Spring 2020 meant something special at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. The esports club at UW-Eau Claire is making a big move with over 100 people taking part in this new movement starting this season.

They are working on five games right now: Overwatch, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Rocket League and League of Legends. These are essentially the gateway drugs to competitive esports. It’s been months of hard work and trying to get funding, according to Joe Murphy, a third-year student senator and director of information technology.

But now they’re here! Nobody’s suddenly a millionaire, but they are working hard to make their scene the best it can be.

Esports Is Not New

Esports may be only a few weeks old here at UW-Eau Claire, but we can go back to at least 1972 for the competitive Pong matches way back when. The first esports event to draw 10,000+ competitors, according to Fox Sports was the 1980- Space Invaders championship. Think about that: Space Invaders! Is it so strange that esports would take off?

Now that technology has improved, we’re years past the 2002 Major League Gaming’s roots and the 2006 creation of Twitch. Now, anyone can stream whatever competitive game they want; or whatever they want period. People can watch their favorite games, streamers, and esports professionals from the comfort of their home.

Murphy spearheaded the esports project. He said he worked to secure funding, find a campus location and propose the concept to the student senate. “I had heard enough whispering about an esports program,” Murphy said. “I finally took it upon myself and said: ‘Let’s have an esports program.’ ”

Murphy also evidently contacted Dell directly, who matched the computers bought by campus. That’s such a great move by Dell, which makes sure UW-Eau Claire has 10 fully functioning gaming setups for PC. That’s including chairs, tables, monitors, and the PCs themselves. These are located at Hilltop.

The rest of the money comes from student technology fees, so it’s nice to see it going to something good, or at least different. Garrett Larson, credited as the co-founder of the club, is the competitive sports director within recreation and sports operations.

Murphy spoke about that in a recent article. “Garrett did a lot of work in the background making the program an official UW-Eau Claire program,” Murphy said. “Really, it was a 50/50 project.”

Murphy feels that PC gaming is superior to console gaming. It’s unfortunate that within gaming there is a pretty intense divide between the console gamers and PC gamers. This sort of thing is not uncommon, but Murphy makes a point that they do not condone that kind of behavior.

Murphy also emphasized the esports club’s anti-toxicity policy, saying that they represent Blugold values. He said the club is as inclusive and positive as the rest of UW-Eau Claire is, within esports and without. The main purpose of the esports club is to play video games, and it should bring people together, not pull them apart.

“Games like League of Legends are huge in Asian markets,” Murphy said. “I’ve heard from a lot of foreign exchange students that having an esports team that offers League gives them a really good experience meeting people. That was something I had not initially thought of but has become a big positive.”

This is the kind of thing we want to hear. It can be hard for the foreign exchange students to meet new people. Esports is helping forge new friendships and the competitive spirit, so much the better. The team also pointed out that they’re looking at adding two more games, FPS titles: CS:GO and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.

So, we’re excited to see more esports clubs pop up. The next step hopefully is to see their club work together and start to compete at the state level. How intense is the competition in the Wisconsin system? With luck, it’s intense.