Xbox U.: UNC is building a ‘gaming arena’

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admin

January 28, 2020

New center boosts UNC flagship as a hotbed for ‘e-sports’ as video games grow in popularity; student club has 800 gamers

UNC Chapel Hill is putting the finishing touches on a new video game arena for students that will try to position the school as one of the state’s leaders in the growing area of what’s becoming known as “e-sports.”

The Carolina Gaming Arena, under construction in the basement of a freshman dorm, will be 1,800 s.f. and will feature nearly 40 computers and nine gaming consoles including Xboxes, Playstation 4s and Nintendo Switches. It’s expected to open in March.

Lee Hyde, UNC’s director of resident services, explained to The Ledger that the idea for the new, state-of-the-art gaming arena originated with students, who saw interest in e-sports growing nationally but were concerned that the state’s preeminent public university lacked adequate video-game facilities.

“Instead of letting other schools pass us, we decided to get out in front of it,” Hyde says.

Not ‘unhealthy’: He said that UNC — where in-state tuition and room and board total more than $24,000 a year — isn’t advocating playing video games: “One of the biggest misconceptions is we are promoting gaming, trying to get people to game in an unhealthy way. We acknowledge they are gaming and are trying to make sure they do that in a positive way, in a way that fulfills them.” He added that the university will enforce time limits on the daily use of the gaming arena.

The cost to build it is in the six figures, he said.

Closer to home, there are other examples of video gaming taking off:

This month, UNC Charlotte’s e-sports club held a 12-hour-long gaming party. Students were asked to bring their own computers or game consoles to the student union, and the club provided catered pizza “to make sure you have the fuel to keep playing!”
The Charlotte Hornets announced last year that the team will field an NBA 2K team in 2020. It said creation of a video gaming team will bring “exciting, fast-paced and entertaining esports action to the fans of Charlotte.”
Catawba College in Salisbury last year added e-sports “to its athletic offerings,” and it provides scholarships and recruits students. The college’s dean said adding the program “allows us to meet our students where their interests are” and called it a “new and exciting intercollegiate sport.” It also has a gaming arena. Unfortunately, Catawba College was not ranked in the top 25 on the ESPN preseason e-sports coaches poll released this month.
A Charlotte group called CLT Esports formed in 2018 and has been hosting tournaments, according to an article last year in Queen City Nerve.

Internationally, e-sports is blowing up quicker than a Fortnite hand grenade: The number of fans, players, prize money and sponsorships are all surging, according to a recent report by Goldman Sachs.

Davis Martin, a UNC senior from Charlotte majoring in astrophysics, says completing the video game arena could be the first step toward establishing e-sports as a varsity sport at Carolina. (Insert your own UNC basketball joke here.)

Strong student interest: Martin, a Providence High grad who heads UNC Chapel Hill Esports, says his club is the largest student group on campus, with as many as 800 players participating in online games from their dorm rooms or apartments. There are 11 games with big enough gaming communities to have their own club officers heading them. The most popular, he said, is probably the battle game “League of Legends,” although the newer fight game “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” is gaining traction.

“The club is a way to connect a lot of different people with similar interests,” Martin says. “It’s an easy way to casually have some fun, have a pastime.”