Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | Blubrry | Podchaser | Email | TuneIn | RSS | More
Overview
Today is a different episode. I’m not talking to an author, this has to do with video games. Though it’s not focused on video game storytelling as I’ve had in the past. It is related.
I am talking with the coaches for the BioMed Science Academy eSports team. BioMed is a local alternative STEM school and they are one of over 200 schools in Ohio with eSports teams.
This is important, because it shows the rise of videogames and how our culture is changing with that. Video games are still growing and there will be more future for today’s kids to be in the video game industry – as storytellers or other.
If you are a teacher or school administrator – this is a good episode to help introduce you to eSports. If you are a parent, there’s a lot in here that you may not realize. I hope to do more episodes that deal with video games and video game storytelling.
Website
YouTube
Transcription
Stephen: Great. Okay. So today on Discover Wordsmiths, a very exciting conversation for me. If anyone’s been following along on this podcast, I’ve had several interviews with some people in the video game industry where we talked about storytelling in video games. And today I’m continuing that with a couple of teachers at a local school, Biomed STEM Academy, which I’m very excited to talk to because they have an e sports team, one of the few in the area.
So welcome Eric and Alexis. How are you guys doing?
Eric: I’m doing wonderful. How
Stephen: are you doing today? I’m I’m really doing great. I’ve been excited. I went to Blossom last night. So I went to bed late, but then all I could think about was talking to you guys. So if I yawn, I apologize. You’re not boring. It’s you know, body picking up.
Before we start delving into this to inform parents and students or whatever tell us a little bit about biomed and what biomed is.
Eric: So we’re at biomed science Academy and biomed is a STEM plus M school. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But we also have a medical pathway as well at our school. And what we do is instead of just teaching math, I will teach math in terms of different science and technology and engineering and even some of the health pathway.
So the math that you see not only goes with the state’s standards, but I’ll also give those applications in the STEM field. And that’s not just me, but the entire school that that’s part of our mission and vision.
Stephen: And my kids, after they went there, what I described that people is instead of just sitting down for a history class, where they tell you the Panama Canal was built at this time, they say, Go do a research on it and build us a working canal that you can move levers and adjust it and then tell us how it affected the economy in the area.
And I’m like, Oh, my God, that tells you so much more than just it was built in this time. You know, about biomed. I remember the table of elements. You know, when I was in school, it’s like, okay, memorize the table of elements. As much as you could. Who cares? Nobody, you can look it up. So who cares if you memorized it?
But you guys put them in groups. Because that’s important working in groups in the world and companies. And you said, okay, this is your one or two research. These tell us everything you, you can find out about it and give a report. And I guarantee those kids remembered those two better than everything else.
And I always thought that was such a great approach to learning and more, much more exciting. I don’t know if the students get it so much, but I would. So, all right. So what we’re going to talk about a little bit more in depth today is your e sports team. And I was really excited about this because I’ve been trying to find out more about video game storytelling and it connected to e sports because Ohio just approved e sports teams in high schools to get varsity letters this year.
And I was super excited about that. So I convinced you guys to get on here and listen to me and talk to me a little bit. So tell us exactly what. eSports is for the world in general.
Alexis: To make it as easy as possible to understand kids play video games competitively against each other.
Eric: Go ahead. Oh yeah.
I was going to say we, we use e sports just like, just like any other sports where we are going to build the community with one another. We have we have problem solving. We have team bonding. It is competitive like those other sports while it might not be physical, but all of those same skills that you do in those traditional sports.
We also hone in on those in our e sports community as well. And we also have a good time. Yeah.
Stephen: So there’s a whole lot there to unpack and point out to people the benefits here, but I don’t want to just spout it all. Let’s, we’ll do it in a conversation. So when you say, first of all, That so who can join the e sports team?
Eric: So for us, anyone can actually join e sports. We are broken into two kinds of divisions. We have a club aspect and an actual competitive aspect. We do have to break it up. We are in a particular league and in that league, the middle schoolers are no longer allowed to join the actual. competitive side.
