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THE SEARCH BAR

Game On: How esports can shape your future

| 38 minutes | Media Contact: University Communications

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Summary

How do you start competing in esports? And how easy is it to turn a love for gaming into a college scholarship and even a career? 

Guest: Luke Theis, senior assistant director of esports at Central Michigan University.

Summary 

In this episode of The Search Bar, Adam Sparkes sits down with Luke Theis, senior assistant director of esports at Central Michigan University, to discuss all things esports. The two talk about some of the most popular competitive video games, how to get started in esports to begin with, how esports is growing at the collegiate level, what career paths esports players are following once they graduate - and what the future holds for the world of competitive gaming. 

Chapters 

Transcript

Introduction

Adam: I think sometimes there's the negative stigma that comes with video games. There was a lot of these nerdier pop culture things that came in front of me when I was a kid. Everyone's parents are going. Do you feel like that's less or more now? How do you feel about it?

Luke: I think it still exists. It think it will always be there, and a big thing that sticks out to me that it feels somewhat relatable is football. When concussions became such a huge thing, it was towards the end when I was playing and it was just like, wow, is football a great thing? It brings those questions on, just like gaming, is gaming a great thing? I think there are great things that we can attach to and try to remove that negativity as much as possible, but it's focusing on those positives and taking those and using those for the greater good of our students and for what we have here for the community.

Adam: How do you start competing in esports and how easy is it to turn a love for gaming into a college scholarship or even a career? Welcome to The Search Bar. I'm your host, Adam Sparks, and on today's episode, we're talking all things esports with Luke Theis, senior assistant director of esports here at Central Michigan University. Hi Luke. Hello. Thanks for coming in today. I was really excited when Aaron told me we were going to do this, producer Aaron, super-producer Aaron, who I mentioned, and then my class to cut out. I probably don't mention him in the podcast, but I was really excited when we were going to do this because talking about video games is fun. I'm an old guy who still plays video games. They've been part of my life since, I don't know. Oh my gosh. Like Atari, Sega Core System, stuff like that, and specifically esports, which is what you do here at Central Michigan University, which is kind of a thing that's springing up all of our college campuses across the country. It's becoming sort of a predominant part of college culture, but also kind of the athletics culture at colleges, which I think is an interesting thing for us to talk about, which is sort of what is esports?

What is esports?

Luke: Yeah, yeah. So what is esports? The great question. To me and to lots of students, it's just a hobby, something they enjoy doing. And now at colleges and high schools and growing more in the professional scene, it's an opportunity to showcase yourself at a high level of competition against other people, other teams. So for us, it's our college teams competing against other college teams in various different game titles, but for some students it's just casually playing, hanging out with other students in their dorms, in our gaming facilities that we have on campus and just connecting with students. And so esports can be a wide range of things, but the main focus is competition towards other teams and other people.

How are esports and traditional sports similar/different?

Adam: In terms of how that fits into the structure of athletics programs in higher ed or how this kind of compares to students who are traditional student athletes, which you, you've been on both sides of this thing.

Luke: Yeah.

Adam: How's it different? How's it the same?

Luke: Yeah, so for me, I was a football player in college. As I was transitioning out of that, my university I was at was starting an esports program, and so I jumped into that because it was something fun, exciting, something I felt attached to and wanted to help build and something I wish I had as a student. And so to me it's really just giving organized structure to students, especially with gamers. A lot of them, they come home, they play games, but now we're giving them structure and supporting them through school as well too, because we want them to be successful. We want them to get their degrees while also having a great time playing games, enhancing their skills, learning time management, communication, teamwork skills, all of that, just like I did in sports football, gave me more than just football. I learned how to work with a team, learned how to communicate team skills. All of that is also with esports, if not more. I was a punter, so how much do I use communication? How much do I use teamwork? Maybe a little less, but for us, our students, every game they play in all five or all three students, depending on the game, they are communicating, they're working. There's always something they have to do, and it's almost a higher level of thinking because it is constantly happening and it's everything's happening very quickly.

Adam: Would you say that esports are a sport then?

