 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, we're celebrating Star Wars Day with April Welch, Executive Director of eSports and Digital Arts at Illinois Tech. May the fourth be with you, April. Thank you so much, Catherine. It's just a wonderful, wonderful day for Star Wars fans everywhere and world builders everywhere. Thank you so much for the opportunity to join you. So, we have something kind of special. April is in her Star Wars room. And behind you are Star Wars figures and all sorts of things, but you know, show us a few. I want to see, you know, especially, you know, Yoda. Absolutely, congrats, Yoda. Welcome, Yoda. Our cue is right here. There's a fantastic all the years in my dining room is a life-size Star Small from 1999. Fantastic. Master replica lightsabers are here. So I'm absolutely, I adore Star Wars. I adore everything that the community brings. And that's really the, again, the goal of really good storytelling actually brings people together. And there's so many wonderful games built around the Star Wars universe and such fantastic storytelling and that choice to allow others to join in and tell their story through the lens of this universe has really, really brought together video games, storytelling, novels, movies. The Disney platform has brought the actual, like, weekly, almost a soap opera when you look at the Mandalorian and other things. All right, and you have your shirt, if you back up a bit. I do, I dressed for you. All right. And if you're watching this after it's on one of the platforms, you will, it won't be May the 4th, but you can enjoy the celebration of Star Wars. So, okay, so let me ask you, I was going to ask you if you're a Star Wars fan, but I actually think you are, is that right? I actually am. I'm a fan of really, of emotional storytelling, of wonderful, wonderful things that let you leave your normal life and explore what could be beyond you. Perfect. And so do you have a favorite movie? I do. I mean, I'm an old person. So I saw the first Star Wars when that was in The Drive-In Theater so many years ago, but for so many like me, Empire Strikes Back is my favorite of the Star Wars movies right now. You know, what's interesting is I did see Star Wars when it first came out in, I don't know, 1979, 1978. 77. Oh, 77. Oh, not long ago. Okay, yeah, I mean, I did go to the movie theater and see it. But you know what, I saw a later Star Wars movie that I really liked, and it was Rogue One with Felicity Jones. And I think the reason I liked it is because I really liked her character. Gotcha. Absolutely. That's a good one too. I mean, there's nothing not good. I love in the Star Wars world how robots and droids have always been treated as equals. There's a whole story of equality for the Star Wars universe where they speak of, and I think when artificial intelligence grows, the way that Star Wars has trained us to treat droids as equals and as valid, I think that's going to come out. And in Rogue One, the way you see the droids interacting, it's very, very heartwarming. And you know, we're going to be talking about lessons from Star Wars today. And so do you, is there a lesson there for us? Absolutely. So when George Lucas first wrote Star Wars, he was studying the work of Joseph Campbell, who wrote the myth series and a bunch of wonderful books. He was also studying, he was also a fan of the samurai stories and a fan of the westerns. So with Star Wars, he was bringing everything together to create an emotional journey that gives you hope. That's, and if you hear him interview after interview, he says it's what he's putting forth is hope. So at the time, you know, that Vietnam War was very close. There is a lot of destruction and pain around our country in 77. And Star Wars was just such a breath of fresh air, such a, such a joyful ride that just let you, you know, forget everything and cheer. So that, I think that's one of the biggest lessons that Star Wars teaches is that there's always hope that we've got a future that's worth fighting for. That it brings people of all walks of life together to have a common language, something to talk about. Like, like this is Mace Windu's lightsaber. I talked to, you know, I talked to a fabricator for hours about how you make this. And then my students actually made me a lightsaber that they built. Oh, I don't have it in hand, but they built it themselves in the 3D lab, fabricating it at Illinois Tech and they put all their names on it. And it's fully functional, not fully functional. I mean, it won't cut, but it's as functional as this one. Yeah, you know, I wouldn't want to mess around with you in a dark alley with a real fully functional light. It kind of makes me think of like the Big Bang Theory where, where, oh, Professor Proton comes back and they have the lightsaber and stuff. I don't know if you've seen that one, but it's kind of funny. But for people who are not familiar with this and Star Wars Day and everything, the most iconic kind of quote from Star Wars is, may the Force be with you. And I don't know when that, when Star Wars Day came about, may the Force be with you, but it's sort of common and everyone kind of gets excited and posts on social media and dresses up at Star Wars as Star Wars characters. I was actually at Starbucks earlier today and someone was dressed up as Yoda. And I thought that that was really cool. And I was able to say, hey, I have a Star Wars show today. So got them excited about that. So fantastic. So let me ask you, you know, let's tie this into eSports a little bit. Do you think that the Force has been with eSports in the past few years? Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, the Force binds us, connects us all. And there's something about eSports that binds us and connects us all. It's a platform that you don't have to be 250 pounds, like alignment needs to be. You don't have to be six foot five, like a basketball player needs to be. You can be yourself and excel at eSports at any of the games. It's a function of your practice, a function of your skill, a function of your choices. So it's a great equalizer. I think eSports is a wonderful way to bring community together and to give people a way to relax and release and enjoy each other's company. They have such wonderful time riding the wave as it were. So we're both members of eSports Trade Association. And I really think that the Force has been with eSPA, especially in the last year or so. Absolutely, absolutely. It's been just a joy to be a part of eSPA and meet other people who are also passionate about eSports and other people who are really excited about letting folks know that eSports is not the enemy, not something your children are doing that's wrong. eSports is a fantastic way to really hone your skills, hone your attention, hone your confidence, learn how to deal with Prama, actually. I've got lots of students who found their found their voice after being in the chat and dealing with, you know, dealing with people from all different walks of life. So there's so many wonderful things about eSports that I could just go on and on and on. Oh, okay. So let's talk about our first quote here and applicability. Okay, Yoda said, do or do not, there is no try. I think the lesson there is to commit to what you're doing. How do you think that this applies to eSports? Absolutely. I think it's the perfect quote that you pulled out. And it's very true at the point in the movie. That's from, again, from my favorite movie. That's from Empire. And at that point, Luke Skywalker was kind of like, I'll give it a try. And Yoda was saying, you know, come at it with, like, bring your all, basically. Don't half-heartedly go for something. You know, don't just try. We want you to show up. And that's how our eSports players are. They practice the same moves over and over and over again until, you know, milliseconds. They're shaving milliseconds off their time to, you know, to do these complex procedures. They work on routines together. They really, they bring their all. They bring their A game. And they, you know, they don't just try. They keep going. You know, they fail and they get up again and keep going. I think that's a fantastic quote. All right. So Darth Vader said in A New Hope, I find your faith, lack of faith disturbing. Do you think that the eSports community is generally supportive in each other and believes in the eSports cause? Or do you think that they resort to the dark side? I think that's a fantastic question. And again, it almost depends on what titles you're playing. You know, if you're, if you're, if you're playing, say, Valorant, there's a fantastic community in Valorant. They're supportive, they're fun. They're, you know, they're all about really, you know, having a, having a good time. They're in there just bouncing around. There are some games that are not that way. There are some games that are really intense and that people are so serious that it gets, it gets, you know, you have to have a thick skin to deal with the chats that come in. And then there are other games that are, you know, it just, it depends on the game. So I think, but when Vader said that, I think that he's, he's awesome. He's also one of my favorite characters. Darth Maul and Darth Vader are, are one of my favorite characters. But having faith in your own ability and he was asking for faith in his plan and his, and his approach, I think that lets you, you've got to have faith in your team. Like if you're playing games like League of Legends, where you're, you're, you're working with others for hours and hours a day to hone your skills as a team, to move as a team. And you're playing games like Rainbow Six Thieves or something like that. Then having faith in your, in your partners is just so important. Sure. Okay. C-3PO said, sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to one. At times do you think that there are impossible odds in esports? And how do you think they're overcome? Well, Han Solo said, never tell me the odds in response to that. So I think that one of the things that's so exciting about esports is the fact that it expands the playing field in a way that physical sports just can't do it. You know, like the most you can do to get a basket, if you're playing basketball, is go to the far end, the other end and shoot the basket. In Fortnite or in other games, the level of skill it takes to hit these targets, to see these snipers, to build fast, to do all the level of skill it takes digitally to do the things that our students and others are doing is absolutely amazing. And the odds are insane when you think about people who are able to do that consistently. So like the pros in esports are just phenomenally good when you compare them. Like the odds of them being able to do the things that they do consistently are just mind blowing. And I wish I had that for you, but it's just a fantastic thing to watch when you are looking to see like and don't even try like I'm too old to play, but if I give you even if you try to try to do some of the things that they're doing, it's just it's just mind blowing how fast they think their reflexes and how quickly they make decisions and make decisions in unison with each other. It's just amazing. And the odds of doing that is incredible. Well, you know what's interesting is I've interviewed a lot of people on this show who have started their businesses in COVID times. And it's