Author: plethoragaming

Research – PlethoraGaming

 

Collegiate esports, worth investing in?

Technology has grown tremendously over the past several years, and alongside it is the video game industry. Over the short years we have seen several genres of video games like MMO, MOBA, turn based games etc; but in the esports industry we only take a look at the competitive games. Esports is “a multiplayer video game played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers.” That means professional teams and players battle in video games to become the top team or top players, and there is a reward for being the best. The esports scene has had tremendous success in the last few years, and it will grow for much longer. I have been in the esports industry for nearly four years, and over the years esports have grown greatly and it’s a great investment; however the collegiate esports scene has several problems that it’s not worth investing in at the moment

First we have to define sports and esports. Sports is defined as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment”. The strongest argument in the definition of sport is ‘involving physical exertion and having skill’. There is a lack of physical exertion, however they have to be in peak mental condition to play the game at its highest level. And for skill, Kane stated “To become a professional gamer, a player must learn different skills and techniques to get better.” And that has been the case for several games including me, practice after practice helps hone in on those skills just like real athletes. Esports can be considered a real sport because they have “Play competitive games, Organized events , Competition, Skill, Broad Following viewers for events, Institutionalization includes rules, coaches etc…” as stated by Jenny

 

Not only sports and esports are similar in terms of playing but team compositions are similar as well. Sports have members in the teams such as “managers, coaches, starters, reserve players, and referees” according to MatPat and the same roles apply for esports, teams have managers, and coaches, starters are considered the main roster for a team, reserve players are the substitute players in a team, and referees are the administrators of a tournament.

It is also commonly mistaken that video games and esports are the same thing; Funk stated “While all eSports are video games, not all video gaming should be classified as sport. Video games must have structure (e.g., standard rules), organization (e.g., rule adherence), and competition (e.g., clear winners and losers) to be considered sport.” For example Batman: Arkham City has fighting in it, however it’s not an esport game, this is because it is essentially a story game that do not have competition against other players. Comparing that to a game like Smite, this game involved strategy and competition against other players, and for its esports it has rules and standards like in their SPL tournaments.

An important aspect of collegiate esports is the NCAA. NCAA has not formally recognized esports as a sport, however it is in the best interest that they do. There are several colleges that support varsity esports such as Illinois College, Georgia State University, Indiana Tech and a handful of others. NCAA should include esports because “The eSports model will also easily fit into the NCAA structure of Division 1, Division 2 and Division 3”. Each university can provide different games and structure different teams based on the athlete’s ability level” There are skill level gaps among esport teams, and already having a system like the NCAA can help secure esports in colleges. Like Hockey, Soccer and Football they all fall under sports, the same can be applied for esports, SMITE, League of Legends and Dota 2 they all can be applied under esports, it is not limited to just one game. From running tournaments at AVGL there is a huge amount of following for collegiate esports, our Fall 2017 League of Legends tournament had 107 teams competing from US or Canada, that’s 535 players. And when including other game tournaments that we ran for Fall 2017, we had over 1,200 players. That is a huge following for collegiate esports, and only a handful of the teams were actually varsity teams. But the problem is, the conversation of having esports in the NCAA has come up several times and it has not been implemented yet; this makes me believe that esports wont enter the NCAA. This problem makes it very hard for colleges to enter the esports scene because there is no structure other than the tournaments hosters in place.

There are several perks of having varsity esports teams. For students or players, there usually is a nice scholarship money. For example “University of Pikeville (KY) 2014 Offers full ride scholarships available ($23,000/year tuition; $14,000 room and board)”(Jenny). Tournaments for collegiate esports have a huge prize pool payout.

The chart above from the article Campus Knowledge of eSports shows the prize pool of the North American Collegiate Championship hosted by Riot Games for their game League of Legends. This is a huge prize pool for college students, and in most cases that would cover the semester or the year’s worth tuition. But college students enter representing their school, all the money goes towards the player because the school does not have any involvement; the students are entering as an unsanctioned team. Colleges could have sanctioned their teams so the money is directly used for college tuitions and other payments.Even if colleges have sanctioned teams, esports has too many games that colleges simply would not be able to sanction all the games.

Another great perk of having varsity esports team is that it helps create revenue for the college. There is a huge following for esports in nearly all colleges, any gamer can say they love to watch these matches and get really hyped for it. Twitch.tv is a platform used by several gamers to watch or stream their games; in 2014 they had nearly 16 billion minutes and more shown on the graph

View post on imgur.com

To put this statistics into perspective in 2013 “NBA’s Miami Heat vs San Antonio Spurs broadcasted on a public network ABC and drew 26.3 million viewers; while that same year League of Legends world final was streamed on Twitch.tv that drew 32 million viewers.” And League of Legends competitive scene has only been released 3 years prior to that, this shows that esports can pull a huge amount of viewers. Colleges that have varsity esport teams can live stream their matches and I believe majority of the gamers on campus will tune in for that. And the reason that esports pulls a lot of viewership is because esports is not bound to any location, other than internet of course which is global. Twitch has an amazing program called Twitch Partners, this enables Twitch streamers to run ads on their live stream, and even have paid subscribers. All this money will go directly to the college after Twitch takes their cut, but that is still a lot of money that the school can make. Even though Twitch is an excellent outlet to make some profits, it also need  a lot of staff members to moderate chat and make sure broadcast is run smoothly.

Just like how people go to a stadium to watch a football game, there is something similar for esports. Gamers call it a LAN event, and at the event is an arena where computers are all set up, we can see all the players on the stage playing the game; and behind them a huge screen for the audience to watch. This is another way to colleges can make a profit; they just have to simply have an admission fee to watch. However they would need a lot of staff to maintain this and make sure viewers do not spoil the games

Sponsorships are a great way for sport teams to make money, we have even seen Coca Cola ads during the Olympics. In esports sponsorships are much easier to obtain, they have fairly low requirements, which almost all colleges meet. Just to show how easy it is RMU esports has over 6000 followers on Twitter and on their Twitch they have around 300 followers; sponsors love to support collegiate esports. RMU has the following sponsors, Steel Series, DxRacer, iBuyPower, Discord, Twitch and almost 10 more sponsors, with all those sponsors it is fairly easy for colleges to set up an esports division.

All these benefits are great for colleges however there are a lot problems that makes collegiate esports difficult to invest in. Esports have several games in it and it varies even in genre of the game, so colleges have a variety of games to invest in. The most common game is League of Legends, that is primarily because of the large player pool for the game and the large prize pool for their tournaments, but if a college wants to include other games how would each teams for esports be treated. For example Smite has a much smaller prize pool for collegiate tournaments compared to League of Legends, so if a college is to include a Smite team the profit would not be as high as League of Legends. So how would they treat the players for each team, would one team get less scholarship money? This causes some serious problems because a Smite team could be putting in the same amount of work as a League of Legends team but the school can not make same amount of profit from each team. That tells me expanding their teams would be very difficult, and more likely would stick to the game that gives them the most profit. The collegiate esports scene would suffer due to lack of diversity in games.

Basketball has a basketball court, football and has a football field and baseball has a baseball field. In esports, courts like this is not good enough of a place for players to practice at. Players require top of the line computers and very high comfort, and this is expensive. Esports in general is very expensive to invest it, first a college would need to give a room or a large enough space for these players. Second they would need top of the line computers to essentially match computers at LAN events, those computers are expensive; a top of the line computer would cost nearly $2,500 each, and that’s without including the peripherals. Comfort is a big issue for players, the pro players practice nearly eight to twelve hours a day, they would need comfy chairs and a comfortable keyboard and mouse to use. Maintenance is a huge factor, the computers always needs to be run smoothly and as technology grows the computers need upgrades, and as their mouse and keyboards wear out they need to be replaced. The cost of maintenance would be high making it difficult for college

Collegiate Varsity Esport teams are not highly skilled. AVGL hosted a League of Legends tournament for the Fall 2017 semester. This tournament had over a hundred teams and from the results of the tournaments, I am able to state that varsity teams are not nearly high skilled as they should be. It is not that the varsity team are not equipped with proper equipment to play at the highest skillset, it is that coaches or the players are just not doing their roles correctly.

Coaches are an important aspect of sports and esports, they are the ones to help the player get better, however esports coaches have a lot of work to put in; this is because for esport titles or moba games, the meta changes. Meta is something we call as a ‘standard’ things to do this version of the game, so our coaches have to stay on top of it. Along with that, doing the math for building items in games and assessing player damage etc… it is a very big aspect of these types of games. So that could very well be the problem for the teams, coaches not being able to coach properly just because it is very time consuming. They are students first, and athletes second.

Most varsity programs offer some type of scholarship so how does teams work for stuff like this. Most teams are compromised to fill the basic minimum slot, for example five main players and usually three subs. Eight player rosters, but in the gaming industry roster changes are very common. School and coaches should be willing to kick members from their teams if they are not performing well. This is a tough choice for gaming teams because we rely on team synergy, because this game requires heavy communication it’s hard to toss a player in and expect them to understand how each of their teammates play and communicate at their level. So team compositions are a huge factor for these varsity teams.  I think the best solution is to be very picky about their players, hold a much more difficult tryouts and create a higher incentive for students to enter the team. This is again a problem for colleges to do because of the rigorous tryouts there is no ‘prerequisites’ that can be obtained to determine top players.

