Esports Has Arrived
Area schools and businesses get in on competitive gaming stories by
BEN LANDO
W
hen he was a kid, before he was a student at Kalamazoo Central High School, Karlo Delos Angeles, now a 26-year-old graduate student at Western Michigan University, was given a Nintendo gaming system and an infamous game called Super Mario Bros. "I started from the classics, and I've been playing ever since," he says, taking a break from overseeing tryouts in January for Western Michigan University's competitive gaming club teams. Delos Angeles now is a team manager for three of WMU’s esports club teams as the university jumps ahead of its peers in establishing and funding an esports program.
22 | ENCORE APRIL 2019
Esports, also known as competitive gaming, is a booming business within the broader gaming industry that is building a lucrative fan base around the world. Market industry research firm Newzoo says video games and devices on which to play them were a $135 billion industry in 2018 — up 11 percent from the previous year. That growth is obvious here in Southwest Michigan — high schools and college students are finding more teams to play