So we do split it up into two. But anyone can join the, anyone can join our esports team. If they are in middle school, we’re actually going to get them prepped for when they do come to high school, that they are ready for those actual competitions.
Stephen: Okay, so what you said skills and then you said prep, what exactly does that mean?
Cause I’ve, I’ve talked to parents and they’ve said, well, how do they do that? If they’re sitting in their living room playing Donkey Kong, what’s that mean? Do they just don’t get it? So tell, tell me what you mean when you say to get them prepped and the skills they use,
Eric: I’m going to, to make this easiest, I’m going to pick on super smash brothers to make, to make it a lot easier for me cause I don’t know all of the games out there.
But what we do is for our, for specifically that we’re in, there are certain rules for when they compete and we make sure that one, the students understand what those rules are. So they can also use that to their advantage, you know, so they can learn the, the, the how do I want to say it? The mechanics.
So they can learn the actual mechanics of, of the game before they actually get to the high school level. The next thing is that way they can also communicate to each other as a team, like, hey, we have to verse these people one on ones. We have to put our best person first, so they’ll have, they’ll have to decide.
amongst ourselves, who’s the actual best competitive player and then strategically determine who’s going to go next and then after that. But we’ll also have practices where they’ll determine like, hey, if you’re going to use a grab, you have to watch out for X, Y, and Z, because you’ll be vulnerable to specific attacks, counters, and so on.
Stephen: And first of all, so I know a lot of parents probably like, what the heck is Smash Brothers? So tell us, again, there’s just so many things. I don’t know what I’m bouncing around. So let’s, let’s, let’s say football, baseball. So parents understand that my kid picks up a baseball. We practice throwing it. They practice catching it.
They get there and you throw the ball and they bat and they run around the bases and they learn the rules of the game. With Smash Brothers, it’s a video game. It’s a fighting game and characters and the players choose their own characters, which have strengths and weaknesses for each. So how, how would you say to, to, for a parent to wrap their mind around?
How is what you’re doing comparable, but also different than regular football, baseball? Practice and skills
Eric: actually see it. No, no, no. I mean, that is, that’s, that’s, that’s a lot to process. I wouldn’t see it that different. Cause even in football, they have to, they have to hone physical skills, right?
Yeah. They
Alexis: have to figure out what their strengths and
Eric: weaknesses are. And. With, with Smash Brothers, it’s, it’s going to be the same thing. They have to, they have to understand all of the different characters, strengths and weaknesses kind of like what you were saying. But they’re also going to have to be able to play to their opponents.
So if they know what their So you’re going to get around their
defense. Same kind of concept in Smash Brothers, you know each character, each person will pick a character, and then they’re going to have to know that character’s strengths and weaknesses to be able to overcome and actually defeat that player. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Stephen: I was just saying, in my thinking you’ve got…
The guy who is maybe not as heavily built has a good arm. So he’s the quarterback, the guy that’s, you know, the refrigerator and he’s in front of the quarterback, the little wiry guy that has quick feet and he runs and catches you know, but you might have two guys, one guy can. You can pass it to him and he’ll hang on to it and run like the Dickens, whereas another guy can run fast and catch it better.
So that’s the same thing here. It’s just that they’re using the, the avatar of the video. Yes. The one pushback I get from a lot of parents, and I’ve heard this from multiple is, well, this is going to just change our culture. And I point out that football has not always been a high school. Equivalent class or thing.
It’s only been within several generations and we’ve changed that. Golf is a sport now. In high school that kids can play and golf is not the same. It’s, it’s a single player thing as opposed to a team thing. So this is just another extension in my mind. No.
Eric: And I, I, I would completely agree. And to piggyback off of that football nowadays.
Is not really the same as football was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago as those rules and like even the equipment that they wear is constantly evolving. Yes. So, I mean, and that’s going to be, that’s going to be the same thing. So. Things that were in the past. Yes, we will still kind of do them today, but it just looks a little bit different.
Stephen: And so two other big things I always like to point out is that number one. You can have a bigger variety of kids that can be on a team and join a sports team. Whereas I was not necessarily big enough to really play football. I might’ve been able to run, which I probably would have done very scared to keep.
