Esports organization Gen.G will venture into the world of beauty, with the announcement of a partnership between them and Benefit cosmetics. Gen.G, who has teams participating in multiple esports competitions, is one of the biggest organizations in the United States and is using this partnership in their continued effort to promote women in the esports industry.
In 2018, Gen.G created an all-female Fortnite team, and has also signed a deal with the dating app Bumble that focused on the female members their organization. Benefit cosmetics has also made previous attempts to promote women in gaming when they hosted the GIRLGAMER festival, which took place in Australia in 2019.
Details of this partnership were reported on by The Esports Observer after Gen.G made the following announcement on their Instagram account:
GAMEFACE will be a series of videos featuring beauty influencer Eleanor "Snitchery" Barnes and members of Gen.G's female esports and streaming teams. Each video will feature a different member of Gen.G, who will talk about their experiences in professional gaming, and of course showcase their make up skills!
The first of these videos dropped yesterday on Benefit Cosmetics' Instagram starring Gen.G's head of new gaming initiative, Kristen "Kitty" Michaela. In it, she talks about how her dreams of gaming professionally started at a young age, and about how difficult it was to break into streaming on the previously male-dominated Twitch.tv. The video finishes with Snitchery doing Kitty's make up before wrapping up.
As esports continues to make its way into mainstream culture, partnerships like this are extremely important. It has the potential to introduce competitive gaming to an entirely new demographic of people. Furthermore, it gives esports a greater air of legitimacy as brands and sponsors can see that esports' appeal doesn't have to end with people who are life long gamers.
It's also a huge win for the representation of women within the competitive gaming space. Esports (and video games in general) have mainly been targeted towards the male population. The GAMEFACE series is here to show that there is a definite place for women in the industry, and this could inspire an entirely new generation of female esports professionals going forward.
Source: The Esports Observer