Students bond over esports

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This article was published 13/02/2021 (1787 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Esports are providing a path for connection to students whose in-person social circles have shrunk owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At École Leila North School, there are nearly 70 kids in the esports club. A handful of the students compete in tournaments organized by Middle Years Esports Manitoba, a league started by a teacher at Archwood School in southeast Winnipeg.

Still in its infancy (MYEMB launched its first season last winter), the organization connects schools across the province and selects games that can be played across platforms and devices, whether its a PlayStation or Nintendo console, a laptop or a phone, making it widely-accessible to students.

The esports club at École Leila North School has been around for three years and was started by multimedia and technology teacher Niall McFadyen and his colleagues.

“(At first) it was sort of like a video game and esports club that ran over the lunch hour, once per school cycle. At that time, we had, you know, 30 to 40 students who would come on a given lunch hour and hang out and play some games in whichever classroom we were using,” McFadyen explained.

“With the pandemic, we can’t have that anymore, where we’d have so many students from different classes in the same space, in close quarters. So right now I’ve been running it as an online club with some online spaces that they can share and communicate with each other about video games.”

The group recently competed in a remote Brawlhalla tournament hosted by Middle Years Esports Manitoba. Brawlhalla is a 2-D animation game in which players, as mystical and fantastical characters, fight to the finish on a battle stage.

“I was excited that I got to do something in the pandemic. It’s fun, because I’ve done nothing in a long time,” Grade 6 student Averit Gill said.

Many of Gill’s classmates expressed a mixture of nervousness and excitement during the tournament.

“It was pretty fun, when we actually got to play. Even if we lost, it was still really fun playing with other people from different schools,” John Castro, another Grade 6 student, said.

McFadyen believes in the power of healthy gaming habits. While working on his master’s of education, he researched the effects of game-based learning in schools. Studies show that this method of learning can improve engagement and independent thinking, encourage teamwork and collaboration, and teach kids about strategy development, among other things.

“Video games and esports can be something that can be a productive and healthy activity during the pandemic, and it’s important for teachers, parents, caregivers, to just talk to kids about games and promote them in a healthy, positive way,” McFadyen said.