 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Katharine Norr. Today, we're talking about the best US Collegiate eSports program, University of Hawaii in Manoa. Welcome, Kevin. Hi. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Katharine. All right. Fantastic. So, Kevin, what is your role at UH Manoa eSports program? So, my role is to, so my direct title is University of Hawaii eSports program assistant, or I work under Sky, who's our director. And the main purpose for my role is try to make sure that I can work with our students in any way possible, whether that be competition, community, career relations. My goal is try to empower students to make sure that they can make that next leap in their eSports journeys. So, I understand you've been involved in eSports at UH Manoa for quite some time. How long have you been doing it? So, I got hired from the university right after I graduated college in 2019. And so, it's been just a little over three years and I'm aiming for my fourth at the moment. Fantastic. So, I understand that UH has just earned an awesome award. Why don't you tell us about that award? So, recently we just won the Collegiate program of the year in 2022. The significance for the award is just to showcase to our students, our administration, the parents, all the work that they put into really paid off. And I'm just very grateful and happy to the committee, the people who voted for us. That just showcases how hard it was and how much work it took to earn this award. But I also do want to shout out all the other colleges that were nominated alongside of us, University of Warwick, Illinois State, Maryville, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and many more. All these programs, all these colleges are doing their best to try to push eSports forward. And without them, there's just a vacuum of students who, I would say, have nothing to, I would say not have anything to look for. But this is their sense of home. This is their sense of pride. And by all of us putting our efforts into making collegiate better, we're just making it a better place for students and chasing their dreams. Fantastic. So what was the criteria to your knowledge, or at least what did you have to submit in order to be up for the award? So the criteria for the award was based off of a 25% fan vote and 75% based off a panel of collegiate experts. And for us, we just talked about the many things that we did within our program to showcase why we believe we deserve this award. A lot of it revolved around the community efforts that Sky and I worked towards, such as sending some of our students to work with the APRU and helping underdeveloped collegiate programs, working with the Overwatch League to make sure that we can get students internships, competition, doing work around the local community, and much more. Fantastic. So let's talk about your work with underdeveloped programs. What do you do there? So with the APRU, we were able to send a couple of our student leaders to work with them and trying to help them develop their content, their programs, into making sure what is the structure for what it takes in collegiate competition. A lot of our students are just trying to raise their skills, essentially skill points in leadership. And so by doing so, we're not only helping them with their skills within the program, but for future when they go into industry. Sure. So at some point, UH was starting their program and having to rely on others. Is that right? I would say so. And just to share a little bit more about that story. So during my final year at UH in 2019, the university has always had gaming clubs, but the gaming clubs would always fizzle out or the leadership structure wouldn't be there. And so I was able to meet by the name of Eugene Ayun, who was a collegiate lead at Corsair. And so at Corsair is a computer hardware and peripheral company. And Sky was able to introduce me to her to join as a student ambassador for the university. From then, Eugene gave each of the schools an assignment, sort of speak, to do something within your campus that's notable. And I decided, hey, let's make a gaming club that can last. And due to that, she was the mentor. And this is what you just asked about, is, oh, you must have needed help from somewhere. I didn't know what it was doing, but thanks to Eugene, she was able to guide me through, create the club. And because of that, the university saw our efforts and saw how popular gaming in eSports was on campus that they wanted to take me on full time. So without her, I might not even be working here. So I owe a lot of my early development and my early adult life thanks to Eugena. Well, that seems to be a common thread with eSports that these emerging programs have to look to more developed programs. And now you're a more developed program. And so it makes sense that you're paying it forward and helping more developing programs. Correct, correct. And I think I know how you just mentioned that UH is a fully fledged develop program. I think we're still growing just because we won this war doesn't mean we can be stagnant. There's so much room for growth. And the main thing, at least what I hope to perpetuate is this is all for the students. We can't just stop. Just like every