Esports

4 Schools Laying Groundwork to Host Esports Tournaments

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 12/05/19

A company that produces esports tournament software has entered into partnerships with four universities to host collegiate esports competitions. Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, Louisiana State University and Houston’s University of St. Thomas will use Mainline.GG software to host tournaments through 2020. Each institution will host its own university-branded tournament site, enabling students to compete in school-sanctioned games, including League of Legends, Rocket League and Smash, among others.

Texas A&M tested the waters in spring 2019 and extended its subscription to 2020. According to a spokesperson in the athletics department there, the software “allows us to maintain the brand continuity of the university and to drive incremental inventory and value for sponsors.”

For UT at Austin, which is running two tournaments on Mainline, the use of the software allows a closer link between the institution and the campus’s Longhorn Gaming Club, “to better support this audience to benefit our students and partners,” noted Mike Buttersworth, director of the Center for Sports Communication & Media, in a statement.

Louisiana State is running an esports Rocket League qualifying tournament on the Mainline program to choose a three-student team to represent the school at the National Intercollegiate Esports League’s “Power Five Esports Invitational” in New York in January 2020.

U St. Thomas adopted Mainline earlier this year to develop its esports program. Now it’s expanding that use to run online tournaments.

“These are top universities seeing the value of esports on campus and making a choice to support their students’ desires to play and compete — much like in traditional sports,” said CEO Chris Buckner in a statement.

Video games have come to college—and they’re not confined to residence halls. In recent years, as interest in esports and video gaming has grown, so too have the resources and opportunities at Seton Hall.

Esports team members from Seton Hall now compete in the Big East Conference, which sponsors league play, tournaments and championships as it does with traditional athletics programs among its member schools. In the Big East’s inaugural season Seton Hall beat Marquette at the Big East Esports Invitational Powered by ESL and was crowned champion in Rocket League play. The Seton Hall team also placed third in League of Legends.

ESL, part of the international digital entertainment group MTG, is said to be the world’s largest independent esports company.

Electronic Gaming Federation Tournament
The Big East has also partnered with the Electronic Gaming Federation (EGF) for tournament play. Founded in 2015, EGF is widely recognized as a leading national governing body for organized high school level and Division 1 collegiate varsity esports leagues.

The EGF Big East Esports Invitational tournament will bring traditional conference rivalries to the arena with esports teams from selected schools in the Big East Conference competing December 7-8 in New York City. Participating in the tournament are teams from Butler, DePaul, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall, Villanova and Xavier. Preliminary matches to determine seeding began on November 3, with Seton Hall beating Villanova to gain the number three seed. Tournament play will be streamed on Twitch.tv/officialEGF.

The EGF Power Five Esports Invitational, held January 18-19, 2020 features schools from the athletic conferences of the SEC, ACC, Pac 12, Big Ten and Big 12. Scheduled Power Five participating teams include: Florida State University, University of Illinois, Louisiana State University, Ole Miss, and Washington State University.

Call it “April Madness,” if you will, as these tournaments are precursors to the 2020 EGF Conference League Season I, which kicks off on February 1, culminating in the final teams across all titles joining for the EGFC National Championship to be held in April 2020.

New Facilities for Esports at Seton Hall
In November 2019, the University completed construction on a state-of-the-art computer lab and esports facility with dedicated and optimized computers for students’ recreational and competitive use. Seton Hall’s esports and gaming lounge is located in Jubilee Hall on the fifth floor. The center contains 33 desktop computers, 16 of which are game-ready and dedicated to gaming with Overwatch, Rocket League and League of Legends already installed, with gaming chairs, mice, keyboards and headsets and six monitors with the capability to project what’s displayed on any of the 16 gaming desktops throughout the room. In the esports facility, gamers also have access to consoles: Microsoft Xbox One, Sony Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Although the facility will be used by Seton Hall’s gaming teams for team practice and Big East tournaments, it is open to students at times throughout the week.