Luke: That's a good question that I try not to answer because I think it's an opinion. Personally, I lean more that it is a sport. If you look at the definition of what a sport is, it's activity between a person or a team against another person or team that is competitive and this is a competitive thing. It's just that the action is more inside the game than it is outside the game, like traditional sports. But I will never specifically say it is a sport. I think it's up to who you're asking. And I think esports can be in its own atmosphere, its own thing, and doesn't have to necessarily attach itself to something. It can really become its own thing.

Adam: Yeah, I mean it's got a lot of those. There's kind a lot of the same ingredients in terms of traditional athletics. I mean, there's an audience factor that's there. There's a casual play factor for people who are either younger or older, in this case, harder to age out. Although I think you can kind of still age out at esports. It's not an old man's game.

Luke: Yeah, you can a little bit. Yeah, for sure.

Adam: I saw something about reaction time playing video games as you get older, and I was like, I'm probably in that category.

Luke: Yeah. Well, that's a big thing we talk about with our students too, because people view esports as harmful to the student. A parent having a child that wants to play this well, is it healthy for them? Is it good for them? Well, let's give them the information that you have a better reaction time. You're going to perform better in game if you're getting the right sleep,

The right nutrition, all of those things, just like a NASCAR driver, they did a study, their heart rate increases when they're racing. Same thing with our esports athletes, their heart rate increases. We want to make sure we're helping them physically, mentally, all of those things so they can perform in game just as well too. So there is some healthy benefits, but we do understand that gaming, someone playing video games 12 hours a day is not a good thing that just being transparent about that. So we want to make sure that we're helping our students with structure with good, positive, healthy things that will help them later if they get a desk job, how to move around in the desk job to not be stuck to the chair and have those unhealthy habits of sitting in a chair all day. So adding things to give them that they can use in a workplace later.

Adam: Yeah, I mean, too much of a good thing can be bad. I mean, to be clear, you wouldn't want to be running around the indoor track for 12 hours a day either. That would probably not bear well for your knees or your body fat percentage.

Luke: For sure.

Adam: You can exercise yourself to death too. You can sit in a chair until you're unhealthy.

Luke: So, trying to help our students find that healthy balance and make that be something beneficial for them and not a hindrance.

How has esports evolved in recent years?

Adam: How has it changed and grown since you've gotten involved? What are the biggest things that have happened?

Luke: A lot, because 2015 was probably the kickoff. It was one of the first college gave scholarships, then going into 2020 it became really popular because COVID, “What do we do? How do we make things happen for students?” And esports was that opportunity that, oh, hey, these students can be in their dorms, they can be isolated and be participating and be involved and part of something that gives them a sense of community that esports can do. And so it grew a lot during 2020. That's right. When I started, I started as a GA and we started with 40 students in a varsity program, built a facility, gave them space to practice and compete, and now it's grown even more. There's over 400 universities that are competing at a NACE level, which NACE is the National Association of Collegiate Esports. They're the most governing body that esports has. There's not really a governing body, but NACE is kind of that, and that's what we view as the governing body for us. And so we follow all of NACE's things and there's over 400 universities competing now, so it's growing yearly and every day more programs are jumping into esports, more universities are jumping into esports.

How does CMU’s esports program work?

Adam: And it's not just the competition. I want to talk, you talked a little bit about since 2020 as here at the university, we both work at that program, that facility has kind of started to take up a little bit more space. And what are the other things that are going on in terms of, in our case, the mid-Michigan community, the Mount Pleasant community, the CMU community. What else does the esports facility and the esports team kind of do?

Luke: Yeah, yeah, great question. So we have, just for the CMU community, we have varsity teams that compete against other teams. We have clubs, so students are welcome to join the clubs, have their own events and activities, and also play against other club teams, just like club sports. And we just have the come in and use our facility Monday through Friday, five to 10:00 PM, it's open to the community at a five hour, $5 an hour rate, and it's a benefit of our students' tuition, so they get access to the space with no cost. So there's that available. But then also looking at the larger community in high schools, it's growing even more. Our region specifically doesn't have a lot of high school numbers, and I think we could play a crucial role in helping get high school esports off the ground because there's a lot of barriers. There are some costs to equipment. There's things that we could be providing to the local area to help grow esports even more and show it as an opportunity to help students get into colleges.

What equipment does an esports team need to get started?

Adam: What does that look like for someone who's looking to start something like that up? If you were going to tell an eighth-grade potential esports coach, what do you need? What's the bare minimum to get a team up and running?

