While they might not be eating lobster in Case Dining Hall, NC State’s unofficial League of Legends esports team, NCSU Prime, has won $28,000 in scholarship money.
League of Legends is a multiplayer team-based video game with a popular competitive scene. Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, runs competitive, professional leagues for the game in both Europe and North America. Popular leagues exist in worldwide as well, with two notable leagues being based in South Korea and China. Riot also hosts an annual World Championship — the 2016 World Championship had over 43 million viewers online, and offered a cumulative $6 million in prize money.
NCSU Prime plays in the University League of Legends Campus Series, which is college-focused and sponsored by Riot. The series is split into four different regions: North, South, East and West. NC State’s team competes for scholarship money in the southern region.
Stephen Downhower, a junior studying biomedical engineering, both manages and plays for NCSU Prime, playing under the name “Pluckin Penguin.” Downhower has been a member of Prime since his freshman year.
“During my freshman year I was just a player,” Downhower said. “During my sophomore year, I became a team captain and a manager for the program. Last year we did a big open tryout. We formed three teams, one of which I was on, and two of those teams were able to maintain form throughout the year and one of them disbanded. Now I’m more of a captain. I don’t have an official position, but I kind of just look over the teams.”
NCSU Cataclysm — a second, non-professional League of Legends team on campus, provides students with yet another gaming niche.
“The two teams support each other,” Downhower said. “The idea behind having two teams is to push the top team to make sure that they are performing at their best, which you do when you know there’s always someone who could potentially play your position.”
Downhower said they do not currently practice together because the skill gap between the two teams is too high.
“We have a lot of good players, but it’s hard to have two teams at an equal level,” Downhower said.
NCSU Prime has five players, a coach, an analyst and a substitute player. The players practice three times a week and play in an amateur league on the side to help with training, on top of weekend collegiate games during the season. The coach and analyst are focused on studying matches and facilitating productive, strategic discussions, according to Downhower.
On Fridays, the team reviews videos of games to develop strategies and better team cooperation. The team reviews the footage in the Circuit Studio, a CHASS research space in Ricks Hall. The team is allowed access to the space thanks to Nick Taylor, the co-director of the Circuit Studio and assistant professor in the communication department.
“I’ve been able to give them access to a collaboration space that features two large sets of visual displays and multiple plugins for laptops, as well as other inputs like desktop PCs and game consoles,” Taylor said. “Normally, the space is used by grad students and faculty to conduct media-related research and design projects, but we made an exception for NCSU Prime. As a scholar interested in the professionalization of competitive video gaming, especially at the college level, I’ve also been studying their meetings.”
Taylor recently presented a keynote at the Spectating Play seminar at the University of Tampere in Tampere, Finland, about NCSU Prime and their use of replays.
During the spring 2017 semester, NCSU Prime made it to the finals of the Southern region of the campus series. The team beat UNC-Chapel Hill in the round of 16, Georgia State University in the quarter-finals and the University of Georgia in the semi-finals. The team placed second in the region, losing in a best of five to Texas A&M by one match. Had they won, they would have traveled to Los Angeles to play in the university league finals with seven other teams. Until the finals, all matches are played online.
The team is currently going through an application process for new players that will end in August.
“We’re trying to see if there are any freshmen who are interested in the program and want to get involved,” Downhower said. “We’re starting off early this year to make sure we give everybody who would be interested in the opportunity a chance to try out. We’re hoping to make any rosters necessary in order to make the best team possible for NC State.”
Downhower said that it is completely possible for someone who is applying to make it into NCSU Prime and, if enough skilled players apply, the addition of a third team is a possibility.
“If we have enough skilled and motivated players, we’ll definitely do it,” Downhower said.
