Ohio University Esports Club Receives Approval for Esports Facility
If you’re an esports fan and are going to/considering Ohio University for a place to further your education, you’re in luck! Last week, the Ohio University Board of Trustees met concerning a facility for the Ohio Esports Club.
Well, that wound up coming back positive! They have a $650,000 budget. Construction should begin in early summer 2020. Now that’s brilliant news! That’s some serious cash to put into an esports facility, no matter how you slice it.
It’s Coming!
That’s right, the project, the dream, of an Ohio Esports Club facility is going to be a reality. This project was both suggested and designed by Jeffrey Kuhn, an instructional designer in the Office of Instructional Innovation and the GRID Lab.
Through his input, and the input of the cofounders of Bobcat Esports, Kristofer Meyeres, a senior studying quantitative business analytics, and Ivy O’Shaughnessy, a senior studying games and animation.
Sounds to us like the Ohio Esports Club has a heavy minds behind the idea. Two years ago, the Office of Instructional Innovation had an Academic Innovation Accelerator. It was a place to pitch ideas for faculty, for the university, such as new programs like Kuhn’s esports program.
Kuhn describes the future space in a recent article: “There will be a place for … an area that’s more kind of socially inclined with Nintendos and Xboxes and PlayStations for people to socialize. The final part (will be) a kind of … open area for students to come in and play games, but then also a good club practice space that during the day would serve as a teaching and learning space, basically a classroom dedicated towards you know, gaming.”
He wants it to be more than just esports though. While it will serve as a space to host esports teams and competitions, he wants this to develop into Ohio University developing an academic program around games and gaming. That would be tremendous, that’s for sure.
A Time of Growth
This could be a major time for growth on Ohio University’s campus, as well as the rest of the Ohio State system. If successful here, the other schools may also embrace it.
“We don’t really have a classroom on campus dedicated to real game development,” Kuhn said. “I think universities really need to recognize games as a part of the lives of their students, then actually have them as a full-fledged field of study in our academic programs. I just really think that we’re missing a large potential opportunity to really expand and innovate across the university.”
Bobcat Esports feels that the facility will create plenty of opportunities for growth and connection within the organization itself. We’d also like to see this fight the negative stigma that comes with esports. Not everyone feels like it’s the next bastion of competition action. That it’s just “a bunch of dorks playing online games,” and that it’s not a real sport.
Esports are valid, and it’s an incredible way to work together and be competitive without being great at a sport. This facility can also help programs that are esports-adjacent. One of these could be sports medicine. One of the things esports programs seem to lack is physical trainers, psychologists, and other things that traditional sports have.
Even though they’re playing video games, the need to be mentally and physically fit is incredibly key. Another member of the Bobcat Esports team is Charlie Savidge. He’s a junior studying marketing and also the Twitch officer for Bobcat Esports. He pointed out that one of the major hurdles has been getting together to play esports.
Finding places to store equipment, and players having no choice but to play remotely in their dorms, possibly on wireless signals, to play together for the Esports Club. This system could change all of that and let the Ohio Esports Club play together like never. They will be able to practice and grow.
This could be the start of something big for Ohio esports in general, not just the Ohio Esports Club. Having this dedicated space is only the first step. We can’t wait to see where it goes after this.
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