Women in Esports - interview with Ashley Kim

-Written by Tara Edwards

Ashley Kim is a second year theatre and business administration double major and President of SC Esports. Ashley oversees the SC Esports board and club activities, hosts club meetings, and organizes community gaming and social events. 

How did you first get into esports?

Ever since I was little, even before I learned how to read, I was playing video games with my mom. I have grown up playing video games my whole life. In high school, we didn't have an esports organization, but we had a lot of people in my school who liked to play video games after school, especially Smash. When I got to USC in the fall of 2019, I went to an involvement fair and signed up for the newsletter for SC Esports. I went to their opening meeting and had a lot of fun, met a lot of great people, and was happy to find that there was an esports organization in the first place. I kept going to club meetings, being active in the Discord and general community, and decided to apply for the board. That semester, I got on the e-board as Community Manager and had that position until last semester, when I became the president. 

What games do you play? 

In general, I like to play a lot of RPGs, story games, and FPS games. In terms of esports, I think my favorite is OverWatch. I play it quite a bit. I've also dabbled in League, Rocket League, and some of the other esports. 

What do you do as President of SC Esports? 

My role as President is mainly to oversee the club and manage all of the other board members and all of our events. We do weekly digital events every single Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. PST. We host a different game theme each time and invite our community to come play that game together. If they don't like that game or they have a different preference, they can play something else. It’s kind of a free-for-all. I host all of our e-board weekly meetings, make sure that everyone is participating, and make sure that all of the other board members know their responsibilities and duties. I try my best to highlight all the different people on our board. Even though I'm President, I don't ever want to make it seem like I'm the only one who makes decisions or has a say in things, so I always try to make sure everyone has a say and if anyone ever has an idea, that we look into how to do it. Right now, we are doing our weekly meetings and we also have unofficial movie nights once a week for community engagement. We are also doing our first monthly contest and it just went live on Monday, March 1st. We're doing an art contest with prizes that will go throughout the whole month.

What are SC Esports’ goals for when campus is open again? 

They’re not too dissimilar to what our goals are right now. Our main goal is just create a safe space and a community for all types of gamers at any skill level and with any game preference. I feel like we would do the same when we are in person. I think the thing that would shift the most though is that we have a lot of new freshmen in our community who haven't been to campus or don't know what it's like to be in-person at USC, so we’d like to keep that in mind and consider events that could bring them into the community more so that they feel like they belong. We’ll definitely have more actual physical outings. Before the pandemic, we would all go out and eat dinner together at K-BBQ as a club, so we might add more of those outings just because we haven't been in-person for so long. Maybe even a couple of social events that aren't just about gaming, but about getting to know each other.

What changes would you like to see happen in the esports industry? 

I would like to see more of an overall acceptance for the esports industry. I feel like we've made a lot of progress during the quarantine with us all being online. Esports has become more prominent of an industry that has shown that it can thrive even when everything else is shut down, but I'd also like to see more of an acceptance of it on a professional level and in the mainstream. People don’t see it as a viable career path or even something that should be considered competitive in a true sense like physical sports. I think that esports deserves more credit than it receives. 

How can esports be more inclusive for women? 

As someone who is female and has been in the esports industry for a really long time, I've definitely experienced a lot of backlash and so have a lot of women I know. I feel like it's hard to say for sure what would be a good solution, but I think a big one is just representation. Currently our board is almost entirely women and I feel like it really encourages other women to join the club. It makes them comfortable. Having more women participate or be represented in higher positions in esports clubs and out in the industry would definitely help. It shows that women can be a part of the gaming industry just like men. Even focusing on marketing for competitive teams with female players and gathering female coaches and female speakers for outreach would help. 

What do you imagine the future of esports will look like? 

Based on the trajectory esports has taken during quarantine, it will get more popular. In general, I feel like esports has gotten more popular especially among people who don't necessarily have previous experience playing the game or people who are not gamers. I would like to see it grow and thrive in that way. Eventually competitive teams and professionals will get more credit and recognition. I think people will start to understand why people play video games and why people see an industry and a valuable business in it. I feel like a lot of people used to think that gaming is not really an industry, it’s just retail or it's not that important, but as we keep going, society in general is coming to understand its importance more and I think that can only reflect good things on the industry and the community. 

What has been your favorite memory involving esports at USC? 

I think one of my favorite memories was when I was being welcome into the club my freshman year. A lot of our community is based on Discord and that's where I really grew to communicate with the community and grow in it. It was nice finding people that I could relate to and people that I had a lot in common with. I really found my biggest friend group in this community. I remember late-night Discord calls, playing hours with each other, even with 8 a.m. classes in the morning. It will always be a really great memory for me. Another one is kind of an inside joke, but basically, at all of our meetings we have a sign-in sheet just to keep track of participation and members. As President, I always remind everybody to sign in on the sheet and I will do so like two or three times throughout the whole meeting, just jumping in between rooms and people. So it has become an inside joke with people saying, ‘oh, there's Ashley, she's going to ask you to sign in on the sign-in sheet,’ all the time. It’s just an example of the funny, light-hearted jokes that I really like in our community. 

To stay up-to-date on SC Esports, join the Discord server. Check out Ashley’s Twitch channel. Follow USC Trojan Esports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for news and updates about the USC Esports teams and communities. View the entire interview with Ashley on USC Games’ YouTube channel here.