Featured Guest Claire Toomey (President, Drexel Esports and Undergraduate Student, Software Engineering, College of Computing & Informatics, Drexel University) 

Host and Producer Melinda Lewis, PhD (Associate Director, Marketing & Media) 

Dean Paula Marantz Cohen, PhD (Dean, Pennoni Honors College) 

Executive Producer Erica Levi Zelinger (Director, Marketing & Media) 

Producer Brian Kantorek (Assistant Director, Marketing & Media) 

Research and Script Melinda Lewis, PhD 

Audio Engineering and Editing Brian Kantorek 

Original Theme Music Brian Kantorek 

Production Assistance Noah Levine 

Social Media Outreach Jaelynn Vesey 

Graphic Design Kat Heller 

Logo Design Michal Anderson 

Additional Voiceover Malia Lewis 

Recorded October 21, 2022 through virtual conferencing. 

Pop, the Question is a production of Marketing & Media in Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. 

The views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of Drexel University or Pennoni Honors College. 

For more info on Drexel University esports, visit https://linktr.ee/drexelesports. 

Copyright © 2022 Drexel University 

Episode Summary 

Esports, as a growing cultural institution, finds itself in the middle of a debate over how it qualifies in the world of professional athletics and competitive sport. With growing popularity among gamers and fans alike, esports thrives among online streamers and college-level competitors. Host Dr. Melinda Lewis faces off with Drexel University undergraduate, gamer, and Drexel Esports President Claire Toomey to understand the rapid evolution of esports and how colleges are fostering a sense of sport and community for gamers. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1:

Music[Inaudible 00:00:18]

Melinda Lewis:

Welcome to Pop The Question, A podcast that exists at the intersection of pop culture and academia. We sit down and talk about our favorite stuff through the lenses of what we do and who we are. From Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University, Dr. Melinda Lewis here. I'm your host.

Hey everybody. I'm here with Claire Toomey, software engineering student here at Drexel University and also president of Drexel eSports. And we're going to be talking about all of eSports, eSports here at Drexel, esports in the nation and esports across the globe. Hey Claire, thanks for hanging out with me.

Claire Toomey:

Madame President.

Melinda Lewis:

Thank you.

Claire Toomey:

Nice to be here.

Melinda Lewis:

So the thing I always like to ask first is always about starting points and I'm wondering what your first video game was?

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, when I was four, my parents recall that the first time I got to ask Santa for something, I said I wanted a video game and my parents never understood what that meant. And since I was pretty little and they thought Game Boy had the word boy in it, so they assumed for boys, they got me a leapfrog, which was close, but no cigar.

Speaker 4:

If this is okay, press A to make a change, press B.

Claire Toomey:

And then I think I got a Nintendo DS when I turned five and my first game on that that I definitely recall was Nintendogs, and that's because my parents bought it for me.

Speaker 5:

Roll over

Claire Toomey:

Yeah. I feel like there were a lot of, when I was growing up, games that I always wanted, but had them intermediary of parents that were like, how about this bass fishing game? And it's like, that's not what I wanted at all.

Melinda Lewis:

Do you remember, were you fascinated by the bells and whistles? Do you kind of remember that sense of I need this, I want this?

Claire Toomey:

I mean, I think any kid that looked at video games when they were younger were like, wow, that's super cool because it's not a Barbie. It's something like on a screen and you can do so many things with it. And then as I got older, I realized I could get really competitive with them and it didn't require the competition at things I wasn't so good at like sports.

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah. Were you coming of age at a time where people were competing with each other more in person or when the online spaces had opened up and people were able to meet each other across all these different platforms?

Claire Toomey:

I mean, I was always competitive with my friends. So we'd be playing Mario Kart at home and I would always try to win, but then games started developing online features. So Nintendo online happened so you could compete with other people worldwide on Mario Kart, which was fun. And then I also ended up getting an Xbox later, so I got to play in online multiplayer lobbies for Call of Duty. And I just always found that really fun and I always wanted to just be number one in whatever I did for that.

