Esports at Florida State University
The main goal of the Esports at Florida State University is to give a foundation to the schools competitive gaming teams. The current iteration of the club was officially created in Fall of 2018. The official club was originally a strictly League of Legends club founded in 2011, but as more games joined the competitive scene, more opportunities for teams came. The members in the original club, which was strictly League of Legends, or LoL, competed in community intercollegiate tournaments and eventually started playing in the official Riot sponsored LoL circuit starting in 2013. This is when the first competitive games were being played by students here.
This community was the only one of its kind on campus until 2015. In 2015 multiple teams for the games Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone were created by students to compete in Blizzard Entertainment's Heroes of the Dorm and Hearthstone Collegiate Championship tournaments. These teams existed separately as their own entities and weren't under any kind of official campus organization. A Counter Strike Global Offense team and 6 StarCraft II players started playing one another in 2016 and both competed in one season of collegiate play. Similarly, an Overwatch team was created in the Fall of 2017 to compete in Blizzard's collegiate Overwatch tournaments. This was big for the beginnings of the Esports community here, due to Overwatch being one of the best games to ever be released. Following the games being played already by the athletes here on campus, Rocket League, Fortnite, and Quake teams were founded in Summer 2018. These are all newer games on the rise for competitive play.
At this point in 2018, Eisa, one of the founders of the club, was managing all the non-LoL teams, and noticed that they had some semblance of a club, but no official representation on campus. Discussions were held with both the LoL club president, Jesse, and the FSU ASLC Game Committee officers to help decide what would be the next step. The end goal obviously being a competitive gaming community.
Late 2018 the club ended up merging with the League of Legends club to create one unified Esports Club that would be the home of all intercollegiate competitive gaming on campus. This was huge because there had never been a gaming community of this size on camps before. The Game Committee are the ones that run all the casual, on-campus gaming socials, so it seemed important to keep ourselves as separate entities from them. This club is more driven on the competitive side of gaming, not so much the community gaming social meetups. This group would be the online, competitive side of campus gaming, and the Game Committee would be the casual side. However, Esports and the Game Committee do still collaborate for on-campus gaming events and work together occasionally.
The Fall of 2018 saw the creation of a Rainbow 6 Siege and a Player Unknowns Battle Ground team, the revival of a Counter Strike Global Offensive team, and the continued growth of the other teams. This was the best time of growth the club had ever seen before with all the amazing teams on the roster and the growing list of areas in which the organization was competing. The Quake and Heroes of the Storm teams were eventually removed due to lack of interest by the students here. These games had teams but slowly died out from students graduating and things. An Apex Legends team was founded in Spring of 2019, being the only game added so far this year.
There are a couple games that have interested players on campus, but not enough to form full teams to compete with. Some of these games include, Smite, Dota, and a FSU Super Smash Bros. team. Esports at FSU is always on the lookout to form teams for new games that have a competitive collegiate community. The beauty of the gaming world is that new games are constantly coming out, and the possibilities for teams are almost endless. All it takes is a group of kids passionate enough about a game to form a team and give everything they have in tournaments to win. This club provides students with a passion for gaming a way to show off their skills and find what game fits them best. The founders are nice people and have open arms for all individuals wishing to be a part of the biggest gaming community around.