If you are worried about your child playing hours of video games and you are expecting they won’t go anywhere with it, now may be their chance to earn some scholarship money. With competitive gaming on the rise and technology more present than ever, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that some people would find a way to get some scholarship money. Colleges have started to give scholarships to teens so that they can be a part of their E-Sports team and compete in tournaments.
E-Sports competitive gaming tournaments between teams for certain genres of games. E-Sports tournaments can be extremely small just within the comforts of your home, to a main stage in Dallas or Los Angeles. The big tournaments last a few days with the players staying in hotels and waiting their turn to face off against other teams for multiple hours.
The games that are the most popular and have the biggest prize pools are Call Of Duty, Fortnite, League of Legends and CSGO. The prize pools can range from$100 to $1 million. These competitions have quite a lot of fans depending on the game and the skill of the players. The competitions most always have prizes for the winners. This caused some colleges to gain interest and make teams so that they could be apart of these competitions. E-Sports are just like any other sport, but instead of using athletic ability, competitions are based on gaming skills. They have fans, contracts (if they done professionally) and company partnerships.
These college teams have coaches, practices, film and sometimes exercises that are gaming based, like wrist exercises. These scholarships give teens that sit in their room all night playing video games a chance to become a7 part of a group, make friends, go to college and get out of the house. However, things aren’t as easy as they seem. Teens still have to try out for the teams; and if they are qualified and make it, then, the scholarships arrive. Colleges have handed out over $16 million in scholarships and teens can get up to $19,000 a year depending on how well they perform. Junior Thomas Like said that he doesn’t, “look to play video games under a scholarship in college,” but he does enjoy them.
These scholarships are a great new addition that colleges have started to add in the last couple of years. The E-Sports industry is growing rapidly, and colleges that give merits to skilled gamers give kids that love video games a chance to do something with those hours spent playing them.
Yet Another One of Brock's Family Members • Dec 9, 2018 at 2:55 pm
Neat article Brock! Interesting and well written. Very informative with quality research and insights. Best of luck with your class and junior semester at BHSS. Please keep us informed of additional articles that you write for The Optimist.
Another one of Brock's Family members • Dec 6, 2018 at 9:12 am
Wow! Glad to see my grand nephew Brock actually contribute something. Keep up the good work Brock Victor!
Lara Croft • Dec 5, 2018 at 4:13 pm
Interesting viewpoint on the scholarship aspect of these video games. This article really hits close to home as I have a brother who will play hours on end of these types of games. He isn’t very good as he has told me he only has one Fortnite win and a .5 K/D ratio in BO4… whatever that may mean. I was wondering if I could pick your brain on this matter and maybe you could suggest some potential routes for him to take (i.e. coaching, quitting, or trying to make a collegiate team). Judging by your profile picture you seem like a strapping young lad who wouldn’t waste his time with video games and would rather indulge himself in the luxury of sportsmanship in the realms of let’s say football or lacrosse for example. I don’t know why you would waste time presumably getting bodied in such video games while you could be honing your craft on the field or whatever may have you. Best of luck with your endeavors and any response would be greatly appreciated!
Ollie • Dec 5, 2018 at 4:02 pm
A very interesting article Mr. Pedersen!