By: Jeremy Blye

Last week, I was given the opportunity to work with Lurie’s Children’s Hospital for their Game On event, and I was joined by some of the community as well. John Ucha and Joshua Zullo made the time to help support the another community that is near and dear to us. While at Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, we had a lot of fun interacting with the patients and crew on the set, and we were able to volunteer for a great cause. Let’s take a look into what we were doing and what we were supporting.

 

 

If you do not know, Lurie’s Children’s Hospital hosts monthly events through their Extra Life Program that allows the patients within the building to interact with one another and any staff/volunteers that may be on site. In this Extra Life Game On event, Lurie’s set up a whole production set with gaming consoles. It was an internal “Twitch Stream” where patients could dial in and speak with all of the people on set. I say it is an internal stream since it was only streamed to people within Lurie’s due to HIPA restrictions. They also had a whole OBS production team behind the camera and games while we played. During this stream, patients had the ability to call in to win free gear, and on top of that they were able to talk to us.

 

 

 

Now that you have an idea of what went on during this event, I thought I would go over how the event went. First of all, this was one of the best volunteer events I have ever been to. It was a lot of fun getting to interact with people within the community, an awesome production cast, and patients around Lurie’s. Considering that we are basically at finals for this quarter, this event was a great way to get some time to just relax, have fun, and entertain those around me. On top of trying to entertain those watching the show, we had our fun messing around with the cast members.

 

I think the best part of this event was when the host got involved with our conversations. John, Josh, and I were joking around that the host opened up a bunch more when he realized we weren’t just annoying kids. When we started discussing older video games on set, the host realized we were not only annoying kids, we were knowledgeable gamers. Although we were poking fun at one another, I had a great time getting to be a part of this event. I am so glad to see people like this put on such amazing events. I am super excited to be able to get back into Lurie’s to help out with future events, and I hope they do the same for us!

 

By: Jeremy Blye

 

Welcome back to this glorious blog as we wind down for this quarter. So much has gone on within the past 2 months, it is awesome to see. Our community has been revived for in-person events, and our online presence is still continuing to boom! I just thought I would give a little bit of insight into what we have planned and what I think of it. Since we have been able to get back in person, I have been trying to help create events that are catered towards our community. We want to be able to see everyone who is a part of our community find a place within what has been created here at DePaul. So what exactly does this mean?

 

EVENTS! As many of you may know, we are hosting our Fall Finals Bash next Thursday (November 11th) from 1-4PM. Come swing by the gaming center to check out some games, some cool people (like ME!), and even some free food! How can you say no to gaming and free food? On top of this, we are hosting another series like the Summer Showdown. Instead of the previous summer name, we have the Snowy Showdown. At the moment, we have two events planned for this. There is the Rainbow Six Siege vs. VALORANT Showdown and a huge Rocket League tourney. The R6 vs. VAL Showdown will feature our competitive teams playing each other in the respective teams. The RL tourney will feature many different schools and even possibly a special guest team! The R6 vs. VAL is happening on 12/4 time TBD and the RL tourney is happening on 12/18 at 12PM. We will hopefully plan more Snowy Showdown series, but only time will be able to tell as far as that goes. On top of this, we do have C2E2 coming right around the corner. It is from December 10th-12th and we have a timeslot from 645PM-745PM on December 11th.

 

Even though it seems we are focusing a whole bunch into what we are offering over winter break, we will be starting a bunch of new events and activities for the community to do going into winter quarter. Now that we all have a grip into what this community looks like while we are in person, we figured we should really interact with all of the awesome people that are here! Be on the lookout into what we will be announcing and what we will try to do for the community as time passes.

 

You know this wouldn’t be a blog without me giving some form of insight from my end. I honestly have been loving what this community has been able to do and the people that I have been able to meet. By far the Esports community is the most unique community I have ever been a part of. It is so cool to see how there are very few biases around this community. People are here because they want to game or socialize. This is something I want to help boost, and I hope with some of the things we are planning, we can accomplish this. As I have said before, this is something that only time will be able to tell!

 

 

By: Jeremy Blye

Throughout my time editing pictures, I have found that many people have been interested in the photo editing process. I thought within this blog I would give some room to explain how exactly I have edited the headshots for the program and why it was done in this fashion.

 

 

In this unedited picture, you can see that there is a stunning young lad. I wonder who he may be. With this picture, it may look good right off the bat. There are some key elements of the picture that I see that could be improved on. When it comes to my “philosophy” of editing, I tend to like to keep things as natural as possible. This is photography and not art. Before I get too off track, I’ll get into the editing process.

