“We all want the best for esports”: The passionate people leading the esports revolution in Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire has become a destination for esports in recent years. To hear why this has happened and how you could help sustain the county’s reputation for this exciting offer, we spoke to Lucy Zhu, esports lecturer at the University of Northampton, and Jacob McNally, Partnerships Coordinator at gaming events company EPIC.LAN.
How did you get into esports?
Lucy: My background is in accounting and finance, and I then worked as a project manager. That was ten years ago and there wasn't anything esports-specific back then but I was always passionate about esports.
I spotted a couple of esports project opportunities and I proposed the idea of an esports cafe, combining the popular esports bars in Asia with British pub culture. That was my project for three years and I flew between the UK and China, attending conferences and making contacts. I realised I wanted to give something more to the esports industry, so I applied for a PhD in esports at Loughborough University.
After that, I applied to become an esports lecturer at the University of Northampton. When the esports course started here, the resources were in place but the course itself wasn't fully written. I knew I could bring my passion for esports because I'm part of the gaming community and I understand what the students might want from the course.
We all want the best for esports - for the players, the practitioners and the whole industry. I want to build bridges to let experience and knowledge flow between each other. Research, education and industry are the three pillars of my career.
Once the course was set up, we started to work with EPIC.LAN to offer the students experience and more industry knowledge outside of classrooms.
Jacob: I started as a player. I used to compete in Halo, not at a high level but in online tournaments. That was my first taste of esports. At the time I didn't realise the scope and size of the industry because I was just playing with my friends for fun. I then found Call of Duty and that was the first major esport that I started following and watching online.
After I graduated, I worked as an estate agent for nine months. Then I got a job at EPIC.LAN working as a partnership co-ordinator, and I've been here for nine months.It's really fun to be part of this company because we do so many different things all the time.
We do services for other companies - providing PCs, technical support, stream engineering - travelling to different events all over the place. I barely spend one day doing the same thing. It's a different job or event we're working on and I find it fascinating.
What would you say to someone passionate about getting into esports?
Lucy: Esports has such an interdisciplinary nature. So if you want to get into esports, it depends what interests you.
Just streaming can be an easy way to start. You don't have to play a game per se. It could just be creating content, talking about your ideas around the esports community. It's very flexible so if you don't want to be on camera, because that's something that can put a lot of people off, you don't have to - you can use something to represent yourself in the video.
At the University of Northampton we offer four different pathways for the students. To be honest, students often start with the gaming. It's easy to get into the flow and really enjoy the gameplay or interacting with team-mates. But esports is about more than just playing games. There's a team behind the team. EPIC.LAN has done a great job to offer a pathway for students to progress into the industry.
Jacob: EPIC.LAN's been going for 20 years now and we've seen so many people come through from the first event they work to the biggest stage in the world. These are big names - not just on camera but also producers, talent managers, operations managers.
And if people don't like a particular area, they can try something else. I've tried many different areas. Esports is still so young that you have the opportunity to try different things before you commit to something and even then you're not stuck.
Staff at Northampton offering esports courses are building on the idea that students should forge their own path into the industry. There's no one path - there are so many different ones to take.
How does a LAN event work?
Jacob: We host three LAN events through the year - February, July and October. February and October are the big ones and July is slightly smaller because of the holiday season.
We're a BYOC LAN, meaning people bring their own setups and they get a spot, they come down with their team and friends to compete.
The good thing about EPIC.LAN is that not everyone who competes will go on to the best player in the world but they still feel comfortable coming along because they want to see their friends, socialise and have fun. They like that they can come and play games for hours and nobody's going to stop them.
We have community events going on throughout each weekend on games like Mario Kart and FIFA. It's not solely focused on esports - that's how it has evolved but we have a casual side to it too, building that community around more than just esports.
Students come to our event to observe it, then they come to the next one and work it a bit, and then at the last of the three they’ll work the whole event.
They'd find out what EPIC.LAN is and if we have a job role available, we know who will be suitable because we've seen their progression through the course. We can also fill gaps in the teaching where we have specialisms. One thing degrees get criticised for sometimes is not having enough industry experience so we were happy to offer that. We see more and more students from Northampton wanting to work at our events.
One student recently came and paid for the event and worked it because it was so much fun when he did it as part of the course initially. For me that's really special because it shows we did a good job in the first place, showing them what EPIC.LAN is all about. It's really wholesome.
Lucy: Our philosophy is that we want to make sure our students are connected with the industry. It wouldn't be good if you graduated purely with classroom knowledge. That wouldn't work at all with esports.
Our vision is definitely that we want this partnership to stay in place and we want to work together to enhance the students' experience.
We took all first-year students to pay a visit to EPIC.LAN so they could show the students how the event was organised behind the scenes. The second visit saw shadowing work in pairs with a member of staff from the event team to learn a little bit more about specific roles and they can rotate on the day to learn different things. The third visit is more related to work placements, where students work for the full weekend.
What is your next big goal that people can help with?
Lucy: At the University of Northampton, we are geographically close to lots of major sports teams - football, rugby, Formula One and so on - so if any of those are interested in connecting with a university for our esports resources, we'd really welcome them to get in touch with us.
It'd be great to work together to help the community.
Jacob: We're looking for a venue in October as unfortunately we recently had to move our events away from Kettering, which had been our home for ten years. We were saddened to have to leave because it was such a popular venue.
We're heading to the West Midlands for our next event in July at Wolverhampton Racecourse. October also has to be in the Midlands really, because we have participants come from all over the country.
There are so many requirements for an event venue - overnight sleeping, power, the network, air conditioning, bars and food, transport links - that we have to take into account.
People in end-of-year surveys have always said Northamptonshire is a desirable location so if it does end up being back in Northamptonshire we'd be excited about that.