So I wouldn’t, I could have played baseball, but the point is It’s very connected to physical ability. And even today, most high schools, the sports teams are male dominated. There’s not as many female teams, basketball, baseball. Yeah, we do have the teams, but you don’t get the mixture of male and female playing on the same team.
E sports allows all of that. Plus, I’m guessing you can have a bigger team than most football, baseball teams. More kids that can join it. So, how many kids do you have on the team?
Eric: In general, we, for the competitive or in all of e sports
Stephen: together? Competitive on all of it together.
Eric: So all together, generally around 50 or so, which for us, that’s, that’s massive for those who don’t know much about biomed, we are a smaller school with graduating classes in the around 70s or so.
So you have 50 students in it. That is. A very massive number. This year currently, we are still in the process of registering teams and getting teams ready, and the only one that’s ready so far is we have one Smash team that has about eight or nine players. Yeah, about. But we know that there’s some other people that are trying to put other teams together, so we’re kinda in a weird limbo waiting for them to make sure that We have all of the players to make sure that we have a team.
So,
Stephen: so what are some of the other games that you could play or are played in competition?
Alexis: There’s Valorant, there’s Apex Legends, Overwatch 2 Mario Kart 8
Eric: Rocket League, Rocket League, oh,
Alexis: Fort, Fortnite, can’t forget that. Yeah, Fortnite. Male schoolers love Fortnite. Yeah. We can
Eric: do chess too.
That’s, that’s another one that I was also about to say is chess which is, you know which is also really cool. Is there any others? Am I forgetting any? I’m sure there’s more. We’re in a specific division. And in our division, there’s only certain games that you can play competitive. And there’s a whole bunch of different divisions that you can, that you can join just in our specific one.
Those are pretty much most of the games. Oh and in case we forgot to actually mention smash brothers, that, that, that went to obviously,
Stephen: you know, to help people wrap their minds around it. Sports have changed and evolved and are different. You know, we think of high school sports football baseball, but like I said, now there’s golf and golf is definitely not a I have to be super strong and super fast.
It’s a skill race car driving, which I brought up Gran Turismo in the movie. That’s out. That’s a different skill, but it’s considered a sport and some of the other sports out there, you know, the, the triathlon where you have rifle shooting and skiing and tobogganing this, the toboggan sled, that’s a sport ice skating, the figure skating, all of these are different with different skills.
This is just the modern skill.
Eric: to, to add on to that, cause I do completely agree with that too. There is still a level of. Physical skill that is needed. ’cause as, as you were playing a lot of these things, when you’re playing in these competitions, a lot of these things happen at a blink of an eye super fast.
So you have to be able to quickly take in all of that information and then, Physically react. It’s, it’s just that that physical reaction isn’t necessarily a, a tackle or a sack or maybe a kick of a ball. You’re, you’re, you are moving your hands and you actually have to be quick with that in itself. So there is still a physical level to it.
It’s just not as not full body. Yeah, it’s not full body. You’re not breaking your bones. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully while doing it.
Stephen: But reiterate again. You can have boys and girls on the same. Yes. Yes. You could have somebody who’s in a wheelchair that could never have even done necessarily golf and getting around on the course they can play e sports.
And I know some of the new adapter controllers words
Eric: right out of my mouth because that’s actually about what that was. I was going to say is I is more acceptable. Accessible. That’s the word I’m trying to say. It is more accessible than a lot of your traditional sports. And for those parents who who are listening and you are concerned with, Hey, like, Hey, maybe your child has some accessibility things that they need like assistance on.
There are a whole bunch of special controllers that help that are designed for multitude of different how do I want to say it? What’s the word? Physical abilities. Yes, yes. No, for sure. Thank you.
Stephen: Thank you. And also somebody, and I know when my son and daughter were in school they had a lot of friends that were identified as being on the spectrum what we used to call autism.
I, I know that still comes up, but they try and use that on the spectrum more. And. With the input of football or baseball, they would never be able to compete and, you know, not do something like that. It gets overwhelming, but the video game interest is usually a lot stronger and that gives them something they can go do.
