Brent Warner
This is the HigherEdTech podcast Season 2 episode 14: eSports with Adam Lopez.

Tim Van Norman
Welcome to today’s HigherEdTech podcast. I’m Tim VanNorman, the instructional technologist here at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner
And I’m Brent Warner Professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. Brent, anything new?

Brent Warner
Uh, well, we made it to March. So that’s about it. Nothing, nothing particularly exciting here. We’re just waiting for our shots. And, and that’s as I go. So, but I am excited. Yeah, we today we have a guest. It’s been a little while, a couple of few episodes, at least since we had a guest and we’re trying to get more on more regularly. So today we’ve got Adam Lopez. Adam Lopez is a previous Semi Pro World of Warcraft player turned teacher. He moved into eSports developing curriculum for Irvine unified and working on projects with the OC D. And now is the esports coordinator for Irvine Valley College. So Adam welcome.

Adam Lopez
Yeah, thank you very much. Brent & Tim, for having me really excited to bring eSports to this space and and spread the word about how great it is academics.

Tim Van Norman
Glad you’re able to come.

Brent Warner
Yeah, we’re excited. It should be a good topic

Tim Van Norman
We’re very excited, we’re jumping on top of each other. So I just so that everybody knows, this is not a case, at least for me of experience, and understanding all of this stuff. So we’re gonna get in and dig into eSports from a novice standpoint. And Brent, I’m hoping you have a little bit more experience, at least with gaming than I do.

Brent Warner
No, I’m a total. I’m a total noob. I actually just tell that actually, I don’t even know if noob is still an expression that’s used, but

Adam Lopez
We still use it, don’t worry!

Brent Warner
Okay. So I’m a little over noob level, I guess.

Adam Lopez
Nice. Yes. stoked to kind of spread the word to people who are not so familiar. I think that’s something that’s really important right now is there may be some misconceptions about eSports. Or, or just misunderstandings, and it’s great to come in to an audience that doesn’t know much about it.

Tim Van Norman
Yeah. Well, that works. So let’s start with what is eSports? Do you guys play games like NBA, Madden, that type of thing? Is that electronic sports or what is eSports?

Adam Lopez
So yeah, what the sports titles do fall under eSports. However, that doesn’t encompass all of what eSports is. eSports is just pretty much the appreciation of competitive video gaming. So this can be at a professional level, with with huge audiences and, and large venues or this could be down just to the casual gamer, there’s a bit of a controversy within the industry of defining where it is. And if it’s just at that professional level and upper echelon of skill. But I think a lot of other people, especially in the academic community, consider casual competitive video gaming to also be eSports The way I see it is just so as long as people are integrating some sort of like strategic approach to how they they win games, or how they achieve their success that kind of determines eSports, but it’s, it’s getting broader and broader right now, do we see previous titles that weren’t expected? weren’t like, accepted as eSports become eSports, such as like, speed running in the past? That was just like, all genre of gaming, but now we’re seeing eSports organizations buy into it. Yeah, but yeah, run games.

Brent Warner
Sorry. Like, you mean, like the games like Temple Run type of speed running islands, where you just run straight down the line and try to jump over things.

Adam Lopez
If somebody is streaming Temple Run, and it has an audience, and they all agree that it is awesome, and they are highly competitive, then yes, that can be qualified as eSports

Brent Warner
Hmm, interesting. Okay.

Tim Van Norman
Okay.

Brent Warner
So, Adam, I think there’s just tons of different ways to go here. But I we kind of want to start broad. So we understand, you know, eSports, relatively new phenomenon. I know, there’s been it’s been around in different levels for a while, but in higher ed, we do think, as you mentioned earlier, there might be a lot of misconceptions about what it is, who’s involved, whether whether there’s long term value, I think a lot of academics are gonna like, you know, be skeptical of that. And so we’re, we’re interested in like, how do you explain it to skeptics, and what types of questions Do they normally present to you and what are your answers to those questions?

