Northwestern Gamers Stick the Plant

Speaker 0 00:00:00 This is the sound of e-sports Speaker 1 00:00:03 Mommy, as well as the operators out of the picture caboose, huh? Speaker 2 00:00:06 No, that's it. Oh my God. A Speaker 1 00:00:09 Quick triple from, Speaker 0 00:00:11 But what does e-sports sound like here at Northwestern today? I talked to some players slash students of the tactical shooter game. Valoran about the vibrant e-sports community we have on campus, as well as the thoughts on the current state of the game at large, Speaker 3 00:00:25 Because our school has such kind of a hyper competitive nature. People think it's a waste of time. Um, and I would argue that it's definitely not. Uh, so I think there's probably a lot of like closeted gamers on campus that just don't want to tell anyone Speaker 0 00:00:39 You just heard from the Dean Mansky, a senior in BiDil calling for Northwestern gamers to rise up. But even if you're not an expert gamer like Mansky, you've probably heard of the likes of league of legends CS go or fortnight valoran, which was released in 2020 by the same company that owns league of legends is currently one of the most popular games out there. And Northwestern e-sports club is definitely playing Fowler. Speaker 4 00:01:01 I'd say in a week I play, let's say 10 to 15 hours. My name is Matt Lee. I'm a freshmen in Weinberger. Now Speaker 0 00:01:10 Lee plays competitively for one of Northwestern's Valerie teams, Speaker 4 00:01:13 I think because of the B-team I now consider how to kind of an extracurricular. Um, but I also do do other things like I'm on the Frisbee team, Speaker 0 00:01:24 Edison tan, another freshman in Weinberg. Agreed Speaker 5 00:01:28 Because I should have been really interesting treating something that I've had as the past done more as an extracurricular, like having set meeting times practices, scrimmages, that type of stuff. It's a, it's definitely been interesting. It kind of broke what I thought was the distinction between my own hobbies and in school extracurriculars Speaker 0 00:01:46 At tense peak, he was one of the top 1% of players in his region Speaker 5 00:01:51 Got as high as the top 3000. But the sense then in playing less and losing more, Speaker 0 00:01:57 Given that it's only ten second quarter here. I asked how he's found Northwestern's gaming and Bellarine community. Speaker 5 00:02:04 Uh, I think the student run communities bigger than I expected. I just quickly took a glance at the e-sports discord we have, and there's five people playing right now. Speaker 0 00:02:13 Um, Speaker 5 00:02:15 So it's, it's definitely more extensive than I assumed it would be because when you come to university, especially with Northwestern being prestigious and whatnot, you would assume it's all academics and social life is more like party. It's not, you don't really think of games or video games. So it's definitely more extensive than I thought Speaker 0 00:02:34 The student community may be 10. Doesn't feel like the school is supporting the e-sports club to the same extent that Northwestern's peer institutions are. Speaker 5 00:02:43 We don't have like a school supported e-sports program as much as other schools, like for just for example, UC Berkeley, or even some of the Ivy leagues, uh, really have started expanding their e-sports programs like giving their students practice rooms, certain types of gear and support at the say they don't have access to a computer. So I think the students definitely have a strong community here, but it's not technically a school supported one like completely officially Speaker 0 00:03:10 Needy Mansky, who you heard from the very beginning also serves as the vice president of Northwestern e-sports club. What is the next step for Northwestern? E-sports Speaker 3 00:03:19 A little bit, I will tell you as much as I can. We are really working on getting more funding for our club. Uh, there's a lot of people who really want to be involved in a competitive capacity, uh, but we don't have as many resources as other schools because we haven't really been recognized as kind of an official e-sports, you know, organization, club, whatever. Um, but we're working with, you know, we have there's, there's things of the works that we're working towards getting more funding and recognition for our players. And of course there's always opportunities. I think people think that e-sports club is only for people who want to compete collegiate competitively. And it's certainly not like we have a great community of people who play games casually as well, Speaker 6 00:04:08 Match Speaker 0 00:04:12 As a casual Valent player myself. I'm excited to see what's next live from WMUR news. I'm a Viper Maine, a sentinels fan. And also Emily's though.