other organization within a college campus, I hope that they're trying to push and strive for the best environment for students and trying to help them get into whatever industry they're pushing for. And that's what we're trying to do in eSports and collegiate. Sure. And what seemed to be probably the biggest news story of the year was the Overwatch program. Tell us about what happened with Overwatch and UH. So in 2021, and this is throughout early years of COVID, eSports was still continuing. But unfortunately, it couldn't be back in person. And I know a lot of people, when they think of the do-against, when they think of eSports, you don't think of that human to human interaction. But as a matter of fact, it's just as significant as just playing on a screen or a TV. And so with Overwatch League, they reached out to us because they have global competition. And because of COVID, the teams from the Eastern Hemisphere could not compete against teams from the US or the Western Hemisphere. So when they reached out to us, we were a little perplexed at first because if you play games here, you know that paying is a massive issue. And so we thought there was no way this is going to be possible. And they reached out, we ran some tests, and they said, we like it. And Sky and I, I just remember we had the conversation of, are you sure? Is this really OK? Our players have frustrations with the ping. So what about pro players? And they said, this is going to be just OK. They asked us, or they had a survey within the entire league. What's your minimum ping threshold? They all said 90, and we hit that target. And so we went full-fledged ahead. And we worked throughout the year in 2021 to make it happen. And thanks to the Overwatch League staff, thanks to the university, we were able to provide internships to our students where they could earn collegiate credit and make it just more than a rental agreement. We made sure that this was something that students can learn from. They can shadow these experts. They can work with the teams. They can work with the managers. And it was such a fantastic experience. And we thought, OK, that was great. And then in 2022, which is last year, they reached out and said, hey, we want to try to work together again and make something happen. Because of our past experience and our past knowledge, it went very smoothly. And we were very happy to just be able to work with them. So when you're talking about ping, you're talking about latency, right? Oh, yes, correct. It's mainly about the idea of when you create an action in game, how long it would take for the game to register that action. And so pro players usually like a ping of 1 to 2 milliseconds, but once it gets past, I would say, 50 milliseconds, I think a lot of people have complaints. And because we're from Hawaii, depending on which game you play, you can go up from 80 to 120, which is where a lot of players get their frustration from. So in terms of playing, they were competing against people in Asia, right? Correct. And so what the Overwatch League did was they would have their teams playing from Korea and China. And we would have direct access to our Tokyo servers. And so teams from Korea and China would connect to Tokyo. And then all the Western teams would fly to Hawaii. We would connect to Tokyo. And then both sides would have 90 ping. And that was the main reason why they reached out to UH was because we had that direct access or that direct fiber line to Tokyo servers. So do you think that because of that, you are primed for having future partnerships with other games and tournaments? I would hope so. I think the big goal is trying to make sure that, or trying to showcase through the industry that the University of Hawaii can provide that type of support and just showcase that Hawaii is more than just tourism and beaches and hotels. To be quite frank, that actually did help us. I wouldn't say the beaches, I guess it's a nice thing. But the hotels and the infrastructure, it allows people to come in. But we do need to continue to beefy up our fiber optic lines, our bandwidth, and all the tech infrastructure here. Because I think we're still a little behind the times. And if we can continue to build that up, I think it would make a lot more publishers and game developers to want to come here and showcase their leagues. But I do also want to add, by building up our infrastructure, you also keep local talent. Because that's the one problem that I think people from Hawaii have is once you graduate from college, you think, OK, if I'm in tech, I really can't stay here. There's limited career options. Where am I going to go? They all fly out to California, to New York, to Seattle, to wherever there is a job market. And hopefully we can continue to just build up our infrastructure. Because we have a lot of talented people here. It's just very unfortunate that we continue to lose them, just because we just don't have the support for them. Sure. And do you think that Overwatch became more aware of Hawaii as a potential place where they can find talent and maybe even have that talent work locally in Hawaii? I believe so. I believe they really got to show or I would love to say the lowest spirit within our students. I think it's a rare thing for just