Adam Lopez
Yeah, I guess. I guess one of the things that I’m gonna have to steal is from one of the awesome people here in Orange County, Kevin Brown, he likes to say we’re not just Thumb monkeys, right? We’re, we’re very intensely getting into strategy and teamwork and, and how to develop ourselves. So there’s a lot of a lot of academics that can be involved with eSports from this. And so I would say just recognize that it is an activity where there’s a lot of rigor, and it can challenge students so that that’s a great place to start. And sometimes it’s just the energy that can sell an administrator on whether or not this is a good activity to be involved in their campus just by being in a room that has the students who are just excited about these games, and engaging in conversations. And then it could just be done deal from there. Some of the other problems I have, I think I see within the especially in the academic space, is not accepting mature video games, at at games at schools on campus, because they think that it will incite violence. And that’s completely false. From from what I’ve understood, and the whole, the whole scene, we know that that’s not true. If anything, it would bring your students together, because they would they understand that that’s just a simulation, and they just want to be together and have opportunities to compete as a team.

Tim Van Norman
A little question in this, is this when you’re talking about a team? Is this one person playing? Or is this you know, and everybody’s watching? Or are like groups of people in the same game fighting together as a against other teams or or playing together against each other to whatever to make, basically, it’s your group against another group? Or what does that mean by team?

Adam Lopez
So yeah, like a majority of the time, a team can be just a group of five players all playing the same title that compete in tournaments for that title. So for example, League of Legends is is the most popular sport in the world, it’s, it’s a game where five players are going against five other players and competing to push down the other person’s base and destroy their base. And whoever does it first wins. And so that’s, that’s the typical case for eSports. Sometimes there’s just one player representing the school, but then they could be on a team of five people who work together to get better as individual athletes. So that can also be a team. And then sometimes the whole team could just be referencing the coaches, the analyst and the competitors all together just working as a team to, to to better themselves and their competitive success.

Tim Van Norman
Sounds like it kind of imitates it may be parallel to some sports programs.

Adam Lopez
Absolutely. So when we look at the people who are buying into this space, and and utilizing their infrastructure, they already have set up, we’re looking at sports conglomerates, who own major teams like the LA Lakers, we even see athletes like Rick Fox, or Shaquille O’Neal buying into eSports, because they understand that whole scene. And so yeah, it’s definitely akin to a sports program. It’s just that the way that it’s different in college is that the students will play a major role in the support systems, they don’t just compete, but they’ll also coach each other, or they’ll look up strategy and they’ll scout the opposing opposing teams. And then on the back end, they’ll have a president who runs events and runs, then you’ll have someone who runs the social media so that just the engagement from students is a little bit different. That’s what kind of makes it different with sports program.

Brent Warner
So this is something I kind of want to step back to here, Adam, I think, you know, my minor understanding of a game likely League of Legends, for example, is, you know, kind of the team is going to attack the other team, right? But you were talking earlier about this idea of like, building strategy and figuring out ways to play, I’d be really interested in some kind of concrete like, like, if you’re talking about a game like League of Legends, and maybe maybe for the listeners, just a brief, clarifying explanation of what League of Legends is. But then, like, outside of the playing time, how are students strategizing to become better players to become better, you know, competitors in this game?

Adam Lopez
Yeah, typically you, especially with League of Legends, you’re gonna see the students do their best to mimic what the pros are doing, because the pros are executing the best strategies. And they’re the ones who really research how to how to win games. And so we’ll kind of see what are the pros doing and how can we copy that effectively. And they can, they can look into so many different resources to get better and to increase their ability to strategize for these games. Like they’ll digest podcasts, they’ll go on Reddit, they’ll go on Twitter, they’ll go on YouTube, do whatever it takes, sometimes it varies from from student to student, but there’s definitely a whole bunch of different ways to do it.

Brent Warner
So I guess I’m thinking about that too. And like, if someone’s maybe my age or older, they’re probably have the traditional idea of Video games being kind of like a straight playthrough. But we want to kind of clarify that a lot of this is open world, right. And so there’s kind of endless choices in terms of what you can do. You can, I mean, I know this is a dumb way to make, but you can build a wall or you can you can shoot a gun or you know, whatever it is, but like, not just in a straight line, but you can move all over the place. So theoretically, you could actually plan you know, a full on military assault where you have people on one side of a hill and one side on a, an absolutely and right. And so this is all part of the strategy that people need to figure out.