Luke: So, you would probably need a couple computers depending on what you want to do. If you're just going to have a Rocket League team, you only need three computers. You could put a team together and play. There's two leagues in Michigan that are available for high schools and schools to participate in, and they do support middle school and high school, so you could do both. And so you join that league. That league also provides support and assistance with information, all sorts of things to help start a program and get it going. And so I would connect them with both those organizations.

What are the most popular esports games?

Adam: What are, you talk about Rocket League, what are the big games right now? What's prevalent on the college scene? What are they all playing?

Luke: So, for us, we have League of Legends, Overwatch to Rocket League, Super Smash Bros., and Valorant. Four of those, League of Legends, Overwatch, Rocket League and Valorant are in the athletic conference that we compete in are athletic conference actually created an esports collegiate conference that we compete in against all of our athletic opponents plus two additional schools that joined outside of the MAC, and so we compete against them in those four titles. Those are the titles we have, but other schools also have titles like Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike, Halo. There's a wide range that's covered at a lot of universities, but we're just focusing on those five and we support other titles in our gaming clubs.

Adam: What's the biggest one right now for you guys? What's your best team?

Luke: For us, this past year, we just made a major commitment to Rocket League, and so we're giving those students scholarships and we're getting them a coach. It's something that I try to communicate a lot is that I'm not a coach.

I'm more like I'm a director. I oversee, I help. I cannot coach five different teams and five different games that are all getting updates and changing all the time. And so getting them a coach, getting 'em the scholarships is a big jump and we're making that commitment because Rocky League is easy to understand. It's very popular, it has a really good path to a national championship, collegiate Rocket League. It's very well known, gets a lot of viewership and can help the university and also the students that are interested in Rocket League. And there's a lot of students that are interested in Rocket League.

How are scholarships impacting collegiate esports?

Adam: So, you talked about getting scholarships for those esports athletes. What's that journey been like? What does that look like for you all? How does that change things for you?

Luke: Yeah, so when I first got here, we were not offering esports scholarships and at my last school we were. So it kind of takes away from, I'm no longer trying to recruit students. I'm taking the students that are already at CMU and finding diamonds in the rough or students that are really interested, getting them involved and getting them going in esports and assisting them as much as I can now that we're able to have these scholarships. With this year main focus was retention, giving it to students that have given time and sacrifice for the program and honoring them and what they've done these last few years and thanking them. And this next year we'll be recruiting and looking for top talent to come to CMU and represent us at higher levels and potentially national championship levels to get CMU out there on the map and collegiate esports. And so scholarships has been a huge thing. It's supporting the students, which as a former student athlete, a big thing that I needed was support to do what I was doing. I was lucky that my parents supported me enough. I didn't have to get a job and the scholarship helped on top of that, but we have students that they weren't on scholarship and they're working jobs, working in esports, helping do what we're doing in esports while also being a student, which being a student is first and foremost, and so we want to make sure we can support them so they can get what's done in the classroom while also helping us in esports and helping build a reputation for CMU.

Adam: Yeah, I mean it's a lot of time. I think that's one of the things where if you, you're removed from being at a university or you've never been yourself, students who are involved in athletics or some of the major institutions that are extracurricular in a university like our co-curricular students that work at the newspaper are doing broadcast or the students that run Threads like our fashion show or esports. It is a lot of time to be doing that and going to work and keeping up on your studies. It is a tremendous amount of pressure for those students. So, scholarship’s a relief.

Luke: We want to make sure that we're supporting them and allowing them to be successful in esports. They want to be and in the classroom.

What are some of the career paths that esports players are following?

Adam: Speaking about the classroom, what are some of the, and I know this is probably very broad in terms of your students, but students who have a career path that lines up with some of the things that they're experiencing at esports. What are those to you, or at least in your mind?

