 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, it's my great pleasure to talk with the director of UCI eSports, Mark Deppie. Our topic is UCI eSports, competition, academics, community, and more. Welcome, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. So I understand that it's UCI eSports fifth anniversary. Thank you. Kind of crazy to think we've been around that long. It felt like we were brand new this whole time. All right. Well, you know, for those who don't know what UCI stands for, it's the University of California, Irvine, correct? Yes. Okay. So I know a lot of people are really interested in your program because it's pretty much the first and the one that everyone's been talking about for the five years you've been. In the eSports game. So tell us how it all happened. You know, in 2015, some colleagues and I just saw an opportunity where UCI was thriving in terms of developing this natural community ecosystem. Our club League of Legends team had won back to back to back national titles before national titles existed. We had a great game design program, eSports were still very nascent, but we're kind of projecting this explosive growth. And then other schools had just started offering scholarship programs with Robert Morris University in Chicago, starting the very first one in 2014. So I and some other colleagues just sort of whispering this idea around campus about what are the chances that a premier research university would tolerate the idea of supporting video games. In such a way that we would offer scholarships for young people to compete for us and obviously we are successful in launching a program, finding the space, finding the financial support for it and creating a tsunami of kind of political support to make it happen. So that's a really brief story of our Genesis. So we began thinking about it in the summer of 2015 and we opened our arena doors fall of 2016 five years ago. All right. So we will learn a little bit more about it with this video, the fifth anniversary video. As we reflect back on the five years of UCI eSports, it's crazy to think how far we've come. In the summer of 2015, this eSports journey started with a vision, a vision to figure out what eSports at a premier research university could look like. Working with students, staff, faculty and corporate partners, we built a program that broadly approaches the world of eSports through our five pillars of competition, academics and research, community, entertainment and careers. Over the years, Mark Deppi and his incredible staff have really managed to professionalize this program and really set an example for other schools, not just in the US, but across the world to now emulate. You know, one of the great things about having eSports on our campus is that it really signals to those of us who love games, that we are home here, that this is a space for all of us. I've partnered up with UCI eSports and we've created the first ever Poki Scholarship, which will be awarded every year forever to someone in one of their eSports programs. Well, there's no doubt that it changed the collegiate eSports community. I think it gave notice to all colleges and universities, administrators, faculty members, students and parents that eSports is a real thing. What's easily our fondest memory with working with UCI eSports is literally the opening of the arena. There hasn't been another type of opportunity for us to integrate with any collegiate school for the long term. The UCI eSports dedication to performance and the well-being of their students is something that just perfectly aligns with where Logitech G wants to be. The eSports program really is just another way for us to support our students. It's just another way for us to make their experience in college that much better and help them get prepared for life after college. Whatever their career path, whatever their aspirations, playing competitively or just getting into the industry or moving on to some other industry or just being a successful student. Alright, that was a great anniversary video, Mark. Can you tell us a little bit more about the five pillars of UCI eSports that you mentioned? Yeah, well, first talk about their importance and I'll just say that when you're building something new, it's really hard to lock in an identity about what you're trying to achieve. And then once you even understand that to be able to communicate it to the millions of people you're going to have to talk to on your way. And so our pillars really come out of what we think the essence of eSports are. I think eSports are a combination of competition, the community that plays these games and the entertainment value they provide. That was one of our alumni gave me that opinion when we were building our program. And there were research universities, so we knew we had to align the academic mission of the university and contribute to the discovery of new knowledge. So we added academics and research. And then after our first year, we just saw so much opportunity to connect our students to internships, to career panels, to full-time jobs. People just send me requests for young talent to come work at their company. And so we added our career pillar after that, but essentially our five pillars allow us to really lock down what we're going to spend time, energy and resources on. And then allows us to communicate that easily to the broader world. And, you know, I noticed that you're using the background for the UCI eSports conference of 2021. I understand that that was just days ago. Tell us about that. Yeah, so we just hosted our fourth annual research conference. As I mentioned, we certainly want to align with the academic mission of the university. And we initially started with a symposium, our very first year of existence, and then for the last four years have thrown up peer reviewed academic conference so people can submit proposals to talk on one of our three tracks. Either peer reviewed academic research, collegiate eSports or scholastic eSports. And so I think we had 300 registrants this year. It was virtual for the second year in a row. It's a really awesome community of people who are trying to connect the dots between education, young people, their interests, and this thing we have come to call eSports and so really proud of that effort. It's a humongous lift for our staff and team, but every year when we finish it up, we're just so proud that we were a part of it. Okay, so getting to the competition part of it. What teams do you have? So right now, for most of our history, we've had League of Legends and Overwatch varsity teams for both of those games. We did have a donor one year that I wanted to fund a Super Smash Ultimate team so we've had one one year of Smash Ultimate. But we are really focused on League of Legends and Overwatch now we have excellent coaches a long history of success in those