Esports Explained
ESPORTS is a broad category of gaming brought to the collegiate world through popular video games such as: Call of Duty, League of Legends, and many more. This guide will hope to explain some of the game types we are actively participating in, and provide some external resources such as YouTube links, as well as a Glossary of commonly used terms in each game. If you're reading this, you're probably someone who cares about supporting and understanding what these players are doing. Thank you for sharing our interest. Whether you have friends or family competing - we hope this information will help you continue to boost these athletes and the Samsons Esports program.
Special terms to learn are stylized in all-caps and italics like this: GLOSSARY TERM so you can identify and click on them to learn what they mean.
The National Junior College Athletic Association - Esports (NJCAAE) (External Link)
Much like traditional college sports and the NJCAA, Esports has a governing body that helps keep the playing field level across the 200+ members. The NJCAAE makes decisions to balance competitions and prevent teams from exploiting GAME MECHANICS to gain an unfair advantage. CHEATING can take many forms in the world of video games, so it is important that rules are followed to verify a player is who they say they are and not using specialized equipment.
The NJCAAE partners with a platform called Generation Esports (External Link) which hosts the brackets and matches for each game.
Where to watch a Live Match
The digital element of Esports typically prevents us from being able to watch the players and the action in the same space. Some larger institutions may have arenas dedicated for such a purpose, but most collegiate Esports programs right now use Social Media & Twitch to broadcast games and results. Here is how to stay informed and involved:
Social Media
Colleges will often post about upcoming matches, "Live Now", and results to many different platforms. Samsons Esports uses Twitter to announce live matches and results. Occasionally, players will be highlighted for their performance and contributions to the team. Facebook is another common location to find information about upcoming Esports matches and results.
You can follow us on Twitter here! https://twitter.com/gogebicsamsons
Twitch.tv
Twitch is the most popular streaming service for collegiate Esports to date. Twitch users can chat live with the broadcasters of the game for real-time interaction; however, the games are broadcast at a 3-minute delay to prevent members of either team from gaining and passing live information to the other team (See GHOSTING). Currently this is the most commonly used platform to view live matches on.
Your Samsons broadcast on Twitch regularly during the season here! https://twitch.tv/gogebicesports.
The Games & Competition
The NJCAAE holds tournaments in about 15 different game titles. These range from First-Person Shooter (FPS) style games, Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs), SPORT TITLES: Soccer, Football, Basketball, and more - like Rocket League which is a game about cars playing soccer (yes, really!). Some games have a team size component requiring competing institutions to have a minimum of 2-5 players. Other games can be played individually in a 1v1 format.
The Samsons Esports program is always looking to recruit for this massive variety of games and could support nearly 50 players at maximum capacity. Commonly institutions at the Junior College level choose games that fit their players' strong suits. For example, the Samsons have had an incredibly strong Call of Duty and Rainbow 6 Siege presence between 22-23 winning two National Championships in that timeframe. However, other games that fall out of popularity or don't have as strong of a PLAYER BASE, don't always see the same recruitment opportunities to build full and competitive teams.
The NJCAAE has tried to address these challenges by offering 3-tiers of gameplay:
- Invitational - Teams must compete in a qualifier and only the top 16-32 teams are chosen based on performance. Players must also maintain the eligibilty requirements laid out in the Open Season below.
- Open - The Open Season is for competitive teams with players attending school Full-Time and meeting the minimum 2.0 GPA.
-- - Intramural - The intramural team acts something like a club, where all GCC community members are welcome to get involved and show off their skills for the college. It's also used to include some of the Highschool players in our local area to give them experience in preparing for the Open or Invitational seasons.
These tiers help spread out the competition and seek to match teams from much larger programs with like-skilled opponents from smaller programs.
That's the basics, now continue reading!