So again, the diversity and the inclusion, that’s buzzwords in, you know, this decade and video games are it. That’s what gives it to everybody. So why did Biomed decide to do an e sports team?
Eric: I’ll be honest with you. We weren’t here yet. Yeah. We we weren’t here when they started. If I
Alexis: had to take a guess.
A lot of kids really
Eric: wanted it. Yeah, no, for sure. It was, it was started by Mr. Alex Wolf. He’s still teaching. I, I forget where he’s at now. But he, he started it and then it was passed down to Aaron Ettinger. And then it was passed down to us. I do know this for our community since biomed, it is a, it is a a choice school.
So we actually pull from a whole bunch of different districts. So we don’t have any actual physical sports ourselves. Most of those students go back to their, like. Hometown home district for it. But eSports is our actual only competitive sport that we have that’s specifically biomeds. Mm-hmm. . And it’s also really nice because everything is done at the actual school.
Mm-hmm. that it, we can actually we can host, we can host the entire eSports mm-hmm. right here on campus.
Stephen: So, so do some of these kids have some big rigs, some pretty impressive setups for their home stuff?
Alexis: Some of them have told me about their home setups, yeah. No, for sure, for sure. And they, I’ve had kids tell, ask me too, like, can I bring in my PS5?
And I’m like, is that a good idea?
Eric: Heh, heh, heh. But yeah.
Stephen: So when they come in for a practice, we’ve touched on this just a little when they come in for a practice, what’s a practice look like? It’s I assume it’s not just chaotic. Turn on TVs and play video games up. Time to go home. What? What are you doing at a practice for the kids?
So
Eric: each week Each week or every other week, we will have a little, like a little mini lesson before we actually start our competitions, not our competition, our, our practice. And in those mini lessons, there are things on like community and respect and being a team player. So we’ll have tiny little conversations about that.
It’s, it’s. easy to forget that we’re dealing with young ones, you know, and so some of these things, like they’re still, they’re still trying to build these skills. So we’ll have, we’ll have a conversation about that. And from there though, it does kind of depend on each team and their strengths and weaknesses.
Last year we, we went through and our Smash Bro or Smash Bros. Captain. He went through and he watched all of the others play, all of his other team members play, and he identified like, hey, you’re constantly getting thrown because you are doing X, Y, and Z, so in order to combat that, you can, and they will kind of work through, they’ll work through some of those strategies together as a, as a team.
Stephen: And then who do you compete against? Because I know the new generation, young generation, the studies are showing that they’re less interested in traditional sports. They’re not watching football, baseball, basketball as much, but Markiplier and PewDiePie, Not them thinking otherwise, you know, and I know these kids watch the twitch streaming like constantly Do you compete against and who watches these and you know, tell us a little bit about the competition
Alexis: Just the different schools that are also in our league.
They, they kind of come up with a schedule for us to be like, oh, this week you’re going to compete against this school for a school that came to mind Akron STEM. Yeah. That
Eric: they’re one one, one also thing. So we are in the division and what’s kind of unique again with e sports compared to your physical.
sports is we play all of our competitions actually at the school. So we’ll play people that are two, three, four hours away still in Ohio. But we’ll be able to get on at the same time. We don’t have those long bus rides to get to, to get to one another. So really Like Alexis was saying, anyone in our division we’re just putting a roster, they come up with it for us, and it’s not always the same.
I do know that they’re working on some of the fine details for that. I will say, I actually don’t know who we’re competing against this year because they haven’t completed those rosters yet.
Stephen: The season starts in January or something, right? Is that it?
Eric: Yes and no. So, if you think of your traditional sports, you know, football is just in the fall.
Generally, like, track is in the spring. We actually have both a fall and a spring season. All of the same games are played in the fall and in the spring. So, for the fall, chances are only our Smash Bros. team is going to be ready to start competing, and we have scrimmages this week, and the actual season starts next week.
But in January… We have an opportunity to reorganize ourself. So the Smash team will probably want to play again. But as I was saying earlier, there’s people who are interested in like Overwatch and League. If they, if they miss the deadline for this season, they’re always able to get their team together and play in the spring season.
