Skylla bolsters female 'Counter-Strike' players with inclusive tournaments

Of the top 20 CS:GO teams in the world, not a single one has a female player.

Female players and teams do not get enough opportunities to practice against better teams, and don't have nearly as many sponsors, former professional Counter-Strike player Petya Zheleva said. 

"The current situation in the competitive female scene is far from good," Zheleva told Mashable.

While there are some women's CS:GO tournaments throughout the year, they feature fewer teams than male tournaments and much lower prize pools. The 2015 Electronic Sports World Cup had 16 all-male teams fighting for a $75,000 prize pool, the women's tournament only had eight teams and a $15,000 prize pool.That's better than past years, but there are still significantly fewer tournaments for female CS teams.

That leads to slower development for these female teams and makes breaking through to the main stage extremely difficult, but it's where Zhelvea's organization, Skylla, wants to help. 

Skylla -- named after a female sea monster from Greek mythology -- has hosted two tournaments since launching in May. Zheleva founded Skylla after spending nearly a decade playing for one of the top female CS teams in Eastern Europe, which she also founded.

Skylla, she said, is as much about being able to compete as it is building up teams who don't get the chance to play at higher levels and improve their game.

"We can actually see that there is an interest from a lot of female players who are now willing to dedicate 100% of their attention to their favorite game," Zheleva said.

Skylla brings together female and male Counter-Strike teams to compete every other month in tournaments. The tournaments are a mix of eight of the top female teams in the world, who rarely get a chance to compete at events aside from women-only tournaments, and eight semi-professional male teams.

Women in Counter-Strike

The Counter-Strike community skews male; women only make up 20% of CS:GO players according to EsportsBets. Player and observer Heather “Sapphire” Garozzo told Kotaku this number difference is a big part of why there aren't women present in the top tier of Counter-Strike.

When women do play on Twitch streams, there are often streams of negative posts in the chat. Even with moderators deleting negative comments, these people are polluting the environment of inclusive or female-only competitions.

Skylla is no exception to this, but Zheleva said most viewers on their channel are interested in the teams and the tournament, so negative backlash is very rare.

Skylla co-founder Tom Lemke told Mashable Skylla is trying to level the playing field for the women that play regardless of the negativity.

"Esports is such a young industry and we want to see more diversity," Lemke said. "This is what makes esports so great. Men and woman can compete on the same playing field."

Supporting up-and-coming teams

After launching in May this year, Zheleva has already seen participating teams and players improve, and does what it can to help the teams grow out of the semi-pro level.

Lemke said the organization has spoken with several role models including Anna Baumann, a legal academic who specializes in esports, who wants to support the teams by educating them about contracts, giving advice on how to become more professional and things to look out for in the industry.

"There are many female teams that have reached a very good level and what's left is finding support/organization which will help them settle as a team and advance to a higher level of professionalism in esports," Zheleva said.

Because of the state of CS:GO at the semi-professional level, teams who aren't placing at the top of tournaments or aren't seeing fast improvement can be discouraged. Zheleva said she had a five-minute emotional talk with a captain of a male team who was considering quitting after losing in the tournament. Even the male teams have a tough time sticking it out to move onto better leagues.

Skylla's own growth

Starting a new esports organization isn't exactly easy, but Skylla really piqued the interest of women in the competitive CS scene right off the bat. Lemke said female players who didn't have full teams started looking for other players to form teams and compete with.

"Unfortunately we've had no requests from mixed teams," Lemke said. "We would love to have mixed teams play in our tournament."

Players are an important part of hosting tournaments, but the organization also needs financial support, which Lemke said is little bit trickier. A few companies have been supporting Skylla, including ChallengeMe.GG, GosuGamers, Noblechairs, Twitch and Lemke's company Unikrn.

"Our current partners understood the goals of Skylla and they were aware that this is not the type of product where the return of investments will follow up from the first week," Zheleva said. "So we are looking to expand this network of supporting companies because their small financial support now, could have big positive impact in the next six months."

And growth has happened. The tournaments are getting more viewers as the weeks go on. The first tournament brought 200,000 views to their Twitch channel, while after the second tournament Skylla had over 850,000 views.

"I [have been] carrying my passion for 'female gaming' since I was 18 years old, and now I am able to use my energy in building something which could have a great importance for the future development of the community," Zheleva said. "During my time as a gamer I experienced most of the negative aspects of being a woman in esports the bad way, that's now why I am looking for solutions of the core problems and I am trying to involve more people from the community in this process."