Page 29 - Campus Technology, January/February 2019

:: eSPORTS
RETHINKING HOW TECHNOLOGY IS USED IN EDUCATION
A variation on the student chapter approach is the game- specific approach. Riot Games, the maker of League of Legends, runs its own college program with some 500 student clubs.
Amid this hubbub of activity, it didn’t take long for
campus visionaries to recognize that esports could serve
as a recruiting vehicle. All that was required was a nominal investment in hiring a coach or two, offering scholarships to woo the players with the greatest potential (often identified through the campus tournaments) and remaking lesser-used spaces for dedicated gaming gear. Besides the obvious tie
to degree tracks in gaming science, game design and sports communications, those schools that have launched esports have also seen interest percolate throughout academic divisions, including computer science, cybersecurity, media studies, digital arts, engineering, anthropology, law, medicine and neuroscience.
As the competition heated up among participating colleges, it was inevitable that the institutional ecosystem would seek a more formal approach to operations. By 2016 NACE, the National Association of Collegiate Esports, had formed as a nonprofit to officially recognize those varsity programs that
adhered to member-defined standards. That served as a seal of approval when student gamers considered which schools to apply to.
Currently, NACE has somewhere in the region of 80 members, claiming 90 percent of all varsity esports programs in the United States. Besides serving as a standards and policy-setting body, the organization also lists jobs (primarily for esports head coaches), sets up sponsorships with major gaming companies, hosts tournaments and runs a convention that draws faculty, game industry experts, university esports representatives and professional players to discuss the phenomenon.
Among the topics that are increasingly coming to the forefront as esports matures: increasing diversity, grappling with amateurism, and addressing legal, compliance and accessibility issues.
But concerns about those issues aren’t holding many schools back. Since the start of the current academic year nearly dozen colleges and universities have announced their intentions of joining the fray by launching or planning new programs. Those include:
• Alma College in Michigan;
• Bay State College in Massachusetts;
• Cazenovia College in New York;
• Concordia University-St. Paul in Minnesota;
• DeSales University in Pennsylvania;
• Misericordia University in Pennsylvania;
• Park University in Missouri;
• Thomas College in Maine; and
• University of Missouri.
So with this level of fierce competition, it should surprise
nobody that colleges and universities are now vying for the best recruits and the biggest audiences. As a result, they’re also upping the stakes.
Take Florida’s Full Sail University, which expects to launch
its new esports facility shortly. “The Fortress,” as it’s called,
will be equipped with “the most current technology to host collegiate and professional gaming tournaments, live esports streaming events, and will be used to explore activities including drone programming, possibly drone racing, and more.” A hundred esports athletes will be able to play simultaneously, as hundreds of onsite spectators cheer them on, according to the school’s press coverage. The price tag: $6 million. As its marketing folks noted in the announcement: Game on.
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