 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today, we're talking with Nick Turner, a lecturer at Queen Mary's College in Hampshire, England, and a consultant with NT eSports. Our topic is eSports Across the Pond, Educating and Inspiring UK Students. Welcome, Nick. Hello. Thanks for having me. It's lovely to be on the show. All right. So, what do you teach at Queen Mary's College? College. So, yeah, at QMC, we're the leading provider of eSports education in the UK, and we teach 16 to 19-year-olds on a formal basis with a curriculum which involves a total of 20 different units, and the full-time students will do 15 units, of which five are mandatory. They have to do them, and then another 10 optional. But we also run it on a slightly smaller scale so that you have, it's like the equivalent of 1A level. So, they might do eSports as 1A level, and then they might do business studies, and they might do media or maths or two other subjects. And we teach a whole range of things to do with eSports. The mandatory units are based around introduction to eSports, where we look at organisations, the structure, we look at traditional sports and how that compares to eSports. We look at teams, games, tournaments in the UK and abroad. We then have the second unit, which is skills, performance and analysis, which is where we look at the different genres of games that are prominent in eSports, and then how we analyse those, and the students will undertake their own performance analysis, watching their peers play as teams in competitive games so that they can come up with an action plan, they feed that action plan back to the team, and then they analyse them again so they can assess the impact. Enterprise and entrepreneurship, which is where they have to come up with an idea of an enterprise that they could start up within eSports, which is kind of, we teach them business at the same time, so the different ways that you can set up companies and PLCs, private limited companies, sole traders, freelancers, etc. And then they have to create a business plan, a proper business plan with an executive summary, having done all the research, and then they pitch that idea to us, which is always good fun, it's like Dragon's Den. The fourth one is health, well-being and fitness, because we're very keen to disperse the myth that, especially with parents, all gamers are just teenagers in dark rooms, drinking energy drinks, playing all night, so we're very keen to show the other side and the importance of it, which is kind of interesting as well, because if you look around the college, if you walk around the college first thing in the morning and you look at the students doing lots of other subjects, there are lots of students who are half asleep, eyes are shut, where they've been gaming all night, whereas you don't see it in the eSports classes, because they know, they learn that it's not a good way to progress, it's not a good way to develop, so we're installing some values into what they do, which is quite good, and then they're the key units, the mandatory units, and then you have the optional units, which are, I would say, slightly more practical in their nature, so they do events management, so I have to put on eSports events, whether that's like a little LAN tournament or something, they'll do livestream broadcasting, content creation, video production, games design, so in the games design unit, they're going to be designing a first person shooter, and then there's other things like branding and nutrition, so there's a whole kind of plethora of subjects that are all interrelated with eSports, which makes that eSports qualification great for transferable skills, because they can take the business side, the financial side, the house side, plus the gaming side, and it's not a gaming course, we don't teach them how to be pro players, it's very much about the industry and the business, because what's happened around the world, but certainly here in the UK, is that we've got more and more companies setting up more organisations developing, the industry is growing exponentially, and we've just been stealing people and experts and specialists from other industries to fill the hole, fill the gap, so the idea is that we're now starting that generation of training people and educating people to go straight into that workplace, go into the eSports industry, so there's plenty to go at, and in the last, it was launched three years ago, and there was probably about 10 colleges that started running it, of which we were one, and now it's closer to 200 colleges, so there are eSports students across the UK now, looking to progress, so it's all very positive and exciting. Okay, fantastic, well I think the people in the United States will need to hear a little bit about how UK education system works, because when we talk about 16 to 19 year olds and college, that seems quite foreign to people in the US, as well as A levels, and so can you explain that? Yes, so the way the education system works in the UK, we have school, which is compulsory from four through till 16, so everybody has to go to school, that's the good, you know, if you don't go to school, you get punished, there are fines in place, etc, and at 16 they take GCSEs, which are a level two qualification, so once they've taken their GCSEs, they then have to either be in educational employment or training, so most people, the majority of people at 16, go on to college, which is a two-year, generally a two-year study program, and then in that two years, that's where they do their A levels, which is the next level up, level three, or they do what's known as BTECs, which is what the eSport is, which is a vocational qualification on the same level as A levels, but A levels are more kind of exam based, and lots of people see them as more academic, which isn't a view that anyone who delivers and does BTECs thinks, but they go through that process of college, and then once they've finished that course, that's when they go to university for three years to do level four, level five, level six, and then at that point you graduate, and after graduation, you can study further in terms of the master's degree and or a postgraduate diploma or something like that, so that's the kind