League Of Legends Research Paper

SALT LAKE CITY — “It was five years ago the first time they showed up in my office and said they were interested in having scholarships for playing Esports,” said AJ Dimick, director of Esports Operations at the University of Utah. “The infrastructure did not exist then. The core group of students at Crimson Gaming created one of the first grassroots gaming community and held events so big they could not be ignored. They bothered all the right people. We could be the first school from a Power Five conference to make a varsity Esports program. ”

League of Legends (LoL) is the world’s most popular Esports game, according to Business Insider. LoL is a game that puts five players against five opposing players where the main objective is to destroy

For example, today, student-athletes take part in leagues, like the Pac-12. They have their own training facilities, are expected to not only practice with their teammates but also to devote their own time to improve, and receive scholarship money. To keep their scholarships, they must fulfill a minimum GPA. In addition to the PAC-12, the university’s League of Legends team takes part in a larger league sponsored by the game’s creators Riot Games, called uLoL, consisting of 300 university teams across the country. The players spend at least 12 hours a week practicing as a team and all maintain a competitive ranking of Diamond 5 — this means they must be in the top 2 percent of players in the nation to keep their scholarship of $1,000 a year. Since this is only the first official year of U of U Esports, the infrastructure of the team is not as well established yet, as there are only 25 Esports players overall, seven of whom are League of Legends players. However, establishing an Esports structure is not the only thing the U of U Esports team has done this

The team is also taking initiative by not only broadcasting their own games but all the other PACG teams’ games on twitch.tv, the leading streaming service for video games in the U.S.

Although it is the offseason, the players can still be seen practicing hard in their current training facility, the Einar Nielsen Fieldhouse. “We’re expecting and encouraged to stay on the team for next year,” said Thomas “Kraedon” Nguyen, whose major is finance. He says while he enjoys the game, Nguyen also plays to retain his scholarship.

“Even though the game is fun to play alone, it feels good to compete and be part of a team that represents something bigger,” said Alex “Kenya” Fritz, whose current major is computer science. In their first official year as a team, they placed in the top 8 out of 70 teams in their uLoL