games, and really optimistic for the really great talent that we have this year. So those are the games we play. There's a lot of interest in other games out there. I get a lot of emails about when you're going to start a team for X, Y, or Z. And ideally when we have more resources and we can grow a little bit, we certainly will. Sir, and you've actually had your teams have had some great success and won championships. Is that right? Yeah, and we could count championships that we're kind of adjacent to. We won the 2018 League of Legends championship. That was certainly our biggest winning highlight. Our Overwatch team went to the Fiesta Bowl and was a finalist that year. We've had a lot of club teams win championships, whether that be in World of Warcraft or Super Smash Brothers. We don't really take credit for their success, but our club teams are our elite as well. So even if you're not one of our varsity team members, there's still a great opportunity to compete at an elite collegiate level UCI. So how do you recruit those people who may be interested in being on a team? Well, identifying people who are both really excellent students and elite gamers is quite the challenge. And essentially they have to reveal themselves to us. So we have coaches in the scene. We have a public discord. We have a recruiting form on our website. I would say oftentimes people will reach out to one of our players or one of our coaches just through a direct message or a discord and just get to know a little bit about us. There's a lot of different ways that we find talent, but like I said, it's a really high bar to find someone that's gotten near straight A's in high school but has also played thousands of hours of video games. Those two don't always go hand in hand as you may not as you may as you may appreciate. And so I understand you also have intramurals. Is that right? We've participated and helped lead some intramurals over the years. When COVID hit, we really invested a lot into it because we had all the infrastructure set up. We had the shout casters, the tournament organizers. So we worked with our recreation department to unroll or to roll out some intramural. I think we had seven or eight games, including league and Overwatch. A game I play Magic the Gathering Arena. And then we even had a word game for faculty and staff. And so, yeah, we've done eSports intramurals over the years. Right now, recreation is kind of running it and they're more focused on kind of the sports titles like FIFA and NFL Madden. Terrific. And so do you have camps as well? Yeah, we say pretty busy over the summer. We've thrown summer camps every year. We started in 2016 or 2017, excuse me, with our first camp for girls and gaming. We really wanted to, A, make it very well known that we want to create a place that's welcoming for young girls and create a pipeline of people interested in games that we could engage with. So we started with girls and gaming that year. We've run boot camps. We've run outreach camps. We have all kinds of different things we've done over the years. But yeah, summer camps are something that a lot of people really like and look forward to on a college campus and allows young parents to find something awesome for their children to do over the summer that both the parents can support because it's at a university like UCI. And the high school or middle school or love because it's got video games related to it. Right. So what's the, the history of your arena? That's a pretty big project. Tell us about that. Well, our space I'll say we, we didn't know how important it was till after it was built. We, we knew we needed a space for our teams to play. We wanted to have an income source to offset the cost of our program. So we built it as a small business that could host tournaments and events and just recreational gaming. But we didn't understand was that every university was going to think they needed one after we built it. So some, some people have facilities that kind of are just for the varsity team. Our space is open to the public. And so it's really become a home base for gamers. Yeah, you can see some of the new PCs that we have in there. We've just recently de-densified it to kind of make a little nicer experience and make people feel a little bit safer sitting next to each other given the pandemic. But yeah, we built it for all those reasons to have a, to have a home to make a make, to create a revenue stream. But yeah, we didn't appreciate the impact of it until everyone else decided they needed one as well. So are there, is it widely used by other people in the community? Yeah, we, before COVID we estimated we had about 170,000 visitors in our three and a half years pre-COVID. So it is a, one of the most heavily walked places on campus. I think we, when you look at credit card transactions, we're in the top seven departments on credit card transactions on campus. You think of dining, you think about arts, you think about major facilities and esports. This 3,500 square foot space was in the top 10 in terms of number of people making transactions. So it is a heavily used space. If you walk by, you'll see fingerprints all over the windows because even when we're not open, people are trying to look in and scuffing up our windows. So it's a very popular space. We just had a reopening a couple of weeks ago for our fifth anniversary, and we had a line about 300 yards long that lasted for a couple of hours as people were coming in to see the space. So we know there's a big appetite to get back in there. All right. So what is a big lesson you've learned in your five years about developing this program? You know, people ask me like, what advice would you give to someone starting the new program? One of the most common ones, I'll give a couple. One is to work with faculty at your university. If you're not familiar with the college environment, faculty are major stakeholders in the governance of universities. And even though there's a lot of faculty supporters, we've had them involved since every step of the way. I think they've also been our most vocal critics. And so really trying to make them feel like a part of the process is a high recommendation. We know how a faculty advisory committee, which has been a great sounding board. The other one is to be really thoughtful in terms of who you're hiring to coach your teams. I think that anyone with subject matter expert who understands the game at a high level is just fine. It's way more important in my opinion that they are a good leader. They're a good role model. They understand how to motivate people. They understand how to deal with conflict. It is a lot of work to manage a group of young people, especially if they haven't had team experience before. So understanding the qualities that you should look for in a great coach are another thing that I've learned. What do you think physical