IT’S GAME ON
A&M’s team of online players finds niche in League of Legends
COLLEGE STATION — Most of the time, Youssef Elmasry is not a calculated mercenary. Hardworking and affable, with short curls and thin-framed glasses, he came to America from Egypt in 2012, earned a degree from Iowa State and began his engineering masters at Texas A&M in December at 21 years old.
But in collegiate eSports, a faction in the rapidly popular world of competitive video gaming, Elmasry and his teammates in A&M’s gaming club assume fantastical characters pitted in battle.
For the likes of Elmasry, a childhood hobby that was considered shameful has evolved into a vital sport: “It’s becoming legit now.”
In 2008, Riot Games launched League of Legends, an online game played worldwide by 100 million people monthly. League has spawned professional players, mostly from South Korea and a small portion of them teenagers, who generate millions of dollars, followers and viewers. Last year’s pro championship — where teams sat at banks of computers and their matchups aired on a giant screen before nearly 20,000 fans inside the Staples Center in Los Angeles — attracted 43 million unique views online.
Anyone can log on and join up with other users, like pickup basketball. Riot founded a league just for college teams in 2014 and more than 200 competed this year.
“We want League of Legends to be a college sport,” Riot’s college eSports manager Michael Sherman said. “We want to institutionalize it.”
Twenty-two schools — although not A&M — offer eSports scholarships, according to Riot. In addition, the Big Ten Network, recognizing the massive audience, partnered with
Riot to televise conference matchups and pay players $5,000 each in scholarship money.
Riot will reward a total of $950,000 for tuitions to winning participants in the playoffs.
Gaming in front of crowds is a rare event. Elmasry and his teammates play in isolation, seated at their personal computers in their bedrooms and communicate by headsets.
After going 5-0 in the regular season, A&M beat Virginia Commonwealth University in a best-ofthree first-round playoff last weekend and will face the University of Virginia in the South Region quarterfinals on Saturday. If it wins the region or a wildcard matchup, A&M will secure one of eight spots in a championship tournament on May 26-29 in Los Angeles.
A&M, which started a League club in 2010, earned $1,000 for each team member after ousting VCU. Another $2,000, $4,000 and $8,000 per player are at stake in the upcoming rounds.
“Eventually more and more universities will create clubs and get into this at some point,” Elmasry said.
Gaming strategy
The objective in League resembles capture the flag. Opposing five-man teams must protect their respective territories and raze their enemy’s base. Along the way, players vanquish adversaries, minions, mythical creatures and turrets in order to earn gold, which they use to purchase more powers.
Users start by selecting from 134 characters who have distinct strengths offset by weaknesses. A good team can coordinate its cast with a group strategy. When characters are killed, they reappear after a brief timeout. Games take between 20 and 60 minutes to complete.
League’s fantastical world — with Vikings and bionic women and angeliclooking yet cold-blooded mermaids — cultivates its own language from the humans on the other side of the screen. Gamers bemoan a “clown fiesta” (a reckless mêlée), celebrate a “gank” (a precise ambush) and call a feeble opponent a “potato” (a player with no skill or intelligence).
Sherman likens the playing experience to an “ecosystem,” where Riot alters characters every two weeks and makes more significant changes every several months to keep users hooked.
“If you become the best, you can’t just stop,” Elmasry said. “It’s like martial arts. You need to adapt to other competitors who may have figured out a counter to your style. You need to keep playing.”
Fitting in
A&M players said they did not foresee League earning esteem when they started out. Sequestering in their bedrooms to gaze unflinchingly at computer screens used to alienate them from peers and worry their parents.
“I was actually really ashamed of it,” said senior Joey Bowers, a sleepy-eyed psychology major from The Woodlands.
“Same,” chimed in junior Zac Acosta. “If you’re playing on the computer like eight hours a day, you don’t want people to know that.”
Acosta, who grew up in San Antonio and studies chemistry, is the most outgoing among a group that admits to being short on charisma.
“For a long time, I was in denial about being a nerd,” Acosta said. “I purposely didn’t associate with them. But I finally gave in.”
“I come from an Asian background, so mostly games are looked at as bad,” said junior Andrew Oh, an accounting major and Spring native of Korean decent.
Oh’s parents were strict. They placed him in summer school at 6 when he performed well but not great in English.
“My parents thought I was stupid for getting a ‘B’ in language, but I was just having a hard time,” he said.
Oh concealed his gaming when his parents checked on him: “You’re like, ‘Alt-Tab,’ and hide your screen real fast.”
“Tab out to porn or something safer,” Acosta said, provoking giggles around the table.