Melinda Lewis:

How do you then move into esports? How do you find competition at a whole other level?

Claire Toomey:

The first time I discovered esports was when I was visiting Nintendo of America in New York City. They have this really beautiful flagship store and I just saw that there was a smash competition going on and they had all these really good famous smash players coming in and playing Super Smash Bros in front of a huge crowd and everyone was cheering and it was super awesome.

And then when I was a junior in high school, we have this game called Overwatch. It's my favorite game. I played on the Drexel team for two years. They have this thing called the Overwatch League, which is pretty much a competitive professional eSport scene for this game. And they hire pro players from around the world and they have this huge grand finals event in person every year. And I saw the first grand finals, it was in New York City that it was just packed with Overwatch League fans and everyone was cheering and screaming for these players and all the professional esports players. Obviously they're making money, they're getting a lot of fame, they're performing really well and everyone seems to be encouraging them. So that was when my love for esports kind of started off was just watching the scene develop with my favorite game.

Melinda Lewis:

Did you think this is the sport for me? This is possible I could do that?

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, there's no way I could have ever reached even half of that level unless I played the game all day every day and didn't focus on school or anything. So here I am now.

But Collegiate esports is a whole other thing. And a lot of high schools and colleges started to develop collegiate esports programs and leagues and that's what I tried to search for when I went to college was a school with some sort of gaming or esports community that I could fall back on.

Melinda Lewis:

Can you explain a little bit about how esports is set up at Drexel? Because esports is a wide thing and so I imagine little pockets and so I was trying to conceptualize the Overwatch team, this team, this team. Is it just like everybody collaborates together or is it like there's this big overview and then everybody does their own thing? How was that set up?

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, so back when, I don't know when, this was way before I got here. An organization called DESGA was founded, DESGA is under Drexel student Life or was under Drexel Student Life, and it stood for Drexel esports and Gaming Association. All games in there kind of did their own thing. It was just a club with a bunch of conglomerate, smaller clubs. So Drexel Overwatch was in there, for example. Up until April of 2021 when DESGA split into DGA, which is Drexel Gaming Association and Drexel esports. So DGA focuses entirely on casual gaming and then they also host a bunch of events for the Drexel community like lands.

It's pretty much just everyone gets together with a bunch of PCs in the same room and play games and then Drexel esports is the other half. And instead of being in student life or being in just a student club, we are considered a club sport. So we finally got that bump up into maybe be considered for athletics and we work under club sports. We have tryouts. People get cut from tryouts. It's a lot more intense team wise. We have to do concussion paperwork. I'm like, do we need this? It's like, do I need to sign a concussion waiver for sitting at a desk?

Melinda Lewis:

But I think that's what's so interesting about esports. It's also this space where it has grown beyond what institutions are accommodating for and really challenging the concept of sport and how we think about it.

Speaker 6:

Oh No, orangutan DC star both going down at the same time, they're going to be able to find one trade for their efforts, but it's have to see if it's enough. One of the things about Overwatch here is it's so much about who has more players on the map. I see it all of the time. The second you see one of those players go down, it tends to snowball if you don't have ultimate to back it up. But Drexel immediately capturing right back at these teams very evenly matched so far

Speaker 7:

Yeah, I mean it looks like Drexel's pulling ahead here, but Ohio state's fighting for every inch

Melinda Lewis:

How do you define esports?

Claire Toomey:

esports I think is competitive enough to maybe be defined as a real sport. I think that there's a lot of teamwork that goes into it. A lot of strategizing and the physical aspect does matter. You'll see professional players train their eyes, train their arms for aiming. It's not as physically intense as a real sport, but what other sports aren't physically intense and why do we count those as a sport? Yeah, it's like a spectrum almost. You have the sports purists who are like football, baseball, basketball, and then they're like, okay, cheerleading. Yeah, but they'll try and gate keep and I'm just not for gatekeeping esports. I think we're just, we deserve to be there just as much as everyone else does.