Luke: So most of our students, over 50% are STEM focused students. But we have a wide range of students from finance to marketing to business to all wide range of things. And it's really how they want to apply it. I think something unique, and a student actually came back to me and was telling me this, that because they had esports on their resume, they asked a lot of questions around it. What is this esports thing and how can our students talk about it and make it a sellable thing, just like I did with football when I had it on my resume. I talked about it, I let them know. It gave me time management, communication skills helped me know when to be on time, when to be there and be focused. And esports can do that same thing. And so make it something that's a sellable point and not something that you say, oh, I played video games in college. No, there's more than that. Talk about everything you learned, everything you gained from it and it can help. But there are specific things that can attach to that. Any management position. We have students that are also team managers and so they're getting managerial experience as a student, very hands-on experience. We have students that run our live streams, run productions and create video content and other content for us. So, it's helping them build their portfolios and build things for them that help them later after college.

Adam: Yeah, I mean there's all sorts of careers that align with those things, but there's esports specific careers when you leave here. This is not a shrinking industry by any means.

Luke: No, it is very much growing. There are professional organizations that are always looking for students coming out of college to bring into that atmosphere of professional esports. And there's lots of opportunity in various areas from managing a business that is a professional organization to managing a team to doing marketing for that team, whatever it is, there's lots of opportunity and even just running gaming events across the country, there's opportunities for that as well too.

Adam: How many students who have that are contributing to the process outside of those who are playing in the games?

Luke: So, we have about 50 students that are competing for us, and then we have about 60 students that are employed through esports with us. We have esports at attendants that oversee our space, manage the space, make sure it's safe, secure, and any guests get their questions answered and get help as needed. We have team managers that are assisting our teams. We have a production team, so we have a producer, a couple observers and casters, and then we also have a video editor and a social media manager as well too. And a graphic designer.

Adam: I mean it's really, it's a one-to-one ratio. I mean 50, 60 students on each side of it there that keeps this thing kind of up and running.

Why is there a negative stigma around playing video games?

Adam: So, I don’t know. For me, I wanted to think about that. I think sometimes there's the negative stigma that comes with video games and I know I feel it a lot. Like I am 42 years old and I grew up very much in an era where the TV's writing your brain, the Nintendo's riding your brain magic, the gathering, we'll send you straight to hell. There was a lot of these nerdier pop culture things that across came in front of me when I was a kid. Everyone's parents are going a little bit. Do you feel like that's less or more now? How do you feel about it?

Luke: I think it still exists. I think it will always be there and a big thing that sticks out to me that it feels somewhat relatable is football. When concussions became such a huge thing, it was towards the end when I was playing and it was just like, wow, is football a great thing? And it brings those questions on just like gaming is gaming a great thing and I think there are great things that we can attach to and try to remove that negativity as much as possible, but it's focusing on those positives and taking those and using those for the greater good of our students and for what we have here for the community.

Adam: Tell me a positive esports story. Tell me something that makes you happy when you think about it with one of your students.

Luke: I mean, the thing that got me into it was I had some experiences as a student athlete that I didn't think were the greatest. And so, when I got the opportunity to help build an esports program, I saw an opportunity to help students outside of esports.

And I know with sports sometimes the focus is winning and kind of everything else is thrown out the window, but for me and for the program we're building, it's about the students trying to give them the best opportunity. And so, we had a situation where a student's parents didn't approve of what they were doing, pretty much dismissed them from the family just because they were involved in an esports program and competing on a team. And so we helped them through that. We brought them into our community, we made them feel like they were one of us and that it was a big family thing. And they've been doing well. They're at my last school, they're still a part of that program there and they're still doing well to this day. And so I was happy to be that support system for that student when they kind of lost that for a bit. And there's a lot of students that have come to us and hey, I was in my dorm, didn't know if I wanted to be at the university I was at or wasn't feeling great. And finally made that connection with somebody that was in the program, joined the program, got involved, and now they're happy that they got involved and they're doing what they're doing, whether it's playing or assisting our program in other areas. And so it's just an opportunity to get that sense of community, be a part of something bigger than yourself, that really motivates me and just creating those opportunities for students, which is something I wish I had. I wish I had an esports program when I was going. My freshman year, I actually considered dropping out of school and pursuing professional esports, but my computer broke. It was a good sign that let's stay in here. And it ended up working out that I'm working in collegiate esports now and building a program.

What are some of your favorite esports games?

Adam: Yeah, who'd have thought it? Right. What was your game when you were in college?

Luke: Counterstrike.

Adam: Counterstrike?

