There has been a lot of interest coming from schools. The innovative schools in the early days recognized that if they offered esports programs, they’d be wilfully attracting some of the brightest STEM students on the planet.

STEM is a big part of gaming. Engineering is a big part of gaming. And computer science is definitely a big part of gaming. Some of the brightest kids on the planet are coming into STEM programs because of gaming, and the wise schools recognized early on that they could use esports for recruiting.

In that regard, Wim Stocks helps schools that may not have seen that very early tide coming in. They’ve aided them in building their curriculum. They’ve helped schools create the notion of a career by offering a curriculum, training, and learning opportunities for careers in esports and venue design.

Wim Stocks also had a hand in helping a college cultivate local sponsorships to help support the building and funding for an esports program on that particular campus. But they are not just the intercollegiate competitor, enabler, and league. They are also helping schools build far bigger footprints in esports than they might have been able to do independently. So much of esports is focused on competition.

Let’s use an analogy. First, think about the business of traditional sports. Then, think about all the jobs surrounding traditional sports: production, broadcasting, stadium design, agents, analysis, marketing, advertising, and sponsorship. Those same dynamics exist in esports.

One of the schools that Wim Stocks have a close association with has identified that there are 87 different skill sets that they can base their curriculum around to help students who want to be involved in esports build their knowledge, education, and experience. By no means is this a small opportunity. They also work very closely with production companies. There are very specific things to esports that don’t come into play from any other sports or any other experiences. And so that’s a powerful dynamic for esports, the marketing of esports.

The pathway into professional gaming is an important bridge in creating more opportunities for players. Unfortunately, when it comes to esports, that pathway isn’t as well defined as it is in more established sports industries.
Wim Stocks better outlines the disparity using the talent pipeline in baseball:
“If you want to play baseball, you want to be a professional baseball player in Major League Baseball, you know what to do. You start at T-ball when you’re six years old. You go to little league. You play for your high school. You play for your college. You play Minor League ball.”
According to Stocks, this pipeline isn’t nearly as defined in esports. Luckily, the work he’s doing with World Gaming and Collegiate Star League (CSL) is aiming to turn that around.
“You could say we act like the NCAA of esports,” Stocks explains. “We organize leagues. Every game is a league, no different than there is an NCAA football league. In our case, there’s a CSL League of Legends league. There’s a CSL Counterstrike league. There’s a CSL Dota 2 league. There’s a CSL Madden league.”
These leagues aren’t just to host competitive matches – they’re designed to help aspiring players get better while creating a global gaming society. The collegiate leagues are open to college students. Like other major collegiate sports, the aim is to build an infrastructure around creating enthusiasm for esports, developing talents, and presenting clear opportunities for those who want to take their gaming to another level.
As for what adopting this model means, Stocks is clear about what the future of the esports talent pipeline could look like:
“The more this starts to look like traditional sports that have a template – that have a built-in infrastructure and tremendous understanding – the more we can model that for esports.”

Which platform makes the most sense to operate tournaments on, and how do we decide which platform and which system we should be running these tournaments on? Ari Brummer has some interesting opinions on the topic. According to Brummer, it varies from game to game. Some games provide a simple answer. For example, League of Legends is played on a PC. And that’s the only way you play the game. Likewise, Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers are played on the Nintendo Switch exclusively. But some games, like Call of Duty, or sports titles, like Madden or NBA 2K, can be played easily across various platforms, so it’s up to you to decide.

Not all games are cross-platform, but recently, games like Call of Duty have adopted this approach. So, for example, you can run a tournament where gamers are playing on Xbox, PC, or PlayStation – both of which are cross-generational. But for a game like NBA 2K, you have to pick one specific platform to enter tournaments on.

Brummer is running a draft-eligible tournament for people to have the opportunity to join the NBA 2K league if they win. It will take place on the Xbox. Before choosing Xbox as the platform for the tournament, their research had shown that there was recently a high uptick in sales for Xbox. They also discovered that there are a lot of competitive players in NBA 2K that play on Xbox. This research drove them to shift their focus from Playstation to Xbox to make sure that top-level talent could compete in the tournament itself.

They aim to have a wide variety of tournaments to cater to players at all levels and make them more accessible to different platforms. This means, if they are running a Madden tournament on Xbox, they might run a FIFA tournament on Playstation. So, using research to make a decision beforehand, they ensure that there’s a clear marketing strategy in place so that gamers know exactly which platform is needed during the sign-up process.