Speaker 7:

You didn't know there were cyber athletes. My hand to God, I didn't know there were cyber and men, but my issue is it's still not a sport

Speaker 8:

Do you have any statistics of how many of those people also go to Star Trek conventions?

Speaker 9:

I would guess there's actually a fair amount of overlap, actually.

Speaker 7:

It is not a sport.

Speaker 9:

There's strategy involved. You have to physically be

Melinda Lewis:

How do you navigate determining? Is it straight up like a checklist of does it have this, does it have this, does it have this? Is it you making those determinations? Is it by committee?

Claire Toomey:

In the world of esports in general, there is no official governing body because every game is made by a different publisher and that's who has the end all be all at the end of the day is who makes the game and what do they say.

Melinda Lewis:

Oh, interesting.

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, that's one very interesting part of working at esports is there's no NCAA

Melinda Lewis:

[Inaudible 00:08:54] is that even something that you would want, an NCAA governing body to help? Or is it just like, I would rather be left alone so I can do what I need to do?

Claire Toomey:

With professional esports, everything's still managed by the game publisher, but in collegiate esports, we're finally starting to see some structure. We have this thing called NACE, national Association of Collegiate esports. And although it's not like required, they've run the NACE Star League, which is the biggest collegiate esports league in the country. And they technically make the rules, but a lot of them are just based off eligibility. And then the game publishers also tell them what to do. In a perfect world, I would love esports to just be its own thing. I think it's too out of the box and too variable to kind of try and cram into this is the sport, this is athletic, this is pure athleticism. Or this is just a silly little club that all students can join in and participate in.

Speaker 10:

Hey, it's your mom. I have a question about that podcast. You do. Are you on the Instagram or the Twitter or the Facebook? If I have an idea for a podcast, how do I get in touch with you? Love you. Bye

Melinda Lewis:

Stepmom. Yeah, so you can find us on all those things actually. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Just go to pop quests pod on any one of those and follow. If you want to send us ideas, you can either go over to our website and leave us a message at pop q podcast. Or you can get us directly at popq@drexel.edu. You can actually find us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher. I can help set it up when I get home, but then you have to promise me to [inaudible 00:10:44]. All right, love you. Bye.

How do you move from being in this realm like a college athlete to a professional athlete? What determines the professional esports athlete?

Claire Toomey:

You see a lot of professional esports athletes, at least from what I've seen, either don't go to college

Melinda Lewis:

Because they're playing.

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, they turn 18 and they're immediately just swooped up by professional organizations sometimes before they're 18. I've seen 14 year old, 15 year old professional esports athletes that are better than any other player you've ever seen. Sometimes with collegiate esports, the really good programs like Red Bird esports, which is Illinois State University, they have players and usually halfway through the season they'll get picked up by a professional team. What determines people getting into the professional team is a lot more than just gameplay. You need to have good leadership, good shot calling. You need to not be a liability for the organization you're going to be joining, so you can't really have any past drama associated with you.

Melinda Lewis:

I've never gone to an esports competition and the only way that I've really watched esports is via Twitch or YouTube, which is I know how a lot of people experience that. But is part of the competitive element, also the persona that you bring to your gameplay and how you are working with your teammates, because it's like you get to experience not only just watching the game play but hearing people talk. Is that also part of these determinations of what makes somebody a professional?

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, it's definitely not required, but I've noticed it a lot with professional players is the team will obviously try and market them and you can't really fix someone that's a complete basement dweller. Yeah, they're good at the game, but can they make us money? Because at the end of the day, it's all about making money and if you can't really market your players that well or your players just can't interact with fans, that cannot be good for your org. So it's maybe just trying to find that happy medium.