So we are starting now and we will also start again.
Stephen: Got it. Nice. And can anybody watch these? Do they stream the competitions? Some people do. We didn’t
Eric: do it last year. Yeah last year was… Alexis and I first year, so there was a lot of information that we had to, to gather. There is, there is streaming.
Most of it does happen through the official Discord, but we can, we can stream through Twitch if we want to. And we can have parents or whoever wants to watch, watch. That’s something that is on our… To do list as it is quickly approaching
Stephen: for us. Yeah. And so if you like compete for seven weeks or whatever, and you win, is there then a bigger Ohio state competition is a national competition?
How does that work?
Alexis: Yep. There’s like the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. So that’s in November. I believe
Eric: I do know for it for sure That there is like once we once we are let’s say we we win in our actual division We’ll play against other divisions again within our league But our league is only for Ohio I don’t think that we have a national at least for the one that we’re specifically in But that doesn’t say that there isn’t other leagues that Schools can join that do a national
Stephen: competition.
Akron have the like Ohio state finals or something like that. They, they host.
Eric: They did last year. Yeah, they did. Akron, Akron did some and Mount Union also, Mount Union also did some as well. It might have also been like the different seasons as well. Yeah, cause Mountain Union I think was at the end of the year.
Yeah,
Stephen: yeah. Nice, they’re both up around us. Yeah, yeah. But again, you can, you should be able to stream it. You know, not necessarily. But I, I think it’d be exciting to go like to Akron and see all these teams actually competing with the video games. I’ve had many, many kids come through the house and video games have always been a thing.
And I’ll tell you, so, so if you guys played the kids, do you get your butts kicked?
Alexis: And he’s played more than I have. Last year I coached Valorant and I still am not clear on the rules.
Eric: No, fair, fair. So I played against Smash and I was able. So, I was able to beat most except for our top three players.
I was not able, I was not able to beat them. But also, I grew up playing Smash Brothers, so I played, I played a lot, but now as… I get older, I don’t have as much time to, to play, to play the games. So yeah, they whooped me. You
Stephen: guys are much closer to that age group, but I’ll tell you, if they add space invaders in there, I’ll take any of those kids on.
Eric: If we go. Killer instinct, the Super Nintendo version. I actually had them pull it up on one of our big TVs up here and I was able to defeat two or three of them in a row without even getting hit. So yeah, you want to take it back to like old school killer instinct? I got you. . Oh, .
Stephen: That played street Fighter two on Super Nintendo and they would get so they were so good.
Played so much. That just for show at parties, they would actually sit with their backs to the TV and fight and fight each other. Wow. And it wasn’t just on the opposite sides. They were like right there. And with the moves cool. Because they, because that’s the other thing people don’t understand is when you get those top baseball players, the top football players, they, they practice throwing, they practice throwing, they, they practice hitting.
They practice hitting. They practice until they get it. So minutely tuned. One of my favorite stories is Dr. Er Larry Bird. He was doing a Pepsi commercial back in the 80s. And what they wanted to show was, you know, he shoots and he misses. He drinks a Pepsi, he shoots and he misses. So they were filming this and they said, okay, shoot and miss.
It took them like 34 times to miss the basket. Because they were tuned and trained. And that’s what these kids are really doing. You know, I can sit down and I can play video games. Ooh, I won. You know. But these kids are like immediately pro level. In the game against other people who have been playing it for thousands of hours.
And the skill level is unheard of at the normal person level. And I think parents still regard the video games as, oh, that’s a kid’s thing, but it’s growing beyond that. And these kids are definitely highly skilled at what they do.
Eric: And again, I feel like for, for those who, parents who are still. Again, like there are skills with those hand eye coordination and to be able to just quickly interpret what is happening in that specific scenario and to react appropriately like that’s, that is, that is very difficult to do.
Stephen: Yes. And I’ve been pointing out the Gran Turismo movie kind of shows that video games lead into real life as much as anything else, you know, that’s only one kid that actually joined the actual racing circuit after training on video games. And how many times have we heard the stories that combat pilots using drones now have been trained on video games?
