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eSports is a global phenomenon, embraced and fuelled by the incessant creative energy and drive that its predominately young, male audience brings.
Hundreds of thousands stream the games online, fans flock to arenas to get momentary glimpses of their gaming idols, and business-minded individuals with any form of capital are constantly probing to get their foot in the door.
Much of the room for development in eSports is not in the upper-echelon of these international tournaments taking place in stadiums, but rather at the grassroots level – especially in smaller eSports regions like Australia.
One of the major bursts of recent eSports growth in Australia has been the role competitive gaming plays in high schools and universities.
With video games playing a larger role in both classrooms as an educational tool and in co-curricular actives as a vehicle for recreation and group play, it makes sense that eSports – a sub-scene of gaming – will have a larger role too. eSports as a whole has been around since the late ’90s, but only really started at Australian universities with the Oceanic Collegiate Championships, started by various league clubs and hosted by remyrhe gaming in 2015.
This event was then officially picked up by the developer Riot Games following a successful test year and began Riot’s official ‘Oceanic University Championship’ (OUC). The OUC ran for both semesters of 2016 and saw even more success than the previous year.
In the first semester, 34 universities fielded sides, while in the second, over 70 unis had teams competing. This is credited to League of Legends being included in the official Australian University Games, alongside all the traditional sports Aussies know and love.
In 2017, eSports continues to expand its reach and impact, with Riot Games now officially supporting high school clubs as well. There are multiple official clubs running across the country, with the main emphasis on teamwork and sportsmanship.
Although there isn’t a clear tournament or league set-up, one can imagine that with enough interest, a nationwide high school League of Legends tournament isn’t far-fetched.
Outside of Riot Games and League of Legends, ESL Australia has partnered with GradConnect to start the University eSports League (UEL). The UEL is focussed on building relationships with participants and key members of big technology companies like IAG, Telstra, PwC and Wisetech Global.
Andrew from GradConnect gave some exclusive words to The Roar regarding the league:
“Many of the people who are working within [big technology] companies […] are very active in the eSports and gaming community so the UEL allows students to gain a glimpse into the internal culture of these companies, and play games in front of and alongside people in these companies and start to build their professional networks via a more fun, engaging and genuine channel.”
The UEL will feature Heartstone, League of Legends, and Overwatch as the three games on display, with plans to include popular titles like CS:GO in the future. However, they are not directly competing with Riot’s pre-existing university championships, choosing instead to focus on building relationships.
“Riot are actually very supportive of the UEL and able to help us publicise it,” Andrew says.
“The focus of the UEL is still to have a tournament format but will run in a slightly more relaxed manner to be more focussed on having a good time and interacting with companies so a bit different to the university clubs system they have in place.
“What Riot are doing in the uni space is something that we also think is awesome and will be watching that one ourselves.”
For many people, sport is a seemingly unscaleable mental and physical mountain to climb. Young adults and children do not all benefit from the rough and tumble that the physicality of traditional sports brings.
However, the effects sports can have on building teamwork, having grace in defeat and victory, and respecting an opponent is a crucial building block for one’s development. That is not even to mention the lifelong friendships that sports can create as well.
If eSports can supplement the core developing facets of sports in building teamwork, sportsmanship and friendships, without the limiting factors of a direct physical presence, then it could play an important role in the extra-curricular activities of kids in the not-so-distant future.
There’s no doubt that traditional sports offers bigger benefits in many areas than it’s online counterpart, but that’s not say that there’s no place for eSports at all. If kids around the country can get equal parts development and pleasure out of a different, yet competitively similar field like eSports, then who’s to say it’s a bad thing at all?