Another cause for varsity teams not being as high skilled as they should be is they don’t have enough practice. Teams practice several hours a day, but are they are not practicing at the right skill level. The problem is due to the lack of varsity teams in collegiate esports they don’t or can’t practice with other schools and if they do, they could always just be a bad team. So getting practice from playing ‘ranked’ games are not effective enough for the players, they need to practice against pro teams. And this is what pro teams do, they ‘scrim’ against other pro team, this creates an equal skill level. But as I keep iterating this over and over, the skill level for varsity teams are not high enough.  A possible solution this dilemma is that they need to create multiple teams for a single school; essentially a Team A and Team B, this helps with constant practice at similar skill level, and the constant growth of several players to do player swaps if needed. Just like any other sports they need constant practice and the proper level, and colleges simply would have a difficult time committing this many hours for students

Focusing a bit more on team synergy, team communication is very important in esports; they need to be constantly talking and give good and relative information. With this information is up to the team captain to make calls on what to do in game. This is something that is very difficult to do, hesitating could be a serious problem. So who gets the team captain role? This is very difficult because as individual players they might be decent players but they need to be able to keep constant communication to make proper plays in game. This is different from sports because usually the calls for a play are before a game, but in esports its during it. A captain needs to be capable of making the right calls during the game, something a coach can not help with (Usually not allowed in any competitive esports). The amount of sacrifice players need to makes it really difficult for colleges to consider investing in because they are students.

I conducted a survey and asked college gamers “how does collegiate varsity esports team compare skill wise to just gaming clubs. Pretty much is there a skill gap?” The best response I got regarding this is from Victor, he states “I don’t think there is much correlation between varsity and skill based on our leagues. But I definitely think that will change over the next 2 years as the varsity programs get more organized. Right now, the teams are all so new that they are working on hiring coaches and recruiting players and it will take time. Our LoL league had University of Houston (club) beating out varsity teams to reach the Grand Final. However, Columbia College (varsity) was extremely good and beat Houston handedly. They have shown what a year or two and a strong coaching staff can build and there will be more of that to come. A team with a full time coach and 2 analyst are going to beat out a team without the resources in the long run.”  I do not believe that things will change in 2 years, more likely 6 years. Students are usually at the school for four years, if nearly 2 years of coaching was not enough to beat a normal college team, how much time do they have to improve the teams each year? I do not think four years is enough for a team to improve so much that they can beat regular players. Because most students are at the school for 4 years, its not worth investing in the players because it is difficult to help a player improve drastically in that short amount of time.

Football, soccer, baseball they have not had massive changes over the years, however in the esports industry especially MOBA games there is always an update for the game. The updates could be weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, but there are always changes. This could be a downside for players who want to commit several hours for the team to be up to date with game and improve on new strategies, however colleges can not forget that they are students first.

Overall the esports industry is great, it has been growing and have had a lot of success. The collegiate scene on the other hand does not have the same success, there are too many problems starting with NCAA, skill gap, and maintenance that will cause colleges a hard time to start up.

 

Work Cited

Funk, Daniel. “ESport Management: Embracing ESport Education and Research Opportunities.” Sport Management Review, Elsevier, 23 July 2017, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441352317300670.

 

Jenny, Seth. “ESports : The New Intercollegiate ‘Athlete.’” Ascue.org, Winthrop University, 13 June 2016, ascue.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jenny_eSports_ASCUE2016.pdf

 

Kane, Daniel. “May 11, 2017 Recognizing ESports as a Sport.” Https://Www.researchgate.net/Profile/Daniel_Kane13/Publication/317929457_Recognizing_ESports_as_a_Sport/Links/597f4db5a6fdcc1a9acd7fe1/Recognizing-ESports-as-a-Sport.pdf, 11 May 2017, www.researchgate.net/publication/317929457_Recognizing_ESports_as_a_Sport.

 

MatthewPatrick13. “Game Theory: Why ESPN Is WRONG about ESports.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 July 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYlpxFWXCM8

 

Sugishita, Kenny. “Campus Knowledge of Esports.” Scholarcommons, Scholarcommons., 14 Dec. 2015, scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4292&context=etd.

Sunny, Jithin Is there skill gap between varsity and casual esports players?. https://imgur.com/a/tWIZa . Accessed 6 December 2017.

 

 

Self Reflective Statement – PlethoraGaming

Core Value I Understand that writing is a practice which involves a multi-stage, recursive and social process.