Melinda Lewis:

And I think this is what is fascinating to me. I know that it is a massive world, but it doesn't make it into my bubble of popular culture very often. The one time it did, it was ninja on Masked Singer and they talked about him making a half a million dollars per month at some point and I was like, I'm sorry, that must have been a mistake. I'm going to Google this and use my research because I was like, oh my gosh, this is a whole world.

Speaker 11:

I knew it!

Speaker 12:

It's ninja.

Speaker 11:

I knew it the whole time. Gamer, twitch superstar and personal friend, he knows I'm a fan, is Ninja.

Speaker 12:

My son is going to love this.

Speaker 11:

People don't know you as a singer, but you're known to kids and gamers and YouTube fans all over the world. What made you want to

Melinda Lewis:

For you, are there common traits amongst those who play esports? Is there an aspect of everybody is super competitive or I'm not super competitive but I'm really strategic.

Claire Toomey:

We have multiple tiers of teams, so we always have a D one team for each of our titles. The D one teams obviously like the best team. They're probably the most competitive

Speaker 12:

Drexel and Drexel gets a pick on the Mercy, which is going to stop them right in their tracks as they start to immediately back up, throw MO on the field and oh, it's just a blood bath for pit scan heroes, he completely dominates as he's known to do

Speaker 13:

A four man slam there from the main tank on Drexel, a vulgar. So honestly, I'm looking not even to win this fight for Westchester. I'm looking to get these ultimates out of Drexel.

Speaker 12:

It looks like a very much make sure they press Q before we do fight to kind of drip things out and get things started. We see the shattered

Claire Toomey:

And in terms of what you said earlier about being strategic, there's different personalities in a team, so there's always got to be a shot caller that guides the team. And then there's other people that prefer to be more strategic in terms of planning before the match, talking in between fights. So there's a lot of different personalities that go into an esports team and sometimes they mesh well, sometimes they don't.

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah. What does community look like then? Because it's both competitive in some ways you're working together as a team often on games or in certain games, then on the others you're trying to destroy each other. How does that help foster community within esports? It's a weird dynamic, although I think I understand it. It would be the same in any eSport.

Claire Toomey:

Yeah, I mean a lot of my friends I guess in the esports world have come from playing on the Overwatch team. I've played on a team with them for a long time and we have pickup games every other Friday in the DGA server. So it's a good time to go with other teams, other casual players and just we randomly get mashed onto teams with each other and we work on defeating the other team. And then a lot of the time there's a huge mentorship aspect. So you'll see higher ranked teams, coaching lower ranked teams, you'll see them playing together in competitive mode.

And then outside of collegiate, I've registered for a few tournaments and I've met a lot of people through Twitter. Surprisingly Twitter gets you very, very far in the esports world. But yeah, I've participated in a bunch of tournaments and I've found a random team and we're still friends to this day. So it's really just whatever you find out there, anytime you run into a random person in a lobby, they might just be your next best friend online. And the thing that's so great about lands, like I mentioned, DGA does those quarterly lands, is that everyone can finally meet in person. And my first time meeting my team was in person at that land.

Melinda Lewis:

No way.

Claire Toomey:

And I was playing for them for an entire year, but we were in covid, so we were all remote. And then just meeting everyone in person was really awesome. And yeah, you're all physically there. Let's get Halal after this game or just hang out for the entire day. So it's always really fun to still meet in person. I promise we all just don't live exclusively online.

Melinda Lewis:

I was just going to say, do you think that Covid has part of that sitting down and practicing and playing and watching?

Claire Toomey:

Absolutely. I hate to say it, but Covid was kind of good for us because we were able to keep on running while Drexel was online. Our esports teams were still operating and competing and we were kind of the only teams competing for that entire school year. I think it definitely made us a lot more recognizable since people could only really watch us. And ever since then we've just kind of tried to keep that momentum of we can do even more in person.

Speaker 14:

Justice rains from above. Rocket barrage. Incoming

Melinda Lewis:

In terms of future stuff, is this what you want to do forever? Is your goal to go into esports or games more broadly?

Claire Toomey:

You see, I'm a software engineering major.