Luke: Yeah. I played Call of Duty a lot growing up. It was a fun game with friends, but there was never enough strategy, and Counterstrike is a whole another level of strategy and game planning that I really enjoy. I like strategy games, and so I really grabbed onto that and I think in a two year timeframe, I got 2,000 hours in the game and played a lot and was at a point that I was going to make the leap but did not make the leap. But I don't regret it. I'm pretty happy when I'm at and doing what I'm doing.

Adam: What's your game right now?

Luke: Probably Rocket League. Rocket League. I play a lot of Rocket League. It's quick games, which is nice with the busy schedule that I have. I only have a little bit of time on the weekends and stuff to connect with some old friends that still play Rocket League, and so we'll play some quick games for 30 minutes to an hour and then go back to doing what we all do as adults now.

Adam: I thought I would've thought it would've been Valorant since you're a Counterstrike guy.

Luke: Yeah, I enjoyed Valorant. It's a great game too. It's just the time commitment and when I play, I have to have four friends. I can't play solo queue. And same with Rocket League. I can't play solo queue. I'm not a solo queue person. I got to play with friends and really, we're just talking the whole time. I'm not too competitive anymore these days.

Adam: Do you think you can beat the students at any of them?

Luke: I can beat some students. We actually did a 10-hour, we did a 12-hour live stream last year for Extra Life Children's Miracle Network to raise funds for that. And I got to jump in some games with some students and play, and I wasn't, bottom of the scoreboard I was doing was fighting. Fighting pretty good.

Adam: This in Rocket League? 

Luke: I did Rocket League and Valorant. I did play some Valorant in that time.

Adam: I tried to play Valorant recently and it reminded me of how long it's been since I played Counterstrike. I was like, probably not

Luke: Even when I went back and played a couple of months ago. It's been a bit, you got to get off the, what's the word? You got to break the I break the ice and get back into it and kind of get back to use to the movements and how to aim and all that.

How much do esports players need to practice?

Adam: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big thing about a lot of these games that if you're not in these communities or if you've never been around a game where that gets played fairly competitively, even as somebody who's not doing it for any kind of a purse or a trophy, there's a lot to it in terms of how good you can just physically be at the game and then how well you can understand what the game lets you do or expects you to do to be successful. I think that type of cognition and that type of, I guess physicality, the reflexes of playing the thing, I think it can be lost on folks who aren't near it. Some of these games are just, I couldn't throw you in and expect you to be good at it in a hundred hours, some of them, right?

Luke: Yeah. Rocket League, I have over 2,000 hours and probably around 800 hours I finally felt decent. I could hit the ball when I want to hit the ball and hit it to where I wanted to hit it to. And I'm still, to this day, I'm not a mechanical player. There's things called jump resets, ceiling shots and things that I'm still learning how to do after 2,000 hours that I can't do because it takes so much work and practice doing it over and over and over until you can do it every single time that our students are working on every day.

Adam: Yeah, I feel like that's one of those games where it's so accessible, right? Rocket League is an incredibly accessible game. So if you've never played Rocket League or you've never played a video game, but you have any access to a computer or a console, I believe Rocket League's free to play, right?

Luke: Yep. Free to play.

Adam: Yeah, try it out, play it for 10 hours and then go watch a video of somebody who's a professional at it and you'll be like, I am an infant.

Luke: Yeah. It's crazy, the difference. And Rocket League's kind of that definition standard that you look for in a sport or eSport is easy to understand, watching it, you get it, you're trying to score the soccer ball into the goal, but then hard to master where you can spend lots of time and still not be able to do what you're watching these professional players do, which is just like we see in sports, crazy bicycle kicks, one hand catches, everybody wants to recreate those as kids, and that's why they pursue that in high school and college.

How often do popular esports games change and update?

Adam: Then there's a lot of moving parts in video games competitively too, whereas just in the last year have watched some crazy ascensions in traditional athletics. We've watched you watch Caitlin Clark, you watch Simone Biles come back to the Olympics this summer, and these are people that completely changed the definition and the expectation of their sport and the cohort that was around them. That same thing kind of happens in esports, but sometimes it's not just the players, it's the developers. You're kind of playing on a new substrate every, I was going to say every six months, but sometimes it's like every six weeks.