of, that's the way that the education system works in the UK, and yeah, so 16 to 19, they don't have to be in college, but they do have to be doing something in terms of developing their skills for employment. So what type of students are attracted to this program, or is it gamers only or others? It's interesting, so when we first started running the course in terms of recruitment, we were quite surprised in the first year at the variety of people who joined, and what we found was that 99% of them did game, of those probably 15%, you would consider quite serious gamers, you know, ranked and were playing in tournaments, the majority just enjoyed gaming, and there was a few that hardly gained at all, but they wanted to learn about the industry, and it's important when we have our open days and we speak to parents that we explain that it's not a gaming course, because we also had issues with people just joining, and then they were really disappointed that they weren't just playing games all day long, despite the fact that we were telling them that's not what's going to happen, that's not what this course is about, you know, there was still that perception, whereas now we have a really interesting range of students that take the course, we had a student last year that took esports alongside law and business studies, and they wanted to be a lawyer, so they were going to go on to university to study law, but the reason they took esports is they wanted to be a lawyer in esports, because their interest and passion in esports. We have a lot of students that take esports and business as well, because I think a lot of people see the opportunity and the money or the potential earnings that they could make and the way that the industry is expanding, so they see opportunity to generate and create business, so we have a lot of entrepreneurial types that take the course, and you know, just at QMC in the last three years, we've got three different groups of people who've set up enterprises themselves, mainly in the sense of teams, you know, like small organizations where they have a number of different rosters, and we had one of our students in his first year at college, he set up a team, and they competed in a, this was during COVID, and they used the facilities at the college to compete in a fortnight tournament, and won, that's £70,000, and you know, that's a 17-year-old, and it's, but those are things that are inspirational, you know, they're the things that other students see and think, wow, you know, that's unbelievable, you know, and so others just kind of, that's what they want to do, so we're guiding them through that pathway to show them that they can do that, they've got things to learn, and we're, you know, as well as working in a lecturing capacity, in a teaching capacity, we're very much mentors for our students, you know, they come to us with their ideas, we get them to pitch their business to us, all their ideas, and say, you know, tell me what you're doing, how are you doing that, what's your money, you know. And you mentioned Dragonstone, which US, our US version is Shark Tank, and so I know that people watching might not know what that is, so that's kind of interesting. Why don't we show the video, and you can tell us what we're watching. Okay, so this was just the day at college, this is the streaming, really, where we've got two things going on in there, we've got people streaming, students streaming, and students shellcasting, and then in the first arena, we've got one group, and they're doing performance analysis, so there's teams playing, and then they've got their classmates are watching and analysing, so that they can then feedback and do their performance analysis, and then as you go through the building here, and we go into the main arena, and in here we've got students playing the games that the students in the first room are shellcasting on, so they're all involved in different ways, with kind of like three or four different elements of esports, and it was just one of those afternoons where I was teaching in one arena, my colleague was teaching in another, and I've kind of walked between the two and gone, oh, this is amazing, like it's all going off, you know, they're all engaged, you know, they're kind of like they're all doing what they need to be doing, but they're learning at the same time, so, you know, that was, it was quite a nice video, and the other times that is really exciting is when we have the, on a Wednesday afternoon, we compete in the student, the British esports student championships, so both of those arenas are full, and we have teams competing against other colleges around the country to try and qualify for the LAN finals at the end of the year in Nottingham, which is also an enrichment, so we have students at the college who don't study esports, and they're doing other subjects, but they're really good players, so they try out at the start of the year to get into the teams, and then they go off and, you know, and compete in the finals, and I think we had more teams than anyone else in the finals this year, which is good, because we're kind of like the leading colleges, one just expects QMC to be the best at everything, the reality is in terms of probably what we deliver, teaching wise, and the facilities that we've got, we are 100% leading the way, but across the country, as you can imagine, there are some very, very talented young gamers, you know, and we don't win everything, we don't expect to win everything, but it's, it's really nice when we do. What, what titles are, is your college competing in? Yeah, so, so we compete in whatever the British Esports Federation set up, so currently it's Valorant Overwatch League of Legends and Rocket League, so they're the four, and we're obviously restricted by age, you know, we can't, we can't have, we can't be playing games that are over 18s, which annoys some of the students because they'd love to be playing, so those four, you know, we, we compete in every, every week on a Wednesday from kind of mid-September, and then the LAN finals are take place in, at the end of the year, in kind of June, June time, which is nice as well, because, you know, they all get their jerseys with the game tags, and we all