The origins

The Norwegian Grassroots Esports Alliance is a non-profit organisation supporting volunteer grassroots esports initiatives. Our primary goal is to facilitate grassroots esports competitions and exchange experiences among our member clubs. We also function as a networking organization for esports in Norway, connecting organizations engaged in gaming and esports through conferences and esports projects.

With our pilot project, we aim to engage more female gamers and esports players through various gaming and esports activities. Our pilot project culminates in a girls-only grassroots esports cup in “Valorant.” We hope to contribute with knowledge and strategies on how to include girls in grassroots esports based on the European Grassroots Esports framework.

Pilot case study

In this video, Cathrine Finnebraaten from The Grassroots Esports Alliance generously provides us with a lightning presentation of the pilot action challenges they faced and the solutions they developed and tested. Enjoy the ride through the Girl Gamer Cup.

Takeaways and main lessons

In our project, we recognized three major barriers/challenges:

• Barrier 1: Communication. One of the biggest challenges was communicating that the events were for girls only. Standard replies were, “Why is the event not for boys?”.
  • How we solved it: We used female gaming and esports influencers. We recruited profiles from famous esports teams or streamers who were included in the project. Make sure to engage the esports community as well, as they can help out with marketing the event and maybe even their own participation.

• Barrier 2: Inclusivity. Adults or males can initiate the event concept and idea, but it is essential to include the target group when you want to operationalize it.
  • How we solved it: We included the target group in the process. However, make sure to engage them as a working group in the planning phase, not just at the end of the project pre-launch.

• Barrier 3: Technical implementation. Depending on the scale of the project, the technical implementation can be an enormous task. In our project, there was a casting crew, lights, a LAN setup (with compo PCs), and a lot more to administer.
  • How we solved it: We engaged several different parties to help with specific technical implementation tasks. When the project scale grows, engaging the local community and volunteers and using paid resources is necessary unless you are one big organizer with a large workforce.