The rise of esports has been
nothing short of astronomical.
Its evolution has launched
competitive gaming into millions of
households and built an expansive
industry of teams competitions,
streaming influencers,
and related product.
And while a lot of sports were
put on hold during the pandemic,
esports competitors were able
to stay connected and keep
working on their skills during
lockdowns and social distancing.
And some of that E Sports business is
starting to catch on in San Antonio.
For most of my life, and being in my 30s now,
it helped shape who I am. I
like to compare it to a bar
you can be at home and you
can drink at home, but a
lot of people would rather be social.
One of the main goals that I have is
actually coming close to either coach at
the University level or at the high school
level because both are growing crazily.
I'm Erica Zucco and this is Commerce St,
a business podcast and an Eyewitness
News original or diving deep into
the growing esports scene in San
Antonio from a local student scoring
a scholarship for his E sports skills
to the people involved in creating
opportunities to expand the gaming world,
you can find a lot of popular E
Sports games like League of Legends,
Overwatch and Rocket League at home,
but competitive gaming usually
happens in person.
For a range of reasons and part of the
development of an esports scene is
creating community spaces where players
can bond learn from each other and
share in the excitement of competition.
Just like in other sports.
So I'm co-owner of the Cyber cafe.
I'm the President and Co founder of
the E Sports and Education Foundation,
and I also work with the VFW to bring
gaming esports into their organization.
Sam Elizondo Co owns the LFG Cyber
Cafe and as a community partner
in the development of a new
esports arena at Port San Antonio.
So behind me, if I'm
not mistaken, is a bunch of concrete
wall is probably being stood up.
This is the E sports and or the gaming and
E sports in robotics and Engineering arena.
On the Port San Antonio campus.
Just like a stadium or a
basketball court, right?
Video games at a very high level?
Need a place to be played and
oftentimes viewed so there's not
a lot of these around the nation.
I can probably think of a handful,
maybe 10 total across the US.
The cool part is that E sports is kind
of been grown from the grassroots
level for a really long time,
so we've always found a place
to kind of do it.
It's just now in the last couple
of years that people have really
doubled down and started to create
infrastructure like what you see behind me.
Elizondo's excited about what an
expanding esports industry in San
Antonio could mean for the city.
I think with with any
new industry, right, there's an ebb
and flow of understanding and it's
just as of late where the people
that were kind of involved in it
in its infancy are now old enough
to really understand and process.
You know what it was that they experience.
So for somebody like me,
I've been gaming for most of my life,
and being in my 30s now it
helped shape who I am,
so I think that's more or less
what we're looking at.
Now is the adoption of that in the
education space in the professional space,
just from the understanding
and the changing of the guard.
Hopefully tons of gaming events.
You know San Antonio is
historically been a huge Tech City.
The caveat with that is we have
amazing cyber security programs,
tons of opportunity in places to work,
but people tend to leave after they
graduate and go to the more exciting
and buzzing places like California.
The hope is that this will create,
you know, entertainment for those
people and start finally keeping them
here in the city and in the state to,
you know, grow.
Our place is a
whole Phillip Torres also owns
a gaming venue. Shenanigans
gaming a long time gamer himself.
He's followed the progress of the
gaming community in San Antonio.
It's it's really changed with I guess
the build out of bigger fiber networks.
Everyone has more access to computers,
an Internet and then with the whole
revival of just competing online,
Fortnite went crazy.
Rocket League went crazy League of Legends.
A lot of competitive video games came out.
Again, I guess it all has to do with
the access to Internet access to PC's,
and yeah, it's really taken off locali.
It's again, there's a new
generation of land centers,
maybe only open in the last few years,
so that's really revived it here in town.
Biggest communities are probably
the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate
Community shenanigans brings gamers
together adding to the sense of
community among players. I'd like to
compare it to a bar you can be at
home, and you can drink at home,
but a lot of people would rather be social.
Be out at a bar drinking,
spending time with your friends,
getting to know other people,
shared interests.
So same with the gaming venue,
you can game at home,
but we'd like to create a community,
a sense of community where you can
come in a play with your friends,
meet other people that have
the same interests as you.
You're already video gaming together.
Maybe you please play the
same games so you can make
friends, socialize and compete as well.
His employees are inspired
by the mission to Caleb.
Villarreal is a customer
service representative at Shenanigans. Uh,
shenanigans especially is community driven.
We take all of our advice from the local
community and we're all about teams.
Phil himself had several teams
in esports and card several card
games before we opened up and then
this place kind of took over,
but that's actually something we're
going to expand back into soon.
Is sponsoring certain teams for video games,
computer games, card tournaments,
things like that.