 

The first step is usually changing the levels of the picture. With this tool, you can manipulate the brightness of the pixels in the shadows, midtones, and highlights. The extremes of each end are the complete black pixels and the complete white pixels. Luckily in the histogram (graph of the pixels), you can see that the brightness of the picture is well balanced. I usually find that I just need to increase the brightness of the highlights and the white pixels. That is what I’m doing here.

 

 

The next step is to add a little bit of saturation to the photo. It already looks decent, but adding in +3 to +6 in saturation helps the photo look just a little bit more alive once it is done editing.

 

 

After this, I like to change the vibrance a little bit. Adding in these little details that changes to photo very insignificantly help make the photo look that much better. Now that I have added in a small change to the vibrance, there are just a few more things that must be done.

 

Because this photo will be used for different media platforms, it is important to clean up any knicks on the face. I know, I know I said I like to keep the photo looking natural, but no one likes looking at any of the oil or acne on my face. It is a super quick edit that can be done with the spot-healing brush. Take a look:

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

In order to get rid of some of the natural oils on my face, you can take the dodge and burn tool to darken the highlights on my face. Doing so helps the lighting look softer from the studio and the photo more crisp. In the end, the before and after photos have a decent difference and make it look that much better and more professional.

 

 

I bet you all thought it would be over from here. Funny thing, there is another step for the photos over here at DePaul. We need to cut out the bodies of each person and give them a transparent background. This allows us to use just the body of said person in any type of graphic with ease. It is also submitted into the league websites like EGF for their own use. 

 

In order to cut people out, you can use 2 different tools. Today, I’ll be using the color range tool. This allows us to select a specific color. In this case, we are selecting the green in the background. From here, we can cut out the green in the background and have a transparent background. Finally, I will save the image as a .png and go from there.

 

 

Overall, I hope you were able to enjoy this little walkthrough into the madness that helped get the picture days done here at DePaul Esports. I figured I may as well walk some people through it since many have asked me exactly what I do when I have been editing. Hopefully you got to learn something from this, and I hope to see you all in the center!

By: Jeremy Blye

 

As many of you know, we had our Welcome Back Bash last Tuesday. It was a way to help welcome back our community with a neat little kickback event. We had a bunch of Nintendo Switch setups, Sega Genesis setups, a Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl setup, pizza, free merch, and an amazing community to come support what we put on! Let’s take a look at what happened last Tuesday.

 

Throughout the 4 hour event, we had a pretty big audience show up that were both a part and not a part of the community. It was neat to see how we were able to attract people that were and were not a part of our community. Many people decided to stop on by because they heard all of the sick gaming music and sounds coming from the basement. We even had some Super Smash Bros. battles go on between our Varsity team and some fellow gamers that showed up to the event. There was some friendly banter between the competing parties, but it was fun to see both a competitive and casual scene come together and just have fun in the middle of the school year. On top of the banter in game, the concourse became flooded with everyone who was at the center once the pizza came in. How can you say no to free food?

 

That’s what I thought. It’s pretty hard to say no to free food, yet alone famous Chicago pizza.

 

As the event started to wrap up, we definitely had a lot of people help close out a wonderful day at the Esports Center. It was a day full of gaming, socializing, and fun times. We can’t wait to see you at more of our awesome DePaul Esports events. Be sure to stay caught up in our Discord servers and social media!

By: Jeremy Blye

 

Throughout the past couple of weeks, we have been able to knock out photo days, DeSmash Tournaments, Jerm on the Street filming, and just interacting with the community. It has been quite fun having everything back in person and putting names to people’s faces. One thing I want to mention is an interesting experience I have had in recent days. I fully understand the pain of trying to learn everyone’s name in an organization/team/classroom setting.

 

When I was younger, I never put too much thought into the amount of work leaders/teachers have to put in to be able to know everyone who they deal with. As I have gotten more and more involved with the Esports program, I am slowly starting to see just how difficult it can be to learn everyone who is in this community. I mean there are just about 1300 students and alumni that exist with us, so you can imagine how many people I can see on a daily basis.

 

During the first photo day, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of new faces I was seeing. I got to a point where I was sometimes unable to realize someone that came in was someone I already knew. For example, Joey from the Rocket League team came in to get his pictures taken, and I had no clue that it was him who was in front of me. It was extremely weird to not even be able to recognize some of my friends due to the sheer number people I was meeting.

 

After the first couple of photo days and many days working as an employee, I think the coolest revelation I have had is my knowledge of names and faces. It is so cool to be able to know and recognize the many different faces that make up DePaul Esports. I know at this point you are all probably wondering why I am even talking about this subject. I just want you to think about this next point.

