 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today we're taking an inside look at collegiate eSports with me is Guy Kave Loa. Welcome, Skye. Hi, Catherine. Good to be back and talking with you. Yeah, it's been a while and you were an early guest, so I'm really happy that you can be here again. So, since we haven't talked to you for a while, why don't you tell us what your involvement is in eSports? Yeah, so, you know, first of all, number one, you know, I'm doing research in eSports as part of my dissertation work and, you know, that is near completion. I'm also the head of the University of Hawaii eSports academic passports and that was created to see if we can, you know, possibly create a curriculum at the university that deals with the industry, a very large and growing industry that hopefully can centralize Hawaii as being part of that discussion. So we're looking at possibly offering three courses, nine credits, and that has been a very successful endeavor that we are soon going to be finishing off. But besides that, you know, it's just been really wonderful to see discussions, activities around eSports in Hawaii. And of course, you know, your show being a big part of that. All right, yeah, definitely. And I try to have people from Hawaii on at least every quarter because we need to, you know, keep telling people that we are a place that we can do have eSports here. So before we get into that, let's talk about a book chapter that you wrote recently and that kind of put this put you on my radar to have you on my show. So tell us about that. Yeah, so I was invited to contribute to a book chapter on a newly released global eSports collection of research by Dal Yong Jin, who is a well-known professor of communications at Simon Fraser. And so I was very much honored to be asked to discuss or to write the book chapter. And essentially, the chapter itself delves into a partial history of what we kind of consider gaming on campuses or competitive gaming on college campuses, but also the development of eSports as part of college life. And I think the idea here is that I wanted to create a bit of context and history around what we kind of understand college eSports to be today, because it is very easy if you sort of search around and look for discussions around collegiate eSports to kind of think like, oh, this is something that is quite new. In reality, it is not. I mean, in college eSports as a varsity activity is very new and that has a definite period where it began in 2014 at RMU University and it was something that was created to support students in their gaming activities as if they were actual athletes. And that was a really big deal in 2014 for Robert Morris University to be that first campus, that first institution to say, we're going to treat the gamers, the competitive players on our campuses as if they are regular student athletes. But the history of gaming on campuses, playing video games as part of college life stretches much further back. For me, it was a big part of my life as a university student. I remember playing first person shooters, a game that I think a lot of students may not know. It was called Delta Force as part of a way in which I interacted with students in different dorms. And so if you actually go back to the first recorded video game tournament ever, which was the intergalactic space towards that happened in Stanford University in 1972, it's very easy to miss that it was on Stanford University because the whole idea that you have the first tournament, this first competitive gaming tournament taking place that was recorded, that itself is a big idea and big news and it's a big event. But most people kind of gloss over that this was actually a student activity that, of course, was engaged with their associations with being a part of the scientific community, the research community. So they had access to these technologies. So there are, of course, continuities between what happened in the past and what's happening now. But of course, there are some major differences. But I wanted to kind of, in that book chapter, create a bit of history and context around this idea of what's college esports today. Sure. And I think that a lot of people, they just don't realize that it goes back to 1972 Stanford. And I have, we have mentioned that on my show before because there, you know, there's some misconception. So who are the big players in collegiate esports today? Well, you know, it's been quite the evolution. It is, of course, still a very much student-centered activity. But now you have institutional stakeholders who have made claims into the space in which they are sort of taking over a lot of these these community efforts and and and processes in which students were actually at the very beginning, sort of the spearheads of these things. So, you know, if we go back and we look at sort of the really the successful organizations and leagues that were created, we're looking at organizations like CSL and TESPA. But even before then, again, this is a partial history. A lot of what I was digging into my research was the fact that it's very it was very difficult to get my hands on actual recorded discussions, discourses, recordings of these early collegiate competitions because for one case or another, students didn't take what they were doing seriously. They just thought it was an activity like any other activity as if they were going to go and play a basketball game or a football game before this sort of idea of, you know, recording live streaming events and sharing content became a part of the the youth culture today. Back in 2009, that was certainly not the case. It was a case in which students just thought, let's hold an event between two colleges. And again, thank God there was actually recorded a video of this. There is a recorded online forum discussions about this. There was online recorded discussions about universities contacting each other, forming teams, but it was this idea that, you know, it's not so much that we're looking and and and actually capturing the beginnings of this this phenomenon, what we call college esports. But there was a fact that, you know, this the first successful leagues clubs that really had the longevity to go on and to kind of live on today like CSL, TESPA is kind of closed down. I do write about TESPA and its origins as well. But it's