Core value I is about showing that we have spent time on writing. To show that we went back to our writing and improved it anyway we can. I have learned that first draft is not what you submit last, there is a lot to improve on in a single paper. I have shown this by rewriting my Causal and Rebuttal Arguments. For example in my causal argument I talked about the value of coaches on teams, this comparison came out as coaches in esports having more burden than sport coaches, which was not my intention. Revising this showed clarification in my writing and communicated the proper meaning I wanted for my argument in sports vs esports.

Core Value II. My work demonstrates that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities.

Core value II means to use multiple sources together to essentially show counterpoints or supporting points to other sources to help create a dialogue in our writing. I found myself not doing this, however I found a really good statement that helped me write a paragraph that created a conversation for a counterpoint. In my Rebuttal Argument I used other sources I found to argue the point of getting hurt in esports. I was able to use another article to show that people can get hurt in sports as well, and just like how there are protective gear for sports, there are protective gears for esports players to avoid getting injured. I synthesized these articles to show a conversation of esports and sports are similar in terms of injuries can occur in both.

Core Value III. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

Core Value II shows that I understand who I am writing to. Also to show that I understood my sources properly, and write correctly regarding its topic. I found this to be fairly easy, I was able to identify the audience and its purpose from reading the thesis, however when I was writing it I found it difficult to show who my audience and is. In my Safer Saws I showed up understand of the text, and what purpose it served for the readers. However when I did reread some of my sources I did not understand if they were for or against, it was after rereading it, and understood the author’s perspective that I was able to truly explain what the author meant.

Core Value IV: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

Core Value IV is stating that all the sources we used was incorporated to our writing properly. That I did not give false meaning for a source. I found this to be really difficult before I did my Annotated Bibliography because the information for my essays were scrambled around, and really did not have any organization. In my annotated bibliography I was able to give a summary of the articles by pointing out the important statements, and show how I used it in my paper. This helped my organize statements to support my ideas, or show counterpoints to my ideas. Showing how I used it helped me get the proper interpretation of my ideas in my writing.

 

 

Core Value V. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation.

Core value V shows that I have credited the proper authors, and used the sources properly. Doing this properly shows where we got our ideas from, and being ethical by not stealing their work. This was the easiest because I showed my work cited pages in my annotated bibliography, visual Rhetoric Rewrite, essentially anything that pulled an idea from somewhere else.

 

Annotated Bibliography – PlethoraGaming

1) On the scientific relevance of esports: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Wagner12/publication/220968200_On_the_Scientific_Relevance_of_eSports/links/00b4952589870231be000000.pdf

Background: The author tries to define esports to lead a proper investigation on the problems in esports. This article defines esports, gives us a brief history of esports and gives us the esports science. The esports science focuses on the development of teams of how they have to have high level of communication to be a high performing team. It also focuses on it as if they were a normal team to state that players need to practice to essentially hone their skills.

How to use it: This is used to show some of the basic needs to be a team, especially for varsity esports in college, how this determines skill gap between casual and competitive players.

 

2) Rise and rise of esports: http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=c0a8ef8e-4cbd-40c7-83f4-3fc09dea9192%40sessionmgr4010&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=97498033&db=aph

Background: This article essentially talks about the boom of esports. It talks about the video game being a entertainment industry however it is being turned into a competitive scene. He states that the hours a pro player puts in essentially makes them equivalent to athletes because of the rigorous training.

How to use it: This article will be used to show that the esports industry is rising, and lead into the question i’m asking of why there is a skill gap in varsity versus casual teams. This is to show that colleges need to invest in esports

 

3) Recognizing ESports as a Sport: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel_Kane13/publication/317929457_Recognizing_ESports_as_a_Sport/links/597f4db5a6fdcc1a9acd7fe1/Recognizing-ESports-as-a-Sport.pdf

Background: This article talks about how esports should be categorized as sports in the competitive level. Using the definition of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the author believes that esports still fits in their category as sports. This article also defines esports and tries to put it together in the same category as sports. It also talks about the benefits of esports being a sport especially in the NCAA

How to use it: This article tries to separate the amateur and professional environment of esports, this will be used to categorize varsity esports as professional and any clubs to be just amateur. And utilize how beneficial it is to have esports in NCAA to have colleges invest more in eports

 

4) eSports: The New intercollegiate “athlete”: https://ascue.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jenny_eSports_ASCUE2016.pdf

Background:This powerpoint introduces esports as a mainstream sport and the players as athletes in college. It compiles several colleges, and shows the usage of esports scholarship. This powerpoint breaks down what categories it must hit to be defined as a sport. This also tries to show how to institutionalize esports in college.

