Esports Involvement and Its Effect on Student College and Career Readiness Factors

A Growing Industry For Players And Students

Gaming offers the least expensive entertainment. In a recent study, the quantified cost per hour of various forms of entertainment was researched. The average cost per hour for gaming services is much cheaper than the cost of a book and even more competitive relative to the cost of entertainment giants Netflix and Spotify (Clinton, 2020). Traditional gaming is a game you buy one time and play, and then may buy the newer release like the Call of Duty franchise compared to SaaS-like gaming is more like a subscription-based games such as World of Warcraft that has monthly fees or even Fortnite and League of Legends which are free to download and play but have in-game cosmetic purchases. Let us look at careers. The US video game industry accounts for nearly 429,000 jobs across all 50 states (Ggarzon, 2020). Economic output and jobs could also be under-calculated based on what metrics are used and public data, however esports and gaming careers are like traditional sports careers. The young women and men who comprise the esports world are more than the gamers. There are several different pathways and roles that must be filled for esports to continue to thrive (NASEF). Organizations like Hitmarker list the available internships and jobs in the gaming and esports industry, as well as online gaming social networking platforms such as eFuse.

The esports industry is calculated by a group of academic leaders to be $24 billion dollars (Ahn, 2020). The esports industry may be far larger and possibly more economically influential than previously reported, which in turn would explain the rise of esports in both the popular zeitgeist and investment communities. Game publishers make up $15.85 billion or 63.7% of that larger number. Gamer publishers really hold the most power and money in the space as they are the creators of and license holders of a product that billions of people use. In-person and virtual esports tournaments contribute to $140 million of the overall yearly revenue.