When you were young, your parents, tired of seeing you with your video games, would question your future and say games were a waste of time. We’ve all been there.
Well, here’s a response to that: Mom, Dad, I can play video games as a career…and get a scholarship to college for it.
Recent years have seen the rise of competitive video gaming, and with it scholarships for amateur and professional gamers from accredited universities. University of Utah is the latest to offer a scholarship for eSports (electronic sports), competitive video gaming.
It joins Columbia College, Indiana Tech, Robert Morris University, Southwestern University and the University of California – Irvine — all which have utilized the rising popularity of video games and competitive video gaming to attract top-tier gamers and potential students for majors coinciding with the video game community, such as engineering and programming.
“EAE is proud to elevate competitive gaming at the U,” Robert Kessler, director of the University of Utah’s Entertainment Arts & Engineering video game development program said in a statement. “We think it is a great opportunity for our students, the vibrant gaming community here on campus and Utah fans in general to come together and watch these players hone their skills and play competitively to represent our school.”
League of Legends (LoL), created by Riot Games in 2009, is a multiplayer online battle arena game and of the largest — if not the largest — eSports game worldwide, in both fanbase and in prize pool. LoL’s not getting all the love — colleges are also targeting top-tier Overwatch and DOTA 2 players.
If only this had begun a few years earlier, we’d be able to tell our parents that playing all those video games would pay off.