Eric: Mm hmm. I will say with our, with our military, they have also started using. They’ve started using things like Xbox controllers on their like bomb defusal robots and stuff like that. So even being able to navigate a video game controller, such as the Xbox controller. If they go into the military, they literally might be using it if they go into something like bomb defusal, which is really cool.
Stephen: And I’ve also been telling parents. That the reason the OS OHSAA approved it for varsity letters is because so many schools are recruiting college for eSports teams, but they were having to go outside of Ohio because we didn’t have a lot at the time. And now there’s like 200 and some schools that have eSports teams and parents are like, what?
And the kids, oh my God, it’s so hilarious because the kids go, wait. I can get a college degree by playing video games. I’m like, yeah, I keep playing overwatch And the parents are like, oh my gosh, and it freaks them out a little bit. The the younger parents like you guys not quite as much they get it a little more But if you start getting parents with kids that are teenagers and they’re in their Forties or so they don’t always get it and you tell them.
Yeah, these kids are getting scholarships to college Maybe not all full scholarships and maybe not you know full rides and stuff like that But it’s starting to happen and it’s going to come it’s growing bigger every year, I think All right, so anything else you guys want to add or say about the eSports these sports teams that I missed asking you about
Eric: It’s always I mean, it’s always it’s always a good time. I don’t know. I don’t think I got
Stephen: anything I always connect it to that The video game industry is bigger than movies and pro football put together and and that’s a number I throw at parents how big the industry is and that there are plenty of companies looking for Not just programmers.
Video games have grown beyond having to program to be in video games. There’s so many jobs in the industry that it’s a good one for kids to actually think of as a career. It is not just something that the nerds do, it’s something a lot of people do. That wasn’t quite the case even a decade ago. No, for sure.
So the one I love throwing out, I’ve got, I printed it off from indeed. com, is Blizzard was looking for narrative design storytellers starting at 98, 000, no college degree in the requirements. Wow. And that’s just the one I use to shock parents. So. Go ahead.
Eric: So I’m also I’m also thinking with that. So definitely the, the creative storytelling is a critical part in video games.
And it’s really cool to see those who want to be writers and authors and stuff like that. Being being a creative storyteller for a video game industry is. absolutely phenomenal. And even if you didn’t want to do that part and if you’re thinking like, oh, it’s just video games working for a company like NVIDIA, they make graphics cards, but not only do they make graphics cards, but those same pieces of hardware that give you the stunning visuals, they’re also used in a whole bunch of data centers to quickly process a whole bunch of different information.
They’ll use that. To model things like infectious diseases and that spread of infectious diseases, they’ll work on heavy heavy computations as well. So even if you’re not necessarily interested in the video game aspect of it, like those are those pieces of technology that do fuel it are also applicable in a whole bunch of other fields as well, which is really
Stephen: cool.
Yes. And I, I’ve been talking to the. Primary school, middle grade because they do teach a narrative storytelling class and talking to them about that. So that’s the other thing is these skills and video games are permeating the kids lives so much that kids in third and fourth grade are learning about making video games in one way or another.
You know, that also, I think people need to understand that kids that. Don’t know anything about video games or anything to do with the coding or, you know, how are they work? There go be a little bit behind in the coming world because it’s permeating the life more and there’s more of that Available.
So I love that bio meds that progressive with you know, third graders doing it on
Eric: not Not necessarily eSports as a whole but like kind of like games kind of like games and education Have you heard a blue kit? So Bluekit is, it, it, it’s, it’s where you can… You play a whole bunch of different games, but in order for you to complete an objective, you have to answer a whole bunch of different questions.
And what we as teachers can do is we can input our content into these questions that students have to answer. And depending on how many that the students actually get right, they’ll be able to like move so many spaces or collect so many things. So we can actually still use video games as a way to get students to study and to work hard.