So what exactly
do we mean when we say E sports?
You might just think it means all
video games and it kind of does.
But most gamers describe it as just the
competitive version. I feel that you
know competition is healthy.
I think cooperation is
great with your friends,
but competition always inspires greatness
and it produces the best results.
So my advice to that person is to go out
there and try their first tournament.
You know, go to a local one.
That's what we did with our Smash
Brothers is a great example right?
I had never been in a tournament.
I'm not very good at it,
but when we had, we had about 12
people here or something like that.
Like, you know what?
Throw me on the bracket,
let's give it a try.
I didn't do good at all,
but I had fun and I think as long
as you can have fun while competing
then I don't see any problem in it.
I think anybody should just take any
chance they get to compete and you know
you get to meet new people.
That's another great part of it.
Like a lot of other sports esports athletes
have the opportunity to compete at the
college varsity level and earn scholarships.
About 150 colleges and universities
have varsity esports programs,
according to the National
Association of Collegiate.
Sports those include Saint Mary's here in
San Antonio and Texas A&M, San Antonio,
a regular customer of shenanigans.
Fernando Garcia is a senior at
Cass Tech High School and has
already been offered scholarships.
He'll be taking one to go to Texas A&M,
San Antonio.
I first got into East Force when I
entered into my high school, which
is called Cass Tech.
I found a lot of people had a
passion for E sports or video games
as a whole and I was like, well,
why don't we actually be one of
the first high schools in getting
too ahead of the game and start
competing at other schools and.
Yeah, here we are.
I actually was trying to figure out a
place for my team to play because it
we play so much better when we're together.
So like whenever at our homes like.
Yeah, that's cool and all but
we play so much better and I was
doing research on what gaming
cafes there are in shenanigans.
Just opened up and we're like they're the
first month and we've been here since.
So let's say we're all playing
online and so on.
Makes a mistake and people
start getting angry.
People can just turn off their
systems right then and there.
But if you're here like people tend to
be more calm and they also realize,
OK, here's what we can fix an.
We can say things nicer and
just being able to see everyone
screens it's so much easier,
especially for my job since I'm the
captain and in game leader I'm trying
to tell people what to do so that
we can be as coordinated as possible,
so that
helps me out a lot as well. His
experience as an E sports athlete helped
earn him national recognition,
but there's some universities that have
an actual varsity program and those
varsity programs offer scholarships.
And Texas A&M San Antonio is one of
the many here in Texas and just being a
competitor and compete at the top level.
Especially since I had the background
in high school esports to help
me get a scholarship for them,
but any walk on students at our freshman
or transfer students can get a gaming
scholarship and despite just
getting his career started,
he had some wisdom to offer
others looking to follow in
his footsteps. I say it's an
awesome opportunity and do research
at your local scene because there's
a lot of opportunities through
there and also competing online.
But as weird as it sounds,
coming from a high school student,
you definitely want to get an education,
especially if you just want
to work in the E sports.
Space before you didn't
need to have those degrees,
but now in the next few years
you're going to need those degrees,
and there's many different
types of jobs within esports.
Definitely try your to go pro,
but if you can't make it just quite
then base of a huge project for it.
There's so many different things to do,
such as being a coach,
analyst and even working in production.
As for the other gamers we talked to,
they're hoping esports is here to stay.
And will make an impact beyond
the screen. So one big thing that
I'm an advocate for is Accessibility.
So E Sports is accessible for everybody.
It's not like any other sport
where there's physical hindrances.
We have competitors that are
under 10 years old female male.
All ages, all races,
all creeds come out and compete
against almost no physical hindrances.
Anyone can compete in esports.
The community is
the best part. My favorite thing
about a cyber cafe is you get
to get with all your friends and
when you win a round of something
just like celebrating with them,
you know what I mean.
The camaraderie of it is just
irreplaceable and that's why this
whole covid online era with a lot
of tournaments and interaction in
general has been weird at first.
But that's one of the things I miss the most.
Is just having everybody together
to play games.
It was something I didn't have.
It was an opportunity that I was never
shown and it would be difficult for
me to not take an opportunity to give
somebody else a chance or show somebody
else a door that they could open.
It means a lot for me personally,
because it really helped me through
some tough times when I was young
and now that we can garner a little
bit more attention from the education
space from the public sector,
I think it's time to capitalize
on that for our youth and
give them something cool.
We hope you enjoyed this
episode of Commerce St.
We have more episodes like this one,
including a feature on Saint
Mary's University's E Sports
program which kicked off in 2020.
You can find all episodes of Commerce
St on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,
Spotify and it kens5.com/commerce Street.
I'm Erica Zucco with producer Kristen Dean.
Thanks for listening.