Imperial fe and florescent made history for women in games this week.
Jan. 16, was a tough day to hate on women playing video games as the CS2 team Imperial fe and former VALORANT Game Changers superstar Ava “florescent” Eugene proved that women can hold their own against men in competitive first-person shooter (FPS) titles.
The odds were against both Imperial fe and florescent. The CS2 team had the tall task of facing NAVI, one of the best teams in the world. Florescent, on the other hand, debuted in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region’s VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Kickoff for Apeks and faced Gentle Mates, an all-men team, for the first time in her career.
Many CS2 fans thought Imperial fe were going to embarrass themselves in BLAST Bounty Season 1 and get knocked out without winning more than a couple of rounds. Many also thought florescent would flounder and show the discrepancy between Game Changers and an international VCT league.
However, the opposite happened. Imperial fe put out a good fight against NAVI and delivered an entertaining show to a broadcast that peaked at over 490,804 viewers, the highest ever for a match including a women’s CS2 team. For comparison, Imperial’s all-men team lost to the same NAVI last year by 13-2 at Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Rio.
Apeks also lost to Gentle Mates, but florescent top-fragged for her team and nearly averaged the highest ADR in the series, according to VLR.gg.
Now that Imperial fe and florescent put women in the spotlight of competitive FPS and proved that women aren’t worse than men at games, we can discuss what esports could do to diminish the gatekeeping.
May what Imperial fe and florescent accomplished on Jan. 16 be the turning point towards more inclusion of women in FPS.
That’s all for now. Stick around on esports.gg for more news and updates.