With Chinese universities offering courses in computer gaming, what was once a route to flunking exams is now a way to a lucrative career
P eng Wenqi sits with a group of gamers at 8.30am on a recent Friday, their eyes glued to a game of League of Legends, the immensely popular multiplayer battle arena video game.
While her gaze rarely leaves the screen, she breaks down the action play by play to the others, who sit around listening with smiles on their faces.
While many might think Peng, 19, and her group are in the final stages of an all-night gaming session that will leave them blurry-eyed and exhausted, it’s quite the opposite. In what might be a teenager’s dream – and a parent’s nightmare – the group are in the middle of a morning class at the Chengdu-based Sichuan Film and Television University, where Peng and her classmates are majoring in e-sports, or competitive video gaming.
“I love video game competitions. It feels great to sweat together with teammates and fight for the same goal,” Peng said. “Sometimes even if you are not competing, you get excited by watching others play. For me, that’s the charm of e-sports.”
Most universities in China discourage video games as a trivial pursuit. But Sichuan Film and Television University is different. Not only does it offer a major in e-sports but it has spent nearly US$500,000 (HK$3.9 million) on the construction of an e-sports laboratory. Equipped with high-end computers and designed as a video game competition stage, the lab allows Peng and others to role play everything from professional gamers to e-sports judges to commentators.
Once seen as a potential downfall for Chinese children, video game competitions are gaining popularity. The Ministry of Education added e-sports as a new major in higher education last year, and since then, at least 20 Chinese colleges and vocational schools have begun offering e-sports studies.
A vocational school in Inner Mongolia is turning teenagers into professional gamers. In Nanjing, the Nanguang College of the Communication University of China has recently announced an undergraduate major in e-sports analysis. And several hundred kilometres to the south, the Shanghai University of Sport says it is planning to teach students how to broadcast video game competitions.
China’s newly found interest in e-sports education is driven largely by the financial rise of the industry.
In the first half of this year, the sales of competitive gaming products hit US$5.
