Is 2020/21 the year of the Student Gamer?

Welcome Week is coming to an end, and students are settling in and preparing to play video games all day study hard and earn their degrees.

Whilst many freshers won’t be experiencing the cumulative hangover that normally presents itself at the start of lectures on Monday, there will certainly be some level of fatigue present, as many digital events have been going on.

Warwick Esports has had no shortages of such events, ranging from 10-mans to pub quizzes, and coming out of welcome week, one thing was abundantly clear. Turnout was big.

🤠Howdy🤠and welcome to week 0 of the Warwick Esports Weekly Read. Each week, we’ll explore an esports related topic in a short 5 min read, as well as look forward towards exciting events on the horizon. If you have a topic you want to see, feel free to DM our lead writer on discord @CheeseLordP#7864

Big Growth? How big?

In early August, the Warwick Esports Discord server sat at a respectable 621 members. As of writing, we currently sit at 1,018.

That’s a net increase of almost 400 users in those few months. To put that into perspective, last year we had a net increase of 200 in the same timeframe.

So something is happening here that begs the question: Is 2020/21 the year of the student gamer?

Well, we’ll have to break things down a little, to figure out what people are actually joining for.

We asked around, and whilst not everyone had the data on hand, the data that we did get was impressive.

All games had a notable increase in the number of player signups, and a large number of players joining for teams had never played in any team environment before.

One thing worth mentioning is that this growth comes at a time when it is harder than ever for societies to reach out to students and organise events, with no in-person events of any kind being allowed to take place, making these numbers all the more impressive.

Woah, that’s a lot of growth. Why?

One immediate explanation is the fact that the esports industry has still managed to grow by roughly 13% this year, despite muted global economic growth.

On top of this, with a pandemic ongoing, many students are beginning to come to terms with the notion that their uni experience will be in no way typical.

Many societies this year simply won’t be able to provide the same quality experience as they normally would.

So students that might usually join sports teams, might be instead signing up for esports teams.

One last factor is Warwick Esports’ recent pivot into being more accessible to casual gamers. In the past, Warwick Esports has had somewhat of a marketing dilemma – trying to appeal to casual audiences to boost their members, whilst still prioritising competitive players because, y’know, we are called Warwick ‘Esports’.

Whilst this problem hasn’t wholly disappeared, it looks like a lot of work has been put in the right direction, with Warwick Esports running community games nights, and supporting an ever-growing list of smaller subcommunities.

In previous years, Warwick Computing Society (CompSoc) has been seen as the ‘society for casual gamers’, with esports being relegated to a more niche base, but it looks like change is in the wind, and that Esports have some serious momentum behind them.

Diversity in Esports

The esports industry doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to diversity, for too many reasons to get into. Whilst most people simply accept this as an unfortunate fact, Warwick Esports is committed to making changes and setting the standard for improving diversity.

That’s why we are proud of the fact that two Warwick students (one current, and one former member, of Warwick Esports) will be speaking as panellists at this year’s UK University Diversity in Esports conference. Signups are still open, so if you are a university student who is interested in esports, we strongly encourage you to take part in this event.

This is all being done on top of our existing efforts to improve diversity, lead by our Equal Opportunities Officer, Harry "Faunic" Smith.

That’s all for this week, and if any of this has piqued your interest, signups for most of our esports teams are still open, but not for long! (If you check and the deadline has passed try messaging the tryout organiser, as you still may have time)

Written by Alex “CheeseLord” Petropoulos (Twitter @AltPet | Discord @CheeseLordP#7864)