the outside or the mainland people to see how much we care and how much effort we put into our students and how much they want to reciprocate that. I think one of the key things was all the staff would just mention, oh, this was interesting to me to see how nice everyone was or how welcoming. And I think that's just a natural part of being born and raised here. I think our favorite part was working with some of the Overwatch staff that were from Hawaii. They were from Maui and they're somewhere from Oahu as well. And just to see them interact with our students, showcasing a little bit of pigeon and just hanging out with the staff and learning a little bit about our culture as well. It was just a perfect environment for everyone. It was a win-win. Did you hear of any opportunities that arose out of the Overwatch tournaments? Not as far as I know. But I do believe that I shouldn't say it's a direct cause from the Overwatch events. It was more so our program overall. But because of the work and efforts that our students have done, a couple of them have landed jobs in other publishers and other companies at the moment and eSports and gaming. And so we want to continue to drive that number up because that's, to me, the true value of success is just, one, how much can we support the students? And two, what can we do for them after college? Sure. And you know what's interesting is I talk to people all over the world about eSports. And they have heard of University of Hawaii, Manoa eSports program. And I think this award will put you more on the map. What do you think about that? To be quite frank, I'm glad people are putting us on the map, but I just hope we can continue to develop partnerships with other orgs and people outside the program just to support students. Quite frankly, I don't need notoriety. I don't need social media numbers. I don't need likes. I don't need clicks. But if it helps our program, by all means, please reach out to me. I want to work. And I just want to provide the best environment for our students. And I know a lot of other collegiate programs are doing the exact same thing. One thing I do want to shout out is a lot of our other programs are working with an even more limited budget than us. And they're doing fantastic things too. I just hope that everyone can see that college eSports is hard. And we're all working towards the same goal of, hey, let's provide the best environment for our students. Let's continue to help them in terms of competition. But let's also help them in academics and research and career. That's my main goal. So let's talk about the eSports program at UH. What games are you guys playing? So currently, we have titles in eight games. And so that would be our Smash team, our Valorant team, League of Legends, Overwatch, Rocket League, Rainbow Six, Apex, and Call of Duty. And within those, we have a varsity team on all of them and three JV teams as well. So that really differs from traditional sports. Your program is very robust with many players. How many players do you have? We would have approximately 100 varsity players and then give or take 30 junior varsity players and then a community of around 1,400 people. So when are tryouts generally? Tryouts are generally around the start of every fall semester. And so that's when every team is trying to recruit for players. But because of the churn of collegiate, some people take a semester off, some people graduate, and so we also have a smaller spring tryout. And spring semester is usually where the bigger competitions are. And yeah. OK, so are there any scholarships offered at this point from UH? So currently, we have scholarships for our Overwatch team. And this is where I talked about wanting to work with other programs and other organizations to support our students because, I mean, ideally, I would love to get scholarships for all teams that the students work just as hard as, I would say, traditional athletes. And I just want to make sure that they're able to support themselves without having to worry about financial factors. Sure. And are the players, are they taking classes in e-sports? Or are they generally majoring in something else? A majority of them are majoring in, I would say, STEM. And then a bunch of others in biology. But we do have one class that's taught by Sky, our director, who teaches an e-sports and society course every spring semester. Terrific. All right. So have you, you know, I know that you've been, you know, involved in the program since 2019 and it's been growing. What was the impact of COVID to your program? Weirdly enough, COVID, because it's e-sports, we were able to function. In fact, we actually grew because of COVID. It just, like, it was a weird, it's a weird. So I'll go into the story. I got hired in October of 2019. And we were doing a fantastic job of just this is my start. This is also my first job. And then I remember COVID hitting. I just come back from a trip in Boston at PAX East. And then COVID hit and I just talked to Sky and we're like, oh, no, like, what are we going to do? We can't have anything in person. And we're like, OK, let's try to keep our program afloat. And then we worked with a bunch of student leaders and said, hey, wait, we don't have to just keep our program afloat. We