 

I may think it is fantastic that I am able to recognize the many faces of DePaul Esports. You may think that as well. In the grand scheme of things, I’m starting to realize how many people DePaul Esports affects. DePaul is a big school to begin with. We have over 23,000 students. The fact that our organization is over 1300 people is stunning. Within just a few weeks, I have been able to become introduced to virtually our whole competitive group(s) of gamers. I’m at a point where I can truly recognize and establish relationships with most of them. Considering we keep having a big influx of gamers every week, I am even more excited to see the amount of people that join our program. It is awesome to be able to see these types of things happening in my time here at DePaul. It only helps further my passion to be a part of this program and help it succeed each and every day. Each day, I hope I can continue to help out with this program, but until then, I’m here for the ride!

By: Jeremy Blye

 

After a little bit of a hiatus from the blogs, I am glad to be able to talk about what has happened in the past two weeks. Honestly, it has been a packed couple of weeks. This has allowed me to share a decent amount of information with updates to the organization. Let’s get started.

 

DeSmash Tourneys: Almost every week, the Super Smash Bros. Club has been holding Smash tournaments that bring around a huge crowd. So far they have been on Saturdays and they start at around 1PM usually. I have to say it has been quite amazing seeing the types of turnouts we have for these types of events. Before the tournament today, there was about 38 people signed up. That number could very much vary and be bigger now that it is the day of the tournament.

 

Tryouts: Like I said in the previous post, we had virtually all of our tryouts over the majority of the gaming titles we offer. Most of the teams have finally solidified their rosters and many of them will be competing within many different leagues. The most important of those leagues comes down to EGF and the Big East section. Hopefully our teams will have solid seasons this fall and will bring home some dubs for DePaul. After seeing the amount of interest in Esports this year, I am interested to see how many people we actually have on our rosters. I know this organization is growing rapidly, and it will be amazing to see the sheer number of competitive players going into this school year. Not only that, the graphics that are being put together for some of our announcements are awesome! Check out this roster announcement from Matt Beach:

 

 

This Week in DePaul: I am glad to announce that Kevin and I will be starting this show up again. We have a few things we need to iron out as far as production goes, but we will be starting all of that up again. That also means there is possibly some Jerm on the Streets in the works for these episodes. You will just have to stay tuned in the future to see what we have to offer for you all.

 

In Person Events: If you did not know, we had a gaming night with the Student Center. It had an amazing turnout. I believe we had over 200 people show up for it. Unfortunately, I was on duty as an RA so I could not attend, but I heard amazing things about the event. Our friends Matt and Kevin were taking the lead on this event and it worked extremely well.

 

Every little event we are holding this year only shows to me the possibilities that this year holds. Like I have said before, Esports has so much potential to become something greater, and I am able to see that even though the school year has just started. I am excited to see what else we are able to accomplish and what communities we are able to facilitate. Only time will be able to tell what can happen, and I am ready for the ride!

By Jeremy Blye:

 

I just wanted to wish everyone the best of luck if they are trying out for any of our teams this week. I understand that for many the start of the school year is an extremely chaotic point in the year, and I hope a community such as Esports can help facilitate a calm environment for those to feel just at home. I am so grateful that DePaul has such resources to allow such a community to exist especially in a day and age where Esports is still becoming popularized and accepted nationally and globally. So let’s take a look at the titles we will be providing opportunities for all students:

 

Rainbow Six Siege – in R6, players will compete in 5v5 situations which involve intense teamwork and strategical routes. Personally, I do not enjoy this game that much, but I understand the appeal for those who are active within the community.

 

Counter Strike: Global Offensive – in CSGO, players will compete over a variety of maps in a 5v5 manner in which teams must compete to either plant or defuse an explosive. One of my personal favorites from throughout the years, yet I am not too good at it.

 

Rocket League – car soccer. Nothing more, nothing less. Just kidding, it’s a game that takes teams of 3 against each other to see who has the superior mechanical and mental skill.

 

Super Smash Bros. – these are 1v1 situations in which the characters fight one another to try and take the crown for the game. I’m awful at this game, but one of our players Matt Beach is pretty good with both MegaMan and Kazuya.

 

VALORANT – As a newer shooter, VALORANT has been taking the public over with its new twist on the formula CSGO established throughout the years. Basically a 5v5 game where the characters have special abilities.

 

League of Legends – I have never understood this game. There is way too much going on in MOBA’s for me to figure out what to do. Our League players are quite phenomenal with the game and it is mind boggling watching them do their thing.

 

COD – one of the most classic shooters that has ever existed. It has been around for close to 20 years now. It is amazing to see that a formula so simple in gaming is still so prevalent within Esports.

 

Overwatch – one of the most unique shooters that takes a 6v6 approach and tries to twist it by allowing characters to have never before seen abilities.

 

Over this weekend (today and tomorrow), I hope every single person gets the chance to find their place within our community. Whether it is through a competitive form or a casual one, I hope those who are interested in being a part can have a piece. So I do not hold you all too much longer, I wish everyone the best of luck. Unfortunately I am unable to show up for any of the tryouts due to other commitments, but I am excited to see everyone throughout the year!

By: Jeremy Blye

 

From the last blog, we obviously know that the next year is right around the corner (2 WEEKS WOOO!). I luckily have been given the opportunity to start working within the Esports Center and get a feel of what the community is when it is in person. Walking into the center made me excited. Even though there has not been a huge flow of traffic within the center, it has made me happy to see the community that is coming together before the school year has even started. There is a level of respect I have not seen between people in awhile. It was nice to see the community function in person when I have only been able to participate virtually.

 

Seeing this within the first few shifts at the Gaming Center gives me hope with this upcoming year. As things slowly start returning to normal, it puts a smile to my face to see everyone just having a good time. It’s awesome that DePaul has the space to facilitate such an environment for our students. At points, I understand gaming can become extremely toxic, and it is great that no one I have seen cares for the drama that stems from such actions.

 

Overall, this blog is more on the short and sweet side. I felt the reopening of the Gaming Center deserved some more recognition. It deserves this type of recognition especially for those who are new to DePaul and are trying to find their way around as they move on to the next chapter of their lives. Not only this, I feel those who have been a part of the Esports community deserve the same amount of recognition. They have helped keep the community running throughout such a crazy year and a half. Like I said in the beginning, I look forward to what this year has in store for us, and I am ready for the ride that comes.

 

Updates for Esports:

• Tonight at 6pm, there will be an Esports event (SMASH BROS!!!!!!!!!!) in the Lincoln Park Student Center. Be sure to check it out, I am trying to make time for it.
• Tomorrow 8/28, the Rocket League and Smash team will be competing against NIU in a LAN over in Hoffman Estates starting at 4PM. Wish them all luck!
• We have a VALORANT and R6 collab coming soon, be on the lookout!

By: Jeremy Blye

 

Now that we are slowly winding down with the end of summer, I thought it would be neat to do a little reflection of what has gone on here at DePaul Esports and how far we have come. I honestly cannot believe that we are almost done with summer. It feels quite odd that the school year is virtually a few weeks away. Luckily, we do not (hopefully) any virtual school. I’m sure everyone including myself is excited to be back for in-person classes. All of this is just a side-note, but let’s take a look into what exactly has gone on.

 

Summer Showdown:

 

This whole series was by far the most enjoyable part of this summer. I never thought that I would be in a position of producing, casting, and putting together events. Yet, look where Kevin and I ended up going. We were able to have an event for COD, Rocket League, and VALORANT. Unfortunately, we were unable to host the event for Rainbow Six Siege, but hopefully we will be able to host more for the future. There was a lot of learning to be had by holding these events, but it honestly showed the potential we have for any type of physical or virtual event for our program. It was crazy to see that we would have consistently at least 20-30 viewers and VODs with over 400 views. Just about half of our whole community is tagging along for these events. This makes me so excited to see how hyper people are to get back to somewhat of a normal life. Now imagine what we could do if we ever do something like this in person. I guess time will have to tell. All I know is that Kevin and I will use everything we experienced over the past few months to bring with us for the future of the program.

 

DePaul Gaming League:

 

Unfortunately for me, I was unable to participate in any of our DGL series. I was honestly working when these occurred, but I still found time to look over the VODs. It was crazy to think that we were able to expand to games such as Skribbl.io and even Animal Crossing. Even though not as many people participated within these events, it was great to see how our casual side of the community was able to appreciate the smaller things we may offer. I know we were thinking of trying to host more pick up games throughout our different titles, but that unfortunately was unable to work out.

 

This Blog:

 

Now, I think we all know about this blog. The one and only Jeremy Blye is able to write this blog and find people to interview at the same time. I hope everyone who has had the chance to read some of my words and phrases even though they can be a bit much at points. I look forward to continue this into our upcoming school year.

 

I think this wraps up virtually everything I have to say for this blog. Like we have mentioned in the past, make sure you check out our Gaming Center in our Loop Campus. Starting Monday, August 23rd, it will be open from 11:30AM-9PM M-Th and 11:30AM-7:30PM on Fridays. Also if you are on campus, I may quite possibly be your RA if you are on the fourth floor of University Hall! Be on the lookout for what we have in the future!