“It’s about engagement and supporting our students,” said Paul Fisher, the associate chief information officer and director of the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center. “It’s a digital era and video gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is expanding exponentially; employment prospects within and ancillary to the field are commensurate with any other booming industry and similar to those in traditional spectator sports. In addition to professional gaming, development and hardware engineering, the field is home to jobs in research, marketing, communication, broadcast and even event planning. Located between New York City and Philadelphia, Seton Hall students are ideally situated to take advantage of these opportunities – and we are dedicated to supporting them.”

Employment Opportunities
According to Indeed.com, the share of job postings per million for Esports roles increased by 10.91% in 2019 with augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR)-related jobs leading the way with an increase of 21.86%.

Indeed.com further notes on its website that,

There is a great deal of excitement about the explosive growth of e4sports, and it’s a prime time to look for opportunities. Four cities currently dominate the esports job market in the U.S.: Los Angeles, Houston, New York, and San Francisco. Just under half of all esports job postings nationwide are in these metro areas, with the other 50% dispersed across the country.

It will be interesting to see if—or how—the geography of esports jobs changes over the next few years. For instance, the first dedicated Esports arena in the U.S. will open in 2021; located in Philadelphia, this $50 million facility is expected to become a destination for visiting enthusiasts.

What’s more, Esports viewership is projected to jump nearly 70% by 2023, indicating significant expansion in employment opportunities over the coming years to keep up with demand.

A leader in the field, Seton Hall has had an esports club team since 2013. Among the first University gaming organizations in the state of New Jersey to be recognized, the team has been asked by a number of gaming organizations (including Riot Games, the creator of League of Legends, which flew Seton Hall students to its headquarters in California) to provide insight into the future of collegiate gaming. The Seton Hall Esports team has, in fact, played a pivotal role in the shaping and formation of league-sanctioned collegiate play.

Fifteen students currently participate as team members, representing Seton Hall in league and tournament play.

A co-founder of the team and current Seton Hall employee, Victor Gomez, assistant director of scheduling and operations, said, “I’m proud of all of it: of our team, our victories, the thousands of dollars we’ve raised for charity through partnering with great organizations such as Extra Life, and the doors we have opened with prize sponsors such as Microsoft and Athletics. Finally, I’m proud of my fellow co-founders, now alumni of the University who went on to work in great environments such as hospitals, American Express, Viacom and other inspiring jobs by using their experiences as players to strengthen their qualities as professionals.”

Christian Ciardiello, also a co-founder of the esports team at Seton Hall agreed, “Our team members regularly use and reference the problem solving and team building skills they’ve learned through their experiences within the program to benefit themselves in their academic and professional careers. In every sense of the way, esports mirrors the traditional collegiate athletics team model with many of the same benefits for players: leadership development, teamwork, communication and the pursuit of excellence.”

And like traditional college athletics, some students in esports turn pro, with many players earning in excess of $100,000 yearly. For Seton Hall, team alumnus Bryan D’Imperio went on to play for Will2Win Gaming and then transitioned into his role as the team’s director of social media and brand content as well as an affiliate broadcaster at Twitch.tv.

Esports Rising
In 2014, more than 70 million viewers across the globe watched esports on the internet or television, according to Newzoo, the leading provider of market intelligence covering global games, esports and mobile markets. In November 2018, almost 100 million viewers watched the League of Legends World Championship broadcast online from South Korea—slightly more than the 98 million viewers who watched the Super Bowl three months later. Newzoo expects that esports viewership will increase to 427 million people and top $1 billion in revenue in 2019.

Derek Larson, a professor in the College of Communication and the Arts, is teaching a course in game design. “I look forward to my students creating and displaying their games in the new lab, as well as hosting a small game developers conference in the near future with studios from New Jersey and New York City,” Larson said.