How to use it: In this I have focused on specifically sport having to have physical exertion to be considered a sport. This powerpoint talks about exercise games but it’s not competitive. I use a substitute to show in my article that physical exertion does exist in video games, and it’s mostly in the eyes and hands.

 

5) eSport management: Embracing eSport education and research opportunities: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441352317300670

Background: This article talks about how esports is evolving, and how do we classify as as a sport? This defines esports but it checks to see which aspects of sports should be a criteria for esports to be considered to be in it. Even further it tries to discuss how its a growing industry and sports should try to guide it.

How to use it: I use this to discuss how esports is different from video game, it shows the difference between ‘fun’ and ‘competition’. This also talks about how diversity is created within college varsity teams to show that esports is evolving and that helps my article by showing the impact of esports in the collegiate scene.

 

6) Campus knowledge of esports: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4292&context=etd

Background: this article focuses on how esports can lead to a higher education. Essentially it talks about how colleges are looking for new innovative ways to have more people enroll in their school, but esports is a fairly new phenomenon and how should colleges treat this to get more enrollment. It has a survey that also shows player earning and such to show how this can lead to a career.

How to use it: This is being used mostly for showing how this leads to a higher education. With video games growing it shows how colleges can utilize this to show improvement in enrollment and have students chase after that goal.

 

7) Comparison of eSports and Traditional Sports Consumption Motives: https://search.proquest.com/docview/917532561?pq-origsite=gscholar

Background: This article focuses on comparing esports and sport media consumption. The author goes over 14 different motivational factors that affects the time spent watching esports. This article also talks about how video game developers might take the route to creating a game that is competitive for esports.

How to use it: I will be using this show my experience in the behind the scenes of creating a game to be competitive. I utilize my experience with Amazon for the game Crucible which I was flown out for; to lead the topic of creating games for esports in my essay, to show what games should colleges focus on in esports.

 

8) Time to be grown-ups about video gaming: the rising esports industry and the need for regulation: http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/arz57&div=29&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals

Background: This article talks about how to regulate esports. The main topics are how can the government get involved. The author wants the government to regulate the visas, form an esports association, and classify which players are employees.

How to use it: I will be using this to show that varsity teams are winning money but does it classify them as employees? The author states that almost any paid players are employees, but I will be fighting that argument, to show that certain games have different wages and it’s not exactly a stable income.

 

9) Not just a game: the employment Status and collective bargaining rights of professional esports players: http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/walee22&div=18&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals

Background: This article focuses on employment status of people in this industry. This article defines what an employee is and tries to figure out if players are employee of their own org or are they employees of the game.This article leads to showing what federal laws are applicable to give these players employment status.

How to use it: I will be using this to show which parts of the esports industry will we consider employment for esports. There are lot of section to esports, like the games, writes, the players, but they all could apply to the federal employment laws in one way or the other, so it shows my discussion in that.

 

10) Survey I conducted: https://imgur.com/a/tWIZa

I asked in a public collegiate esports tournament group chat (Discord.gg/AVGL) “how does collegiate varsity esports team compare skill wise to just gaming clubs. Pretty much is there a skill gap?”

Background: What I got from the surveys are player responses stating essentially how it run in their college. However few statements from various people gives clarification on the skill gap between pro, varsity and casual gaming. Essentially how did varsity esports team get beat out by casual college players.

How to use it: I work with AVGL and conducted this public survey to give me a better understanding how things are run at colleges with varsity esports. I will be focusing on what Victor said on the topic of coaching. Essentially answering the question is 4 years enough for the players to really make any impact in improving.

Rebuttal Argument – PlethoraGaming

When we think of esports we think ‘oh its video games,’ and not an actual sport. So is esports actually a sport? The common counterpoint is that esports needs to involve physical work in order for it to be sport. One of the arguments is

Anyone can also be a professional gamer. A good internet connection and decent specs on your computer can make you the next big name in gaming, if there has ever been one. These pro gamers spend nearly 12 hours a day training for the next competition.

But can’t that be said about athletes as well. Anyone can also be a professional athelete, they just need some training and learn some techniques. A person who likes football can pick up a football and start throwing and practicing. To be a pro gamer it is much harder, for example in MOBA games there are constant changes to the game where players have to learn the new meta and strategies of the game.

 

Training in eSports is rather detrimental to your health. Aches and pains in your hands from tapping away at your keyboard could have prolonged effects on your health, and looking at a bright screen for too long can hurt your eyes. Yes, if you were practicing with a teammate for football and get hit in the head too hard you can get a concussion, and that too could have long term effects on your health. But new protective gear could one day erase these injuries. For eSports, however, glasses and gloves would only dull the pain for so long.

