Taking College Esports Seriously
Venue: HICSS
Year: 2019

This study examined how collegiate esports players conceptualized their own competitive gameplay as situated between work and play. Using interviews guided by Stebbins' (2007) serious leisure perspective, 16 collegiate esports players described how belonging to a collegiate esports team has shaped their identity, and how they experienced gaming within the structured environment of a collegiate esports team and club. Stebbins' description of skill and knowledge development was supported, and the findings are in accord with Stebbins' conceptualization of "personal rewards," such as self expression, self image, and self actualization. 1.The Growth of Collegiate Esports With much of the focus upon professional esports, less attention has been directed at competitive esports developments on university and college campuses across North America. At the start of 2017, 40 collegiate esports scholarship programs began in North America, with over 4 million dollars in college funding for esports  Today, more than 70 programs exist with 9 million dollars of scholarship money in the collegiate scene  Robert Morris University (RMU) the University of California at Irvine (UCI) and the University of Utah (UT) have varsity based collegiate esports programs. RMU was the first school to offer varsity esports scholarships in 2014. In 2016, an important shift occurred when UCI announced its own esports program in 2016, making it the first public research university to offer esports scholarships  The University of Utah started its own program in 2017, making it the first university in the Power Five athletic conferences to offer esports scholarships. While collegiate esports programs have garnered attention, it is notable that video games played at colleges are not a new thing [4] The first video game tournament ever held was a college affair, when in 1972, competitors gathered to play Spacewar at Stanford University [5] Today, playing video games competitively takes place in a more structured environment involving student lead clubs and scholarship based teams. The University of Washington and the University of British Columbia have student organized gaming clubs on their campuses, with collegiate esports organizations TESPA and the Collegiate Starleague supporting hundreds of teams and offering thousands of dollars in scholarships [6] Game developers have started to see the benefits of collegiate esports. Riot Games holds a series of collegiate tournaments in North America open to student clubs and esports varsity programs, the most recent being the College League of Legends. Notable among the tournaments was the 2016 North American Collegiate Championships (NACC) for the League of Legends (LoL)  game. The competition ended with a match between the University of British Columba's (UBC) student lead esports club and Robert Morris University's esports scholarship team. UBC won $180,000 dollars for their team in 1st place money [8] The 2016 win by UBC was a back to back win, as they also won the 2015 championship, making a total of $360,000 dollars for the team. What these tournaments illustrate is the potential for large monetary payoffs if players dedicate the time and effort to develop the expertise to play at this level. For students who are already gamers, this becomes an attractive activity as college costs continue to increase. Esports scholarships can be a few thousand dollars per student each year, to complete full ride scholarships [9] Opportunities to take a dedicated turn towards video games in college, however, presently exist alongside entrenched public perceptions of harms associated with the excessive use of popular media [10]  Early academic work on video games examined the influence gaming plays in the socialization of youth, addictive habits kids may develop with games, and the consequences of being exposed to video game violence    Decades later, results from video game research are more nuanced. Studies indicate that time spent in certain games (MMOs) allows for the development of team building skills  personal initiative by youths Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2019 URI: https:/hdl.handle.net/10125/59683 ISBN: 978 0 9981331 2 6 (CC BY NC ND 4.0) Page 2448  and the management of feelings of boredom, frustration, and anger  As students spend time committed to playing video games, concerns over whether collegiate esports affords students meaningful college experiences have started to surface [18] Parents have questioned the impact esports involvement will have on their children while in college [19] To address these concerns, it will be important to explore the dynamics of taking an activity that is normally viewed as leisure (playing video games) and seeing it transformed into an activity that looks more like work [20] Specifically, does a more dedicated orientation towards playing video games in college offer students benefits related to issues of confidence, identity development, and social belonging. This paper examines the perspective of students who are players in either student based esports clubs or in esports scholarship programs. The study addresses how participants see their gaming within the context of work and play. Specifically, the study employed the serious leisure framework [21] as committed leisure to examine how players conceptualized their dedication to competitively playing video games. 2. The Work of Video Games The work versus play literature on video games situates the transformation of when amateurs become more dedicated towards activities that have traditionally been viewed as play [22]    For example, the work of amateur "modders" involves modifying game code. For some modifications, the work can be so valuable that some game mods can be parleyed into independently successful video games  Game companies can benefit from this uneven relationship with modders, as companies locate this type of work outside the bounds of a traditional employee employer relationship [26] The virtual world of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft and EVE Online, has traditionally presented itself as a digital space of escapism and enjoyment, but it is also a space where significant ingame labor is expended [27] In game economies in MMORPGs depend upon the extraction of virtual goods to advance in the game. Dedication to "gold farming" involves intense work like execution of repetitive tasks to extract virtual goods. Chinese gold farmers would spend hours "grinding" it out in front of computers for very little pay. The result was the creation of a billion dollar industry in gold farming with around 100,000 workers employed [28] Emerging literature on esports illustrates what commitment looks like for competitive players. Taylor [29] wrote early about the dedication of EverQuest "power gamers," finding them to be reflective, goal oriented, and social. Work on power gamers informed her later research on the professionalization of esports, as becoming a professional involves a greater set of skills beyond being technically proficient at video games. The extended work involves being flexible to changes, open to communication, and a cooperative team member [30] Professionalization also requires reorienting of values, with players making greater efforts to master their gameplay and to realize their potential as skilled players  As leisure is translated into work, professionalization means players should be institutionally aware of the industry and the career choices they make. This requires a concerted effort in building their own media brands, cultivating professional identities, having some understanding around contractual law, knowing what a transition to a different team will mean for their careers, and being financially responsible [20] Scholarship on esports, however, has started to examine the corrosive effects work like orientations can have when winning becomes the singular goal of players. Brock [32] disagrees with previous conceptualizations of work and play in esports as being constructions that recognize the intermingling of work and play into an acceptable reality for professional gamers  Stories from esports players, such as Min Ki, who find themselves financially pressured to match fix LoL games in Korea or face his team disbanding, illustrate that rationalized play in esports can perpetuate systems of social control, award aggressive competition, and present a destabilizing element in employment [32] The work versus play literature in video games provides an outline of what a work like orientation towards gaming looks like and the potential for exploitation and corruption by outside forces. While acknowledging the prospect for exploitation, the literature also suggests there are benefits for gamers in their commitment. Modders, for example, highlighted the pleasure in having ownership and control over the planning and designing of games [26] Power gamers understood their work like orientation towards rationalized play to be a pleasurable part of how they gamed [20] Finally, "professionalized" esports players appreciated the sense of community and friendships made as video games became a core activity in one's life  The collegiate esports community has not experienced the same undermining of work and labor present in the gaming literature. A relevant concern, however, around collegiate esports is the role the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA)