When the association was created, only six institutions joined, but that has since climbed to more than 30 member colleges and universities, he said. Such a statistic interests larger institutions, which are more often out to capture recognition rather than more students, Brooks said. Not to say that no one watches - an audience of sometimes thousands remains invisible, viewing online, usually through Twitch, an online broadcast service, he said. The “arenas” where these games are played, though, certainly depart from a football field or baseball diamond - as Brooks describes them, they’re just complex computer labs, stocked with high-quality gaming PCs and hefty monitors, and gamers often pick their preference of keyboard, headset and mouse.Īfter all, if you were to witness matches, all you would see are students furiously clicking away, said Brooks, also the former director of strategic partnerships for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Robert Morris went all out - players would don uniforms and eat postgame meals together, another ritual oddly similar to traditional athletics. Those players often maintain stringent practice schedules that occupy a massive chunk of time, not unlike a typical athlete’s regimen.īrooks’s association, which celebrates its one-year anniversary this July, gave structure to the handful of institutions that had already created varsity esports teams, starting with Robert Morris University Illinois, a private Chicago university that in 2014 wove gaming competitions into its athletics program and launched a scholarship program. The system works like this: colleges form teams that train and compete with other institutions in some of the nation’s most popular strategy and battle video games. “The parents - they’re doing their jobs, looking out for interests of their son or daughter, but the most common question I receive is ‘Is this real thing?’ And that’s totally fair - it’s brand-new.”
“I’m typically talking to parents,” said Michael Brooks, the founder of the National Association of Collegiate eSports. Some smaller private institutions view gaming as a way to attract prospective students amid enrollment downturns, and even a number of Division I colleges and universities have entered this digital arena. The concept of collegiate esports has blossomed and become much more organized in recent years.
What was perhaps a wild pipe dream decades ago, merely a Dorito-fueled teenage daydream, has come true: colleges are paying students scholarships to play video games.īut hold your gasps of indignation.
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