One of the questions Jessica Hammer is often asked is how games have changed with the advent of digital technologies. According to Hammer, games have been shaped by the technologies people had on hand for as long as people have played them.
“For example, if you look at the manufacturing of game pieces, of dice, of cards, of Meeples, of the things that we can make and that have a cultural understanding of how they work – these shape the kinds of play we can do with them.”
Hammer often connects games across the digital and non-digital divide. To her, there is no divide.
“The way I analyze games is looking at the sort of verbs or actions that they encourage players to take. So you’ve got matching games that are happening in the physical world. For example, if you think about Set, it’s a game of visual perception. You’re looking at a set of cards. You’re looking for matches.
“But that connects to games like match-three games, like Bejeweled or Candy Crush, where you’re looking for matches in a digital environment. Those underlying principles of what the player is doing and the kind of perceptual tasks that are being asked of them are the same.”
However, technologies still have new angles to offer. They provide new human-computer interactions, affordances, or new capabilities for interaction. One way they do this is by automating the complex equations that can make physical games difficult to play at an enjoyable pace.
“Most people who play board games have had the experience of sitting around and waiting while someone else is counting up points,” explains Hammer. “A computer can do that for you, what we call, automagically.”
Computers are also great at hiding key information in games that call for it like Hanabi, one of Hammer’s favorite games.
“These are new capacities that computer games give us,” says Hammer. “We can use them to enhance the kinds of core human interactions that games are.”

Games are nothing without players, a sentiment that rings particularly true regarding Roblox. As an interactive experience based on community development, the company knew from the very beginning that it wanted players to be able to express themselves through shared collaborative experiences.

But to foster real collaboration, Roblox knew that respect among community members was crucial. Within the company, there’s a constant conversation taking place to ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to build something special. With this goal in mind, Roblox Studio was designed to use LUA, one of the most user-friendly coding languages available. Roblox seeks to give kids the tools to create; to see players become developers.

When looking at the top games on Roblox, you’re likely to see concepts that, if they were to be pitched in a traditional green light fashion, they would probably never happen. But thanks to the supportive community the company’s built, gamers don’t have to worry about that green light process. Any kid can come on to the platform and, thanks to its ease of use, they can create a game. It really allows them to express themselves without adults getting in the way with rules and regulations. Kids know what kids like.

Whether it’s a seasoned player who’s been active in the world for years or a brand-new developer coming to the community for the first time, Roblox provides everyone with amazing opportunities to be creative in a way that encourages others to add to the story…making the world of the game so much cooler in the process.

How do problematic social issues manifest within the gaming community? According to Maria Hwang, some game characters play off of racist and sexist stereotypes. She also points out issues in the way gamers and fans interact with each other. “There’s a cyberbullying aspect in online communities, and that includes game communities,” she notes.

Hwang highlights the novelty of humanity’s relationship with immersive digital technology as a possible contributing factor. “We’re still in a transition period where we don’t truly understand the distinction between our online and offline lives,” she continues. “As we define what that means and whether our online alter egos are distinct or just continuations of who we are, things will change. For now, though, the idea of embodying new characters and exploring virtual worlds is still a relatively new concept. Cyberbullying may be prevalent because people think that these experiences aren’t real, even though virtual reality is as close to real as entertainment media can get.”

These misconceptions find parallels in the disconnect between people’s actions and their outcomes – Some gamers conclude they can do whatever they want without ramifications. “There are consequences,” cautions Hwang, “but they’re often harder to observe or less tangible than what one might experience in real life.”

Hwang also says that profit motives play a role. “Some people want to capitalize on troublesome things, such as heavily accentuated, hypersexualized portrayals of female characters similar to those found in lingerie commercials and modeling.”

Despite such negatives, Hwang points to a hopeful future. “As we move forward, we constantly reconsider the fluidity between our online and real-life identities. This makes us better equipped to address cyberbullying, stereotyping, and other problems. I believe the gaming and online communities will follow suit, but things are definitely not ideal at the moment.”

Game developers are more frequently using stress testing on their games prior to finalization to ensure their game and servers will handle the demand of their player community.
The video game industry is moving to more digital copies of games. When a game launches, everyone downloads it and jumps online at the same time. Without stress testing, it can be hard for game developers to predict if their servers are going to hold up when everybody hops on the game at the same time. This is especially true for more popular titles that have a lot of player demand.
Think of when a new show comes out on Netflix and everybody jumps on to watch it at the same time. Netflix doesn’t run as smooth because of the service demand. The same thing applies to video games.
Companies in the video game industry will hold a public beta. They’ll give access to the game before the final version is officially released so players can play it and test the game out. As a player, you get to demo the game and decide if you’d like to buy the final game or not.
For the developer, these public betas give them a stress test of your game. They get to test out their servers and say “Ok this many people are on. Our servers can handle this many people. Let’s take this information and project how many people are going to buy our game. And multiply this many people so when it does come out and everybody jumps on at the same time, we’re not having server issues.”
Stress testing is an effective method that game developers use to make sure their game is running on day one. Use stress tests to your advantage to determine your community’s anticipation for the game so you can deliver a better launch day experience for them.

