University of Mount Union
Be Exceptional
Esports Student Interview
I'm AJ Hammond I'm from Hermitage Pennsylvania and I'm a computer science
major I'm Zach Carney and I'm a sports business majoring with a coaching minor
I'm from Pittsburgh PA E gaming has been a huge part of my life for the past
four or five years um it's obviously the textbook definition would be playing
video games competitively on a team against other people but um it's
something that has allowed me to meet new people not just being a competitor
but being a fan of the whole E gaming scene being fans of different teams and
meeting like-minded people that just have a love for the game E gaming to me is the
the future if you think about it you turn on the TV now ESPN 3 there's
over watched tournaments you know you turn on computer and you type in twitch
or mixer and those are all live streaming apps and to me I've been
playing competitive since 2010 and to see where it's come from and where it's
heading is pretty amazing the difference between computer based gaming and
console gaming is in my mind competition you know when I really wanted to compete
back in like 2010 to like 2014 era I had a PC and I played on PC now that I've
gotten older and I got I don't have like time because I play
a sport here I kind of switched over to Xbox and ps4 and it's just so much
easier to like access compared to the PC but when you get a PC and you build
the PC and you want to play competitively I definitely choose PC over
those two Yea the main difference for me would really just be the games that
are played on each console so for example stuff like Call of Duty is
played on PlayStation halo play on PlayStation not halo, halo is played on xbox
Call of Duty is played on PlayStation 4 and different like a PC is more
accessible to other areas of the world because some of these games don't
require a huge thousands of dollars PC to be ran but like for example in other
areas of the world like America the console eSports are a little bit more
prevalent so it really comes down to preference for me it's a different kind
of games okay obviously the ones that are extremely violent violent will not
extremely but there were are the first-person shooters that are violent
but games such as League of Legends rocket League those really aren't
violent games even the cartoon fighter games like Super Smash Brothers it's all
cartoon violence at that point some of the first-person shooters so that what
it happened to be this violent would be overwatch which is all cartoon based
violence even the most recent halos got a T for Teen rating and with the violence
though I'd like to kind of point out that the competitors don't really
register in their mind that when you shoot someone you're actually shooting
like another person you're registering in your mind that you have to get these
points you have to get these points to win so you have to do what you have to do
to win so it's there there's kind of a disconnect between like you're not
registering that you actually have a gun in your hand you're actually doing that
you know what I mean right and going over that like each game has a different
effect on everybody so I mean when I mean back when I first started playing
most of the shooter games and games like that they did have blood and gore and
violence and now that they're you know we see what's going on in the world
we pick it up and even the video game creators notice what's going
on developers have noticed and they've toned everything back yeah they've
change everything but I mean there's also so many games out there that you
don't even have to shoot to play for example like lead to legends smite
overwatch and games like that I mean they're still fun to play
you still they're still the most played games out there even though they're not
first quarters first-person shooter games the biggest positive with the
gaming implementation would probably be just the the added diversity and giving
people that don't want to play a sport a chance to compete be part of a team be
part of a brotherhood be part of something bigger
and I think E gaming is really one of those key outlets to do all of those
things the biggest thing I see is the future
like I said earlier I see this taking off tremendously like it has since 2010
and with it increasing I see more young kids wanting to do it in and just like
he said like I said earlier now he just reiterate it was diversity diversity is
gonna be huge is it just brings people together and brings people in and the
amount of people that are gonna play play this in the future is gonna be on
the rise and if we get it early more people are gonna see how dominant we are
how good we play it and they would want to come here
and something that's sort of
unique to E gaming is the fact that you can totally just hate another team on the
when you're playing rivals whatever and then once the game ends you're just a
group of kids that have a shared love for this game that you're competing in
and that's like just there's a tremendous amount of respect between
players which is kind of unique from what I've seen in E sports or E gaming
right and like that being said it's and like I said it's just like a sport
any other sport for example when we played Baldwin Wallace at Baldwin Wallace this
year after the game we all their team and our team sat down and we prayed
together you know it's more than a game when you're playing but
then after you know you're just a normal kid going back to doing whatever you do
I think it's a good idea that Mount Union is adding E gaming yes um the biggest thing
in a gaming I mean that most people don't think about is diversity when
you pick up the controller it's it doesn't matter just like there's just
like playing a sport you pick up the control you don't care who's to the left of