Adam Lopez
Exactly. So like, as far as attacking points to a good example for this would be Counter Strike, our team was just practicing last week, we recorded it, what they call axes, which is just executes. And that’s where they have very timed and coordinated usage of utility. So they’re throwing smoke grenades, Flash, flashbangs, and molotovs, which cover areas of fire, and they have very distinct locations that they’re throwing them so that as they entered the site, they are set up for as much success, like the opposing team really have a lot to deal with all at the same time. That’s,

Tim Van Norman
and I mean, in the strategies sounds amazing there. So I know that a lot of these players have have stars in their eyes. What is the likelihood of somebody becoming a professional? What does it mean? And if they don’t, what happens to him?

Adam Lopez
Yeah, good question. Because there will be a lot of athletes that aspire to be a pro, and you have to be very, very good to get into the spotlight. To do pretty well, though, especially these days, the amateur scene is developing in North America. So it’s not too challenging, if you know the steps to maybe climb your way to a college scholarship. But these players, they still are performing within the top point, you know, 5% point 3% of their title. So it is it is very challenging, and rigorous, to have a lot of success. But the good news is, is that we we aren’t just especially in academics, we’re looking to do more than just get players ready to be a professional athlete, we want to invite them into the ecosystem. So maybe they don’t go pro. But hey, if they’ve also have an eye for I guess AR or something, then they could mix eSports and art and then go into the industry and become a professional in that way. And so that’s another major part of how this fits into academics.

Brent Warner
I did like earlier because you were talking about well, one person is going to take over the you know, building the actual event or one person is going to be doing the social media. So I kind of see it as very cross disciplinary in that way as you’re talking. So I’m thinking, Well, why wouldn’t someone be taking a marketing class at the same time? Or, you know, why wouldn’t someone be taking a you know, I don’t know what the term is, but like events planning or you know, like, whatever it is that they’re interested in that ties in with that I could see where it could fit across almost endless other, you know, academic pursuits?

Adam Lopez
Absolutely, it just because the possibilities are endless, we just practice the same thing that the pro organizations are doing and back and cover so many different fields that they’re recovering academics, that students that we do see this, especially in the clubs and some of the more high performing college clubs out there, where their ecosystem members are, are there, let’s say partnerships there, they’re in charge of partnerships for their club, but then they’re also doing business or marketing as their major. And so they’re trying to work their way into the, into the industry that way, it’s working very well right now, that is definitely a path that works out for a lot of people.

Brent Warner
Okay, so I play some games. Not a lot, not not like all the time, but I do play some games. But I am what I would personally consider a casual gamer. So I don’t like to get online when I play even when they’re online games. So like if I play assassin’s creed or, you know, whatever, whatever, kind of I like these open world explorer games, but I like to just kind of walk around and then do an occasional fight and then go like dig around and just find treasures or something. Is there a place for someone who considers themselves like a casual gamer? Like just like, Hey, I’m not I’m not competitive, but I like playing. Is there a place for that type of person in an Esports world and realm or is it like mad just go have fun by yourself and you probably don’t want to participate in this.

Adam Lopez
So yeah, you know, we do our best to to be as inclusive as possible within eSports and there’s definitely room for casual gaming within eSports Yes, a majority of the time when people are talking about eSports they are talking about the upper echelon of skill but you know, we These eSports titles are successful because they’re fun to play. And they’re challenging. And so if someone just wants to have a casual experience and be, especially in academic space, welcomed into a community, there’s definitely that’s very, very common. And I think that’s where a lot of our community members will come from is they’re just casual watchers or casual gamers and, and they may just want to jump in and play some smash against some of the other players and on their campus.

Tim Van Norman
Nice. So what are the top games right now?