still a big part of the culture, the early culture of student led activities and creating college esports communities. And they still they're the legacies, the individuals, the mentorships, the relationships still live on today in sort of the the new iterations of what we see with college esports that have kind of manifested. So what factors do you think are most important in the development and increased. Kind of collegiate involvement in esports. I'm sorry, say that again. It couldn't hear what you know, like, like things like internet speed, you know, Twitch or, you know, I mean, what do you think was most important in the evolution of esports, collegiate esports? I mean, the technology, of course, is very important. And, you know, that was something that has always been a part of the discussions is, you know, how can we how can we set up, you know, a five v five in a particular room on campus that might not have all the outlets or the power capabilities to support a tournament. But those kind of issues were kind of solved, you know, fairly quickly. Students are very clever in kind of getting things, you know, you know, piecemeal together to create a really fun and entertaining event among friends. But what was really pivotal in creating a community, a collegiate community of competitors, clubs and teams where we're actually in most situations or many situations, the women that were involved. So I know that we have an issue that, you know, and especially in collegiate where women do not take part, right? This is an activity in which, you know, 90 percent or over 90 percent of the players that are participants in varsity college esports are men. And that it has been a fact from the very beginning. Nothing has changed since 2014, and it continues to be the case to today. But it's the fact that you actually have, you know, young women and girls who actually take up the mantle of organizing these clubs and these tournaments and these events. It's the case sometimes where you have a girl or a woman who is actually part of the team. This happened in UBC, University of British Columbia, where one of the players who was, you know, who was a girl decided to step back from her competitive role to actually manage the entire team. It's the fact that you have women that are actually taking the charge and organizing the events themselves. And it's one of these situations where we have to kind of understand, number one, why are women, you know, going into that particular part of collegiate? Of course, it's a situation where it requires a lot of organizing, timekeeping, events, planning. And it continues to be the case that where you see most participation in collegiate esports is still in that organizing aspect of the space itself. Of course, things are getting better. More women are participating and actually being competitors. But it is a situation where if we just concentrate on women being competitors, which is still a very important sort of metric to me, that we do want to have more women feeling comfortable in the space in which they can say, you know, I'm playing along either on all women's team or a team that is co-ed, right? We want to encourage that. But if we use that as the only metric and kind of ignore a lot of the groundwork, a lot of the community work that women have always been a part of, I think we do a sort of a big disservice in that. So that was kind of part of the reason why I wanted to write the chapter. I wasn't able to give full voice to actually really the dozens of young women and young college women who have built up collegiate across all different campuses from Boston to UCLA, even to Hawaii itself, you know, one of the first organizers of our League of Legends club was a woman, a young woman. So it was a fact that I wanted to give voice to the to the idea that at the heart of collegiate, really the reason why it's survived and been sustainable is that we've had these sort of like pivotal personalities that have been supportive of this. Fair. So does title nine factor in at all for collegiate eSports? I mean, you know, it's certainly a case where the NCAA has wondered, you know, what is collegiate eSports? They've been very confused by it, to be honest. I think that's one of the reasons why they stepped back in 2017. And again, in the book, I do talk about sort of some of their their thought processes in looking at collegiate. And for them, it was a situation where, you know, they really did not understand how the space was going to evolve. I mean, I think even for Riot very early on in 2014, when they looked at collegiate, they had no idea what to do with it. They just knew that they had to support it. But I think for the NCAA was the fact that it was a very confusing space. You have, you know, potentially a dozen games across multiple competitions in which 90 or closer, more than 90 percent of the participants are men, which a publisher is the ultimate and the final say. That was a very that was a very scary proposition for them to enter into. So they did really say RFP, which is the fact that they wanted to do a study of the collegiate space and so they hired InterSport, which is basically was the group that was required to study the collegiate landscape across the United States. And the director there was actually from RMU. And so they did a study and they just said, OK, let's just put a pause on this. They sort of what we call basically a table of the discussion. And that doesn't mean that they will not come back. You know, this is something that I think the NCAA will have to address into the future. But right now they've let the publishers really take the the front seat. And so Riot did right after they stepped back. Riot came out with the RSA, which is sort of their governing institution or governing body that looks at League of Legends. And in my opinion, that was actually the right choice. OK, and so what does before we move into University of Hawaii eSports, what does college eSports look like today across the country? Right now it's a mishmash of everything, right? Because there is no governing institution or at least one single governing institution. There are multiple governing institutions. It's a mishmash of, again, student clubs. Even before, even under a student club, there are just random teams that are formed, student clubs. There are, of course, governing