Freshman “Jungler” Ryan “IVERNEDTHISRANK” Kijevcanin interviewed with ESL after beating Villanova in the tournament seeding rounds this season. Watch the full interview here »

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Fans of Spike Rush mode in Rocket League have been patiently awaiting its return. The popular mode was introduced during the game’s Radical Summer event back in June, and many were quite taken with it. Well, the wait is now over, as Spike Rush has officially returned for a limited time! In Spike Rush, all players have spikes protruding from their vehicles. As such, when a player makes contact with the ball, it ends up sticking to the vehicle, and players can retract the spikes at any time to let the ball loose. In theory, this should make it easier to score, but once the ball is stuck to the car, the player cannot collect or use boosts, leaving them a more vulnerable target.

Spike Rush is returning for a limited time! See if your skills are still sharp, and on point! Details: https://t.co/MtFw33HnBQ pic.twitter.com/2bQKVfWJWg

— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) December 2, 2019

Spike Rush mode quickly became a fan favorite upon its release, with many players requesting it become a permanent part of the game. User doggo_dood on Reddit specifically posed that question earlier in the year, and the post has a 92% Upvoted status. Other temporary modes, such as the hockey-inspired Snow Day and Hoops (inspired by basketball), have later been added as permanent. It remains to be seen if Psyonix will do the same for Spike Rush, but the developer’s willingness to bring back the mode (even in a limited capacity) shows that they know fans are interested.

Can we get Spike Rush as a permanent game mode? from r/RocketLeague

Besides the return of Spike Rush, it’s been a big week for Rocket League fans. Psyonix has made some major changes to the way items are purchased in the game, most notably dumping Crates (Loot Boxes) in favor of Blueprints, which ensure that players will know exactly what they’re spending their credits on. You can find out the complete details here.

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Released in 2015, Rocket League has become one of the biggest multiplayer games on the planet. Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC and offering cross-play between the various versions, the game has become nothing short of a phenomenon.

The Rocket League Spike Rush event is now live and runs through December 9th at 1 p.m. PST. Are you looking forward to revisiting Spike Rush mode? Or will you be playing it for the first time? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!

Rocket League players will no longer have to worry about grinding for new crates and the keys that unlock them in order to get the custom skins they want. But the new alternative will hurt their wallets.

Yesterday, Rocket League’s Blueprint update went live, kicking off season 12 and adding a new item shop where players can just buy whatever items they want outright. Players’ existing crates were converted into blueprints, which they can craft by spending credits, an in-game currency bought with real cash. Existing keys, meanwhile, were liquidated into additional credits.

Instead of having players earn crates by playing matches and then spending money to buy keys to unlock them, the new system drops random blueprints. Now, instead of spending money before knowing what you’d get from the crate, players can decide ahead of time if they want to craft the item in the blueprint.

They can also bypass this luck of the draw altogether if they already know what they want, by spending money in the new item shop. The catch is that the items are extremely pricey to buy outright, and you have to buy bundles of credits that are usually more than what you need. If you want to buy Infium Exotic Wheels for 1,400 credits, you need to buy a pack of 1,600 credits for $15, then have 200 credits left over.

This mismatch between credits and the exact cost of an item is frustrating in and of itself, but the sticker price is also a tough pill to swallow. Infinium Wheels were released back in February 2018, and because Rocket League allows item trading, enough sets were on the market to drive the price pretty far down, with some estimates putting them at below the value of a single key in the old economy.

Crafting new items with blueprints can also be a hefty investment. The Intrudium Blueprint, for instance, costs 2,000 credits to make. While black market decals, of which Intrudium is one, tend to be on the more expensive end, sites which track prices for Rocket League items put the price of one at around five keys, or the equivalent of $5, for much of the year.

The prices have taken a lot of Rocket League players by surprise, many of whom have spent the last 24 hours posting about the topic on the game’s subreddit. There have been so many complaints that its moderators have taken to deleting a number of the posts deemed to be duplicative so as not to clog up the frontpage too much.

The prices aren’t as surprising when you look at what Fortnite’s shop charges, however. There, $5 to $15 for skins and accessories has become the norm. The makers of Fortnite, Epic Games, purchased Rocket League’s developers, Psyonix, in May of this year. Psyonix did not immediately respond to a request by Kotaku for comment.