If you are familiar with names like Dhayana Sena and Haughty Chicken, you are probably a passionate video gamer familiar with some of the best female gamers, and Australians are no stranger to you. If you have no idea who these ladies are, we should probably start by laying the base for you: while women gamblers represent 50 percent of the online gambling community Down Under, they continue to struggle to gain more visibility. Unfortunately, the same can be said about women gamers and gamblers in the US and other parts of the world as well. Powerful examples like Vanessa Selbst, the only woman to ever reach the first position on the Global Poker Index that features both women and men with her mind-blowing $11,850,000 casino winnings seem to still not be enough to change rusty stereotypes that gaming is exclusively dedicated to men.
Dhayana and Haughty are some of the most determined warriors carrying this battle in the video gaming field in Australia. Their main goal? To change the perception that only male gamers can steal the show and be the industry’s stars.
Let’s dig a little deeper into this matter and find out exactly who Dhayana and Naughty are, what they do, and how they could completely revolutionize the face of the gaming industry in Australia and, gradually, the rest of the world.
Meet Haughty Chicken, the 58-year-old Vide Game Streamer in Melbourne
Haughty has been playing video games for over four decades now, but she decided to give the popular live streaming platform Twitch a go in 2020, during the first coronavirus lockdown in Melbourne. She needed to come up with a challenging username and remembered the drawing of a chicken wearing a suit that an artist had gifted her. She had called it a “haughty looking chicken”, so the road from there to her new username online was pretty short and felt natural. The online gaming community loved her idea and she gathered more than 10,000 followers on Twitch, quickly turning into one of the main partners of the platform.
Haughty still continues to wear a red bow during all her live gaming streams as a way of bringing a homage to the famous chicken drawing she used to have as an avatar. Haughty shared her first few toxic and misogynistic encounters with various Twitch channels, which convinced her even more of the necessity of some big changes in the community.
Haughty is 58 and she represents other similar women who are gradually becoming the growing norm in the country’s video gaming population. According to data originating from Digital Australia’s 2020 Report, women who are over 18 represent 47 percent of the total population of gamers in Australia. A fresh Nielsen research speaks about women accounting for 59 percent of the massive 1.8 billion hours that Aussies have spent engaged in video gaming in 2020 alone.
The figures are aligned with the Australian as well as the global trends; however, this does not mean that female gamers do not continue to be faced with plenty of obstacles from the still male-dominated gaming industry. Women seem to continue to have barriers put up whenever they wish to join a new gaming community online compared to their men counterparts. This is a direct result of the unhealthy stereotypes and toxic actions of male players towards female gamers. Plus, there is also the issue with female gamers still not being considered good enough to be accepted in the respective communities.
Haughty is bringing her own contribution towards the changes she would like to see and experience on her own, and her work is highly praised among female players in Australia, the US, and other parts of the planet. She is not only a female player but also one who is no longer in her teen years, which would make her message even more powerful.
Who Is Dhayana Senaan?
She is Xbox’s ambassador and also the female video gamer who decided to create the women of Xbox community as a safe haven exclusively dedicated to female players as well as to players who identify as female where they can find the support they are looking for from other females. Dhayana roots for “equality and diversity” as part of the complicated corporate world that has sent her straight into the arms of the virtual gaming community.
All in all, there are plenty of reassuring signs of change with courageous women like Dhayana and Haughty Chicken popping up in the industry, but we still seem to have a pretty long way to go to significantly improve female gamers’ visibility in the gaming world.