institutions, there are associations. It's really a situation in which, you know, the term and the the analogy Wild Wild West is thrown around in eSports. I think that it's both Wild Wild West and many respects in collegiate more than actually in professional eSports. I know that people kind of push back at that analogy. I don't think so. I think it's still completely unstructured and continues to be that case for for many universities. But there is a slow and creeping realization that there needs to be more structure into these spaces. And you're seeing third party entities, you know, unfortunately, in my opinion, starting to take over the space and starting to do a lot of the groundwork in which students were actually a big part of that and taking on that work and assuming that responsibility. So, you know, right now, the best way to say this is, yes, it's a mishmash of a variety of organizations, clubs, students, teams in which everybody is trying to figure out what is the best way forward without the NCAA. There and there is a question from a viewer asking whether there are scholarships available for minorities in collegiate eSports? Yeah, I mean, I think there are, I mean, specifically minorities. I'm not entirely sure. I know that there are scholarships that are being targeted towards exceptional students in collegiate and also, you know, scholarships targeted towards particular teams that are can be all women teams. But, you know, that is something that is, I think, slowly becoming a realization where the scholarships themselves are becoming are being crafted specifically around marginalized groups within the space. Because, as we've said before, most of a vast majority of scholarships do go to men and young men in the space. And if we want to be more inclusive and more diverse in our thinking about what collegiate eSports can be, I think targeting scholarships around the idea of people of color, LGBTQ students, marginalized populations around traditional gaming communities would be a very good way to open up that discourse. But I don't think anything right now on my radar points to this, to scholarships necessarily being targeted towards minority students. But I do see hints, especially at the University of Oklahoma, where there are targeting those scholarships to be a little bit more blue skies thinking, not just necessarily around competition. Scholarships are being, of course, offered not just for the competitors, but UCI started the idea of offering scholarships for a range of roles that support the team. So that's shout casting. You know, shout casters can possibly get scholarships. Content creators could possibly get scholarships. And I would eventually hope event organizers, right? So if you target scholarships around the event organizers, which tend to be the women in the space, that would be another way of inserting greater diversity inclusion into this discussion. That makes a lot of sense. OK, so let's shift to University of Hawaii eSports and let's show the video and see what what's going on there. I'm Jason, the manager and varsity lead for our Valor program here at UAG Sports. This semester, we did a lot, but our varsity team specifically killed it in a bunch of tournaments. I think the big thing that I can say for us is we made a name for UH that they really put our name on the map not only as an organization that is really involved, but is really competitive. We won a bunch of tournaments and participated in a lot of tournaments as well, including the Vanguard Championship Series, the GCI tournament and CSL next semester. I'm hoping to ramp up that level of competition and also try to bring home a win for us. What's up? My name is Noah. I also go by Rod. I'm currently part of the six-man roster on the varsity team at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Valoran. I currently play as a sub or a coaching role on the team. And so I just watch the teams doing their scrims, watch vods with them, kind of go over what I see, what I notice. I really appreciated working with the team this semester. It was super fun just to get to know everybody and, you know, climb rank with them. It's a great experience overall. A memorable moment for me this semester would probably have to be when we beat UCI. That's probably when we realized, like, oh, this team is serious. This team has a lot of game. We have a lot to bring to the table and we can go far. So it was a pretty cool moment. All right. My name is Nika Kazu. My in-game name is Kazu. I am currently a member on the varsity squad for our Valorant at UH. One thing I really like about our team right now is that we have really good chemistry. Everyone gets along really well. A memorable moment from this semester so far is the first couple of games playing on the varsity squad. We crowned ourselves the Pistols King, Pistols Kings, because we went 8-0 and it was just a really great feeling to just be winning all the time, you know. Yeah. Hey, my. All right. So tell us about the video that we just watched. Yeah, so that was our Valorant team. We're super, super proud of them at UH Esports. Valorant is a game that has a lot of potential to become the largest or at least the most vibrant collegiate game for the community itself. For those of you that don't know Valorant, it's Riot's first first-person shooter game. It's attracted a tremendous amount of interest because it taps into, I think, both an aesthetic. The game itself has a very sort of interesting cyber aesthetic, sort of cyber apathetic aesthetic. It taps into several sort of interests with the collegiate space. Number one, it was a game in which people could immediately build upon, right, from Riot. So most of the collegiate community has known Riot as Riot Game, not Riot Games, right, because they've only had one game since 2009. And so when Riot started to think about Valorant and TFT and a host of other games that they planned to release, it was a really exciting time because the collegiate space, or at least for a lot of college students, both now and in the past, Riot has been a very special publisher and developer for them because of League of Legends. So for them to come out with a first-person shooter, everybody wanted to hop onto the game very early. And for us, our team captain, Case and Padilla, who was a recent graduate of UH, was very forward-thinking and convinced