Adam Lopez
Let’s see. So there’s the the major three, as they’ve been called, have been kind of the old guard of Esports. So we’ve got League of Legends, which has kind of paved the way for eSports. They, they start doing things differently, and they really Riot Games, they’ve broken down so many barriers and really push the industry forward. And then there’s Counter Strike, which is the shooter, which is very popular, especially in the West. And then Dota two, which has these insanely large prize pools once a year at what’s called the Invitational and players walk away, even if you get like a place to still walk away with a million dollars. And so it’s just insane how how, how big their prize pools are. So those are the major three, and then we’re seeing other ones up and coming like Fowler, it’s doing a really good job lately. fortnight’s done a great job, but they kind of backed off racket leaks a great one. Great fun one to watch. There’s plenty of them out there. So I could just keep going down the list. So I’ll stop talking. Yeah, there’s a lot.

Brent Warner
You will, because that’s interesting, because we’re kind of thinking, well, how long? So if you’re saying they’re old guard, and they’ve been around for a long time? How long does a game cycle lasts? I don’t know if that makes sense at that question, kind of, if you understand what I mean by that are like, how long is it totally, I would say like a game is popular. And then we’re gonna switch out to a different game or whatever it is.

Adam Lopez
And sometimes, sometimes a community will move from its older first version to its second or third, for instance, Counter Strike is on its third iteration of the game. That is one of the old guard back from two, early 2000s. It’s been having tournaments that have been, you know, just incredible, especially for their time having really large prize pools. So it will jump, sometimes games come in to the, to the scene, and then they’re out and two or three years. And it’s it’s a shame when that happens, too. But the Dota has been around for the same amount of time to early 2000s. That was a mod of a game, and it eventually turned into its own game. And League of Legends also came from, I believe the same creators of that, but they all branched off and did their own thing. And yeah, it will, it will switch through. But typically, if you can get to the point where you’re a popular eSports title, you’re gonna be around for a few years. Okay.

Tim Van Norman
So how long does it take somebody who is, is competitive naturally. Okay. For to get competitive in a new game. So once they’ve been competitive in one moving to a new one? Or do they kind of stick with what they know, or how does that work?

Adam Lopez
Yeah, typically, when you see people jump from title to title, it is within the same genre. For example, I was just talking about ballerina, you’ve seen a lot of people who were maybe not the best in the Counter Strike scene. But they jumped over to valiant just because it’s got a scene and they were they, they do really well there. But it’s just a little bit different of a game. And so they may appreciate that difference, and maybe their skill shines there. So again, it is possible for them to jump in. We see that especially in the fighting game community, too. They’ll jump from title to title all the time. That’s very common for them. So yeah, it does happen. But typically, it’s it doesn’t get too big of a leap. Like you won’t have somebody who’s been playing first person shooters all of a sudden switch to an over the top strategy game where they’re building all these different buildings and stuff. That doesn’t happen too often.

Brent Warner
Oh, that’s so interesting. So so it kind of in another way, it parallels sports, right? Like, people don’t just totally typically typically don’t just totally change the sport that they’re going to, but they might go for example, from boxing to MMA, right?

Adam Lopez
Exactly. That’s a great, that’s a great way of putting it.

Brent Warner
That’s really interesting. Okay, so now, I’m assuming that you’re seeing gamers improving their abilities, you know, over time over the semester. for you as a teacher setting this up, and I think this is fascinating, like, how do you how are you grading students? Or are you grading students? And how are you seeing their improvements? And what are you looking for through that process of like, hey, you’re showing me real improvement, or, hey, you’re not practicing enough. You’re not getting good enough at this. You know what I mean? Like, to me, that’s just such a fascinating, different way to look at things.

Adam Lopez
Yeah, it does get a little a little complicated the ways that we see players improve though, especially in this activity. is mostly in their social skills. So 80% of the students that have been involved with academic eSports were prior partly not involved in any extracurriculars. And so it’s really important for them to get together and communicate and being exposed to that teamwork. Environment does a lot for their social skills and their communication. Oh, that was one of the ways

Brent Warner
this is amazing, because I hadn’t thought about that. But there is an image and you know, better or worse of like, the antisocial gamer, right? And so…

Unknown Speaker
Yes, exactly.