Luke: For the League of Legends. It updates every two weeks and there's major changes every two weeks, hence why I cannot coach and keep up with that because that is just a lot. But yeah, things change constantly. Rocket League's probably been the most consistent over time, but a lot of games do change over seasons or over a few patches or updates just because they want to change the meta, change what is meta and what's going on?

How has interest in collegiate esports changed?

Adam: How much interest are you all getting externally in terms of are students reaching out to you? Do you have students that are walking in just to see the space? What's it like right now for you in terms of meeting young people?

Luke: Yeah, we always have students reaching out, wanting to learn more about the program. And from all over too. It's not just in United States of America, it's all over the world there. Students are always reaching out, looking for opportunities. We have a high population of international students, and so they're also looking into esports as well too. And so there's always students reaching out. I don't think it ever really stops, and students are always walking in the door wanting to learn more how they can get involved and what they can be doing. So it's growing a lot. I saw a recent study that says over 70% of students on a campus play video games, so pretty much everyone's kind of doing it. There was another study that said over 90%, but it included mobile gaming. It had, I forget what the game was, but it included Wordle. If you play Wordle, you're a gamer.

Adam: You're a gamer.

Luke: And so, I go with the 70% one a little bit better, but probably in some way, shape or form. Everybody's playing a game or a part of some game on their phone or on their device that they have. And so students are interested in it, and it's only growing more and more every year. There's over 5,000 students that participate in high school esports here in Michigan alone, not even including all the other states that also have high school esports.

How does esports foster community building and belonging?

Adam: And like you said, it's that it's a place for community. I mean, even folks who aren't going to come in and play at a really high competitive level in the most competitive games if they want to be involved in this thing because maybe they're a different kind of gamer, but they like the idea of where they watch it. I think that's, lemme back this up a little bit. It reminds me a little bit of maybe seven or eight years ago when Critical Role started to become huge. So Critical Role is a show that is on YouTube and Twitch and its voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons for people who don't know, and it's massive. It's millions of views for each episode, and it is literally seven hours of middle-aged nerds playing Dungeons and Dragons. And I think this is wonderful, but what shocked me as this gained in popularity was they started to have, because of the massive advertising and things that came with this, there started to be sort of audience statistics that would come out, psychographics for the audience and the amount of people who had watched hundreds of hours of this show and never played Dungeon Dragons really struck me.

And I think there's some similar stuff out there for esports too. There's folks who, maybe they're a gamer, maybe they're not, but they might not ever play the game that they actually watch and fandom. They just, I'm not going to play, but I'll watch people play it. Right?

Luke: Yeah, no, exactly. That happens quite a bit, I think. And that's kind of the cool part is when we think of a gaming community, a lot of people may see one big community that's all the same, but it is very broken up into genres, into what they want to be doing, what games specifically they want to play. So we're trying to cover that whole community. We're not trying to just focus on one or two communities. We want to support all students from tabletop gaming to desktop and console gaming as well too.

Adam: And I think that's the thing too, is that community, if you're that viewer, it's the chat rooms, it's the discord. And I think I say that with a little bit of caution because I know that a lot of us are aware that the internet is a place that is full of vapid nasty behavior at times, but that's not always the case. There's a lot of positive things that happen for folks that are in these communities. They wouldn't stick around otherwise, right? I mean, you've got people who love to be trolls, but there's I think far more folks who are just getting enrichment in their personal lives from being attached.

Luke: Yeah, I think one great thing is we do have a Discord server for our program. When a student joins, they have to verify that they're a student or alumni and faculty or staff are welcome as well too. And it automatically changes their name from their gamer name to their first and last name.

Adam: You're accountable.

Luke: Yes. We've had zero issues in our Discord. Nobody's been toxic or brought on anything to the Discord that wouldn't be welcome. And obviously they understand it would be taken to student conduct if it did happen, but we've had zero incidences where we've had to take something to student conduct in our discord. And so I think with that accountability, and I think that's what the internet gives is you can be someone that you're not and have a fake name and play this card, but really when you are yourself online, you're not going to act that way. And you are more professional and more respectful. And we've seen that.

Adam: There's ways to do it, right?

Luke: Yes. Ways to keep it positive and a good thing for the students.

Adam: And I think that's an important thing for younger people who are considering coming to an institution and coming at it this level. And for parents to understand nobody's here for your kids to get drugged down into some dark corner of the internet where they're chatting about this stuff. This is a community that's very much here and supporting themselves, whether they're online or whether they're in the digital space doing it.

