Coker College preps for eSports program
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
It’s a very rare occurrence for a new game or athletic endeavor to rise from inception to phenomenon within a few short years, but that’s exactly what’s happened with eSports – playing video games for prize money and/or school and club championships – and Coker College is getting into the action by establishing a new eSports program this fall.
“We’re treating it just like any other sport,” says Joseph Rudy, eSports director and coach. “We’re going to have everything that every other student athlete would have, meaning scholarships, jerseys, travel for tournaments. It’s going to be a legit thing, just in the video game world.”
Wildly popular in South Korea, where eSports tournament audiences have filled soccer stadiums, Rudy says that eSports first took root through strategy games like the Starcraft series. Spectators follow along as individual players or teams build their armada of space vessels while trying to thwart their opponent’s progress. He says that while the idea of watching other people play video games might sound dull, it’s can be very engaging to see their strategies unfold and witness real-time confrontations.
“It’s pretty insane when you’re there with a crowd and you’re getting excited with them,” says Rudy, adding that occasionally, the audience is united in “mass confusion” while trying to think ahead of a player and comprehend their gameplay, but it only adds to the drama and satisfaction when that unconventional thinking plays out and begins to make sense.
Coker plans to begin their eSports program with two popular games: League of Legends (a MOBA, or multi-player online battle arena), and Overwatch (a first-person shooter with a variety of strategic objectives). Rudy says they may add the online card game Hearthstone at a later date.
For equipment, the school will likely build six high-end computers for team use, and the gamers will be headquartered in the Coker College library, where the campus broadband wi-fi is strongest.
Opponents won’t be pulled from Coker’s usual South Atlantic Conference pool, since eSports programs can currently play pretty much any school or club they can schedule. Rudy says Coker will join a variety of leagues and play in numerous tournaments, and he plans to work with other colleges and universities to establish a normal schedule and roster of eSports teams. He notes that having the full support of Coker’s athletics program might give the new eSports team an advantage over teams from much larger institutions.
“The last national champion in League of Legends was Maryville, which is a Division II school. At a lot of D-1 schools, their eSports program is run by a club and not by the actual school, where with a lot of D-2 schools (like Coker) and D-3 schools, you have the support of the school backing you up and you can do better than these D-1 schools that have a massive player base to pick kids from,” says Rudy.
Recruiting players for eSports is mostly a straightforward affair, since a player’s game stats are readily available online, but some of the qualities Coach Rudy values are a bit more subjective.
“A good player is someone who is very good at the game, but you also need to have a work ethic. You can’t play pick-up basketball once a week and expect to be amazing. You have to put in the time working on the fundamentals,” says Rudy. “And you have to know how to work with the team, how to recognize your mistakes and correct them, how to keep a level head, take criticism, learn and grow.”
Rudy says the team will be co-ed, and he believes that as eSports grow in popularity and more schools establish their own co-ed programs, these face-to-face interactions between male and female gamers could help to heal the online gaming community’s reputation for misogyny and sexism.
“I feel like the thing that hurts a lot is the anonymity of the Internet. If we talk in person, I get feedback from your voice and facial expressions, but when you just go at someone online and degrade them, you don’t have that feedback so you can’t see how you are affecting someone. And there’s often no consequences at all,” Rudy says. “But when you’re gaming side by side, it’s not the same. Gender doesn’t really come up.”
To keep up with the latest on Coker College’s eSports program visit them online at www.CokerCobras.com.