Brent Warner
So you’re, you’re saying this proj– this type of activity being involved with this. Actually, like the process kind of lets them blossom or bloom or socialize and meet with other students. That’s, that’s absolutely amazing. I never even thought of that.

Unknown Speaker
Absolutely! And you’ll even see the swagger evolve within the students who kind of come in they’ll have a little hunched over meek like posture, and then you get them involved with the team like two months later, they you know, walk around with all this swaggered their shoulders are up and they’re totally enjoying it. It’s, it’s this is all too common in the esports space, because, you know, they used to going home, and just doing this on their own and then you bring in you bring them with their community, and they can just do so much for them. UCI did a study on on the ways that academic eSports affected community members. And they found that when people were polled about their experience with their high school clubs, their high school eSports clubs, they mostly talked about social and emotional learning type topics.

Brent Warner
Oh that is so cool. Wow. Now now we’ve got a whole nother direction we can talk about in the future.

Adam Lopez
Yeah, I got a little carried away with that part.

Brent Warner
No. I think.

Adam Lopez
And Besides — it sounds like you want to say something, Tim?

Tim Van Norman
No, I this is amazing, I think of my son, who is definitely one of those introvert people. And I can see exactly what you’re talking about as he gets on the games, and he’s talking to people and, and stuff is just amazing.

Unknown Speaker
This is definitely one of the biggest sells that we have in this space is that it does so so many things after that, right after they develop those social skills, then they buy in more to the activity. And so then we will see their mechanics, improving the skill and the games, or we will see their health improve as and say, Oh, I need to perform at top peak performance levels. I need to drink, I need to eat my vegetables, I need to work out and get healthy sleep. And they will absolutely try to influence those areas of their life.

Brent Warner
I love that. Wow.

Tim Van Norman
Cool. That’s amazing.

Adam Lopez
So I think – oh go ahead, Tim.

Tim Van Norman
So we were talking about improving over time. What is a season?

Adam Lopez
Yeah, so that’s gonna change like the title to title. And that’s kind of the problem with eSports Is that it? It varies title to title. When we’re talking about academic eSports, when we’re talking about seasons, it’s going to be the semesters, right? So we’ve got fall, spring, and summer. And sometimes they’ll they’ll have a winter season for certain titles. But when we’re talking about seasons like that, they’re going to be very long tournaments, that’s going to be probably nine to 12 week tournaments, maybe even longer, where they compete against a whole bunch of other college teams are in high school, right? They do that too. And and then they’ll move into playoffs, depending on how they seated within the brackets. And then they’ll eventually be a grand finals. And then in the procedure, they have their own seasons, but typically they follow those standards as well like spring, summer, winter fall, but it can it can change. Yeah, I think that’s about it.

Brent Warner
Yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense to go through and because it’s constructed by the people who are putting it together, right? So you say hey, it’s gonna be we’re gonna have the biggest tournament is going to be in middle of December, right, whatever that is.

Adam Lopez
And that’s actually pretty common too. The championships tend to happen at the end of the year. A lot of these proceeds, or, or leagues will have a year long season, where teams are accumulating points, and then they go to this big championship bracket at the end of the year. And in League of Legends case, they’ll have teams represent different nations at that at that championship.

Brent Warner
Getting all the way up. So So Adam, when you’re putting together these teams, what are you looking for in the athletes, like how are you deciding, Hey, you guys should be a team or do you just let it go organically? What, what’s the process for that?

Adam Lopez
Yeah, I like that. You said that part about organically because I am a huge advocate for student lead. So I like to, to make sure that the students are happy with the direction that we’re going with the teams if they want to keep things cash. Then that’s fine. And then maybe we’ll look for players who are a little bit more interested in and just being on a team and having a good time. Whereas if they want to keep them more competitive, then we’ll start to prioritize skill and performance in the game. So during the tryouts we’ll we’ll look for them to be performing really well. But you also want somebody who’s going to contribute to the team environment. Now this is for for just winning, if I wanted to put together a team for winning, but at the same time, I wouldn’t want to turn down a student who has not so fantastic teamwork skills, because that that’s an opportunity to develop them in that space. So it can be I think, a just the best practice is to look to the students and say, what kind of team do we want to build? And then have your tryouts be based around that?

