{"id":8190,"date":"2016-12-06T10:35:25","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T15:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=8190"},"modified":"2016-12-06T10:35:25","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T15:35:25","slug":"morningside-debuts-new-e-sports-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/8190","title":{"rendered":"Morningside debuts new e-sports program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Overwatch_logo\"\u00a0(12.6.16) By Blake Meacham–<\/strong>Over the past few years, the United States has experienced an uprising of a new sport. This sport isn\u2019t played on a court or a field, and it doesn\u2019t use bats or balls or nets. Rather, it\u2019s played in a room of any size, and the equipment used to compete is a computer and a keyboard.<\/p>\n

E-Sports is sweeping the nation, and a number of colleges and universities are beginning to build programs that showcase students playing video games competitively.<\/p>\n

Dean Stevens, computer science, saw Robert Morris University in Illinois create one of the first collegiate E-Sports programs in the country. The program not only began to compete against other schools, but they also handed out scholarships to students that were able to play for the team. Stevens immediately realized that he wanted to create an E-Sports program as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to the administration here at Morningside a couple of years ago and they gave it some serious thought for a while,\u201d explained Stevens. \u201cThey decided they approved and would provide funding, and now here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevens is the head of the Video Game Institute of Education and Research that does research on the effect that video games have on human subjects, especially young adults. Based on his research, he firmly believes that competitive video games are the \u201cwave of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevens and a group of more than a dozen students built their \u201cbattlefield,\u201d otherwise known as the E-Sports Nexus, on campus in Roadman Hall. They used the funding that the school has given them to put together sleek, impressive looking monitors and towers for students to efficiently and effectively master their craft.<\/p>\n

While Dean is coaching and advising these students, they haven\u2019t been able to officially compete yet, and more than likely won\u2019t be able to until the 2017-2018 school year. However, Stevens schedules weekly meetings where he and the club can meet up and play \u201cpick-up games\u201d as well as discuss strategy.<\/p>\n

Stevens\u2019 E-Sports group is one of the founders of the National Association of Collegiate E-Sports, which is joined by other NAIA and NCAA E-Sports teams that will eventually compete against one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our competitions are done virtually\u2014we don\u2019t have to drive miles and miles to meet up and compete against each other. We basically meet up on a Saturday\u2026 it\u2019s our best five against their best five,\u201d said Stevens, detailing how a typical day of competition would look.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NACE [National Association of Collegiate E-Sports] is adding new members all the time. They could be anywhere from PAC-12 like the University of California or Oregon. They could even be GPAC schools, like Midland who just made an E-Sports program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the Morningside Team is in its infancy, they consider their pick-up games as practice. They\u2019re playing two different games right now\u2014League of Legends and Overwatch. Eventually, one of those games could be the game they choose to compete with on the national level. Right now, though, they\u2019re just trying to get more students interested.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m more focused on generating interest and having fun,\u201d admitted Stevens. \u201cWe\u2019re already built a solid team, and once our program gains in popularity and success, we can even begin to recruit students to play for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

To prove even further that this program is a serious one, those that are interested in joining Morningside\u2019s E-Sports team can be endowed a scholarship for up to $5,000, just like every other sports program on campus. With an offer like that, one should expect to hear the term \u201cE-Sports\u201d used more often around campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0(12.6.16) By Blake Meacham–Over the past few years, the United States has experienced an uprising of a new sport. This sport isn\u2019t played on a court or a field, and it doesn\u2019t use bats or balls or nets. Rather, it\u2019s played in a room of any size, and the equipment used to compete is a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":8191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8192,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8190\/revisions\/8192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}