After a long day of classes, many members of the Stevens Esports Club prefer to unwind by brawling with their friends and shooting other strangers. Of course, these beatdowns don’t take place in reality—rather, they are fought through various online video games.
“I joined the Esports club my sophomore year, when it was still in its infancy,” said Chris Kurtz, a veteran member of the club. “I’ve grown up playing video games my whole life, and I was particularly interested in League of Legends, so I joined that team.”
Kurtz has since risen through the club’s ranks to become a member of its e-board, which organizes teams and schedules tournaments. These tournaments include collegiate competitions, where teams from Stevens compete with students from other institutions in showdowns of prowess in a particular game. Although games that include fighting are a mainstay of the club, the e-board grapples with logistical challenges. “We aren’t able to meet in-person too often, and we’re still working with the SGA to get room bookings,” said Kurtz. “Right now, the best place to interact with the club would be through our Discord, which you can find through the Stevens Discord Hub.”
A prospective member browsing through the club’s Discord server can also find listings for the games commonly played by other students. Aside from League, popular games such as Apex Legends, Valorant, the Smash Bros series, CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Rocket League, and others all have their own teams that one can apply for.
In particular, there are two kinds of teams for each game which club members can join: a competitive “red” team, whose members perform at high rankings and practice twice a week, and a less rigorous “gray” team, whose members perform at casual rankings and only practice once a week.
“For our teams, we are a bit limited on who can join,” said Kurtz. “It does come down to the size [of a particular team] and whether or not there’s an odd number of players. There are cuts for applications for certain teams, but we’re working on a way to make sure that everyone is included through a separate group called the content team, where we can teach you how to commentate on games, as well as graphic design and content production. [Members of the content team] also handle our social media and talk to other organizations.”
The Esports Club maintains an active Twitch channel where games are streamed live each semester. Although the club had planned to upload sessions on YouTube as well, the quarantine had stalled production for the prior year.
“Thankfully, most of [the club’s] essential functions were already online-based prior to the pandemic,” said Kurtz. “The biggest issue was that teams couldn’t meet up in person—everything had to be done through Discord. But aside from that, we could still be active at nearly full capacity.”
With meetings resuming this semester, those interested in competitive gaming should consider joining the Esports club if they are looking for an inclusive environment where they can improve their skills and play with other students.
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