An underdog win over their trans-Tasman rivals has earned the NZ women's Esports team a spot on the global stage. It's a challenge, player Rangsey Mou says, for women to be respected in gaming.
In the rapidly-growing gaming world, Rangsey Mou is known as "Magic". She's a member of the E Blacks - the New Zealand Esports team - and competed in a pilot event at last year's Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
And now she's part of an all-women's Kiwi team who've played their way into the Global Esports Games in Saudi Arabia in December.
All because she entered a gaming lobby by accident as a kid.
Mou started gaming around the age of eight, following whatever her older brother would play on their shared computer. “I didn’t really get a choice,” she laughs.
For her 13th birthday, her brother let her create an email and sign up for Battle.net, an online gaming service where you can join lobbies with other people. One day, she accidentally clicked on the wrong game - Dota - but figured she might as well keep playing it. She quickly grew to love the multiplayer online battle arena game - and she's now regarded as one of the best players in Australasia.
“At that age, going outside and doing other sports and other hobbies is important too,” says Mou, now 27. “But when you go home as a kid, and you have the choice of playing games or watching TV, I guess I just chose to play games.”
"Magic" started taking gaming seriously when she was around 17.
“I’m pretty competitive by nature, and when Dota specifically came out with a ranking system, I placed pretty high on the leaderboards in the first calibration,” she explains.
“I’ve kept climbing since, and because I was placed highly and got into games with people I considered at the time really high skilled, I’d meet them and then get to learn from them and get advice from them.”
Eventually Mou was invited to Australian or Southeast Asian tournaments, and her commitment to Dota grew.
She now lives in Sydney, working in IT, but still represents New Zealand and the E Blacks on the global stage.
Last month, New Zealand women’s Dota 2 team faced off against Australia in a three-game qualifier for the Global Esport Games.
The Kiwis had never defeated their trans-Tasman rivals, and after winning the first game and losing the second, the spot in Saudi Arabia came down to the final game - which lasted 90 minutes.
Mou says her team definitely felt like underdogs against an Australian team who'd played together a lot longer.
“We thought they were higher skilled than us, so we were a bit intimidated,” she says, the team sharing their thoughts with coach Jordan Baker.
But Magic had a trick up her sleeve. In Dota, you choose a “hero” to play as, who all have different abilities. The Australians didn’t know Mou played a certain hero, so hadn’t studied her gameplay.
At the end of the game, Mou told her team to distract the enemy, and sacrificed herself for her teammates - the move eventually winning the game for the E Blacks.
Strategy works alongside speed for Dota.
“It requires about two main skills to be good at the game - mechanical skills, which is just how fast you can click your buttons and how quick you react to things in the game,” Mou explains.
“And then there’s strategic thinking, like how smart you are, when you’re winning the game early on; how do you secure this win or if you’re losing, what can you do to come back into the game?
“Sometimes in Dota, just thoughtless mistakes and being careless can cost you the game, so sometimes being the smarter player actually thwarts just being better skilled in general. But you still need that skill to be able to play to a good level as well.”
As part of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, three Esports were offered as pilot events in a trial to potentially include Esports in a future Games.
The Commonwealth Esports championship in August featured Dota, eFootball and Rocket League, and New Zealand sent a representative for eFootball and their Dota 2 Open team.
Mou was selected to play with the open team when one of the original members pulled out, and was the only woman in the open division.
The potential of having Esports recognised on a larger scale would be a dream for Mou, to have more people respect gaming.
“I think Esports is a very new thing and it’s only really well understood by the younger generation. I still think it gets, not frowned upon, but not supported entirely by the older generations cause they just see it as games,” she says.
“So having it demo at the Commonwealth Games, I think it’s a huge thing. It means they see that this can be a serious career if that’s what it takes. Gaming’s not bad, it’s the same as watching sports. This is just a different type of sport.”
The organisers of the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Victoria decided Esports wouldn't feature as a medal event. But now, of course, the future of those games is all up in the air.
Mou (second from right) with her Commonwealth Esports Championship teammates.
Mou wants to encourage more women to pursue gaming, but admits it isn’t always the most welcoming environment for women.
“I think a lot of people get harassed a lot, especially in competitive video games, but I think women specifically get targeted, just for their gender,” she says.
“And I think there's a general stereotype that women are somehow inferior to men when it comes to gaming, it’s a negative stereotype.
“This sort of thinking affects a lot of their potential and their performances, because it just reduces their confidence.”
Despite being one of the top Dota players, Mou is still on the receiving end of negative comments about her gender "every other week".
“For most other girls out there, there are countless stories of how it’s been really rough with the treatment and discrimination,” she says.
“On an average day, no one really says anything to me. But on the occasional day when someone actually trash talks me - not because I’m bad but because I’m a girl - it’s very annoying.
“I just try to think those people aren’t really worth the time to acknowledge, and they just want a reaction.”
Mou believes it causes a lot of women to stop trying to improve, or even stop playing, especially in competitive team games where often players are put into a team with strangers - “and it’s 95 percent chance it’s all-male,” she says.
“The skill gap between men and women will just keep getting bigger because of this. That’s a barrier they have to overcome, and it’s quite hard to overcome, so I see why a lot of women just don’t bother.”
Being able to play on an all-female team for the Global Games is a special experience for Mou.
“We didn’t know each other at the start, but they’re all really amazing girls and I feel like it’s kind of like a sisterhood now,” she says.
“We all get along and none of us really encounter other girls in the game, so it was nice to finally get five New Zealand women together. It’s really nice, it’s like a bonding experience, being able to play together.”