can definitely work together and build upon this. And because of that, we we we started to build on more teams. Thank you to especially Cason. He was a hard proponent on, hey, let's get a Valorant team. And now it's one of our most successful teams at at UH. And so can do to grow. And when I first started to, we didn't have how it's a space for our students. Like we had an area, but we would have to reserve it and would compete against the likes of engineering with the Academy of Creative Media. And anyone else who wants to use our space called the iLab, but because of COVID ownership that go of it and they were like, OK, we don't have anyone who can watch over it. Who needs it? And then we swooped in and said, hey, the Esports teams are in here all the time. Can we please take it over? And so now we're able to have a space where our teams and our players can all come in, a community can hang out. And yeah, COVID definitely did impact us. And personally, how it affected me was it was hard for me to see the growth because I wasn't there in person, if that makes sense. I was always at home just seeing the numbers like, yeah, we would grow. But it was hard for me to grasp the impact that our university's Esports program had on these students. And then when we finally came back and we saw the liveliness of the space itself, that's when I was like, oh, OK, we really did do a great job. And now let's continue to grow upon it because we can't stop here. So you said you mentioned that it was your first job. So your first job is in Esports. Now, you seem to have a job that would be the envy of so many people. Do you hear from a lot of people like, wow, you get to do what you love? Yeah, I think a lot of my peers with all like who are in traditional industry, they're like, oh, wow, this is the dream job. And yeah, quite frankly, I love what I'm doing. I love working with the students. I love working with the administration and trying to convince them that, hey, this is something that we need to continue to build upon. And that's not to say it's not all glam and glorious. I think everyone who works in Esports knows how exhausting how many hours you have to put in. But I think we do it because of the love that we have for our program, our students and our teams. There's no it's a nonstop grind. And we just have to continue to put in the effort to continue to grow it. So what about sponsorship? Have you been able to attract sponsorship to bring into the program or are your individual athletes, are they attracting sponsors? So we just recently got that a lower Pacific sponsorship that was able to provide scholarships to our Overwatch team. And so hopefully we can continue to grow upon it. We are also getting a second space, which it's quite crazy because I know a lot of other colleges are struggling to get even just one. And so we're getting another one at Sinclair. They're doing a major renovation to make it the Student Success Center. And we want to have our Esports competitive teams be housed there and let this isla be our community center. And with that, we want to try to attract sponsorship to showcase. Hey, this is what our teams get. This is what our students get. Please try out. Please come to our university, learn from or be a part of the program. And hopefully we can help you succeed. So are your athletes, are they allowed to accept sponsorship, money under NC? I mean, I don't think they're part of NC double A. Maybe they're not. We do that. So I believe students are able to receive their own sponsorships. But with the industry, I don't think, at least in collegiate, I haven't seen just specific players get sponsorships unless they're, I would say, tier two, which is like almost pro. And so I believe it can happen. It's just we don't see it very frequently. And so are the Esports athletes at UH, are they doing streaming and, you know, outside of their regular play? Yeah, I think that's all individuals. If students want to stream, we would provide an area for them to do so. Also content. We have a content team here, which helps to promote our players, helps promote themselves and, I would say, add a personality to them because here's, I'll add this to the podcast. I think one of the major problems in just collegiate esports in particular is parents don't understand what's happening within their, you know, what their child or what their child is doing. Like, yes, they might be playing games, but they don't really understand, especially here in Hawaii, too. And so I think we need a showcase like, hey, what is the student that's playing the game rather than just, oh, here's this character in this video game that's clicking heads or winning the video game. That doesn't really resonate or connect to the parents. But if the parents are able to say, hey, this is what they're majoring in, this is what they're doing, this is what they like outside of just being a master at a video game, then they can get more invested rather than just, oh, here's a video game player who happens to be really good. Sure. Have you seen any athletes actually go on to use the skill in future employment? Yes, well, I would say just purely like esports are competitive teams, but more so are especially our content team. That's been the most successful