Like Gabianelli anyone can get hurt. He makes a remark about how new protective gear help avoid this, but that is also true for video games. We have features with monitors where the lightning is adjusted so it doesnt strain your eye. And with new keyboards with wrist support and other neat features these problems are resolved, you just need the proper equipment for esports; similar in the way you need proper equipment in sports.

 

In a similar way, while eSports has “sports” in the name, it is the furthest thing from any sport we watch or play today.

Hocket is not like foot; but we consider both of them sports, just because we changed how we watch and play, does not mean its not sports. There are several traditional sports like hockey, football, soccer etc… And there are several esport games like League of Legends, Smite, Overwatch. I’m sure we all watch sports and esports the same way, there are bars now that show esports instead of sports, just like a typical bar. People gather around to watch sports; eating food and getting really excited. We do this in esports too, we gather with our friends and watch esports and whenever something cool happens we get really excited. We may not be playing it exactly the same but we are watching it the same for sure.

Works Cited

Formoso, Anthony Gabianelli & Thomas, and The Montclarion. “Point/Counterpoint: Are ESports ‘Real’ Sports?” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 16 Apr. 2017, college.usatoday.com/2017/04/16/pointcounterpoint-are-esports-real-sports/.

 

 

Causal Argument – PlethoraGaming

Collegiate Varsity Esport teams are not highly skilled

AVGL hosted a League of Legends tournament for the Fall 2017 semester. This tournament had over a hundred teams and from the results of the tournaments, I am able to state that varsity teams are not nearly high skilled as they should be. It is not that the varsity team is not equipped with proper equipment to play at the highest skillset, it is that coaches or the players are just not doing their roles correctly.

 

Coaches are an important aspect of sports and esports, they are the ones to help the player get better, however esports coaches have a lot of work to put into. This is because for esport titles or moba games, the meta changes. Meta is something we call as a ‘standard’ things to do this version of the game, so our coaches have to stay on top of it. Along with that, doing the math for building items in games and assessing player damage etc… is a very big aspect of these types of games. So that could very well be the problem for the teams, coaches not being able to coach properly just because it is very time consuming. They are students first, and athletes second.

Most varsity programs offer some type of scholarship so how does teams work for stuff like this. Most teams are compromised to fill the basic minimum slot, for example five main players and usually three subs. Eight player rosters, but in the gaming industry roster changes are very common. School and coaches should be willing to kick members from their teams if they are not performing well. This is a tough choice for gaming teams because we rely on team synergy, because this game requires heavy communication its hard to toss a player in and expect them to understand how each of their teammates play and communicate at their level. So team compositions are a huge factor for these varsity teams.  I think the best solution is to be very picky about their players, hold a much more difficult tryouts and create a higher incentive for students to enter the team.

Another cause for varsity teams not being as high skilled as they should be is they dont have enough practice. Teams practice several hours a day, but are they are not practicing at the right skill level. The problem is due to the lack of varsity teams in collegiate esports they don’t or can’t practice with other schools and if they do, they could always just be a bad team. So getting practice from playing ‘ranked’ games are not effective enough for the players, they need to practice against pro teams. And this is what pro teams do, they ‘scrim’ against other pro team, this creates an equal skill level. But as I keep iterating this over and over, the skill level for varsity teams are not high enough.  A possible solution this dilema is that they need to create multiple teams for a single school; essentially a Team A and Team B, this helps with constant practice at similar skill level, and the constant growth of several players to do player swaps if needed. Just like any other sports they need constant practice and the proper level

Focusing a bit more on team synergy, team communication is very important in esports; they need to be constantly talking and give good and relative information. With this information is up to the team captain to make calls on what to do in game. This is something that is very difficult to do, hesitating could be a serious problem. So who gets the team captain role? This is very difficult because as individual players they might be decent players but they need to be able to keep constant communication to make proper plays in game. This is different from sports because usually the calls for a play are before a game, but in esports its during it. A captain needs to be capable of making the right calls during the game, something a coach can not help with (Uuually not allowed in any competitive esports).

 

Work Cited

“Best of Mic Check – Funny & Insane Moments | League of Legends.” YouTube, YouTube, 22 June 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVoQg81JMIQ.

White Paper – PlethoraGaming

Content Description

  • Production value of collegiate esports
  • Sports vs esports
  • Collegiate esports as a whole for esports

Hypothesis 1

Collegiate esport varsity teams do not compare equally skill wise to esports as a club

Hypothesis 2

Collegiate esports is not main stream due to risk difficult entry into the scene

Topics for small paper

Definition/Classification Argument

Esports is commonly mistaken with having the argument its not a real sport because it does not involve physical activities. Instead it should be focused on the the type of training it takes to get to their level.

