desarrollado íntegramente con varias formas de jugar. Al mismo tiempo, existe un paradigma negativo de los juegos de deportes electrónicos para las mujeres en Indonesia, que incluye daños en la visión, entumecimiento en las manos, olvido de comer, ser introvertida y usar lenguaje duro. Desde una perspectiva cultural, se considera que las mujeres que practican deportes electrónicos violan la naturaleza de las mujeres porque reflejan características masculinas. Este estudio utiliza una investigación cuantitativa con un diseño causal-comparativo para examinar el efecto de la participación de estudiantes femeninas en la práctica de deportes electrónicos sobre el desarrollo psicológico, las habilidades de comunicación y los riesgos de los juegos virtuales. Los datos de la investigación fueron anal