me that we needed to do something quick. So the game came out in December of 2020. So Riot, when COVID was kind of in full swing, and he built out the team. He found the players and the players themselves had just really gotten along tremendously well. Just recently, we were voted the top two, among the top two Valorant collegiate teams in the United States. It was a random Twitter poll by GamersEDU, but it was us and San Jose State. And we've kind of created this really wonderful rivalry between us and San Jose State, and we had an excellent, excellent game, in which of course, they did beat us 2-0, but it was a very close 2-0 in each game, very, very close. But still, the Twitch chat went off. It was something that, I think that the students themselves just loved because there was some great sort of back and forth, quote-unquote trash talking, but it was still above par. And we just had a bunch of fun. It was really great. So do you feel that UH is kind of entering into esports in a bigger way than it had before? Is it growing? Oh yeah, yeah. So one of my concerns early on in building out the program in 2017 and 18 is that we didn't have a dedicated location to do what we wanted to do. And that was kind of the albatross for us, is that, you know, HPU had the arena. When I was at UCI, I was constantly at their arena. And I always wondered, you know, why can't we have a location for the players? A dedicated location, quote-unquote an arena, right? We didn't have an arena, but we had an iLab, and that was good enough. I eventually changed my position and thought, of course, a space is important, but beyond a space, you need a community. And you need a community that engages with other schools. And that's what I decided to pivot from, from the location to the community. And it was worked out really, really well. And finally, we do have, you know, a control over the iLab, that is our location now. And we hope to do more events for that. But yeah, the idea of UH actually forming bonds, connections, you know, partnering with Cloud9, we were one of the affiliate schools that actually made a connection with Cloud9, one of the biggest professional eSports organizations in the United States, kind of fortified that perspective of mine, that relationships are more important right now than location. Sure. And so how has COVID impacted collegiate eSports? Tremendously. Like I said, the idea that you no longer actually have a location became even more of a catalyst for me to form relationships via Discord. So the arenas, the physical locations, you know, have been these spots that we wanted to actually build out and collect in, have become the Discord communities. So no longer are people going to arenas, they're actually forming communities via Discord. And that was very important for us to do. And one last thing, there's a big surprise that I just want to put out there that UH wants to announce very soon. So stay tuned. It's something that you will read about very soon. All right, fantastic. Okay, so there's recent news that I think is interesting in relation to Hawaii, because Hawaii is a very diverse location. We are a state made up of many people from all over Asia and the Pacific Islands and the US mainland. So it's very diverse. And so I understand that there's been some challenges for an Overwatch team, Dallas Fuel, in terms of they voiced some concerns about or at least one player voiced concerns about kind of trash talk against him because he's Asian. What can you tell us about that? Yeah, so, unfortunately an Overwatch player, a Korean Overwatch player on the field, yesterday talked about the discrimination and harassment that he has been experiencing in Texas. And it's a situation where I think these sort of examples should make us think in Hawaii. Where do we fit? Where does Hawaii fit in this global discussion around esports? And it's a discussion that I'm having very seriously. It's a discussion that I think the state has to have very seriously because Hawaii is not on the periphery. We are and should be and should continue to recognize in ourselves. We are a central player in the discussion around global esports, which I tend not to like the word global esports because I think that's too abstract, but at least esports in Asia Pacific. We are right dab in the middle of it. And so for a Korean player on the dash field to feel alienated, harassed, subjected to taunts and even violence is a situation in which we in Hawaii, of course be coming from a location in which multiculturalism and at least a mix of ethnicities is sort of the common background, sort of the environment in which we all kind of grew up and should give us pause to say, we can be a location, we can be a hub, we can be a center. So of course when we think about global esports, we think about Shanghai, Seoul, New York, Paris, Berlin, but where's Hawaii? I think there's a strong case to be made that Hawaii can fit right into there very easily. Sure, and that's a big reason why I have this show is because I strongly feel that we should be an important location for esports. And I think I invited people to come to Hawaii and play and I think you did as well. Yeah, and like I said, very big news. It's very much something that at the university is very happy to be taking part in and it's very much related to what we just discussed about. Sure, and so how can people obtain a book that we talked about earlier and we need to wrap it up so I'll give you the last word on that. Yeah, so actually I can maybe I'll provide the link to the publisher and you can maybe put that into the YouTube description because that's I think where you can actually go and purchase the book is through the publisher of Loomsburg. Sure, and probably just Googling global esports and when has it been released for publication? It's already released, good to go. So it might even be available on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. All right, Skye, it was great to have you on and we learned so much about the background of collegiate esports and what's going on with UH. Yes, thank you, Catherine. I always appreciate talking with you. All right, so thank you to the viewer who sent in the question and thank you for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be author and attorney Justin Jacobsen to talk about esports player representation. See you then.