Luke: Yeah, for sure.

What do you think the future of esports holds?

Adam: Let's move it over a little bit and talk about some of the stuff that's going on just in the esports world, the IOC announcement of exploring in this, the International Olympic Committee, correct. IOC? Yeah, my notes say IOC, I forgot what it meant. I think it's exciting, the idea that this is being brought up, but there's also a little bit of kickback because of what was brought up. Is that correct?

Luke: Yeah. So from what I saw, and I might have missed the most recent one, but it's not necessarily actual esports titles. Even for our program, we don't support sport related esports. So like Madden, 2K, we don't have any teams like that. It hasn't been very popular. It exists. Some universities do have it, but it's not as popular. And so, what they brought on was more traditional sport esports or VR style, real lifestyle esports that doesn't match up with the professional esports scene that a lot of people know. And so it caught a little bit a flack for that. From my understanding. It kind of came down to the game developers as well too. There was a back and forth between the Olympics and the game developers on using their games, and that's something different than sports. No one has the rights to football. Anybody can start a football league if they want to, whereas esports, the game developers own the rights. And so it's really up to them if we're allowed to compete, if we're allowed to do what we do, they get the final say as the game developers and the creators of those games.

Adam: Yeah, I think that it's kind of weird. It would be sort of if Olympic soccer, if somebody owned all the turf, you know what I mean? You are at the mercy of the platform a little bit. So I kind of sympathize with, I think somebody showed a virtual tennis game that they were proposing, I think it was tennis and one of the videos I saw, and it was like everyone was like, what is, it kind of stifles the excitement a little bit, but I think the fact that the discussion is happening is huge.

Luke: And I think even seeing professional athletes avidly talk about gaming, Jokic from the Nuggets talking about how he plays League of Legends and other professional athletes talking about how they play games. It's just becoming more and more mainstream media and something that's not so frowned upon like it was before.

Adam: Yeah, I feel like COVID did a lot for that softening too, where when there was these periods of time where a lot of these athletes and celebrities couldn't do anything, suddenly they were showing up on Twitch streams.

Luke: Making their own streams and doing all of that.

Adam: It was prolific for almost two years there. I mean, that part of it's died down, but I do feel like it kind of codified competitive video gaming in a space that coexisted with athletics and film stars and things like that just became, it kind of packed it into the zeitgeist a little more.

Luke: Well, it even helped athletes get into an audience that maybe they weren't reaching before and make that connection and connect with fans they weren't able to before either, because a live stream almost feels more personal than an interview or time on the field in their sport. And so it was kind of something more personal that let people connect with that athlete. And so I think it was something that was really cool to see and hopefully continue to see some of that. I think it's great for the athletes and it's great for the fans of those athletes as well too.

Adam: Yeah, I think it was really cool. I was thinking about it. I think, oh my gosh, was it the Super Bowl last year or was it the College National Championship? They had streamers outside, not just playing football, just playing games. I saw they were going through all the tailgating stuff and there's these massive tents set up from Activision and Sony. I forget who, but there was stuff like that where you'd kind of go, alright, we're bringing people out who are big names in this to the Rose Bowl or whatever it was. And I apologize, I forget what it was.

Luke: I think they had some stuff at the Super Bowl.

Adam: Yeah, it's happened multiple times in the last couple of years.

Luke: They keep bringing in content creators and various people that play esports or gaming and bring them in. And it highlights gaming even more and shows that it's becoming part of mainstream media.

Adam: Yeah, I, and that's even to talk about the downstream opportunities for students who are involved in this. I know we talked about esports as a business, but then there's just streaming as a business. It's huge. And there's obviously streamers who become popular and have revenue coming in usually start off doing it alone. But once you start making real money that doesn't last long either. I mean, being a video editor, being somebody who's running their broadcast, being their business manager, understanding the business of the game, I mean, those people can very well be coming from places like our esports program.

Luke: Yeah, exactly. And that's the experience we're trying to give them is things that they can take and put into the real world after college. Just like every co-curricular activity.

What exciting things are happening with CMU’s esports program?

Adam: Is there anything coming up either here at CMU or in the esports scene that you're excited about right now? What are you looking at in the near future?

