Anna ‘Laejten' Nordlander, Sweden

Laejten is quite the well-rounded gamer. Having been a past sponsored pro in World of Warcraft arena, and still repping the Counter-Strike 1.6 scene, she probably has the most travel and tournament experience out of the participants in this tournament. On the other hand, her versatility is working against her. As recently as two weeks ago, she was participating in the 1.6 tournament at ESWC, and spent almost all of her time leading up to that tournament practicing in that game rather than laddering. Still, one shouldn't count her out. Good friends with many top progamers, including many of her fellow swedes, Laejten has no shortage of people to turn to for advice. She has also been the most driven of any of the participants in the days leading up to the tournament, taking almost no breaks and practicing well into meals.



Another veteran of the progaming scene (for her, WarCraft 3 and Halo), SsQ is no stranger to the spotlight. Playing a live tournament will be just another standard day for a rather standard terran player. Watching over her shoulder, she plays standard but not overly safe - what could actually be the most dangerous style in the Best of 1 round robin round. In that kind of situation, standard becomes predictable, and without being overly safe SsQ could prove vulnerably to cheeses more commonly found in Bo1s. On the other hand, standard is reliable. With enough practice, somebody who plays standard knows all of the small adjustments necessary to beat a whole variety of strategies. SsQ's success in her international debut in StarCraft 2 will depend largely on her adaptability.

Florence ‘Flo’ Chee-Yun Yao, USA

Although other competitors have may have Flo beat on overall LAN background, she is the one out of them who has the most experience playing StarCraft 2 in such a setting. Having participated in the open bracket at a number of different MLGs, she is no stranger to the unique challenges of a StarCraft 2 live tournament. She also has won a number of online cups for females, twice defeating Laejten on the path to Iron Lady cup titles. Flo got to the location a day earlier than most of the other competitors and spent it practicing and adapting to all the local conditions, so she should be easily as comfortable as those native to the time zone. With no outside factors holding her back, and looking at past success as a guide, Flo is a definite contender for the title.



Any regular follower of RainBOw's stream will be familiar with Aphrodite as a guest streamer. Although she first gained notoriety as RainBOw's girlfriend, she has quite the talent of her own, including a rather diverse pool of strategies in her back pocket from which she chooses. She also has the advantage of Kim Sung Je and the StarTale manager traveling with her - besides the in-attendance-significant-other bounce that has manifested itself countless times this year, you aren't going to find many more qualified coaches around to go over any mistakes found in matches, corrected for the next match or the next day. Between that and her success in the Korean Masters League, Aphrodite is definitely one of the favorites in this tournament.

Roxanne ’DaSakura’ Daviault, Canada

Although Flo had a lot of success in the earlier online female-only cups, DaSakura is one of a few who have come on very strong recently, winning three of them in three months. She's also no stranger to hitting top progamers on ladder, beating the likes of Drewbie and TT1. RainBOw also mentioned that he ran into her while he was streaming a little while ago. This is her first LAN, though, and there's no denying the roles play in such a situation. This tournament may be unique because of the lack of a live audience, but the pressure is still there. Her recent success may indicate that she has the best chance out of the western participants, assuming no nerve issues interfere.



As one of the most successful females in WarCraft 3, and a very high ranking ladder player, Colagirl may be the smart money in this tournament. Her fellow eastern team representatives in the exhibition match have chosen her as the captain, so it is clear that she commands respect. She seems to prefer infestors to mutas in TvZ, and so can only be helped by the EMP change in patch 1.4.2 (which just hit days ago). However, being the favorite isn't easy - it adds loads of pressure to the unprepared player, and when that's combined with the fact that she's the homeland hero in China, nobody else has so many hopes and expectations pinned to her run. If she can succeed the gratification will be immense, and she should be well prepared for the attention after how much she received in WC3.

This is by far the largest female-only event (by prize) in the StarCraft 2 scene yet. There have been some competitions with smaller prize pool, but certainly nothing of this scale. What made you decide now was the right time to take such a step?

I don’t think the timing is particularly better now than at any other time, the ZOWIE DIVINA is something we have been planning for a while and just worked towards it. Finally all of the pieces started to fall into place and we could actualize our plans.

At a time when many tournaments are moving away from invite-only to including qualifiers, this tournament is a 6-woman invitational. Were qualifiers considered? Past that, how were the 6 ladies chosen?

In the initial considerations we were a bit confused about the “proper” number of participants for a tournament of this sort, we knew that we wanted to gather the top players of the female StarCraft 2 scene without compromising on the quality of the event, but at the same time we wanted to ensure that we were able to give the girls the best experience while attending the tournament. We finally decided to go for a compact event with six players to ensure that we could deliver a quality event.

The selection process was a little bit complicated at first, we tried to reach girls based on results of previous tournaments, but we quickly figured that there was not many tournaments with female participation, where we could actually use the results to evaluate performances. Instead we started asking everyone in our network to kindly give us the names of all female players they knew of, who had the skill and dedication to compete at the highest level. The list was not THAT long, but we did end up with around 20 names in total.

We then looked into recent results, focusing on results from LAN, and some girls had not really been active in the past few months, so they were sorted out naturally. A few were still playing BW, so they were also out of the question. All in all I think we had about 12 girls left where we only needed half. Our final decision was made based on feedback and reputation of the girls, combined with an evaluation of their overall skill, dedication and effort.

Do you see this as a one-off event or is this something you'd like to do more of in the future?

We will definitely be having more ZOWIE DIVINA tournaments in the future.

We want to make ZOWIE DIVINA the cream of the crop with regards to female gaming tournaments, an event female gamers will aspire to attend, so they practice hard and long - when the female players practice, they are playing vs males, so the transition into the general tournaments will at some point come naturally, as they grow confident and realize that the males can be beaten.

Was there any particular reason China was chosen to host the event?

We decided to have the event in China because of past experiences working with PLU. They are always very dedicated and precise and we knew that they would be able to deliver the type of quality event that we were looking to create with ZOWIE DIVINA.

Female interest in SC2 is lower than male interest. Do you believe this is just a matter of gender preferences, or would carrots like this tournament help to engender higher participation and/or more enthusiasm about taking the game more seriously?

I think it is most likely a matter of gender preference, many girls still think it’s “nerdy” to play games and spend many hours in front of the computer, but the development with social medias over the past few years have led to more girls spending massive amounts of hours in front of their computers.

There is still a small step between the daily social media activities to online gaming, but I think we are definitely moving towards a higher population of girls in gaming with a somewhat decent pace. We will get there.

While some of the past issues involving females in SC2 may have clued you in to some of the expected response, was it entirely what you expected? Is there anything you'd like to say to those saying this is a sexist idea, or others along the same lines?

I think most gamers have reflected positively upon our initiative, at least the feedback we have received has been very positive, and most people recognize what we are trying to do for the community.

I don’t understand why some people cry over one female gaming tournament, when there is still like 50 professional general tournaments, completely dominated by males, for every one female tournament. Some people are just always going to hate and go against the flow for whatever reason. The male gaming scene has had around 10 years to develop itself, but it’s not until recent years we have seen girls come in and start competing. I think these people just need to slow down and allow female gamers to adapt to competitive gaming, so they can slowly but steadily reach towards the same level as the males.

When everything comes down to it, anyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I don’t want to spend my time converting those who don’t believe in female gaming. We try to work with different ideas that can make a difference for electronic sports, and these ideas will not always work – but we are willing to put in the effort to try. If people disagree, they are free to believe what they want. I will rather spend my time focusing on the part of the community that is ready to move on.