amazing how many businesses have propped up during this time. And frankly, the odds are against them. And it's, you know, I give them a lot of credit for putting all their time and energy. And you know what, I've also noticed some people, they pivot, they find that that one direction that they started to go to that it didn't really work. And then they pivot and they have as much of a great attitude about the next venture. And they keep doing that. And then when I have these business owners or people who have worked in the eSports industry for a long time, and some even before it was called eSports, you know, I'm impressed by what they've done and that they've gone from working in the gaming industry to the eSports industry and doing some amazing things. And the odds were always against them, but they just do it anyway. They don't just try. They actually take action and do. That's so true. Our eSports program, we started in 2013. We consolidated a bunch of our different. I found myself being the faculty lead for many different individual games. And with Elvin Moye, one of our lead students who played League of Legends, we consolidated in 2013. And you are absolutely right. It's just that passion there and that fearlessness that says, you know, we're going to build it anyway. Let them come or let them not come. We're going to build a community for us by us. And that's how we are for our students. Lead everything. We're just about to hire a new person. And I reached out to our students and I gave them a whole list of applicants and said, tell me your top five. Tell me your top three. Tell me your alternates. We're going to pick who you want. So you're absolutely right. All right. So let's go on to our next quote. Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope said, strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Clearly often success arises out of overcoming failures. How do you think this supplies esports? Overcoming failures is what you train for. And this is what I keep saying. This is this is one of the hidden benefits of esports. My students have so much confidence in their job interviews because over and over and over, they've failed and they got up. They failed and they got up. They failed and they tried something new. They failed and they did another direction. It's like flight simulator training for a pilot. They know how to fail and rebound. They know how to fail and rebound faster than anybody I've ever met. And I think that's a fantastic skill to have. And they know how to not take things personally. They know how to, if somebody's really snarky in the comments, they know how to shut that out and not take it personally and not let it throw them off their game. So definitely, definitely. So Obi-Wan did not prove that he was more powerful after being struck down. But theoretically in some of the novels, he was more powerful after being struck down. But our students are taking, this is another thing, they take that virtual hit and then they get up. They take that virtual hit and then they go learn. This is the part that people forget. Our students watch a lot of YouTube videos. They watch a lot of other people gaming. They don't just take a hit and just randomly try again. They take a hit and go study something and figure it out and make themselves better. It's like self-guided learning. And you know what's interesting? For people who don't value gaming or they don't value esports or they're a parent and they think that their child is wasting their time. You can learn a lot of lessons from gaming that you can apply in other areas of your life. What do you think of that? Oh, I think that's 100% true. Absolutely. And there's research to back that up too. And through the esports trade association, we have a great team on research. But that is so true. There's so much that gaming gives you when you are, when you're, especially when you're young, when you let your young kids play, there's hand-eye coordination. There's confidence. There's communication. They read faster. They make decisions faster. There's so much that our gamers do so well because they're practicing over and over and over again. And there's also, you know, if you think about it, there's the fact that gaming is so prolific now. It gives our kids in our younger kids, like third, fourth grade, they give them a common language, something to talk about at school. So they're, if they're in the, you know, if they're building in Minecraft, they have something to talk about that breaks the ice. And that's just brilliant. Being able to have something that everybody can join in on and everybody's got a bit of, you know, an opinion and a fun birthday party is in Minecraft and that sort of thing. You know, I think when people get older, that's when the fear of failure causes them to not act or be cautious about acting. But if you think about when you are a child learning how to walk, you fell and fell and fell. And it wasn't any big deal. But when we fall even one time as an adult, it is, you know, a problem. And but it's also, it's not only how we think about that fall, it's our fear of what other people will think or the behavior of other people when they see someone fall. So yeah. And okay, so our next quote can pull up Yoda to help answer this. Yoda in the phantom menace said, fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Do you think that the eSports industry is dominated by courage or by fear? For me, I would say it's dominated by courage. And I think that the bit of fear that is there is way over reported. It's dominated by people who are really, and again, eSports is a very small part of the whole game, like professional eSports is a very small part of the