But we’re also keeping their interest at the same time. So they want to do well in this game, so the only way to do well in this game is to actually study and learn the things that you have to learn. So, even as educators, we can leverage the idea of games to get students to… Learn the things we need ’em to learn or want, or want them to want them to,
Stephen: to learn.
Get ’em where they’re at, not where you think they should be or where it used to be. Yeah. Because if you’re,
Eric: oh, yeah, so, no, sorry. Yeah, yeah. No, all
Stephen: you. No, no, it’s, it’s all you.
Eric: Oh, yeah. I was gonna say, compared to just skill and drill, like, Hey, do 20 of these, you know, then students are bored, dozing off, and they’re not gonna do anything, so, right.
But yeah.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have dysentery and you’ve died.
So that was something I thought of going back a second. Some of these games are on multiple platforms. PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo usually has their own games. And then some are on like PCs with Steam and all that. Is there like guidelines on this game played in the league is going to be on this platform?
Or, or how does that work? Because some of them are cross platform and some are not.
Eric: The, the cross platform ones, you are allowed to play cross platform. I do know that. Yeah but then there’s like Smash and Mario Kart. Yeah, there’s, there’s some games that are specific to a system or a what’s the word?
Launchers, like, for example, Fortnite has to go through the Epic Games launcher. So there are some… Yeah, it does. It does just depend, but I can tell you this, though. If there is a game and the students are able to play it on PC, they’re playing it on PC over a console. Most of them are really good. At the mouse and keyboard compared to the actual controller.
Stephen: Okay. That’s interesting. But that’s expected. I mean, they start off with bio med with computers and they have computers for everything, for their whole careers. It lives with them. I know my kids my son still uses his laptop five years out of school. So it’s getting a little old. But like, what about.
I know I’ve heard a lot of gamers, they will use wired controllers because they’re more responsive than the wireless. What do you do for Nintendo? Do they get wired pro controllers or do they use Joy Cons? We
Alexis: got a Switch, so like, we have the Joy Cons ready to go already. And did anybody use a wired one last
Eric: year?
I don’t remember it. We had a couple people use a wired, not, not many, but some of that for us at least does come down to funding. Anything that we get for our esports team, we have to either find grants for or we have to fundraise. So, last year we did a fundraiser and we were able to buy a Switch. And we were also able to buy a copy of Super Smash Brothers, but this year we’re going to also do some more fundraising because our computers are a little bit older and we want to keep things as up to date as, as possible.
Stephen: Right. Yeah, I bet the computers get more, way more expensive than the consoles. Oh, for sure. For sure. All right. Well, guys, I love talking to you. It’s been great. I know you’ve got class coming up. I have another meeting soon. I appreciate you taking the time and I’d really like to stay in touch. Find out how the season’s going with the kids, what they’re doing.
And then if you have fundraisers or if you have something going on, keep me in mind on your list and shoot me an email. I’d love to. Stay involved in knowing what’s going on. Cause I mean, you guys are a mile away from or five miles away. You know, I think it’s awesome that you’ve got this and you’re doing it.
So thank you guys.
Eric: No, thank you. That would actually be really appreciated too. Yeah.
Stephen: Let me know. I don’t have a huge audience in the area, but I do have some people if there’s a fundraiser, if there’s, oh, that was something else. Do you guys have a team name and jerseys and stuff?
Eric: No. Yeah, we actually talked about, we talked a little bit about getting like shirts made for them.
Last year, because they had shirts made I think the year before, but we, we weren’t able to get any last year, but I know this year that we’re actually really trying to get I know shirts more than jerseys per se, but still kind of, I guess the, in the, in the, in the same vein, with our actual, because we have an actual e sports logo as well to, you know, get that on it.
So that is, that is something that we’re definitely also looking into.
Stephen: Cool. Well, if you open it up to parents and stuff, buying some of the swag shoot me that too. Cause I’ll definitely get a shirt and wear it around. No dude, that’s awesome. All right, guys. I appreciate it very much. It was a great talk.
And again, I’ll let I’ll let you know when this goes live. I’ll probably put it up pretty soon because I want to get this out and I want parents and people to be able to see it and see how the world has changed and wake some people up to it. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Have a good night.