training is for esports athletes? No, I think everyone should know, yeah, that that physical movement, getting blood going cardiovascular health, understanding proper ergonomics and posture, those are really essential for pretty much everything. So it's no different in esports. We were very fortunate to have Halish Patel, our exercise physiologist, express interest in helping to develop a health and wellness program for our program. Right, I guess at the get go our first year, and it's been expanded ever since. And now every one of our athletes is able to have one on one personal training we do fitness testing. We track their progress over the quarter. And so they have really great access to workouts and guidance. We talk about nutrition and sleep and mental health. And so, yeah, it's been really wonderful to have someone really intentionally focused on health because I think everyone's concerned about how much time people spend in front of computers and the sedentary nature of gaming. And so when we can both show that we're getting outside and I guess reap the benefits of it, it certainly is a strength for our program. So does UCI esports value diversity and inclusion? No, I think any public university has a very public facing statement and stance on trying to be a welcoming and inclusive space for all people. Esports at UCI is no different. One of the videos mentioned that we do have a 15 page diversity plan that a task force put together several years ago on our website. You can go look at it right now. We've done everything in that list of recommendations. I will say the challenge is we haven't felt the impact that we were hoping to have and so you still don't see the entire gaming community reflected when you look at the top esports stages. You certainly see women and underrepresented minorities in and around esports programs. But I think we still have a lot of work to do. There's a lot of people talking about it. But I will say it's one of my big frustrations over the five years we've been doing this is that the needle hasn't really moved. We don't really have levers to pull to make it move. So yes, it is both something we highly value and also aspire to do much better than we have so far. But besides that challenge, what other challenges have been big for you? I will say it's just nascent. We're early in the history of college esports. I will say everything feels new every year. We reinvent the wheel very often. So that's one kind of personal challenge at UCI in our program. The other thing I think that's maybe one of the biggest issues for college esports is a lot of people are trying to influence the direction of where college esports heads and the group that's not exerting its influence the way it should is really higher education. I really strongly believe that colleges you really need to set standards and create guidelines and eligibility rules and level the playing field. It is kind of the Wild Wild West. We talk about that a lot. And I would love to see schools really make sure their voices heard because right now, like I said, there's kind of like a gold rush or a rush to implement different things or gobble up kind of just all the air in the room. And so I'm a little nervous if schools can't get organized that that'll continue to happen. And I understand you also have a position with NAISF. Is that right? I helped NAISF kind of launch many years ago and I've been honored to serve as commissioner for the last few years. It was funded through the Samueli Foundation, one of UCI's biggest donors and so we're interested and have a long history of kind of investing in STEM education. They saw some clear overlap in esports and STEM. And so we initially piloted an Orange County High School Esports League in 2016 or 2017 and we expanded it to North America wide the following year. And then it's kind of been up and running for several years. And yes, I'm still the commissioner of it and excited to see where it goes from here. All right. So what do you think the future of esports is? I talk about esports is the future of competition. I really think if you look at how society is evolving, we're meeting people online. I met my wife through a dating app. We buy everything online. We're not, we're not, I don't know, I don't see it going back to back to retail or in person experiences. I know we will always seek in person engagement, but I just think we will always use technology. As we think about competition and especially intercollegiate competition, it's hard for me to imagine us banging our heads together playing football in 100 years from now. I just think that's not the direction that society's headed. So when I talk about esports, I really think it represents how we're going to compete in the future. And so that's why it's worth paying attention to. Sure. And so how did UCI esports adapt to the pandemic? Well, UCI, like many schools shut our doors in March of 2020 and didn't reopen them for a long time. So we weren't really encouraged to come back until this summer. So it was nice that because we do compete in a digital environment, we are able to compete and practice online, but with our facility, our fitness program and all the staffing we have, we really lost the ability for a lot of that to make an impact the way we wanted to. So yeah, I mean, we were treated to our homes, offices and our home PCs. We sent gear home with students that needed better equipment. But it was certainly a struggle psychologically and just structurally. So I could not be more excited to be back. It was a little weird coming back. Our arena officially opens to the public on Monday. We just can't be more excited to see each other face to face and re-engage. All right. That's fantastic. And so, you know, Mark, I'm going to give you the last word. And so could you let us know how people who are interested can find you and any last comments or thoughts that you want to give us? Yeah, well, we'd love for people to engage with us. We have a public discord. You can find our website is esports.uci.edu. You can find us there. If you're interested in our conference, you can check it out. Just Google UCI eSports conference. I'm at UCI Kaboom on Twitter. All our social media handles for the campus are at UCI eSports. And I'll just make a shameless plug. We are hiring an arena coordinator. We've had a lot of turnover in the last year. And we are really right now staffing back up. And so we're going to have an arena coordinator position open right now. And then several other jobs coming in the next six months. So hopefully folks keep an eye out for those. All right. Terrific, Mark. It was terrific having you on our show. And so best of luck to you and your program. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. And thank you to our viewers for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be Uzair Hassan of eSports. How see you then.