Got a Video-Gaming Team? What About an Arena for It?

At Columbia College, in Missouri, a once-smelly locker room for the soccer team has been converted into a futuristic-looking space for a promising new group of competitors: students who play video games on the growing campus “eSports” circuit. The Game Hut, as it is known, is now a don’t-miss stop on the campus tour.

At Boise State University, a 3,000-square-foot section of the library has been emptied of stacks and is being renovated into a glass-walled area big enough for 100 video-game competitors — and twice as many spectators.

Competitive video gaming on the collegiate level — known as eSports — is spreading rapidly. While many may argue over whether these organized competitions of multiplayer video games are “real” sports or not, and others question whether colleges should be encouraging activities that can foster online sexism or lead to a type of addiction, there’s no question that eSports are claiming their place on campuses. With more than 70 colleges now boasting scholarships for their varsity eSports teams (up from six two years ago), and hundreds of other institutions offering club teams, college leaders are scrambling to develop attractive new campus spaces where headset-wearing students can sit at computers in ergonomic chairs and duke it out with teams from other colleges.

Campus Spaces: Flexibility for the Future

This special report examines how colleges’ buildings, grounds, classrooms, and public areas help them do their jobs better (or, in some cases, hinder them).

• Speed, Convenience, Affordability: Why Modular Construction Is Catching On
• Does the Faculty Office Have a Future?
• Help Your Students Succeed by Building Spaces Where They Can Talk With Professors
• How Colleges Manage to Afford Big Projects in Lean Times

Move over basketball and tennis; now there are also teams competing in games like League of Legends, in which teams of up to five square off over a virtual fanciful territory called Summoner’s Rift and, using various weapons, compete to destroy each other’s home bases; and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, in which one five-person terrorist team tries to outwit the counterterrorist team in tasks like planting bombs or freeing hostages. Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, meanwhile, is betting big on competitive video gaming on two fronts: It is converting a theater in a nearby arts-and-science center into a venue to host local and regional collegiate video-game competitions. The gamers’ play will be displayed live on the 40-foot-by-65-foot screen, in surround sound.

Harrisburg is hoping to tap into the worldwide wave of interest in watching live eSports competitions, a form of entertainment that on the professional level has sold out arenas like Madison Square Garden and the Beijing Olympic stadium. It is predicted to generate $1.5 billion in revenues worldwide by 2020. The university is also converting 2,200 square feet of the center into a training facility for use by its own new varsity eSports team, complete with 30 computer stations and a separate, glass-enclosed coaching area where the teams can discuss strategy and review videos of their previous matches.

The dollar amounts for these campus projects aren’t huge. Eric Darr, Harrisburg’s president, says renovating and outfitting the space for his university’s team will cost no more than $1 million. (That doesn’t count the money the college plans to spend by offering 15 full-tuition scholarships to eSports team members starting in the fall.) But he hopes current and prospective students appreciate the college’s investment and commitment.

“If you’re playing in a converted closet,” says Darr, “that sends a signal to your students.”

Those converted closets are getting scarcer, with ramifications that extend far beyond the campus-planning office. “It’s literally changing what we understand athletics to be,” says Michael Brooks, executive director of the National Association of Collegiate Esports. The organization formed less than two years ago to help oversee and promote the growth of competitive video gaming on the collegiate level. Interest is growing so fast that NACE has a hard time keeping its website up to date, but Brooks expects that 120 colleges will be fielding varsity teams in eSports by August.

Colleges’ growing interest in eSports spins off from the explosive growth in video-gaming competitions: Championship tournaments draw tens of millions of viewers online and on ESPN; the most charismatic play-by-play and color “casters” can become celebrities in their own right, and star video-gamers can earn a comfortable living.

If all of that sounds like some alternate universe, fret not: Even college leaders whose institutions have embraced eSports say they don’t understand the full range of the phenomenon.

“This isn’t new. It’s just new to us,” says Brett E. Shelton, professor of educational technology at Boise State and co-director of the new varsity eSports team there.

While he and other college officials may not fully appreciate the passions that fuel the global appeal, they argue that they can’t simply dismiss the phenomenon of eSports, which, they say, represents a societal shift. “Thinking of it as a stereotypical gamer in the basement is not the way to go,” says Elizabeth Newbury, director of the Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “It’s game culture meets sports culture.”

As campus amenities go, eSports spaces are not yet as ubiquitous — or as pricey — as the recreation centers, climbing walls, and lazy rivers that now adorn campuses across the country. Columbia College’s new Game Hut, for example, cost in the tens of thousands of dollars to develop, the president says. The most expensive features were the custom-lighting fixtures that snake along the walls and ceiling and change colors.

Stephens College, a women’s institution that’s also in Columbia, Mo., put its new eSports space together for even less. “We went down to the hardware store and got a couple of countertops,” says Mark Brunner, director of information and technology services and coordinator of eSports there. The 500-square-foot space isn’t posh, but it looks nothing like a converted closet, either.

The new Esports Gaming Center at DePaul University’s downtown Chicago campus, which opened in April, was also a relative bargain. It occupies a room in the student union that was once designated for faculty to collaborate with one another, but has seen little use lately. Now, the 1,000-square-foot space could pass easily for a sleek computer-equipped study hall, but for the cushiony chairs and sign on the wall that says, “Good Luck. Have Fun. Be Vincentian.” That’s a reference to the religious order that founded the Roman Catholic institution, and a play on the common gamer shorthand “GLHF” that’s shared before matches. A university spokesman says it “represents DePaul’s welcoming and respectful gaming environment with the hopes of establishing DePaul as a leader in eSports inclusion.” The cost for the gaming center, he adds, was “de minimis.”