you or to the right of you or who's on your team you want to win and compete
and when you think of Mount Union sports you think of competing this year in OAC
play mount union is probably the most dominant sport
and I mean most dominant college and university in their respective
sports in OAC and if Mount gets this it's hopping on the bandwagon early and
it's just gonna take off and Mount Union sports can then be again dominant in E
gaming as well yeah that's the plan we're not we're not here to lose we're
not here to lose and I'm just reiterating on the fact that it gives so
many people here that the chance to be competitive and it really doesn't matter
who you are you're all on a level playing field at the start of every
match so there are tons of people that wouldn't have the chance to compete if
it wasn't for E gaming you didn't want to compete
mount unions approach on
Community Services like everybody else's you know you give back to those
who give to you so for example you know you were once that little kid looking up
to someone and now that E gaming is taking over and it's such a younger
population and generation thing that's taking over and expanding you got to
give back for example like maybe we can hold like gaming tournaments for little
kids that come in and play with us and you know it's just something
that like you want to do it makes you just make you happy it makes the little
kids happy knowing that you're doing that or even you know you
could do multiple other things it's just awesome and just like in traditional
sports going out and doing community service going out into the community helping out
say at a garden or at an orphanage it's great team building for the E gaming team in
general in my experience the stereotypical people that just sit in
their basement to play video games weren't the ones that were excelling in
tournament and in competitive play you have to have a well balanced lifestyle
just like any other sport like going back to it's really just like any other
sport where you have to be balanced with your lifestyle go out and work out
go out and socialize and those people that do sit in their basements don't
really make the connections you need to excel in E gaming you know when
reacting to the stereotype I mean it's just it's not what it say it is
we're two different people but like when we pick up that controller
we have the same goal we're the same person
so it's not it's not oh I'm a nerd or doing this you know I'm an athlete and
I've played multiple sports and I've been playing football since I was four I
picked up football before I could picked up the controller but yet I when I pick
up that controller I still want to be the best at that and the stereotype is
it's not what people say it is and there has to be a certain disconnect to like
when just like when you're on the field you're on the field when you're playing
the game you're playing the game when you're not you're not you have to
balance your lifestyle
what kind of students do I see bringing in and majors
bring in everything wide variety like I said I'm a sports business major and I
think I said you're in computer science well obviously you're gonna have the
computer science majors you're gonna have the computer based majors but also
some of the management majors some of the sports management majors
sports business, business in general management in general
because you need to manage your own team
you need to have sort of certain rules certain guidelines that people
like you kinda have to govern yourselves at that point so yeah like he said it's
it's just gonna be a wide variety you never know what you're gonna get you
know for like when you're recruiting you get people from Florida Canada Alaska
wherever you want but like whatever they want to do in life you know and I know
there are tons and tons of people that um want to go to college to do this they
want to go to a college that has first and foremost a good education and second
off an E gaming program and so I know that there will be students
that are interested and people from every walk of life are able to come
and play these games yeah that's one of the cool things about E sports is how it
brings everyone from everywhere together and you hear stories about like sports
saving people's lives and taking them away from where they were in their past
life and I think I think E gaming does that as well people's lives have been
changed and it's just not talked about a lot because um we
just don't see it as much but now that it's on the rise you'll see it a lot
more people talking about it a lot more and twitch and mixer I've talked about
it earlier um it's just live streams for people to go to other people's channels
and watch them play and that's huge too because people go on there and they like
to interact with other people and that's that's a great way to interact to talk
to people and I know people love that as well so it's just it's awesome
to see where it's come like I said I turned it on the TV three weeks ago
tuned into the ESPN 3 and there was an overwatch tournament you know
10 years ago I wouldn't have ever seen that it would have been unheard of
E gaming has taken leaps and bounds over the past couple years it's now a multi-million
dollar industry so yeah I just did a project for my marketing class earlier
this morning on the gaming industry the gaming industry produced a hundred and
ten billion dollars last year to put that in perspective the NFL
is worth I think 147 billion and the NBA is worth 143 billion and when you
think about gaming industries it's very low-key but then it's one
of the most profitable there's only and they said it by 2022
there's only gonna be three industries that make more money than the gaming and
as it was music TV and sports so that's pretty amazing to see how much
it's risen from something
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