go away for the weekend, so, you know, that's, that's a really nice kind of like element, but we also just have other enrichments like extracurricular activity with eSports, where we have just escapism, so any students from around the, the college can come and just play any games, no, you know, not competitive, just enjoy the facilities, we have a couple of different Minecraft sessions that we run as well, you know, which attracts a lot of interest, so we just try to maximize the, the amazing facilities that we've got. Terrific, and people watching this will be inspired to go to your college, I'm sure, or something similar, so you mentioned health, and so we have some pictures, let's bring up the one where people are, are actually relaxing or laying down, what are we looking at? Yeah, so, so on this one, the students are doing deep muscle relaxation therapy, and I just happened to, I was teaching in the arena next door, and I walked past the room, and kind of had a double take, and looked at the lecturer, and he kind of like gave me the thumbs up, it's nice to say, this is good, isn't it, because I'm just like, I'm not doing much now, and, and they all, they all sleep, you know, because of that kind of like, like, how do you, how do you calm down from the stress, how, you know, if you're angry with a game, or, you know, you're tired, or whatever, how do you break out from just currently, you know, drinking energy, drinks, and staying up all night, you need to learn the techniques and the methods to take control of your personal well-being, and so, you know, Matt Johnson, who did that session, was doing that, and I spoke to one of the first years today, who did that lesson this week, and they all fell asleep as well. So, you know, that's my kind of teaching, I'd be quite happy, they do fall asleep in some of my lectures, but they're not supposed to, so, you know, I can't claim any credit for deep relaxation therapy. So you have some other things you do to promote communication, let's look at the photos, what are we looking at here? Yeah, so obviously communication is so important in any team sport, you know, in particular with eSports, so just to try and highlight, you know, we're always trying to look at innovative ways of delivering teaching, so we set them a task whereby they had to play Pac-Man, so nice and simple, but they had to have, they had a tally chart, and it was, they had options of verbal, non-verbal, and then non-physical, so that they all, and they had to come up with their own strategies of how they were going to do that, so you could see in those photos, some of them were kind of hand-on-hand, and there was, there was, they were like tapping and touching, like we can see there, you had other people that were stood behind, like tapping backs, you know, tapping heads, and it was, because they can't see you either, it enabled us to really kind of like go around the room and kind of see what they were doing, and then they were recording all of their results to see, to come up with the most effective way of communicating without the normal things that they do. So yeah, it's just kind of, it's just trying to bring things into the classroom that they're going to enjoy, and like find a bit of fun, but there's a, you know, there's a key message behind that. Sure, and let's bring up the Fortnite photo with the colorful things, yeah, can you tell us about that? Yeah, so again kind of what we were talking about strategy, this was, this was Matt, one of Matt's lessons, and talking about strategy within eSports and in Fortnite, the things that you can and you can't do, you know, like building, so it was basically a live battle royale, you know, that was the set up whereby they were putting teams or quads, and then they had to attack, defend, build, hide, you know, and kind of like work out different ways, and they were, they had like things that they would like balls that they were throwing, you know, because then you're thinking about spatial awareness and distance, and you know, if you can't throw the ball that far, then there's no point trying to attack from behind your barrier, if you can't actually offload your ammo. So again, you know, it's just, just, just things to, to get them out of the classroom and thinking about it in a broader context really. Sure. And, and there was a photo of a visitor who came and who happened to be a champion. Let's bring that one up. So we've got Daniel Squibbs there, who was a former pro Rocket League player. He works for Guild eSports, which is David Beckham's organization, the first eSports company in the UK to float on the stock exchange as a PLC, and Guilds have been in on a number of occasions. And Danny was also the, we had the Commonwealth Games here in Birmingham over the summer, and eSports was introduced as a pilot, which was, which is great for all things eSports. And Danny was the coach for the England team for the Rocket League. And again, you know, I was there as a guest of the British eSports Federation. And it was great to see kind of like see him in action as opposed to in the classroom. But also there was, you know, there were a couple of our students there that I didn't know were going. And the next thing kind of like Twitter pings and sort of like, because there's taken a photo of me speaking to somebody else, but they then get to see it like at those events, they get to see the people in real life who have been in and spoken to them. And that's when they realise how kind of fortunate they are at QMC, because we have, everybody wants to come in, everyone wants to be part of it. You know, we've had Excel in Guild and we have a partnership with Fematic, which is new for this year, which is really exciting, whereby they deliver stuff for us. We get to take them up there to their headquarters. And that kind of like industry engagement is really interesting. The head of the British, he's the founder and CEO of the British eSports Federation features in, when we're talking about the way that eSports works in the UK, you know, we bring Chester in to that so we can explain who he is and what he does. But the photo that they see of him is him stood right outside our big QMC sign, because he came down to launch the facility. You know, was