Page 20 - spaces4learning, November/December 2019

spaces4learning ESPORTS
IP BRINGS THE WOW FACTOR TO EDUCATIONAL ESPORTS PROGRAMS
The technical requirements you need to know to start a K-12
or higher education esports program.
By Matt Allard
ESPORTS — A VIDEO GAME COMPETITION WITH A LIVE audience either at a venue or online — has evolved from a niche event into a legitimate industry with total global revenues of more than a billion dollars annually. That is not a typo. That is billion — with a B.
Esports prize pools totaled $160 million in 2018. When all is counted at the end of 2019, those pools are expected to grow by 25 percent. The top 10 professional players earned a range be- tween $1 million and $2 million each in 2018. It is estimated the total audience of esports will grow to 454 million viewers in 2019 with revenues of $1.1 billion, up about 22 percent from 2018.
The increasing availability of online streaming media plat- forms, particularly YouTube and Twitch, have become central to the growth and promotion of esports competitions. Mainstream sports organizations including ESPN now provide extensive cov- erage. With a rise in the number of leagues, the popularity of purpose-built venues, rising investment, viewership growth and even the potential for esports to be added to the Olympics, it is time to recognize esports is no longer a fad. Esports is all grown up — and now it is time for it to go to school.
Academia Legitimizing the Profession
Esports is a growing area of study at colleges and universities and is attracting big name partners. Degrees are being offered in gaming programming, game art, game design and esports man- agement —for education and professional competition alike. Es- ports programs require a specialized and diverse group of person- nel, and an esports event’s success is dependent on a combination of business and technology expertise.
On the business side, there are roles in marketing, finance, and the management of partners, logistics, events, teams and organi- zations. On the production side, there is website development, social media management, Twitch stream control, camera operation, audio engineering and more. Another aspect is on-camera talent for play- by-play reporting, color commentary, hosting and analysis.
But perhaps most critical to successfully preparing students for an esports career — a job market that is sure to be competitive for the foreseeable future — is offering hands-on, real-world experi- ence in such a production. Offering students the opportunity to utilize the real technologies that exist within the esports space is critical. Providing them with a production reel of real events is key.
In this article, we will consider the technical infrastructure requirements for starting up an esports program in K-12 schools or higher education.
What workflow is required for esports curricula? Computers and Consoles
One of the first expenses to consider will be the gaming com- puters, consoles, displays and peripherals. There are plenty of pur- pose-built gaming rigs out there. While some of this hardware might be irreplaceable — the standard for digital sports compe- titions is nearly all conducted on Sony and Microsoft consoles — gaming PCs can typically be built from parts at a much more affordable cost per unit.
That said, consideration must be given to the capture of video from these sources. A camera pointed toward a competitor works great for picture-in-picture production layouts, however, pointing a camera at a screen simply won’t cut it in the world of esports.
To solve this, we turn to a second consideration...
Traditional cabling is costly, but there is a better solution: IP infrastructure.
Production of esports events with video resolutions of up to 4K UHD need to be planned. Large numbers of simultaneous, high-resolution computer sources over the network have to be mixed in real time along with camera sources, graphics and au- dio. Special cabling was once required to achieve such a work- flow — however, the world has changed! No longer are expensive cables required to send signals around a campus as IP transport permits organizations to expand and achieve new capabilities that would not be practical using a legacy approach.
To be future ready, the only answer is to incorporate Internet Protocol (IP) based transport in the production workflow.
The most common IT elements involved in media production include software processing, standard networking, common com-
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