Luke: So, I'm really excited about just continuing to grow the program. Last year was my first full year with the program, working with the program. And we've made a lot of strides and this year we announced scholarships and a coach. So we're making an even bigger step this year. So just year to year, the opportunities that we have as a program to help not just elevate our students, but also elevate the university in the space of collegiate esports and continue to work with our athletic conference and the national bodies. I sit on a few committees and stuff, so just trying to keep pushing esports forward and help CMU be on that map and help support these students and highlight the students we have here at CMU.

Adam: How could the community help support you? If you could ask for something from the people that might be listening who are in our close community or in the broader community, what would you ask 'em to do?

Luke: If you're interested in the program at all, want to learn more, reach out to us. We have lots of opportunities in terms of facilities supporting our students, supporting our teams, just like an athletic program. We need support from the community to make things happen and to support our students even more. So reach out to us, talk to us, and we'd be happy to have a conversation about anything from our facilities to our teams, to ways to support our students in travel equipment, various things, just to get more support for them and help them be the best that they can be.

Adam: How do I become a spectator of CMU esports?

Luke: What's the best way? We stream and put all of our content onto YouTube. We like YouTube a lot and we found that a lot of our viewers are our family members of our players, and they use YouTube a little bit more. So youtube.com/@cmichesports, that's the link. You can find all of our live streams and content there of our matches.

How do I get started in esports?

Adam: We'll make sure they can click it on our YouTube link. Perfect. If I'm a young esports athlete or I have one at home, what's a good way to get started? To get noticed, to be prepared to potentially play for my college team?

Luke: Yeah, it's a great question. It was actually something I was surprised. The first summer camp, I was expecting parents to be like, what is this? What's going on in here? And they were actually asking, how can I get involved? Is there an AAU of esports?

And so we started figuring that out and there, there's high school leagues, there's amateur leagues, ways to get involved and if a student wants to get involved, reach out to us as college directors and directors in the collegiate space, we're always trying to help students get involved in their middle school, high school leagues and get there. Because a student that comes to us with experience is a lot better than a student with no experience. Not to scare off college students that haven't had experience, but it's better to come in with some experience. So we tell parents, look out for amateur leagues. There's always something going on in major towns like Grand Rapids, Detroit, there's some type of esport event or some tournament going on that they can participate in. And luckily for some of the games they've actually built in tournaments within the game. So just competing in those and participating in those would help a lot for the students that are trying to get started in esports and get involved.

And for students that aren't looking to compete, but do anything. Start making your own content, doing your own things, trying out video editing. Just try it. Once you start trying it, you'll learn things as you go and get better and better. And so, by the time you're going to a college, you can say, “Hey, I've already made videos on esports. I've made highlight reels, I've done these things. Let me do that for your program” and it's going to be an easy yes, please do that. I'm one person, I can't do everything. So more students, the greater

Adam: So you got to have the tape, right? It's like your mom with the VHS when you're out batting, when you're…

Luke: And it doesn't have to be perfect either. Something that is showing that you're putting in effort and trying to learn because again, we're not going to get students come in and work with us. They're not experts in their field. They're students that are learning. So we're always there to help them build through it, improve it, and make it better for them. So it's a really good portfolio when they're leaving college.

Adam: That's awesome. I've got a really great collection of TimeSplitters 2 clips of me playing. I'm just joking. There was no way to record TimeSplitters 2.

Luke: Coming back to be a student?

Adam: I was good at TimeSplitters 2 multiplayer. We had to play it on the four-way, split screen on the original Xbox on our Dukes. Sat around with the Dukes to play. It was great, man. It had the monkey hoard mode. I recommend that one. If you could find it on a 360.

Luke: I’ll have to see if that’s still a thing.

Adam: My gosh. That's a franchise that died so bad.

Luke: That’s unlucky.

Adam: Luke, thanks so much for coming over and talking to us about video games. It makes me want to go and play some games with my son and get destroyed. Not every time. Thanks so much for coming in, man. It's good to meet you.

Luke: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was awesome.

Adam: Yeah. Thank you for stopping by The Search Bar. Make sure that you like and subscribe so that you don't have to search for the next episode.

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The views and opinions expressed in these episodes are strictly those of the host and guest speaker.