RIT Esports
First Ever eSports Team Finally Introduced to Renowned Tech School
When it comes to sports at RIT the first thing you probably think of is the school’s division 1 hockey team, if not you might think of its various club sports like basketball, soccer, or even ultimate Frisbee. But an unlikely newcomer has made its way to campus promising to be more than just a club sport with the potential of competing with RIT’s established hockey teams shaking up the competitive sport scene at RIT. This newcomer is RIT eSports. Yes, just like the e in email it stands for electronic sports. Like the name implies eSports is a digital competitive platform where students on the team play against each other in competitive online games where players train mentally to out maneuver their opponents on a screen with a mouse and keyboard or game controller.
Introduced at the beginning of this semester RIT eSports has been a long time coming for the tech school as various gaming clubs have been attempting to compete without being apart of any official eSports league. A group of students from these clubs have gotten together to finally make the team, a team with the potential of competing in national competitions that are possibly bigger than a division 1 college hockey championship.
Although eSports itself has been around for a while bringing it to RIT wasn’t an easy process. When founder Evan Hirsh was asked why it took so long to bring eSports to RIT he said “I am honestly not sure. During my first year here, I was shocked that there was no competitive gaming infrastructure in place already. While I wasn’t great at the time, I wanted to build my own team, and I found that to be surprisingly difficult.”
On the official RIT eSports website the organization claims to pride themselves on “leadership, and determination, modeling ourselves after both professional eSport teams and traditional collegiate athletics programs”. The interesting part about this statement is the modeling after “traditional collegiate athletics programs”. Traditional sports usually require a player to be at a certain physical peak to be considered a pro, the work they do is on a field or court while eSports can be played by a wider variety pf people as long as they are mentally capable of playing the game. e-sports players can even participate in major tournaments from the comfort of their own home via online play.
When asked about the teams structure Evan said “We want the teams to work as much like traditional sports teams as possible. This means we want them to have coaches, managers, and of course players. However, since currently we are a student run club, our managers and coaches are also students. Because of this, finding coaches is a difficult task, since in esports your ability to perform well is not nearly as limited by physical capabilities, meaning those with excellent knowledge of the game can often play well.”
Although the structure is reminiscent of a traditional sports team the challenges they face are unique in that coaches are limited and even if you find a player with the skills to be a coach they are not always keen to teaching their skills to others as they are to just playing the game.
The constant references to traditional sports teams are intriguing and wondering how a more traditional athlete felt about the new organization I asked Brandon Smith, a volleyball player at RIT what he felt about people competing in video games also carrying the title of athlete “Its quite odd, but it's big enough to have tournaments at Madison Square Garden. The following, prestige, and competitiveness matches that of an athlete.”
This is a more accepting answer than some as last year for the first time ESPN’s second channel ESPN2 aired the EVO Championship series, a collection of tournaments for the biggest fighting games at the time. People were outraged, especially in the twitterverse with quotes like “Excuse me can you broadcast some real sports like poker??” or “They got the Nerd Olympics on ESPN 2 again!” This wasn’t the first time ESPN has broadcasted Esports but in the past because of fan outrage they even had to end partnerships with other video game tournaments showing how the budding league still struggles in comparison for acceptance. However, ESPN still argues that the demand is big enough to warrant the amount of backlash.
I asked two players where they see the future of eSports and both were surprisingly positive, Nick Bova, a player on the organizations Rocket League team (a game about rocket powered cars playing soccer), said “ I see eSports becoming the next big thing. eSports is already taking the gaming community by storm, and it’s even getting sponsorship by big name companies. Professional Esports will probably be as popular as football, soccer, hockey, etc at some point.” While Brandon Smith, the previously mentioned volleyball player said “Its going to explode. As things become more digitalized, so will the sports.”
So next time you see a flyer for RIT’s eSports teams I encourage you to take a closer look and watch the event and be a part of history as it grows exponentially each year. Finally here is a quote that wasn’t publicly released until last Friday by Bill Destler when the eSports proposal was submitted, “I am very enthusiastic about this concept.” The future sure is bright.
