The excitement was palpable in Stimpson Auditorium on the evening of October 28, as students gathered to witness the finals of a campus-wide FIFA 15 for Xbox One student video game competition. The event culminated a month-long tournament across the university and offered some major prizes for the winner – free textbooks for the spring semester and, maybe even more importantly, bragging rights. The final two students in the competition, Cory Thompson and Sam Natkin, are both business school students who play on the Shenandoah men’s soccer team. Cory ended up beating Sam twice to win the student championship and then beat Assistant Professor of Sport Management Joey Gawrysiak, Ph.D., to claim the grand prize.
Harry F. Byrd, Jr. School of Business Dean Miles Davis, Ph.D., established the tourney as a means to generate excitement and get students involved in extracurricular activities, using FIFA, arguably the most popular video game among Shenandoah’s students. Fifty students participated in the double elimination event.
Food, prizes and trivia were incorporated into the final day of competition to encourage students to come and support their friends, or to just enjoy watching video games. Competitive video games, or eSports, are a booming industry that has grabbed the attention of major media outlets such as ESPN and TBS. This event was a small sample of this world. Video games are poised to become a successful spectator sport with major economic and cultural implications.
Dr. Davis and the Harry F. Byrd, Jr. School of Business provided the food and the grand prize of free textbooks. The Sport Business Club, Program Director and Assistant Professor for Sport Management Fritz Polite, Ph.D., and Press Start Video Games provided other prizes, which were raffled off. Members of the Video Game Club and Sport Business Club, under the supervision of Dr. Gawrysiak, ran the tournament. Feedback was positive from students, who also noted they want more events like this to occur in the future.