This fall quarter has been exciting for all of us at DePaul Esports: our community is now over 600 members strong, we are officially a chapter of Tespa (the premier network of collegiate esports student organizations ├░┼©ÔÇØ┬Ñ), and we put an exclamation point on all of this with our final event of the year. Also a special thanks to HyperX for providing us with awesome raffle items throughout the quarter!
In partnership with the Chicago Fire Soccer Club, we hosted a FIFA
tournament on November 8th at DePaul’s loop campus. ├ó┼í┬¢ The EA Sports title FIFA 20 has a huge following on our campus, so we knew that an event around this game would be well-received by students.
I first want to give credit to everyone who helped make this event possible. For the Chicago Fire, I want to give a shout out to Kacey Anderson for leading the Fire's activation and overseeing the tournament. For DePaul Esports, our executive director Kevin O'Brien and director of events Robert Brumfield for helping put all of this into motion from the spring. The entire DePaul Esports team did an amazing job with sourcing all the necessary pieces to make this event as spectacular as it was.
I must also give a huge applause to everyone who participated in this first-of-its-kind event for us. Hearing your thoughts on recent initiatives we've pursued as an organization have been invaluable. ├░┼©ÔÇÿ┬Å
Last Friday's event consisted of a 16-person bracket-style tournament around FIFA 20 for PS4, an assortment of consoles and other games open for free play provided by I Play Games!, and a second bracket-style tournament around the video game Fortnite inside the DePaul Esports Gaming Center. All around, a variety of activities for casual and competitive gamers alike.
I wanted to reflect on how our team’s efforts leading up to the event amounted to truly a fantastic experience for our attendees.
The opportunity for us to partner with an MLS team for an event required a calculated approach from the start. The Fire would provide the additional hardware, exclusive prizes, and even a celebrity meet and greet for their major part in this event - the responsibility of DePaul Esports was to get the word out.
In developing our promotional mix, we identified two means through which we could attract the attention we needed: advertising (non-paid), consisting of campus flyers and social media graphics, and media outreach, including emails to journalists and media alert distribution.
Upon announcing the event, we received an outstanding level of interest from students. We quickly decided to host single-elimination qualifier matches in the weeks before the actual event to narrow our 32 entries down to a field of 16. Coordinating and overseeing this crucial part of our competition looked to be a unique challenge from the outset, but our timeliness in organizing the qualifying structure ultimately allowed us to be successful in setting a full field.
The tournament started at 1:30p.m on November 8th. We progressed through the first round of matches, consisting of three games for each player - advancing would be determined by the number of wins, goals scored, and goals against. The Fire brought some really awesome tech to help keep track of all this.
By 3:30, we reached our final match of the tournament. In a dramatic fashion, the winning goal occurred in the match’s 87th minute, with the final score at 3-2. Our top three finalists all received a cool Fire prize pack, including gear and a copy of FIFA 20.
One of the highlights of the event was having Enrique Espinoza, professional player on the Chicago Fire’s eMLS squad, make an appearance and engage with attendees. The DePaul FIFA community highly anticipated being able to just meet him, but his willingness to play a couple of matches of FIFA 20 elevated this experience even further for so many students (even though he dominated match after match on the virtual pitch).
All around, this event illustrates not only the growth DePaul Esports has undergone in the last two years, but also the rapid traction collegiate esports is gaining as a whole.
DePaul Esports continues to discover new ways to engage with students through the common bond of video games. What our team has accomplished so far is a very promising indicator of what lays ahead for us, and I couldn't be more excited for the winter quarter.