Freshman Anthony Cui from Sugar Land is the only A&M member under 21. He estimated that one in six students at his high school played League, so he was not stigmatized. Bashful, Cui leaves his teammates to explain his precociousness.
Bowers said Cui was a top-500 player out of the more than 1 million ranked in North America.
Cui corrected him: “Top 400.”
“He’s a beast, dude,” Bowers asserted.
Finding friendships
Perceptions of gamers changed only recently, once League reached a critical mass. Arenas filled, venture capitalists invested and closeted nerds turned into celebrities. William Lee, known by his user name “Scarra,” dropped out of A&M in 2012 to go pro. Nearly 439,000 followers watch him play for 32.5 hours every week on the streaming website Twitch. He sells shirts emblazoned with his face. He has 51 million unique views.
Fans feel intimately connected with their favorite gamers because they can message them on Twitch.
“Imagine being able to like watch Kobe Bryant while he’s practicing,” Bowers suggested for comparison. “And talk to him and ask him questions.”
Bowers clarified that followers usually have to donate money to catch a pro’s attention. “It’s worth it, getting to ask your role model a question for five bucks.”
Fame trickles down to the college level. Elmasry and Oh said strangers in public have approached them with praise. Once when Bowers ordered a sandwich, the man behind the counter recognized him from watching a Riot tournament.
The enormous and connected global online community brought together by League has reversed the stereotype that gaming is anti-social. It has given the A&M players more attention, purpose and meaningful friendships.
At the command of his parents, Oh had planned to quit League when he began college. Then the school randomly assigned him to dorm with Bowers. The two top-800 players considered it kismet.
For Cui, the team offers a shy freshman embrace from upperclassmen.
Elmasry chose A&M over Iowa State, where he completed his undergraduate degree in December, after discovering the eSports squad ranked high on Riot’s standings. Acosta invited Elmasry to be his roommate in an offcampus house.
After living six weeks in the College Station subdivision, Elmasry had yet to unpack a suitcase kept in the living room and several cardboard boxes in his bedroom. The walls of his room were bare. He cycled through clothes piled in a hamper. Plastic shopping bags of toiletries from WalMart covered the floor of his closet.
He ignored the clutter. He had settled comfortably in front of a plastic foldout desk that he purchased online. He left a cereal box open on the floor beside his swivel chair. Two cans of cream soda, one of which was two days old and mostly full, rested next to his mouse pad.
By contrast, he neatly arranged reminders of home: his Quran squarely at the right corner of his desk and the rug on which he prays draped over the edge of his twin-size bed.
Elmasry speaks with an American accent that he refined by watching “Family Guy.”
“It took me a while to figure out that a lot of the jokes are based on sarcasm,” he said.
He has come the farthest of the A&M players in terms of distance and progress. His family raised five children between Cairo and Abu Dhabi. At 6, Elmasry began playing Counter Strike with his three older brothers at Internet cafes. When one brother eventually developed a video game addiction that sank his grades and bank account, Elmasry’s parents warned him: “This will happen to you.”
He stopped gaming when he attended Iowa State in 2012, but he could not live without League. He watched streaming footage of matches for hours.
“That tortured me,” he said. “I was living alone.”
He went one semester on the sideline before succumbing to temptation.
“A sense of nostalgia came back,” he said of returning to League. “It was very rewarding.”
Winning combination
Users wear headsets to talk and communication — it is the most critical aspect of League. With so many variables, teammates constantly relay information about opponent resources, but a shot-caller steps up to strategize.
In Game 1 of the VCU match, A&M looked rudderless and selfish in a win that took twice as long as expected. Oh miscommunicated one word in a question to Cui during an attack, which got them both killed. A clown fiesta raged. Elmasry seldom spoke.
Elmasry immediately piped up at the start of Game 2.
“Guys, we need to be able to adjust,” he said. “Let’s focus. Focus. We’re going to win.”
Then his genius and instinct took over. He orchestrated an ambush that gets the team into a rhythm, wiping out minions, slaying a dragon, demolishing towers, massacring enemies, growing more powerful and confident by the minute.
“Dude, this guy’s worse than a potato,” Oh cracked while slaughtering his opponent.
“You can definitely kill this idiot,” Elmasry later barked. “Chase him, dude.”
In the real world, the glow of the screen reflected off Elmasry’s glasses and his eyes darted across the screen. His right hand swiped his mouse and his left fingers punched the Q,W, E and R keys, as if Elmasry believed his typing determined the clout of the Viking’s ax.
A&M destroyed VCU’s nexus in less than 25 minutes.
“The pressure changes everything,” Elmasry said. “We just won money.”