in getting people into industry is just trying to make sure that they can utilize the skills here and continue to grow and level up their skill and then further themselves into a publisher or another organization. Sure. And, you know, the parent feedback and pressure, you know, that would seem to be a big deal. What skills are you telling parents that the esports athletes and other esports personnel are acquiring? So I think a lot of parents, the initial conversation is, OK, and they see their child is playing a lot of video games. Like, OK, yes, they're very good, but what else can they learn? Or what else is out there? And not even just parents, when I talk to the competitive teams and actually, let's cut back. So I always have one-on-one meetings with students and I always try to ask them, hey, what are their majors? And it's like very generic, but it's also like, hey, do you want to do this? And the reason why is because I had this exact conversation with myself and my friends when I was an engineer student. I was miserable. I was studying all the time and it took my friends to realize, hey, Kev, like, you're just not having fun. You're just there studying all the time. They're going to concerts, they're living a normal college life. And that's not to say you can't do this as an engineer, but you have to sacrifice so much of your time. And that, to me, I was lucky enough to meet Sky, who, you know, got me connected into the industry. But I want to do that same road to my students. Like, hey, do you actually want to be an engineer? Do you actually want to become a doctor? If they do great, I want to support them. I want to help them succeed. Let's continue to be on our eSports team, but I'm not going to sway them away. But if they're on the fence, they're like, oh, I don't know. Like, you know, just a little unsure they're on the fence because it's that idea of the red pill and the blue pill. Like, do I want to chase financial freedom or do I want to chase their passion? And I always try to tell them that you can mix both now within eSports. And so just trying to get them skills and, hey, do you want to be in management or do you want to look into marketing or finance or do you want to help with production and broadcast or content creation? There's so much around eSports. I would say your key thing to every student is try to truly understand what you like inside and out, doesn't have to be connected to gaming and then learn those skills in college and then apply it to eSports and gaming. Don't just think of the idea of I'm going to chase eSports and gaming because that doesn't work. It's like saying I work in movies. I learned this from Eugenia. Well, like what do you do in movies? Do you do setsides? Do you do makeup? Do you do the cinematography? There's so much you cannot just say I'm in movies. It's the same with eSports. If you regret what you want to do in eSports, learn those skills, learn it in college and then apply to the eSports program. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer, but I hope that helps. That's great. That's fantastic. Well, would you agree that more people know about eSports now than they did in 2019 when you got started? 100%. And I still don't think a majority of our campus knows. And I hope that we can continue to showcase eSports is here to say this is something that we can really invest in. This is something that students really care about. I did a Q&A with preschoolers here. And all of them are playing video games. All of them have mobile phones. And I just remember thinking at the time, I could barely hold a mouse at keyboard at your age. And everyone is now invested in it. And so why don't we invest in it in the healthiest way possible and trying to help them achieve different skills rather than just clicking buttons? Fantastic. Well, so can people find you at your website, Kevin? Yes. People can find me at my website. You can also find me. Or you can also reach out to me through email at kevmn.edu. You can reach out to us on our Discord at discord.gg slash uheesports. You'll find all the resources there. And we really hope that you can be a part of our program and help students succeed. I also want to throw this in really quick. I think a lot of people want to support collegiate eSports. Look around your community. Look around what colleges are trying to do their best. Yes, UHE Sports won the award. But I do want to showcase all the other awesome, amazing programs out there. UHE Sports isn't the only one. There are so many other great schools. I want to thank our administration, the parents, all the students that worked hard. This isn't just the, oh, Kevin got speaking. So he must have received the award. No, this is all of us. We all worked hard. And I just want them to just enjoy that little moment that, hey, we all did this together. Fantastic. Well, Kevin, thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you so much, Catherine. It was really nice speaking to you again. All right. Terrific. So thank you to our viewers for joining us today. In two weeks, my guest will be Megan Van Petten. And we'll be discussing leadership in eSports. See you then. 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, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.