GAME ON!

NACE

(Gamers in the Lambton Esports Arena)

There may be some hope early in this new year for those of you who still have very mature and overly ripe basement-dwelling children (or grandchildren) residing on the premises. It can be found in the new collegiate sports organization known as the NACE. Perhaps there could be a scholarship for your electronic game-playing resident, even if he or she is undersized and unathletic.

The National Association of Collegiate Esports was formed a couple of years ago to "advance collegiate esports in the varsity space." There are now around 100 schools involved and almost $10 million in scholarships given. Canadian colleges are also found in the NACE.

At this point, you are probably thinking that sitting in a big chair in front of a console is not the same thing as running around on the gridiron. The debate about what constitutes a 'sport', however, was held last year over the game of Bridge and will not be iterated here. Certainly competition is involved, as are strategy and tactics and while playing "these young people can do up to 360 controlled precise actions per minute. Their fingers and hands and their eyes move so quickly in exact coordination."

Esports are not just played by those in the athletic department and 'gaming' is of interest in the engineering faculty where the games are designed. It is also a big business for the business schools. As this is being written, Saint Peter's University in New Jersey is launching a bachelor's degree in business that specializes in esports.

So if your adult child is not likely to be able to withstand the rigour required in the STEM subjects and unwilling to tolerate the bullying highly likely to be experienced when participating in the NCAA, consider the NACE. Sources: The place to begin is at the National Association of Collegiate Esports.

A good recent article: "Video Games Are a Waste of Time?, Not For Those With Esport Scholarships," Arielle Dollinger, New York Times, Nov. 2, 2018. See: "List of Varsity Esports Programs Spans North America," Sean Morrison, ESPN.com, March 15, 2018. "Video Games As A College Sport," Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Inside Higher Ed, June 9, 2017.

Some Canadian Sources: St. Clair College - eSports Administration and Entrepreneurship
"St. Clair College Unveils eSports Administration Program: "St. Clair College Unveiled its New eSports Administration and Entrepreneurship Program on Wednesday, which the school hopes will build on the success started last year when it was the first post-secondary institution in Canada to launch an eSports gaming varsity team," Dave Battagello, Windsor Star, Nov. 1, 2016 "Scores of Gamers Compete at St. Clair College for e-Sports Scholarships,"CBC News, June 12, 2017. "St. Clair College Esports Team Holds Tryouts, Scholarships Offered to Top Video Gamers," CBC News, Jan.4, 2018. Durham College "Durham College Embraces eSports WIth Construction of Gaming Arena," July 10, 2018.

Lambton College Esports Entrepreneurship & Administration
Esports Arena - Lambton College officially opened its Esports Arena in September 2017. 

"Gamers Clash at Lambton College," Colin Gowdy, Blackburnnews.com, Nov.30, 2018.

Post Script: You will stop scoffing when you consider the statistics. In the clash at Lambton against St. Clair noted above, 40,000 viewers were expected to watch. Contrast that with the approximately 312 people at the Western University Homecoming Game. (The large number above comes from the Gowdy piece. The smaller number is based on my estimate and it includes the concession stand employees, the security officials required to make sure the students didn't have any fun and the few people on the LTC bus that passed by on nearby Western Road early in the first half.) One also has to consider the spillover effect that will spread across campus. Already grants are being given in the health sciences to study things like the neurological impact of constant video viewing. There are signs of action in other academic areas and I will leave you with this example which argues "...persuasively that digital games embody "the most powerful economic, technological, social, and cultural forces at work" in the current regime of accumulation (p. 74). Where "Fordist commodities were governed by a 'metalogic' of massification, durability, solidity, structure, standardization, fixity, longevity, and utility," post-Fordist commodities are governed by a metalogic of the "instantaneous, experiential, fluid, flexible, heterogenous, customized, portable, and [are] permeated by a fashion with form and style" (p. 74). According to Digital Play, the digital games industry falls into the post-Fordist category, even though it still draws upon some of the characteristics of a Fordist media-entertainment industry." (From a review of: Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing).
I suppose the point of my rambling, in this case, is that video games are not just being played in your basement. Both scholars and athletes may be playing them on a campus near you.
I confess, however, that I have not played a video game (other than that one with the bouncing dot back in the last century) and I lack the expertise to understand the sentence bolded above.
Post Script:
By the way, one of the co-authors of Digital Play is a faculty member at Western University, but perhaps he is not responsible for the bit of prose bolded above.