Cause / Effect Argument

Esports not being fully developed in the collegiate scene has left, typical gaming clubs to have more skilled players than esport varsity teams

Rebuttal Argument

There are skill gaps in collegiate varsity teams due a lack of coaching abilities compared to professional teams

Current State of My Research Paper

I have been able to pull a lot of evidence from American Video Game League (AVGL) an org I work for which recently finished running its collegiate tournament for League of Legends, Smite and Paladins. Focusing on LoL we saw a few varsity teams just get beat out by regular college students. I want to focus on this stats to talk about my claims. Even more I am bringing my knowledge of going to the Amazon Summit for Crucible to discuss certain aspect of esports that has shed some light. (However I may have to avoid this because I signed a non-disclosure form and can not talk about the game itself). Even still I should be able to talk about the expectations of sports vs esports

Safer Saws—PlethoraGaming

Manufacturers

1A: “I’ve tried to be fair, but the more I hear about SawStop and Stephen Gass, the more of a bully and a jerk they seem to be.”

1B: This says Bosch was trying to cooperate with Stephen Gass, but as Bosch looked into SawStop they seemed like bullies

1C: This is an opinionated claim

1D: Does not really have any evidence behind it, but they did say they tried to cooperate and create a ‘safe’ saw. And ended up making a safe saw of their own

http://toolguyd.com/sawstop-bosch-reaxx-table-saw-lawsuit/

Amputees

11A: “Tom Corbett was helping remodel a home in Manchester, Massachusetts, two years ago when a piece of wood he was trying to cut jammed in his table saw and his hand was thrown into the blade. Four of his fingers were severed in an instant.”

11B: This amputee is saying he accidentally got injured.

11C: Proposal, seems like he wants safety to be more accessible.

11D: This makes complete sense logically, why wouldn’t someone who lost their fingers want better safety technology for their tools.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/table-saw-sawstop-safety-finger-cut/

Industry Spokespeople

3A: “The agency has been wrestling with the issue, on and off, for 15 years. So far, its most definitive act has been to give SawStop an award for safety innovation. It will be at least next year before the agency adopts a regulation, if it ever does..”

3B: There are ways to avoid getting injured with system like SawStop, but we are not having this as a mandatory quite yet.

3C: Proposal, they are trying to get safety to be a higher priority as it 15 years have gone by trying to push this.

3D: This is persuasive to push saw safety, 15 years is a long time and we still have not come to a resolve. With technology like SawStop theres a question asked why have there been no improvement on regulation for safety yet.

http://fcir.org/2013/05/16/power-tool-industry-circles-the-wagons-as-disabling-saw-injuries-mount/

Personal Injury Lawyers

6A: “Now these manufacturers are facing dozens of lawsuits brought forth by people whose injuries could have been prevented had SawStop or similar safety mechanisms been in place. People who have lost fingers, hands, and arms to table saws have been devastated by their injuries, multiple surgeries, and medical bills they may never be able to pay so long as they are unable to work.”

6B: SawStop could have prevented injuries, and still help people continue their jobs

6C: Fact, there are several people being injured and lawsuit brought to the manufacturers.

6D: This seems accurate because people can not work if they lose fingers or arms, SawStop could have kept people their jobs

 

 

 

 

Proposal+5 – PlethoraGaming

For my research topic, I have picked the topic of esports. I have worked in this scene for several years now and feel like I can make specific claims regarding this industry. I want to ask ‘With esports growing, why is there a lack of acceptance and wanting to make this mainstream’

 

Campus knowledge of esports

This article talks about the collegiate esports scene. This shows if the colleges understand the collegiate esports scene and how they can involve themselves to improve it and help the students.

I hope this shows the investment people or schools in this matter are making into the esports scene. I also hope to use my knowledge of working at AVGL (Collegiate tournament) to talk more about the collegiate scene.

On the Scientific Relevance of eSports

This article talks about the relevance of esports for kids or teens. This tries to shows how esports should be treated

I’m hoping this article will help shed some light on the troubles of esports and the effects esports has on the youth

What is eSports and why do people watch it?

This article talks about some of the behind the scene aspect of  esports, especially the broadcast part of it. It goes in depth of why people watch it and how the success is measured

I hope to bring my experience with esports broadcast to kinda piggy back on some of the main points this article brought up

Comparison of eSports and Traditional Sports Consumption Motives

This article compares sports and esports, more specifically the competitive aspect of it. To show the limitations of sports vs esports

This is a point I want to argue in my essay to show the relevance of esports in this modern time.

Reconsidering Esport: Economics and Executive Ownership

This article talks about how esports can effect the economy. Talks more about the professionalism of esports and commercializing the gaming industry for its esports scene

I hope to bring some points regarding how this will help grow the scene of sports if we add esports onto that list

 

Visual Rhetoric Rewrite – PlethoraGaming

0:00-0:01 A woman is sitting in a good looking hall area and is starting at a tablet, from the looks of it chatting with someone. And next to her a really shiny silver trophy on the table as her tablet. Other people seem to be in room because a lady in the shot looks like she is talking to someone else that is off screen

0:00-0:03 We get to take a look at the tablet the woman was looking at it is an advertisement towards how to grow your 401(k) from a website called AceYourRetirement.com. This tells us this is an ad for retirement

0:03-0:05 We pan over to a bunch of college kids, they look like they are a team and won something. The girls are in excitement while a girl on the center left is holding a victory trophy. The mom is cheerful with the group of girls. They also seems to be a fraternity because of the symbols in the room

0:06-0:07 They are in a fraternity home, and are celebrating a win for for something with one of the kids hugging their mom.

0:08-0:10 We pan over to a mom and child in a bank. The mom is creating a bank account for the daughter, and the daughter looks clueless to whats going on

0:10-0:12 The kid and mom are grown up with holding a pamphlet at a college that says “look forward to a brighter future”

0:12-0:15 The mom and kid are now touring, about 3 different times the college background changed, showing that they are looking to pick the best college

0:15-0:18 The mom is showing a board with three options for college, about the pros and cons regarding tuition, meal etc.. And its very elaborate

0:18-0:20 The kid is now overwhelmed by the options to pick, and seems to be afraid because she doesn’t know which is the right choice

0:20-0:24 Back to the fraternity home, and the mom and child are celebrating being in college

0:25-0:28 The mom on the tablet is considering applying to the AceYourRetirement

0:28-0:34 Just showing a banned for retirement

 

Stone Money Rewrite—PlethoraGaming

One thing I have known for a long time is that money has different value in every country. For example when I traveled last year one dollar would be equivalent to 70 of that country’s currency. Three dollars can get be a box of Oreo, while two hundred and ten of the other country’s currency can get me about five boxes of Oreo’s. I have no doubt that we believe in a sort of ‘fake’ money, after hearing about the concept of Stone Money.

Friedman said that the acknowledgement of ownership is all it took to add value to the currency; and that acknowledgement is passed down. This surprised me because how can generations of people put trust in something, and not question it? Then I recalled, this is similar to religion people have faith on something that could or could not be real

The US setting aside gold for the French is exactly like the German marking a number on the fei, by adding belief to it, it adds value. This created a lower monetary value for the US, while increasing the France’s monetary value even though the gold was not even moved a few feet away. This goes back to show that money is not fluid, just because a person can make others perceive something differently

The story of How Fake Money Saved Brazil by NPR also shows the effect of how we perceive money. Their story was the value of money were not stable, and in order to stabilize and return faith into the economy they had to create essentially a fake currency. By changing how much the old currency values compared to the new currency and keeping products at the new currency the same, it restored the value of the new money. Because the money was no longer varied, products maintained a value, which restored faith in the economy. This plan could have easily backfired if they did not believe in the new currency, this shows how the faith we put into currency can change the value.

And now in modern-day we have electronic currency. We can now get paid by having our money deposited directly into our bank account. And because when we check our bank balance and it shows a number we believe in it, even though it’s just a set of number. We use it to buy real products with our debit or credit card, even though we didn’t pay physical money for it, the electronic money is treated as real physical money. Money that is not backed by something valuable like gold etc… we can consider it fiction.

We also have other fiction money, such as Etherium and Bitcoin known as cryptocurrencies. Even though they have an equivalent value for other non-electronic currency, what would happen if they stopped using cryptocurrency or say they get banned in a country? That might be what we will be facing soon as there are rumors about cryptocurrency ban in China. According to Josiah Wilmoth just rumors of the ban dropped values of the currency by ten percent or more. This proves that because we believe is some rumor we affect the cryptocurrency.

To sum this all up, just because we perceive or believe something, we are capable of making a value for it.

 

Work Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Wilmoth, Josiah. “Ethereum, Bitcoin Prices Lead $20 Billion Slump Amid Chinese Regulatory Turbulence.” CryptoCoinsNews, Cryptocoinsnews, 9 Sept. 2017, http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ethereum-bitcoin-prices-lead-20-billion-slump-amid-chinese-regulatory-turbulence/.

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 9 Sept. 2017. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;&gt;