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Updated: February 14, 2022 @ 10:04 pm
Electronic sports (esports) are a mega-popular pastime, with games like League of Legends, Battle Royale and PUBG invading your YouTube recommended page.
Mika Kumar, a fine arts and art history student at the University of Cincinnati and Esports Club president.
Features Reporter
Electronic sports (esports) are a mega-popular pastime, with games like League of Legends, Battle Royale and PUBG invading your YouTube recommended page.
Electronic sports (esports) are a mega-popular pastime, with games like League of Legends, Battle Royale and PUBG invading your YouTube recommended page. If you weren’t aware, an esport is a multiplayer video game played competitively for an audience, and the over $1 billion industry is growing – and fast. Newzoo expects esport viewership to grow by 9.2% to 920.3 million viewers by 2024, with streamers like Ninja and Shroud helping to drive audiences up.
The University of Cincinnati (UC) Esports Club are aware of these skyrocketing trends, but, according to club president Mika Kumar, “we’re just a bunch of people that like to play games and watch people play games.”
This “bunch of people” includes a Discord community of over 2,000 members, with 800 of those members being UC-verified students. When Kumar, a fine arts and art history student at DAAP, first joined the UC Esports Discord in 2017, there were only around 25 members.
Discord, an instant messaging and digital distribution platform, has a hub of different communities at UC, and UC Esports is the biggest.
Not only is the community large, but it is generous. The club has done charity livestreams on Twitch, which began during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of engaging members. In December 2020, the club did a Christmas 24-hour livestream and were able to raise over $1,000 for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
Mika Kumar, a fine arts and art history student at the University of Cincinnati and Esports Club president.
A bit before this livestream, A Kid Again, a local nonprofit organization that supports children with life-threatening conditions, reached out to the club for some help. They wanted UC Esports to host an “adventure,” which is what A Kid Again defines as a child’s time away from the hospital, giving them the opportunity to forget about being sick. The club agreed and hosted a Minecraft adventure.
After experiencing the success of the Christmas livestream, and with the request from A Kid Again waiting, the Esports Club knew what they wanted to do next.
“We were so impressed with how well our community did with the Christmas charity livestream that we wanted to raise money for A Kid Again,” Kumar said.
Valentine’s Day weekend 2021, in an event called “Spread the Love,” the UC Esports Club raised over $3,000 for A Kid Again. Their next charity livestream is planned for spring break 2022 from March 18 to 20 with schools including OSU, Miami and NKU joining in.
As president, Kumar is the face of the club, runs meetings and works closely with administration. She has been president since November 2019 after first joining the executive board as an officer in spring 2018.
“I feel like people have grown to respect me, at least compared to my first year,” Kumar said. “I’ll admit, most of our members are men, but this year we have our most diverse set of officers.” Currently, women take up four of the seven spots on the executive board of the UC Esports Club.
Esports offers students a place to play video games, either casually or competitively. The group hosts events occasionally and meets for bi-weekly meetings on Fridays from 6 to 9 p.m.
Members don’t necessarily need to attend meetings, which are more of a social gathering than playing games. Over the years, Kumar has learned that people prefer to play on their PCs at home rather than bring laptops to a meeting space.
The UC Esports Club is getting their own space at the end of the spring 2022 semester, though, in the 1819 Innovation Hub. It will be called the Esports Innovation Lab. For Kumar, it’s a dream come true.
“For as long as I can remember, as an officer, I’ve always been battling for an esports space,” Kumar said. “I think UC came to realize that other Ohio universities are getting into esports and it’s about time that we do it ourselves. The UC Esports community definitely ignited the spark [for the lab] and we advocated for it very strongly.”
Kumar, who is graduating this spring, feels bittersweet about the lab opening as she leaves UC, but she’s proud of her work. “I feel like all the work has been worth it for this moment,” she said. “It’s my magnum opus.”
Features Reporter
Bryn Dippold is a fourth-year journalism student and has completed internships with Cincinnati Magazine, CityBeat, Cincy Magazine, and is currently working as a student journalist for the College of A&S MarComm office and TNR’s features reporter.
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