“We really want e-sports to become as ingrained in the academic environment as anything else — speech competitions, football competitions,” said Tyler Rosen, president of the e-Sports Association, which helps organize college events with the financial support of Blizzard Entertainment.
A test of what happens when schools embrace e-sports started recently at Robert Morris University Illinois. The first 35 students to receive athletic scholarships under the school’s new e-sports program began training this fall in a room decked out with jet-black walls, mood lighting and leather gamer chairs with red piping.
The students, all League of Legends players, are getting up to 50 percent of the price of tuition and room and board, which runs about $39,000 a year, according to Kurt Melcher, the university’s associate athletic director. Mr. Melcher said he had received more than half a dozen calls from athletic directors at other universities who are interested in incorporating e-sports into their programs.
The idea came to Mr. Melcher, a gamer, this year after he started reading about the Collegiate StarLeague. A conversation with his wife dispelled any doubts he had about awarding athletic scholarships to gamers.
Mr. Melcher said his wife asked, “Why should it only be given to some kid who can put a ball into a hole?”
Childintime wrote:Rugby doesn't do it for you? Nit trying to start a rugby vs yankball slag-off - they're both hardcore, legit sports - just that rugby also has danger, plus an extra dash of homoeroticism and grown men crying to national anthems.
That'd be the clincher for no AFL then, which is a bit of both plus aerial skills and 360 degree unchained lunacy.Brooks wrote:Not enough pauldrons and helms. The pageantry is crucial.Childintime wrote:Rugby doesn't do it for you? Nit trying to start a rugby vs yankball slag-off - they're both hardcore, legit sports - just that rugby also has danger, plus an extra dash of homoeroticism and grown men crying to national anthems.
davyK wrote:Watching elite players is too intimidating and hard to follow. It is great to know that a game is deep enough for people to become that good, and that would be an attractive quality of a game for many people, but it also needs to be attractive to novices, or even intermediate level players.
For example my best 40 line time is just under 2 mins. For many people here that wouldn't even rate me as intermediate. How can I get involved in competitive Tetris and have an enjoyable time? Quite often when I went online with Tetris Party I would have my ass handed to me even with the rating system enabled. That isn't enjoyable for me and I imagine quite boring for my superior opponent! If there were ways of grading players with methods of moving up the divisions then maybe more people would be attracted.
Many people consider Tetris as a solo game and don't even know about battle mode. I have organised some events in work and people were amazed such a mode existed. I work in IT and you would think more people would know about this - so imagine how little is known about it in other walks of life.
Selecting the mode is important too. I first tried traditional Game A battle in my competitions and this was a bit boring to watch because most people play too slowly. I quickly switched to Game B - first to 25 lines with garbage attacks on (this mode is available in Tetris & Dr. Mario on SNES) and the game was transformed by the race element. It got people playing and after a whiile some started playing Game A informally.
Tetris could be a great game for spectators as everything can be seen and understood from a single screen view. Even elite level play can be enjoyed up to a point. My office competitions have been achieved by hooking a SNES up to a projector for big screen play and it really makes for entertaining experiences for players and spectators. Opportunities for local and online gaming need to exist.
Finally it needs the right mix of promotion , marketing and organisation. The support of the Tetris Company would be key in doing this and that would be supplemented by the energy of the tetris community.
davyK wrote:Thinking about the spectator's view a bit more - they could perhaps see a longer piece preview queue as well which would offer a similar experience like watching poker.
Items are a good idea - the selection of them would need to be carefully chosen so it wouldn't be too easy to figure out an optimal set.
davyK wrote:Elite players not wanting items or other rule changes is a valid position. However if the community is to grow and become acessible for all then changes would need to be made. There would be room for an elite division playing what they consider to be pure (though any rules set is arbitrary - lets face it) but to keep the whole thing encumbered by that would sadly see it never become truly relevant.
The community should want more people playing puzzle games - lest we see what happend to Cave in the shmup community.
The previous post has some great ideas about slowed down replays between rounds - you would need pretty well informed commentators though - but I guess that isn't impossible to achieve.
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