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah

Claire Toomey:

Not completely unrelated. I can still technically get a software engineering job in esports. However, I tell people my major when I'm at esports conferences or talking with other people like me and they're like, oh, I major in esports business. I know esports is definitely, it feels like something I want to do. It feels like something I am good at in terms of managing and predicting what's going to happen because with this job in particular, I've had to do a lot of guesswork on what we need to do since there's no existing formula for how to make an esports event successful or how to make an esports team successful.

So I've found myself pretty strong in areas in terms of strategy in this field. It's very variable and that's what scares me a little bit about this industry is you never know what's going to happen. Sometimes you'll be number one and then next day you're just at the bottom. I want to try and find maybe a happy balance once I'm out of college. I think collegiate esports is a lot more stable thankfully, just because you know, you have universities that are pretty reputable backing us. There's also a lot of growth to be had, which I'm excited for.

Melinda Lewis:

Being good at predictions and strategies, what do you think is next? What do you think is either the next big thing or the next big step for esports?

Claire Toomey:

I guess the next step is to create a varsity esports program or some type of esports program that has professional staff behind everything. Because right now we're student run and although it's like fantastic being student run, I have my classes, everyone has their own classes. We kind of just need someone that can dedicate themselves full time. But getting our players on scholarship is something that I definitely want to see at Drexel before I graduate. A lot of schools offer scholarships. Our D one players, every single one of them could literally go to any school for a scholarship, but they choose to come here because Drexel is awesome. And then in general, I think collegiate esports is fixing that inequity between different orgs, giving us a little bit more support in comparison to our competitors.

Melinda Lewis:

It's amazing to me how it is not necessarily transcended into other popular culture until maybe recently. I think E S P N has started to feature esports. Would you prefer it to maintain in this way or do you want it to be explosive?

Claire Toomey:

Anytime esports, anything gets aired on E S P N, there's always a bunch of tweets. Like ESPN will go trending on Twitter and then you'll open, you'll open the ESPN tag and it's always angry guys on Twitter asking why it's on their TV. So I think we deserve something equal. It can be separate. I don't need it to be on ESPN, but I just need it to be recognizable and accessible to people that would want to see it.

Speaker 15:

To be honest, when they asked me to cover the League of Legends tournament, I assumed it was a basketball game with N B A legends. This is not that. It is a computer game contest.

Speaker 16:

Yeah, a little different.

Speaker 15:

But you know how they do in esports, ready, set, sit down.

Claire Toomey:

I mean, esports just can't really be ignored. We can't be like disrespected anymore. We're such like a respectable industry now with just how successful we are and how fast we're growing that we need to be kind of maybe looped into our own thing. And I also forgot to mention at Drexel there is an esports major and minor that got introduced and I think the big issue now is where do we put esports because it's too big and competitive for student life. However, some people who have a traditional sense of athletics and with very traditional athletics departments kind of like don't really want it. Some schools have just gone out of their way and made an entirely new esports department so they don't belong to athletics or student life. They're just their own thing. Those programs I think have probably been the most successful because they're not having to deal with the extra things that come with trying to fit inside this box.

Melinda Lewis:

Yeah, I think that's kind of the cool thing about it is that you already have in this realm of esports, such a massive following and appeal, but the infrastructure I think would be really nice. Well, Claire, thank you so much. I learned so much.

Claire Toomey:

Thank you.

Melinda Lewis:

I'm really excited about the work that y'all are doing.

Claire Toomey:

Thank you for having me. This is fun.

Melinda Lewis:

Pop the question was researched and hosted by Dr. Melinda Lewis. Our theme music and episodes are produced by Brian Kantorek with additional audio production by Noah Levine. All of this was done under the directorship of Erica Levi Zelinger, the deanship of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen and the Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.

Speaker 17:

I know it's important. I do. I honestly do. But we talking about practice, man. What are we talking about? Practice.

We talking about practice, man, we talking about.