The DePaul center is designed to accommodate spectators, but not to the extent that Boise State and Harrisburg are planning. The second-floor library space that Boise State is now renovating will include areas for reconfigurable movable seating, as well as room for vendors and demonstrations during big events. Ted Black, who runs the Whitaker Center, where Harrisburg will stage competitions, says that for bigger events — “think Comic-Con plus eSports” — he imagines using the entire facility, including the center’s main 700-seat theater.

Harrisburg “prides itself on having geeks as students,” says Darr, the president. “This is a recruiting tool.”

As with traditional sports, the facilities for eSports can allow for naming opportunities — typically companies like Dell and HP, which make computers and keyboards designed for gaming. Harrisburg says sponsorships from HP and Intel will cover some of the costs for the 15 scholarships it plans to offer next year.

Arrangements like Harrisburg’s with the Whitaker Center also allow colleges to share some costs. The university doesn’t have an event-management staff to help in hosting tournaments, but the center does. The two organizations will share revenues from ticket sales and event sponsorships.

While the success of the new venue has yet to be tested, Black, of NACE, says Harrisburg is ahead of the curve in creating an eSports venue for spectators. When compared with the cost of traditional athletics, eSports are actually relatively inexpensive for colleges. The teams may sometimes travel to tournaments, but most competitions take place online. Besides a really good internet connection, the essentials are basically the computer hardware, the keyboards and mice, and the chairs. The latter run about $400 each and offer good back support and adjustable arms, and, as Black says, “look cool.”

Players sometimes bring their own hardware. They might have a preference for the action of their own keyboard or the feel of their mouse, “like a baseball player with their glove,” says Bryan Curtis, assistant director of athletics and director of eSports at Columbia College.

Columbia’s president, Scott Dalrymple, is a gamer himself (he says he’s not very good). He knows that some colleagues in higher education do “a lot of eye-rolling” over the very notion of gaming as a college sport, but he has little patience with such skepticism. “What’s inherently more noble about the ability to spike a volleyball or dunk a basketball?” he asks. “We don’t get to decide whether it has a role in higher ed. It’s here. This generation has made the decision that it’s important to them. Shouldn’t we listen to them?”

As it happens, Columbia’s coaches do push a day or two a week of physical activity for the well-being of their eSports varsity players — typically some Ultimate Frisbee or time in the gym.

Leaders of eSports programs at other colleges note that gaming involves dexterity, quickness, and the same kind of collaboration and communication that makes for successful athletics teams. “You practice together, you eat together, you review films together.” says Shelton, the Boise State eSports official. No, the teams don’t spend a lot of time on cardio, he says, “but there are far fewer concussions.”

Not everyone buys that assessment. In 2016, the Pac-12 conference considered and rejected the inclusion of an eSports league. The University of Arizona’s Ann Weaver Hart was one of several university presidents who opposed the idea, arguing that it could open the door to a host of Title IX fairness and financial issues for colleges if they were required to regulate it as they do traditional sports. Now a professor of educational policy studies and practice, Hart says her opinion hasn’t changed. “My objection is not to gaming. My objection is to defining this as a sport,” she says. Sports should include not just skill but also physical exertion or physical activity, she says. “Just naming it as eSports doesn’t make it a sport.”

The idea that because video-game tournaments are big business “and young people of college age like video games, means that colleges should sponsor varsity teams of gamers, doesn’t hold water,” she says. “People like motocross,” Hart notes, but that doesn’t mean colleges should embrace that as a sport, either. “Every decision like this is a values decision, it’s a money decision.”

According to NACE, about 40 percent of the varsity teams are run by colleges’ athletics departments; another 40 percent are overseen by student-affairs offices. Most of the rest are overseen by academic departments. Colleges that are members of NACE, which represents about 90 percent of the varsity programs, must ensure that their team members each have at least a 2.0 GPA. Mindful of the potential for compulsive behavior, many teams enforce limits on practice times, sometimes going so far as to shut down players’ accounts.

Some colleges offer courses and academic programs connected with gaming or the eSports business. Harrisburg offers an entire bachelor’s degree in interactive game media that includes courses in game design.

Except for Stephens, all teams in NACE are officially co-ed, although Black says that 80 percent of the players are men. The gaming community is infamous for its sometimes-sexist online culture, an issue that gained national prominence a few years ago when the harassment of the so-called Gamergate movement came to public attention. Stephens College was especially wary when it began its team, going so far as to warn its players not to associate their real names with their screen names when playing. Stephens chose Overwatch as its game, because it has strong female characters, including a scientist who uses a freeze ray as a weapon.

Newbury, the scholar who has studied video-gaming culture, welcomes colleges’ interest in eSports and notes that they might ultimately become a tool for combating some of the sexism that now infuses online gaming. What eSports needs, she says, is to devote more attention not only to its treatment of women, but also to its definition of masculinity and “what it means to be a dude in these spaces,” be they virtual or physical.

Colleges can also use eSports to lower barriers between players and spectators that are common in the professional sports world, she says. That divide is not as pronounced in eSports because the competitions grew out of a collaborative tradition in which gamers would bring their computers to a central location, set up local-area networks, and start playing.

By establishing venues where eSports spectators can compete against the players, she says, colleges could actually help create a stronger sense of community.

Goldie Blumenstyk writes about the intersection of business and higher education. Check out www.goldieblumenstyk.com for information on her book about the higher-education crisis; follow her on Twitter @GoldieStandard; or email her at goldie@chronicle.com.