whole gaming ecosystem. But when you think about collegiate eSports, eSports in high school, eSports in middle school, eSports that is built around community at the YMCA. And I just built a program for them. Like if you, if you go broad and talk about eSports, dominantly, it's the courage to show up and play with friends. It's the courage to open your, you know, to try to jump in there and try, even though you've never played this game before, it's the courage to fail and it's the courage to figure it out. And it's far more, far more on the side of courage than fear, I believe. Sure. And, you know, new games come out like Valorant, you know, and when it comes out, that's, that's when people have to have that courage to jump in and learn it. I mean, if they have an opportunity, they have that opportunity to be the best if they jump in right away. But they should also have the courage to jump in later. And, and because even though it's kind of a catch-up situation still, but in any way, like think about the courage that it takes to do all these things first. Like in the eSports industry, everything's being done for the first time. Like UCI eSports, when they developed their program, they were like first or one of the first, not quite the first, but they were one of the first. And, you know, anyone who has that vision to be the first is really acting courageously. And we see it all around and we should appreciate that, whether it's in eSports or whether we're watching SpaceX launch a rocket or whether we see, you know, an electric car that is has all of these amazing, you know, functions that we've never seen before. Like whatever we see in tech, you know, it's you have these firsts and it's very exciting. And it's just kind of dominated by these courageous personalities. Oh, that's so true. And Kathy and Mark at UCI are so open. Like they invited me into their lab when I was building my lab in 2018. They've been just fantastic. That's one thing about the collegiate eSports scene is, you know, it's not like the like, you know, people are pounding to try to one up each other. We're so supportive at the administrative level. Doc Haskell, there's so many wonderful folks in collegiate eSports really bringing it. And like as in terms of first, like in Chicago, Robert Morris was the first school to offer scholarships. And now we offer scholarships for our eSports player. We don't offer scholarships for the headhunters. We offer we offer scholarships for people who build our community. We offer scholarships for people who will elevate everyone. So like we have 13 titles we play, we have, we have, you know, four or five teams under each title so that everybody can play. So our goal is community and growth and really being supportive. We're an engineering school and a tech school. So we want them to have an oasis, like just like Ready Player One, we want to express the relieving oasis where it's fun and you can win things and your friends are there. So tell us about what's going on in Illinois Tech right now in your department. Oh, absolutely. Yes. So I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. We're just bringing up a game design and interactive arts degree. We're really, we're really leaning in to the intersection of technology and art. We just had a fantastic event where Amazon warehouse services team and gave a talk on artificial intelligence and machine learning and gaming that was absolutely fantastic. We're really leaning into finding the, that balance between the art side of gaming and the technical side of gaming so that when places like the ILM stagecraft stages are going up where Unreal Engine, the game, the game design behind VR is merging with production. Those types of things are happening right now and it's just fantastic to be in this space, to have gamers that are enjoying themselves or enjoying their college years but are still on the leaderboards and are still earning while they play. I've got students who've paid off their college loans because they know how to manage their content. They know how to open accounts on Patreon, on Facebook, on Twitter, on TikTok even, on LinkedIn, on Instagram. So they've got their social presence down so that when they're on Twitch they're very easily earning and they're very easily making an impact and curating their content in a way that is entertaining and it builds an audience. It sounds to me like that's Illinois Tech is a great option for people who are interested in having a career in gaming, in esports, in visual arts. And so how can they, how can they contact you? Yeah, absolutely. I think my, my LinkedIn is on the, is on the screen. My email is welch, a, at IIT.edu. And for gaming we just started a partnership with, with Columbia, Columbia College in Chicago. So it's a fantastic blend because we've got the technical side of the world down and they've got the artistic side of the world down. So together we're hoping to really make an impact and give people a full experience. So our kids are computer scientists, our engineers, our, we've got an ID school, a school of design by Last Home on Holy Nod. So we've got some really, a lot to bring to the table. And it's just been so much fun being there for the past like, since 2006. Well, if, if I was trying to pick a school, I'd be very encouraged by what you're telling me because you have a lot of enthusiasm. Thank you so much April for being here to celebrate Star Wars Day with us. Thank you so much and may the Force be with you all. All right. So thank you to our viewers for joining us today. And next week, my guests will be Andy Lee and Greg Sardar from Game Glass. May the Force be with you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.