'I would pretend to be a dude': Female gamers and harassment in NBA 2K

The extent to which Dr. Ali Forbes went to prepare for her virtual ethnography of NBA 2K gamers was nothing short of impressive.

She learned how to play on both the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

She watched YouTube tutorial videos.

She kept a game-play journal.

But there was a problem. Forbes, then-a doctoral student at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, wanted both male and female gamers for the study. But she could not find women willing to participate.

Dr. Ali Forbes earned her doctorate at Arizona State University in 2021 and is a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin.

“My first 10 interviews were men,” said Forbes, now a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin. “Though there were women and girls playing, they weren’t interested in talking about their experiences openly the way that guys were.”

After more specifically recruiting female gamers, Forbes found out why. Over the course of 17 semi-structured in-depth interviews with American and Canadian NBA 2K players and her own participant observations, Forbes learned that hostility toward female gamers is so prolific, female participants avoid drawing attention to themselves by speaking in a deeper voice or refusing to chat with teammates altogether.

As our new publication in Communication & Sport explains, it isn't unheard of for NBA 2K players to exit the game when they realized there is a girl competing against them. Participants recounted opponents and teammates alike calling them "the B-word,” and telling them to get back into the kitchen or to kill themselves.

“I would pretend to be a dude, so that I would get some respect,” said one participant. “Sadly, I prefer that the guys think I’m one of them. I’m sensitive and would rather not go through the BS of name calling, yelling, and ball hogging.”

First released in 1999, NBA 2K is a basketball video game franchise that portrays National Basketball Association players, arenas, and practice facilities. It's a popular game. The franchise has sold more than 150 million units globally.

In 2019, NBA 2K20 included Women’s National Basketball Association professionals for the first time. Although players could not yet create female avatars, they could assume the virtual identity of a WNBA player and compete with WNBA teams.

Scholars such as Eric N. Bailey and colleagues and Lindsey Darvin and coauthors hailed this development as a positive step toward addressing female characters' longstanding underrepresentation in gaming. Few women design, program, or produce video games. And when female characters are in games, they are, as Darvin, Ceyda Mumcu, and Ann Pegoraro called it in 2021, “sexualized background decorations or distressed damsels.”

Numerous scholars have found a connection between gamers' exposure to sexualized characters and their likelihood to harass women after gameplay. Examples of this, found in studies by Karen Dill and coauthors (2008), Kishonna Gray (2014), John T. Holden and coauthors (2020), Mike Z. Yaho and coauthors (2010), and Nick Yee (2006), are trash talking and directing objectionable language and offensive comments towards women on social media and game blogs. In their 2013 examination of players’ reactions to men’s and women’s voices in eSports, Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff and Lindsey M. Rose found that players negatively comment on women’s voices thrice more than a male voice or no voice. A combination of anonymity, competition, a lack of direct repercussions, and frequent and normalized banter brews a hostile environment, according to Toby Crew in 2024.

Removing themselves from the game chat decreases the likelihood anyone will hear their voice, determine they are female, and harass them, participants told Forbes. But this also limits gamers' ability to create meaningful connections, to develop as players, and in turn, to take advantage of the financial opportunities available to elite gamers. Colleges and universities, for example, offer scholarships for eSports. As of 2025, professional eSports players in the U.S. can make between $30,000 and $206,000 annually.

Though NBA 2K has since-then introduced female avatars into the MyPlayer features of the game, such representation is being added to an environment where female players have been trying to ensure competitors don’t know they are female. How this addition, along with the WNBA's skyrocketing popularity, influences future game iterations remains to be seen.

Forbes said she is proud of undertaking qualitative video game research through a mass communications lens: something we don’t see a lot of in our field and that I hope more people undertake.

“I think it’s also shinning a light on a problem that traditionally exists quietly and privately,” Forbes said. ”Bringing that conversation publicly is something I’m proud of.”