Finding your people in the gaming space can be a daunting prospect. After all, there are billions of gamers in the world, and thousands of gaming communities. How do you find the people who share your interests, who make you feel seen and safe and are also fun and good company? If the experience of Nancy Chen, founder of Girlies Squad, is any example, the answer is simple: Ask.
Nancy Chen tells me her story begins with one TikTok video, where she asked, “So are there any other Fortnite girlies out there? Because it’s becoming a little bit lonely playing as a solo.” That video received over 2,800 comments (at the time of this writing), with most of them being from women who said they didn’t have any other girls to play with and would jump at the chance to find their peers.
And thus began Girlies Squad, a Discord server for girl gamers to play together and enjoy each other’s company. According to the organization’s website, its purpose is to “redefine what it means to be a girl gamer by creating a safe, inclusive space where girls of all skill levels can play confidently, form lifelong friendships, and create unforgettable memories that go beyond the screen.”
I’ve joined the server and have had a blast just seeing the community interact and the discussions spinning out. I knew Nancy would make a fantastic subject for BOSS Mode, as a woman who saw what the games community was missing and created it herself. Below is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: [after discussing our own history as gamers] Why don’t we start there? Tell me a little bit about yourself!
Chen: Gaming has always been part of my life but, you know, I’m the typical 9-to-5 corporate girly. Back in 2024, work was always really stressful, working long hours. I just needed to take my mind off things. So I started gaming, and that’s when I picked up Fortnite.
But pretty much the only person I was playing with was my husband, and I kinda of got bored playing with him constantly. Sometimes I would try going on mic, but going into a lobby with your mic on as a girl is daunting. People don’t often say the nicest things. That just ruined the whole experience. I didn’t really have any other friends to play Fortnite with.
So it got a little bit loony, and I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to put out a TikTok.” That TikTok went absolutely viral. There were so many girls that started commenting on it, saying, “It’s so hard to find other girls that play games.”
I saw all of those comments and someone suggested I start a Discord server. At that point, I had no idea what Discord was, but I thought, you know what? I’m going to give it a go. So I created the Discord server the day after the video and it started growing massively. That was in February 2024. Since then we’ve got 47,000 members.
It’s a girls-only safe space for girls to be able to get together to play Fortnite. We also have a bunch of channels for other games, like Valorant, Minecraft, League of Legends. It’s evolved to more than just a space to connect over gaming. We now have channels for different types of hobbies, for photography, for fashion, for self-care. In addition to running gaming events, like all-girl lobbies and matches, we also do movie nights and study sessions together. It’s evolved into more than just gaming, even though gaming has bonded us — it’s a space for that social connection.
It’s been a great outlet for me that I get to do after my 9-to-5, and it’s opened up a lot of opportunities. I’ve been introduced more into the world of Fortnite Creative, and we now have our own Girlies Studio where we work with developers to create unique Fortnite experiences for the community with the type of aesthetics and gameplay they like.
GamesBeat: You mentioned that gaming has always been part of your life. Can I ask, other than Fortnite, what are your gaming go-tos? Looking at your TikTok, you talk about a lot of different series!
Chen: Growing up, Pokémon was always my thing, and Mario Kart. Then it evolved into Fallout, Diablo, Elden Ring. I love being able to explore all different types of games. For me, it’s definitely a bit of an escape from reality, being able to immerse myself in these different worlds. Now being able to do it in a way that brings all of these girls together, and for me to create these experiences for the members of the community is very rewarding.
GamesBeat: People say that if the book you want doesn’t exist, write it. If the game you want doesn’t exist, make it. If the space you want doesn’t exist, make your own. But what is it actually like creating the space you want? What’s that experience actually like? What were the triumphs? Were there any difficult moments?
Chen: If there’s a space that you feel doesn’t exist, just go for it! Create the community. For me, I think the biggest learning experience comes from listening to the members of the community — what they’re hoping together, the types of events they want, how they want it structured — and being able to tailor their experience and make it easy for them to navigate.