it Monday, we had guests from the Middle East coming in to talk about the investment that they were going to put in out there, along with the Chief Educational Advisor from the British eSports Federation. And, you know, it's an eye-opener for the students, because they almost take it for granted because it's their local college. And they think this is great, but they also think that everywhere else is like this. And so when you get all these guests in, A, inspires them. And they network, you know, we talked to them about LinkedIn and sort of like the next thing they've, oh, I connected with Danny on LinkedIn and he messaged me and, you know, they get really excited. And kind of like that excitement is the things that leads to inspiration. And hopefully, you know, we're going to have some really successful graduates. Not hopefully, I'm very confident that we will see a lot of our students in really good positions within eSports in the UK, further beyond. Right. And are girl, young women, are they in your program? Yep. So it's open to all. So we have, and again, that's one of the beauties of eSports is that inclusivity. We have males, females studying the course in terms of the competitive scene. We have female teams this year. We have mixed teams. And the photos that you just saw there were of the land final in Nottingham for the British eSports student championships. And you can see in the Overwatch team, so Overwatch Division one is like the pinnacle of the championships. This is our team. And we have two girls, three boys. And of those, four of them study eSports. Now, three of them study eSports and two of them don't. They're just in the team study elsewhere in the college. And one of the highlights for me was watching the stream when they walked out onto stage. And the chat on Twitch went mad because we had two girls. And it's like, oh, no way, they've got two girls in their team. And, you know, and I'm sat there kind of like with the biggest smile that you can possibly imagine because it's like, yes, we have. And then we won. And it's sort of like, you know, it's just goes to show. And then after the after they won, you know, they get presented the trophies and they'll get interviewed. And, you know, it's a really good platform for those girls to encourage other girls to think, okay, it's not just it's not just boys that can compete, you know, we've competed at the highest level in the student championships and we've won. And, you know, and another thing that came from that victory, which is something that we promote quite heavily in terms of eSports with parents, is all of those things that eSports brings in terms of personal development, you know, like strategic thinking, communication, dexterity and quick thinking. All of those things that, but one of the most important things is confidence because you have, you can have students who aren't necessarily that outgoing and that confident, but they're very confident in their gaming. And then that brings confidence. And I have one student who was a first year student last year who was part of that team that won and he's now second year. And in the first year, he was so quiet, he hardly spoke at all. And since he's come back, he is a completely different young man. And it's so good to see that kind of right level of confidence that that he's now achieved. And so now he's gone into the second year and he's in the team again, you know, he's, he stepped up, you know, he stepped up into like a much more senior kind of like role in the way that the rest of the college see him because, you know, he's one of our heroes that went and won the student championship. So all of the things that we predicted and hoped for and wanted to demonstrate through the eSports qualification and the extracurricular activity, you know, are coming to fruition and it justifies what we do. So we'll wrap this up by having you tell us about your consultancy. Yeah, so NTE sports is my consultancy company, which is just basically stemmed from demand really. You know, I've been in education for a long time. I used to have a business before I got into education. I started to advise an eSports company about education about seven or eight years ago, and then jumped out of education to work for that company to kind of like build up eSports kind of knowledge and get a feel for everything. And then jumped back into education when the BTEC was launched, the qualification. And from that, we just had so many, I had so many people kind of like asking for help and support in terms of set up. How do we set things up? What do we do with an arena? How do we get an arena? Resources, like how do we teach eSports? Because as you can imagine, there's lots of qualified teachers in the UK. There's quite a few people that have been involved in eSports, but there's very few trained teachers who have experience in eSports. And at QMC, luckily, we have three. There's three of us. And so that kind of stemmed from there really. And, you know, and how colleges set up arenas, they can come to me and we can sort that out for them. Resources for teaching, bringing products to market, you know, where companies have a product that they've designed, but they don't know anything about eSports and they don't know how to get into the market. So it's quite varied and it goes beyond the UK. So I get to do things around the world, which is kind of the passion, I suppose, for me. I set up my first business when I was 24, which was a radio business. And I really enjoy that kind of taking ideas from something on paper and turning that into something that exists in reality. And NTE sports has enabled me to do that. So I've got a really good, comfortable life balance at the moment. I spend part-time teaching, part-time on my consultancy stuff, but it's all eSports and it's all good. So, you know, and I get to meet lots of nice people and network with lots of nice people like South Catherine. Well, Nick, thank you so much for being my guest today. And thank you to our viewers for joining today. In two weeks, Tom Leonard, the host of the podcast, Gamers Changed Lives will be my guest host. Look forward to an interesting session. And Aloha and Mahalo. Also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.