By MICHAEL BALD/Editor of Patriot Pulse
Students are leaning toward the monitors, laser focused. Their fingers move like striking snakes on their keyboards.
Though they are in a small, tightly knit room, they still shout at each other like people in the New York Stock Exchange. It’s all fun and games though. This is just regular bantering among the players of the eSports team at the University of Texas at Tyler.
“A lot of people don’t think of Tyler, Texas, as having a lot of gaming talent,” said Ashley Daniel, the eSports Club director.
Though despite the title, they are not a club.
“We are a program,” she said.
The program was founded by professors at Soules College of Business through a research grant. Once the dean of the college, Dr. Krist Swimberghe, liked what he saw from the results, he quickly doubled their resources. He enlarged an original five-PC setup into a 10-PC setup.
“We operate off their budget right now,” Daniel said. “Eventually we should fall under student engagement. We’re working for that by the end of the semester, hopefully.”
The ambitions do not stop there.
EXPANDING THE PROGRAM
“In the future, we aim to fall under varsity athletics to offer scholarships to players,” she said. “For now, what we’re doing is housing our collegiate programs and also our gaming community. … We want to have all the players, obviously from our teams, competing. We also want to have casters over each game. Something we’ve been working towards is starting to host our games in the (Patriot Zone) as like a kind of watch party.”
A watch party in the eSporting community is when people broadcast themselves playing
a game.
It is like a typical sporting event, only instead of broadcasting people playing baseball or football, it would be “Smash Bros.” or “League of Legends.”
The other side of the program is the eSports Collegiate Management Team.
“They are amazing. We wouldn’t be able to run without them,” Daniel said. “So, with our ECMT, we have directors for each game, like ‘Valorant,’ ‘Overwatch,’ all that good stuff. And they help run pretty much every facet of the program which I think is just amazing because I know in traditional sports a lot of growth and development happens there but in eSports, there’s a greater opportunity for personal growth because of the hands-on nature of it.”
They are also utilizing marketing, public relations and vice presidents for eSports.
“We have our PR and communications director,” she said. “They do a lot of the flyers,
the marketing … and we have our VPs over each game. They do a lot as a sort of visionary for the program with ideas. They help take their game and their teams into a direction that they want to see happening.”
Alex Lopez, a member of the Smash Team, has benefitted from the directions of the VPs.
“Our Smash Team, for instance, have been absolutely fantastic with what they’ve done,” Daniel said. “I know last semester we did a lot of tabling events. Alex Lopez went and he would have a 1 v. 1 with like all these students in the high schools and they would compete for like a $50 Chick-fil-A gift card and no one won because he’s that good.”
THE LAB
According to Julie Delello, director of The Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, “We have had over 500 students playing in our lab.”
The lab eSports program is in Soules College of Business, Room 158. This is their current setup. However, this could change with time.
“We normally keep the lab open just so anyone can come in and play,” Daniel said. “We want to have that going for our community side of things.”
They are hoping to expand their space in the hallway they currently reside in. That way they can make room for console games like Xbox or PlayStation.
“For us it depends on if there is a league for us to compete in or how much budget we have,” Daniel said. “Because we do want to have a thriving gaming community here … that’s a space we’re looking at for expanding physically and then I guess developmentally.”
ESPORTS MEMBERS
Daniel has been into games since she was a kid.
“So, I had all the gaming console’s,” Daniel said. “Like Game Cube, Nintendo 64, all that good stuff. And I loved ‘Smash Melee.’ I was watching YouTube videos and playing that a lot but then when I was older, I got into the DS and more casual gaming I feel like. I really got into PC gaming like early high school, and I started my ‘League of Legends’ addiction.
She took her love of gaming and brought it with her even up into college. She originally applied for the University of Texas at Austin but then settled for UT Tyler.
“I came to UT Tyler as a CAP student,” Daniel said. “I was trying to go to UT Austin then I realized in order to get into the major I wanted you had to retake all the credits that you got in high school. So, I said, ‘Never mind, I’m gonna do HR here,’ and I’m very glad I did.”
eSports, however, was not even a thing when she came to UT Tyler. She found out about it after professors at the college were doing a survey for the research grant, they got.
“They were doing a survey for their research grant so that they could get eSports here,” she said. “I emailed them about it and I was like what can we do to get eSports here, that would be awesome, and they told me that they’d be looking for a student worker next semester and I stayed tuned for that and applied and I got the job.”
As director of eSports, she hopes to take the program to great lengths.
“Hopefully, another place I’d like to take the program is offering more academic opportunities tied into the work that’s done for the program. … There’s a lot of things that go into it,” Daniel said. “I can see there being like a marketing internship or a project development internship. We’re turning that into a course like project development.”
Dillon Massey, an eSports program member, hopes to see more recognition for it as time goes on because it can be a space for people with similar passions to connect.
“It’s an up-and-coming medium that I hope sees much more recognition in the future,” Massey said. “The best part about being involved in esports must be competing in something I already have a passion for and making more friends that share the same passion as me while doing it.”
As for Daniel, she wants people to tell everyone here about eSports, if they’re passionate about it.
“Tell everyone you know how much you love eSports,” Daniel said. “Tell your faculty. Tell the president. Tell your dean of your building. Tell anyone. Get the word out that you want to see eSports here.”
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