When it comes to creating games, I think one of my biggest lessons learned is that sometimes, what I like isn’t what most of the community might like. It’s an iterative process of putting out opportunities for members to make suggestions and feedback that we’re then able to incorporate into the gameplay experience. That feedback loop is so important to be able to create a sustainable and highly engaged community.
GamesBeat: This is a business, correct?
Chen: It is, but we don’t directly monetize. The members don’t pay anything. How we monetize Girlies Squad, first, is with Girlies Studio; we create Fortnite Maps for the community, and Fortnite will pay us an amount based on play time and the other metrics that they use. In other ways, we also work with brands who want to be able to market within the Discord server as well as on social media.
I think there’s more and more interest from brands wanting to integrate into our server because they see the benefit of how engaged the community is. In the span of a week, there are normally more than 35,000 message that are sent within the server. At any given time, there are always around 6,000 girls concurrently online in the server.
What brands are realizing is those are the numbers they don’t see on standard social media like Instagram and TikTok where followers just kind of scroll past a post and interact with it for two seconds but without any kind of connection to be made. In the Girlies Squad server, we have all of these different channels where we’re able to target marketing for those brands.
We’re seeing a lot of brands wanting to integrate into our Fortnite maps, because the players on average are usually in the maps for at least 24 minutes. If they advertised on social media, the audience kind of scrolls past.
GamesBeat: I think a lot of companies are realizing that’s a prime market, especially in the games industry. The audience isn’t just young men anymore.
Chen: Yeah, exactly right. I think one of the things I’ve been most surprised about Girlies Squad is that you would think a lot of them would be hardcore gamers — but no, there’s actually a lot of casual gamers who just want to blow off steam after work. We’ve got moms, we’ve got students, we’ve got people of all different ages.
An interesting thing that I’ve found is that gaming has become more of a social networking platform in a sense. For Girlies Squad, we run all of these different types of events for the members. We run all-girls lobbies and movie nights, and when I started running these matches, I always thought the most popular ones would be tournament-style matches, but that wasn’t the case at all. The most popular ones with the highest turnout were the social events where we go, 100 girls in a lobby and we’re just emoting and dancing.
Another type is what we call a demolition party, where we go in and destroy buildings on a Fortnite map — not that usual kind of Fortnite gameplay that we usually do. We also have events like car meets, where 100 girls load into a lobby and just drive around showing off their cars. It goes to show that people are also using Fortnite as a space to connect with each other, not necessarily just for gameplay.
GamesBeat: Do you have any moment that you’re particularly proud of?
Chen: One moment where I felt like we were really being recognized as a community was when the Sabrina Carpenter skin came out. Everyone in the community was excited! I held this event where we had an all-girls dance party on Fortnite, but we all had to wear the Sabrina Carpenter skin. I posted a clip about that on TikTok, and Fortnite posted it onto their profile, and that was awesome because it was one of the first times where Fortnite recognized us as a community.
There were a lot of mean comments from guys saying, “These girls don’t know how to play Fortnite. That’s why they have to do a dance party.” But ignoring those terrible comments, it was so cool to see Fortnite acknowledge that us girl gamers represent a big proportion of the community that loves Fortnite.
GamesBeat: What would you say was your “Boss Move” that defined your career trajectory?
Chen: I honestly think my Boss Move is creating that TikTok. It was so outside my comfort zone, because prior to that, I had not posted TikToks at all. It was outside my comfort zone, but I really wanted to be able to connect with other girls. And I’m just so glad that I did that! I’m going all-in to be able to create this space!
GamesBeat: And what would you say is your boss music?
Chen: Let me have a look at my playlist — I’ve got playlist to remind me I’m a badass! The top song is “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado! Just a little reminder, you know — sometimes the world of gaming is such a male-dominated industry sometimes you don’t get the nicest comments on social media. That song kind of reminds me that I do what I love, and my mission is being able to create a safe space for girls away from those people who can be so nasty.