Mobile Legends: Bang Bang developer MOONTON wants female esports to be independent like women's tennis
It's starting slow by getting women teams to go up against development teams first.
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) developer MOONTON is making a bold move for gender diversity in esports. For the first time ever, two professional women esports teams will be competing at the MLBB Development League (MDL) Indonesia come the tenth season.
They will be chosen from the winners of Indonesia's Woman Star League (WSL) Season 8, and the WSL Invitational 2024. These two teams will be going up against all-male teams at MDL, where teams compete for promotion to the Mobile Legends Professional League (MPL) Indonesia.
But if you're worried that they will have a tough time at it, Indonesia's esports governing body, Pengurus Besar Esports Indonesia (PBESI), is confident they will do well.
"When we first talked about women in esports, it was years ago, because the strength of the lady gamers were not the strongest, because we were lacking in talents," Debora Imanuella, PBESI's VP of Communications, said in an exclusive interview with Yahoo Esports SEA.
"But now we have one team that has won many times, more than 20 tournament wins in a row. And it's not really good for the women's scene, because when one team wins over and over again, it's not fun anymore."
And she has a good reason to feel that way. Bigetron Era (BTR), the team in question, are likely to be the first team picked. They have been absolutely dominant in the women's scene, winning title after title, and it's likely the only way they can improve and take on new challenges is to move on to MDL.
"Esports is about competition, and it's not really healthy when most of the comments on YouTube are like 'oh, just give the championship to BTR'. That's why the Federation wants a healthy scene where female esports can also grow," she added.
Excited to play
Meanwhile, Bigetron Era's roamer, Vivi "Vivian" Indrawaty, is already looking forward to playing at the 10th season of MDL, saying she was 80 per cent excited, as it would be a new experience for her and the team.
"My hope is that we will make fewer and smaller mistakes than the ones we made in previous tournaments, and I will be able to play more neatly and disciplined against the MDL teams," said Vivi.
"We still don't know what our performance will be like at MDL. But you can be sure that we will do our best to provide the best. And every shortcoming and failure will be used as a lesson for the next match so that there are no more mistakes."
Long term plans
The introduction of all-women teams to MDL is also part of MOONTON's long term plans for the game.
"I think all esports have stages, and what we're working on is to make sure we have the most diversity and a strong ecosystem. As the ecosystem grows, say maybe after seven or eight seasons, we started to figure out how to make it bigger and better," said Eric Wu, Senior Partnerships Manager at MOONTON's Esports Ecosystem Team.
And while moving the two best female teams to MDL may affect viewership numbers for the women-only league, MOONTON says this is just a part of the KPI, and they are fine to take the hit for their long term goals for MLBB as an esport.
"We do see some hesitation from stakeholders. For example, esports teams worry about the sustainability of women events and whether it will be financially beneficial to them. They are also concerned about being able to find sponsors for the mid or long term," he said.
"Before last year, sponsors were hesitant because they didn't foresee the future of female tournaments. But for the past few years, because of MLBB's fast growth and (because) we had our MWI tournaments, sponsors are now much more confident and understanding of the trends."
MLBB has been growing, and has proven to be worthwhile for such sponsors, according to Wu, who added that MOONTON running more cross-region tournaments has also played its part.
Having a high prize pool for women tournaments also helps in getting sponsors to invest, he said which in turn grows their confidence to participate.
However, Wu admitted that it is still a challenge to run an esports league for women. That said, he added that MOONTON is hoping this will be a start of things to come.
"I think in the future as a long term objective, if we consider this like women tennis, we want MLBB women esports to be just as independent. With over 10 different regions participating at the MLBB Women's Invitational this year, we are already establishing a very solid base for the MLBB women ecosystem. Obviously, the next step is to give them the room to grow, and have diverse enough content to support it."
Aloysius Low is an ex-CNET editor with more than 15 years of experience. He's really into cats and is currently reviewing products at canbuyornot.com
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