Brent Warner
I gotta say, I love how this whole thing seems to be led with compassion. Like, that is such a great approach to all of this. I’m just this is, you know, it’s uplifting to hear all that.

Adam Lopez
Absolutely. Love to hear it.

Tim Van Norman
So where do you guys play? What kind of arena stadium? What, what would make up the location to play? And what would kind of look like?

Unknown Speaker
Sure. So right now, right, we’re obviously all online. And so all of our tournaments are online, some colleges do meet at their facilities, and play together, following protocols. But most of the time, we’re just playing online. Now, there will also be tournaments that will be in person, they’re called lands. Sometimes they’re over just a weekend. And so you would go to a venue and compete. Maybe on one day, maybe it’d be a two day type of series. And that would be at a venue with the gaming PCs, hopefully outfitted with like the most cutting edge hardware, you would see lines of PCs put up. So for League of Legends, there’d be five different PCs put up next to each other, there probably be a tournament zone for all the teams that are probably a main stage. And that’s where they’d be featuring their best teams have won the matches that they believe will be competitive. Sometimes it’s just whatever the winner’s bracket is, as well, because typically, those are the teams that people want to watch. there’ll probably be a broadcasting place for for commentators to be leading the action and walking everybody through the agenda, what’s going on. And there’ll be an hopefully an audience too. But the some of the places that the colleges are building are just focused on having maybe a place for their competitors to practice. And then sometimes they’ll add in a place for an audience. Sometimes they’ll add in a broadcast booth. They can they can vary college to college.

Brent Warner
So I know you’re you’re working on this, what does it take to build an Esports program? And like, if there’s people listening, and they’re going, well, we’re thinking about this at our school? What does it take? Like? How do people get started doing that? And I know, that’s no question, but

Adam Lopez
that’s a great question. No, it’s a great question. Because I think that a lot of people are beginning to realize, like, hey, this eSports thing I keep hearing about, how do we get this going? Right. And I think the first thing that people can do is see if you may, if you have a champion on your campus, somebody who’s familiar with eSports, and just reach out to them, maybe put the feeler out there and say, Hey, we’re interested in eSports. Does anybody know anything about this culture, because we see so often that academic programs will succeed, because they have somebody who’s familiar with the culture on their campus kind of leading that effort. I would also say like survey your students if you can, so if you’re coming from the administrative level, on your campus, then see if you can maybe do a survey and see just how interested students are in in eSports. If your faculty, I think your your job would be to just spread the word, and maybe see if some students would want to start an Esports club that would probably get things ignited in a very, like student led fashion to

Tim Van Norman
you talked about high end computers or latest various computers. Could this be done even just like in a computer lab or something like that with just mediocre computers? Or do you really need the high end computers? Obviously, it would depend on the game and stuff like that. But if you’re getting started, what type of work could you start? Could you start at a low end? Or Or do you really need quality equipment?

Adam Lopez
Well, so so that’s kind of like a relative term like low end some of the PCs that are on college campuses can definitely run some of these titles and some of these titles are popular eSports sales because their demand is low. That League of Legends demand actually is that high and people will say at the graphics are actually quite bad for for consumption. Considering, you know, it’s 2021. But because it’s on the low end, it makes it more attainable for people to play. And so it is possible to do however, you would probably see a significant drop in student interest. Because gamers we love our RGB and the colors and the the sick looking graphics and the the cutting edge Nvidia hardware or whatever, right. So we, I think it is important to have that and then it will also especially if you’re if you’re really competitive school, you’re gonna probably need the gaming computers, because they’re going to give you higher frame rates, and especially where it’s at the upper echelon where milliseconds matter. And that’s what’s determining the outcome of fights, it is kind of important that you have at least mid tier gaming hardware on your campus.

Brent Warner
Now, Adam, earlier you had mentioned, like, some of these athletes getting scholarships to universities, and all sorts of things like that. And previously, you and I had a separate conversation, where you’re talking about kind of the strength of ibcs team and you know, like that there’s a lot going on. What is what does this look like in the overall college and university scene right now? Like, what are you what are you seeing happening with the whole eSports idea?

