Plymouth Schools offer gamers a chance to show their stuff
PLYMOUTH – There was a time when video games were the battleground of kids and their parents.
Today it would be wrong to say, “It’s a waste of time. You’ll never make a living at it.”
Very wrong.
Professional esports leagues are thriving all over the world with players and teams drawing some rich paydays. One recent tournament offered a $2 million purse divided up between the top four teams.
Many colleges are offering considerable scholarship money, at times up to and close to full tuition, to come and play on their esports teams.
The way esports are growing the money and opportunities are growing exponentially.
Plymouth High School has cleared the way to offer an esports “team” for the coming year to let virtual athletes compete against others and increase their skills.
A team was already in operation at Lincoln Jr. High with a game “labs” in the old Lincoln building for both a Jr. High and High School team. A grant bought the state-of-the-art equipment and now the high school team has coaches: Andrew Senff and Evan Johnson. Both work in the PCSC I.T. Department.
“Esports has been on the rise for quite some time,” said Senff. “It was pretty small but as the years have gone on the game titles are becoming more and more competitive and more and more people are getting involved.”
The opportunities are increasing as the money behind esports increases. There are a few millionaires in the professional esports ranks and quite a few playing their game for a living.
“Professionally the way a lot of it is handled by esports teams when they compete is there is a prize pool for the place finishers and the teams divide that amongst all their players,” said Johnson.
“I’m not sure when they started giving scholarships,” said Senff. “I know that it’s only been recently that government bodies and schools acknowledged ESports as a legitimate thing. Before it was just kids playing games. Now they are taking it more seriously.”
The range of games is large with each player having their expertise, from shooting games to sports games to fighting games.
“It depends on the league you’re in and what games they offer,” said Johnson. “They have shooters like Fortnight, Rainbow Six Siege, CS GO (Counter Strike Global Offensive) but they also have things like Rocket League which is soccer with cars, all the way to Super Smash Bros. that is just a brawl type of game. It’s kind of all over the place it just depends on what your league offers.”
“As a coach, the easy part for us is that we don’t dictate that,” said Johnson. “It will be whatever league that says ‘Hey these are the games we are offering’ and you can choose which ones you want to offer your kids.”
“The one that we plan on joining is the Indiana Esports Network. It’s completely free. For the first year, it’s kind of ‘club’ level to get your feet wet and see how it goes. After that, it’s competing.”
The similarities between the way a traditional sports team operates and the way an esports team operates are strikingly similar. Practice for example.
“The way I foresee it, let’s take shooters for instance, there may be three or four titles in our games list that are categorized as shooters,” said Senff. “A lot of the skills you use to succeed in those games carry over across all the titles.
Maybe practice would look like let’s learn this game’s set of maps, let’s learn the different locations, the ‘callouts’ as they are known, let’s learn where the choke points are, or where you engage in battles the most. For all your shooters, your aiming and your ‘game sense’ is the same from game to game.”
To be a good coach also involves constantly continuing to keep up with games and techniques.
“Esports is extremely similar to real sports,” said Johnson. “It requires strategy and know-how and everything else. You are just translating that into virtual.”
“A lot of it is just following the scene,” said Senff. “As games progress through their lifespan of being an esport, like Fortnight for example. The way professionals played Fortnight in season one of Fortnight differs vastly from how they are playing the game in the current season.”
“Watching the professionals at the top level seeing how they are playing the game and keeping up on how the game has evolved is going to be big.”
There are already “position coaches” on some of the higher-level teams.
“The game rocket league is a three versus three kind of soccer scenario and the top-level professional teams will have multiple coaches,” said Senff. “They have a coach to make them the best striker they can be or the best defender.”
“We play ourselves,” said Johnson. “We have for years. It’s kind of a mixture of our own experience as well as keeping up with the current scene on how the game is evolving and how we can translate that to our players.”
While knowing computer coding isn’t necessary being a good player does involve understanding how a game works.
“It can come down to how can you use the game’s physics engine or how can you use the way the game renders its graphics to maximize your play,” said Senff. “There are different movement mechanics in the game that the developers may not have intended. The skill ceiling is high. You can use those mechanics to gain an edge over somebody who may not know how to do that.”
The team will also allow Johnson and Senff to teach the same peripheral lessons as traditional sports on responsibilities off of the “field”.
“We are going to treat this like any of the other sport,” said Senff. “If your grades aren’t good enough you aren’t going to be able to participate. We can’t let this get in the way of academics.
We want to breach the stereotype that a lot of people have of gamers, that we are all anti-social, sitting in the dark with our hoodies on. We want to connect the bridge we walk on with the one everybody walks on.”
“Our idea of success as a club and as a team would be to see our players grow in their skill level and grow as a team, being friends,” he said. “We want to foster friendships that might not otherwise have happened and see them grow their skill.”
