By: Jeremy Blye

 

Throughout my time at DePaul, I haven’t seen anyone share a deep perspective into their involvement with a specific team, and I thought I would make some room to share my own thoughts. To give a little bit more insight, I would like to take a deeper dive into how one of our Esports Teams functions. More specifically, this team is our Rocket League team and the progress it has made since September of last year.

 

As an incoming freshman, I had no clue of what I wanted to do with college. We were in the middle of the pandemic. We were stuck in our homes virtually every single day. We were stuck with a stagnant life. I decided to make a change to that. When I joined this program, I was not too sure as to what game I would like to be a part of. I knew I wanted to join an Esports team because I have a passion and love for video games. I also tend to find myself to be okay at gaming and wanted to elevate my skill. I also missed being a part of a serious team/organization and luckily this program has helped fulfill some of my own wishes. I ran cross country and track within high school, so this program helped fill a spot in my heart. By the first week or so of being a part of this organization, I decided to join the Rocket League team.

 

As being a new person within the team, I knew I had to earn my respect and prove that I deserved to have some sort of a spot within the team. These are some values of discipline that had been engrained into my head by participating in other sports. It was interesting to see how many of these values I lived by translated nearly perfectly within a video game. While I was growing up, I was always surrounded by negative pictures of video games and what “negative” consequences came from putting in time into gaming. By taking a hobby much more seriously, I was able to see the how participating within an Esports team had many more pros than there were cons. Although I was sitting on a computer and just looking at a screen, I was able to take a passion of mine and improve it to the best of my own ability. There was now this opportunity for me to figure out how I could elevate my skills as a gamer and person overall. This team has allowed for my own personal growth as a player and as a person overall.

 

So far with this post, I have been relatively general with how I have put together my thoughts. I think it is extremely important in a field such as Esports and gaming to give as much background information as possible before going into specific events and providing exact details. It allows me to demonstrate a year worth of events without taking away too much from your day (Even though I know you all love reading what I have to say, I understand it could be a lot). Without going on too many more tangents, let’s take a deeper dive into this Esport.

 

Rocket League as an Esport at DePaul

 

I was quite surprised when I found out how similar Esports is to what many consider traditional sports. Each has its own unique attributes, but they function relatively similar. Rocket League in its own is in a somewhat similar boat. This game even follows suit of what makes one activity a part of a club and one a part of a team. I am referring to how seriously the players take what they are doing. With any activity, anyone can just participate. What matters is how far one may take it and what they may do to reach whatever goals they may lay out in front of themselves.

 

The reason our Rocket League Esports team is considered a sport/team is because of the mindsets that help bring this team into fruition. Too often, there are those negative mindsets that gamers are lazy and do not do anything productive. I was again surprised to see how many of the traits that made me love being a part of a team be translated seamlessly into the program. The way the coaches work with the players is virtually the same as a normal sport. Same with how players interact with one another and how one goes about improving within the game. One may be good with solely a mechanical aspect of one of these games, but that does not mean that they have a firm understanding with how to become good mentally. The mental side of the game covers more than just understanding the game. This is learning how to become a smart player and how to control emotions.

 

The level of “intelligence” that comes from playing Rocket League comes from how one approaches the game itself. One can simply just play the game. This does not mean that they are necessarily a smart player. They have to be able to make split-second decisions that may make or break the game. They also have to know when they can take risks. If a risk is made and the game starts falling apart because of that, then this means the play was not necessarily a good or smart one. Not only do players need to understand what they are doing in game, they must understand how to react to those around them (both on the same and opposite teams). This means players need to have good synergy to be successful and be able to read their opponents to further that success.

 

In gaming, it is hard to become emotional especially when one becomes attached. I know this from experience. I find it extremely easy to become frustrated or angry with a video game since it is something that I have complete control with. Every I do is up to the inputs I have in my controller/keyboard. This is unlike running where I had other factors that I could not control. In gaming, it is so important to be able to control my own emotions and feelings to be able to bring out some form of success. It just poses difficulty sometime when I know I cannot control something I believed could be.

 

Not only is the mental-side of the game important, the physical side must be addressed as well. Just like in normal sports, there is some form of a training regiment to be able to have some form of improvement over a certain period of time. Even though this is done completely virtually, one player must train specific aspects of their mechanics within the game to be able to improve. This is something that should be obvious to any observer, but I never noticed the level of seriousness one must take to improve with a video game until I actually did it.

 

Conclusion

 

First of all, I hope you made it in one piece. I understand that this was quite a bit to read. I think in future posts, I would like to dive into more specific aspects of each of the teams and express with other people or more of my own work. I think it is interesting to see how similar gaming is to what we consider traditional hobbies, and I would like to do my best at informing others on what I know and how I feel. I think it is good to start with a relatively general piece before going into crazy specific aspects on how these teams function. It allows anyone to get a start into understanding how these Esports teams work. Thanks again for reading and I’ll see you in the next post!