Competition has always been at the core of gaming, and esports is a great example of the evolution of gaming over the last 50 years. Esports really began in the 1980s with Walter Day who, via his organization Twin Galaxies, hosted competitions to determine the best players for arcade games like Donkey Kong and Tetris based on high scores that spectators could watch. Today, esports are more in line with traditional sports, with leagues in such varied communities as NBA 2K, Call of Duty, and Overwatch.

The next esports milestone looks to be in game development itself for both Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, but particularly PS5 due to its storage architecture. Because of the way the hardware is built now with the SSD structure, as well as the elimination of hard drives, the jump in game development is akin to comparing an old record player to an iPhone.

These developments seem to signal a major milestone in overall entertainment in the gaming space, helping the form continue its transition from being an activity that only a few players can enjoy at a given time to something more like sports that thousands, even millions, can enjoy worldwide, whether you’re a gamer or not. NBA 2K League has even been featured on ESPN alongside “real” sports.

In the future, the acceptance of esports by major outlets will continue to make such an event the norm rather than the exception, especially as more games are created to work in this kind of sports format.

From its humble beginnings in the arcade, esports have become one of the greatest examples of how gaming has evolved to become the juggernaut of entertainment it is today.

A few things have changed.
One is that esports has become more accessible to a wider range of people. So, the affordability of gaming consoles, gaming moving towards mobile, and free gaming, have all grown exponentially over the past few years. Consequently, it’s been easier to get gaming in front of more people.
The second thing that has changed is what I call the mainstreaming of esports, where you see esports information on sports networks such as ESPN and others. You turn on your TV, in some instances, and watch esports competitions live.
That is only going to increase because esports is ultimately a global sport. We believe that there are three global sports at the end of the day: soccer, basketball, and esports. Those are the three sports that anyone can, theoretically, play at any moment of the day.
So, that’s why you see the growth of esports all around the world; because it is a universal language in that regard. It’ll only grow as technology, communication, and connectivity keep growing.
In terms of breaking into the industry — for anyone who’s interested in pursuing a career within the esports landscape, I would make a few recommendations.
One would be to familiarize yourself, as intimately as possible, with the landscape. What are the top games right now? What are the next games coming out? When and where are the big tournaments? Actually, you should attend a big tournament.
Besides, are you reading the trades of esports? Are you following esports journalists on social media? Are you watching the events online? You need to immerse yourself in the space if you’re not from it. If you’re not a native, you can’t be an outsider looking to just break in; there are so many on the inside that already want these positions. So, you have to learn as much as you can in the gaming space.

The second thing I would suggest is to look for organizations that are interested in becoming part of the gaming space. As you see more non-esports traditional entities and sports organizations get involved, — whether through investment in esports organizations or owning and operating esports organizations (such as the Cleveland Cavaliers owning and operating a team in a professional esports league) — there are more and more non-esports endemics who are tasked with leading this shift.
Therefore, if you can get to people like me first before others (people who know the space and have the connections and the knowledge), you’re going to prove your worth and help yourself potentially solidify a position. Because people like me need people who know the space.
There are going to be more endemics and organizations getting involved in esports. So, knowledge of the esports landscape, performance, and connections is a gold rush.
We’re still so early in the gaming space. It feels like esports has gotten really big over the past few years. Think 10 years from now; we’ll be looking back at around this time and realize that only a handful of games were franchised and had leagues. Theoretically, a decade from now, that could be the norm. So much could change.
So, I would say this: Learn as much as you can and make contact with as many organizations and people looking to be in the gaming space.

Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) was an exciting era in gaming, especially for game designers who were curious about how such a project could work. For those who are unfamiliar, Twitch Pays Pokémon is a social-experiment-slash-game played live on Twitch, where actions and decisions are crowdsourced via the chat function.
Dan Shefelman lived through that moment and remembers all the fascinating ways the game evolved around its clear obstacles.
“I thought we’d seen it all. We’ve seen multiplayer games, we did platform games, we had FPS, we’ve just seen every genre possible. And then, Twitch Plays Pokémon comes around.”
The most glaring obstacle was how thousands of commands given by the chat could be distilled into one cohesive decision so the game could progress.
“[I asked if] it needs to take one input and the character moves. And they said no, all these people are putting in that input and they’re – somehow – getting averaged. Well, you know, at one point, then a voting system came out.”
The technology also had to answer the question of lag. If a user gave an input from South Korea, and another user gave an input from Brazil, which would arrive first? Would the first one count before the second? These questions were slowly rising, and communities developed out of the solutions people found. Eventually, they developed a voting system, until another problem arose.
“The voting system went away and it was just this incredible phenomenon of how we deal with, basically, overpopulation . . . Maybe it’s almost like a democracy deciding on a policy. And they did.”
This happened outside of the game, and players returned ready to navigate it as a team, like a crowd-sourced game.
“We as a team, a world team, we can beat that by coming together as communities to plan and strategize, to play one game,” says Shefelman. “Like a million people played one game together with one character. And that was basically a new genre.”