By: Jeremy Blye

 

https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/7/3/e001118#article-bottom

 

In the past week or so I have been given the opportunity to take a look at an academic paper that was written on the effects of sedentary sessions that come with gaming. This research paper was written by Joanne DiFrancisco-Donoghue, Seth E Jenny, Peter C Douris, Sophia Ahmad, Kyle Yuen, Tamzid Hassan, Hillary Gan, Kenney Abraham, and Amber Sousa. They all were looking at “the effect of prolonged sitting on executive function and performance in competitive esports players” due to this being unknown (Donoghue & co.) Wow, that was a mouthful. Basically what this paper goes over is how bad sitting for long periods of time can be.

 

I know a lot of you will not go out of your way to read this, but I find the information that was provided to be extremely valuable considering the fact that I am sitting around all day if I am on my computer. I even have a hip injury that is partly related to how I had been sitting at my computer. I never realized how important it is to work on posture and have some form of mobility while gaming, but now I do. Let’s get into the knitty gritty of the information provided.

 

In this study, there were 12 men and 9 women with an average of 20.76 years of age. These are demographics that fit within the people that fill our community. It honestly is a fantastic sample group to choose from. Obviously because of COVID this could not be done in-person so it was completed remotely. Let’s take a quick look into what exactly the researchers were looking at and what they were testing:

 

• Ultimate goal of seeing how adding some form of mobility would affect gamer’s performance and health
• One group played roughly 2 hours of an FPS title and had 0 breaks during gameplay
• One group played roughly 2 hours of the same FPS title and had a 6 minute walking break
• One group played roughly 2 hours of the same FPS title and had a 6 minute resting break (flat on the ground with their eyes open)

 

As far as the specific information for each participant, I do not find there is the need to highlight it. If you are interested into knowing the ethnicities, weight, and other facts such as this please refer to the link at the top of the blog. Refer to Table 1 for this information.

 

Figure 2 which uses a diagram to explain the situation above:

 

After the read of all of this, I felt it to be so important since the results pertain to myself. It applies to virtually all gamers and all competitive Esports players. We are all sitting around for sometimes hours on end and without many breaks. By actually becoming injured, I was able to further this realization with the data that was provided before my eyes. This is a moment where this is something my mother would tell me to work on and I would not listen to her because she’s my mother.

 

Let’s take a look into a “normal” gaming session. Let’s say that the title that is being played is CSGO. In a regular competitive game, it could take anywhere around 45ish minutes. If you were to play a whole series in competition this could last up to 3 games in many rounds. This could be up to 2 hours and 15 minutes (give or take). This study represents exactly how that “normal” gaming session would go. I know from experience that not a lot of people take breaks during gaming. Once you’re in that zone, you will not leave it. Even if you are in that zone, a question that is posed is how healthy is it to just sit for over 2 hours? Well, the simple answer is no. Here’s why:

 

• Performance Wise:
  • Gamers who took no breaks at all ended up performing the worst out of all of the comparison groups. This is because one is running themselves to exhaustion by playing competitively for hours on end.
  • Gamers who had a break played better, but the group who walked played the best. This is because during the walk it allows the body and mind to stay mobile. Not only this, the walking is the most healthy for a mental break for the game.
  • Again, I could go into further detail about the study, but I would like the researchers to have a little bit of spotlight with their findings since it is quite interesting.
• Health Wise:
  • The gamers who had no breaks at all tended to be exhausted in all areas of life. Based on the scale of exercise intensity, the researchers were able to see that the gamers with no break were more exhausted.
  • The reader (YOU) can probably figure out this one. The ones with the breaks felt that both types of breaks helped with their gaming performance. The walking group said that the “active walking break positively helped their gaming performance” (Donoghue & co.).

 

Why should you, the reader, care?

 

Honestly, you do not have to. I will sound like a broken record player at one point, but self-care in gaming is so important. If you do not upkeep yourself, you will deteriorate. Even though this is not a traditional sport, gaming still can affect one physically and mentally. This study shows within a relative small amount of gaming how much one can be affected. Just by taking breaks within a gaming session, it can impact how you play and how you feel. Again, the researchers go into much more detail in how this works, but I felt it needed to be highlighted. I also do not want to make this blog 2000 words and into my own little research paper. If there is anything you can get from this read is that you should take care of yourself and sometimes prioritize yourself…even if you do not want to.

 

Be sure to stay tuned for what we have in the future here at DePaul Esports! Tryouts are right around the corner…dates to be coming within the next 4-5 days at the latest. Not only this, we have the Esports Center reopening on August 23rd!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! That will be an exciting time! As you all know, we have more working in the background, but until then, I will see you all in the next one!