The University of Oregon Esports program put on the Business of esports Conference on Friday, the day after opening the new gaming lounge in the EMU. The event brought speakers from major esports companies to talk about the growing franchise, and how students can be a part of esports, whether on the business side, as journalists, or just as gamers.
Competitive gaming, also known as esports, is usually a team-based video game competition. It is a worldwide sport, but in America over 70 schools and 5,000 students are a part of the National Association of Collegiate Esports, according to their website. These schools compete with one another and many offer scholarships for their players.
“The Business of esports Conference is to connect with the curricular portions of what were doing and allow speakers to come and talk to our students who are interested in making a potential career out of this or just interested in the gaming sports field,” said David Gugliotti, the UO esports program director.
The conference was attended by mostly students, who were either interested in the field of esports or just the business aspect of it. About 100 people attended the event, many from the business school.
The conference started at 8 a.m. with a keynote presentation from David Higdon, the global head of communications of the esports division at Riot Games. Riot created the game League of Legends, one of the top esports games worldwide.
“It’s going to give them direct conversation and they’re going to hear from the folks that are working in the industry about what’s happening in the industry,“ Gugliotti said. ”It gives them that direct line into the industry to learn all about it.”
Higdon spoke on how Riot pride themselves as a player focused company, and how they will be expanding to find new markets in first-person-shooter, mobile and card games. He also spoke on how esports can market advertising better than any other sport, as they know their exact player count at all times.
Then participants broke out into sessions on topics such as the growth of Twitch and other streaming platforms, journalism in esports and college esports. It also included a talk from members of three large esports companies, who spoke about hoping to expand the esports brand to be multi-generational and creating merchandise that gamers would buy.
The last speaker of the evening was Paul Brewer of ESL Gaming, a company that produces video game competitions worldwide, who spoke about misconceptions about esports and its future.
The night ended with a League of Legends tournament in the main lobby of the EMU. A projector displayed the game for an audience to watch. The UO team competed against the North Christian University team, which has an impressive esports program and offers athletic scholarships to compete at the university. The UO team beat NCU in a crushing victory 2-0.
The conference comes the day after the opening of the esports lounge, a nearly 1,100-square-foot room that can be found in the EMU down the hallway between Falling Sky and the computer lab.
The lounge hosts 25 professional-tier PCs and three console stations, each with multiple game systems, according to Gugliotti. Against the walls are wood cut outlines of trees, backlit with green LEDs.
The lounge is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Use of the lounge costs $4/hr or $35 for 10 hours for UO students, $5/hour for faculty, staff and alumni and $7/hour for all others, according to a university spokesperson.