Unknown Speaker
What I’m seeing is just a lot of development and shifting within the scene, people are trying out all these different ways of bringing it to their campus, those people who are are trying to bring it in as a club sport, which is just a little bit of funding or Adel, they’ll try to bring it in through the athletics department. And the things that I’m seeing within the scene, though, is that it’s becoming quite powerful and robust. People are starting to scout talent, the top top eSports teams are just now beginning to scout talent out of the collegiate space. For instance, golden guardians, just picked up two players who came out of Maryville University, which is the top top League of Legends team in the collegiate space right now. And I’ve seen it to definitely become just stronger in general, people becoming unified. There’s a lot of infrastructure being set up, people are, like you said, there’s scholarships out there, there are companies who are there, their whole basis of operations is just making sure that people get scholarships in the esports space. And so there’s definitely a lot of growth to be had, though. And there’s a lot of conversations that need to happen between the publishers and the educators because right now, the publishers run a lot of the scene and they have so much power because it’s their IP. And so sometimes we don’t see students represented the way that we would like to them to be represented. And so I think that’s probably the next step that we need to have to really grow the community.

Brent Warner
Cool.

Tim Van Norman
Interesting. So what can we look forward to from IVC’s athletes this year? What what are we this is our first year, this first semester, I believe with it?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, definitely. So I mean, I think you could just say I like to see them performing pretty darn well, considering we’re new. We want to grow the club, we want to have more events, we want to have partnerships. And so I think right now, we’re just gonna see a lot of things happen within the program that are a lot of develop developmental things. But I think the teams are also performing really, really well. And we should see them continue to do that. So far, a lot of the FPS teams are undefeated within the tournaments that they’re playing, which is the NJC Wi Fi, which is a strictly Community College eSports league and they haven’t dropped any matches there. And the players are performing really well. I hope that we see athletes go on to get scholarships, I think we definitely will see some of our athletes go on to get scholarships, considering the level that they’re performing. And I also hope to send students into the ecosystem industry, from our club into maybe internship programs and, and after that, I know the sky’s the limit. I think we got a lot of opportunity here and I’ve I’m really thankful to be a part of it.

Brent Warner
That’s awesome. Yeah. So I hope that people are interested and excited after hearing this and and, you know, hearing you talk about it and sharing some of these things. Is there a way for people to follow along with college level esports like and IVC’s esports?

Unknown Speaker
Definitely. So if you’re ever interested in kind of like what’s happening within the academic eSports space, you could go to Twitter or LinkedIn, and search hashtag eSports. edu, all one word, and that’s a really good way to get connected with like the depths of the community and the people who are really making a lot of changes. They’ll make a lot of posts there. And then if you’re looking to follow IBC eSports, we just made our social media less than a month ago. We have a Twitter that is being Coming, active. And you can follow us at IBC underscore eSports. And our sports department also is at IVC. lasers. And yeah, I really thankful to have the opportunity to to share that and grow the program. That’s definitely one of our highest priorities right now.

Brent Warner
This is awesome, Adam. I think there’s just so much cool stuff going on here. And so I’m really glad you came and talk to us today.

Tim Van Norman
Absolutely. Thank you.

Adam Lopez
Thank you.

Tim Van Norman
Thank you for listening today. In this episode, we talked about eSports with Adam Lopez. For more information about this show, please visit our website at thehigheredtechpodcast.com. There you will find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner
As always, we do want your feedback. So please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com and let us know your thoughts. If you have ideas for future shows. There’s a link on the page so you can just give us your topic ideas.

Tim Van Norman
Where everyone at IVC that’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support 9494 or 515696 or by emailing IVCtech@ivc.edu. If you have questions about technology in your classroom, please contact me Tim van Norman at tvannorman@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram at @BrentGWarner.

Tim Van Norman
I’m Tim van Norman,

Brent Warner
and I’m Brent Warner. And we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality Have a good one, everybody