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Queen’s Gaming Collective have raised $1.5 million for a women-led gaming lifestyle brand.
The initiative seeks to promote diversity in an industry which has been traditionally male dominated. The group will form a collective of female gamers – known as Queens – who will be more effective influencers as part of this group.
Alisa Jacobs, the group’s CEO, told GamesBeat that Queen’s Gaming Collective is “a lot of things”, primarily a “media and management company, with a lifestyle brand”. While there is some focus on content creation, the group’s main ambition is to grow the brand recognition for these women.
Some examples of Queen’s Gaming Collective’s work in this department include sourcing funding for a female-written comic book and finding distribution for a female-hosted gaming podcast.
“We see a lot of value in letting women tell their gaming stories,” Jacobs said. “Our roster has eSports athletes, self-identified gamers, streamers, cosplayers, crossover artists that identify first as a champion athlete or a DJ but spend 90% of their off-hours in Discord or gaming.”
Jacobs also added that they view the Queen’s Gaming Collective as something which will remain a small group in order to offer high quality and prestige service.
“If you think about where women are in the business right now, and you think about where diversity is, quite candidly, it isn’t at the level of the highest men in the industry like Ninja,” Jacobs said.
“They have had great opportunities and built brands. But a lot of it has been under-resourced and under-represented. The brands don’t know who they are.”
The majority of the funding comes from Bitkraft Ventures, who raised $165 million recently for a similar initiative (although theirs was not specific to women). In fact, everyone currently on the Bitkraft team is white and male — something Jacobs pointed out to them, prompting their support.
“Culture can’t evolve in silos. We cannot change the narrative or dismantle the patriarchy, or do any of these buzzwords in corporate jargon or anti-racist America without their support,” Jacobs said.
“If we want to start to change the face of the industry from very white, very male, very wealthy, at the corporate level, then we actually need their support.”
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