Over the past nine years, Mark Deppe has built and directed one of the best esports programs in the country. And this year, he’s recruited some of the best players in the country to become Anteaters. Why now? Esports players find an environment here that supports them with scholarship assistance, dedicated coaching and stellar academics. In fact, among colleges and universities with major esports programs, UC Irvine is the highest ranked academically, and top esports players are coming to UC Irvine this fall.

In this episode of The UCI Podcast, Aaron Orlowski speaks with Deppe to learn more about what makes UC Irvine such a special esports environment.

To get the latest episodes of The UCI Podcast delivered automatically, subscribe at:

Apple Podcasts – Spotify

TRANSCRIPT

From the University of California, Irvine, I’m Aaron Orlowski, and you are listening to The UCI Podcast. Today I’m speaking with esports director Mark Deppe, who led the creation of UC Irvine’s program. Thank you, Mark, for joining me today.

Mark Deppe:

It’s a pleasure to be here.

Aaron Orlowski:

For this time of year, for many universities, it’s the start of football season and tailgating games. But here UC Irvine, we don’t have a football team, and it’s the start of esports season. So this is an exciting moment for the university. But maybe we can back up just a step and look at where does UC Irvine’s esports team fit into the broader college esports universe? Are we one of the top ranked schools for esports?

Mark Deppe:

Yeah. And for those that aren’t familiar with our program, we started our program back in the fall of 2016. So we’ve been functional for eight school years. This will be the ninth that we’re heading into now. And when we announced our program, we were really special in that we were the first on the West Coast. We were the first public university to invest in esports, and I think still today we’re the highest academically ranked school that really supports esports deeply. And so when you look at the broad global or national esports ecosystem for colleges, we really are at the intersection of elite competition and elite academics. So if you want to earn a great valuable degree while competing at the top level of esports, UC Irvine is high on your list.

Aaron Orlowski:

Alright, that’s the perfect pitch. What games do the teams at UC Irvine play in competition? And a second question is, do those games change from year to year?

Mark Deppe:

We have teams for three esports these days. One’s League of Legends. That’s the game we first started with and one of the most popular eSport titles in the world. It’s been around for over a decade now. The second game we started in 2017 is Overwatch. That’s an Activision Blizzard kind of fantasy first-person game. And then the third we started a couple of years ago is Valorent; that game is like Legends. It’s made by Riot Games. And it’s another first-person shooter that has a little bit of fantasy and a little bit of counterstrike kind of vibes to it. It might be the most popular eSport right now and probably is the most popular eSport in college.

Aaron Orlowski:

You mentioned that you launched UC Irvine’s esports program back in 2016. What has changed since then? How has the program grown and evolved?

Mark Deppe:

When we first started, we got into the very, very beginning of things. So certainly the industry has certainly matured since then. Lots more schools have gotten in and adopted things with a lot more understanding about what games are. I don’t have to define esports these days to everyone I talk to. So it’s a much more mature universe. But I would say scholastic esports, which I essentially is K through 12 plus college esports has grown tremendously, and it continues to grow.

Hundreds of schools have university-recognized programs hundreds at the division one kind of level. There’s widespread adoption in high schools. Los Angeles Unified School District has rolled out esports in a broad kind of way. You’re seeing major districts roll them out, and the Olympics just a couple of months ago voted unanimously to include esports in their offerings. And so yeah, I think, people are very familiar with games at esports, and this idea that people want to compete in video games. And it and everyone understands that video games are just so incredibly popular that it makes it easier to have a conversation around it. So overall, it’s grown tremendously, and it’s matured, and it’s been really fun to be a part of it.

Aaron Orlowski:

That’s amazing. As the whole competition sector has grown and become more mainstream, how has recruiting, especially for the college esports teams, changed in recent years?

Mark Deppe:

When we recruited our first batch of students, they came in as freshmen, and we didn’t really have to recruit for a few years because we graduated our students at a very high rate. And so they stick around. We kind of had a low for a few years recruiting one student here and there. That’s picked back up. So it’s really interesting to find recruits. Our coaches are always out watching amateur tournaments and high school events, and our games have online ranking systems. So it’s really easy to objectively identify people who win a lot at the game. That’s very different than traditional sports, where it’s very subjective to understand two players in basketball may not have ever played against each other, and so it’s really hard to rank them. But in esports, it’s much, much easier.

We’re looking for those special athletes who have amazing grades and want to earn a valuable degree. They’re committed to their academics, and they’re also elite competitors. And so we have that wonderful niche because we have, I would say, the most valuable college degree that you can earn through video games and esports. We have a lot of interest because we only offer partial scholarships, so we’re also hoping for California residents because UC Irvine and all the UCs offer much better financial deals when you are a resident of California. But we do recruit nationally. We have Canadian athletes, and we have athletes from all over the United States. And we are attracting people from all over the world.

Aaron Orlowski:

Are there any big-name players a fan might recognize who are coming to UC Irvine this season?

Mark Deppe:

We have we have some pretty notable recruits coming in. I’ll briefly name them all. For Valorent, we have two players. We have Lacey Dilworth, our first female esports recruit ever, which is really exciting. She comes to us from the Bay Area and has played professionally for a few years. She’s one of the best athletes in the women’s professional league. And we’re stealing a Valorent athlete named Jason Vo. He’s coming to us from UC Riverside. He’s an absolute superstar. He’s been whooping us up when we compete against UC Riverside. And so we’re excited to welcome him to UC Irvine, which was his dream school. He’s really excited to join us this fall. Then in League of Legends, we have three recruits: Seungmin Lee, Tim Kim and Jett Joye. Jett is very notable.

He is the highest rank League of Legends player ever in the history of North American League of Legends. That’s not just high school players, that’s not just college players, that’s not pro players. It’s everybody. He’s currently the highest-ranked ever. He’s a top liner. I’m really excited for him to join us. We have Tim, who’s a juggler, and then Seungmin, who is a midlaner and a top liner. So lots of great talent coming in. And yeah, I’d say Jett is probably the biggest name. Everyone’s expecting him to be adopted into the pros, which could happen at any moment. But for now, he’ll be joining UC Irvine and we couldn’t be more excited to have him.

Aaron Orlowski:

That’s so cool. You mentioned there’s a transfer from, from UC Riverside. NCAA football coaches have been making use of a transfer portal to recruit athletes. I mean, is the same type of thing happening in esports, where you recruit from other schools and try and get those top athletes to transfer?

Mark Deppe:

We are certainly less regulated than anything in the NCAA world. Riverside doesn’t have an official varsity program. And so they don’t offer scholarships or have paid coaching and things like that. We’re certainly the next step up in terms of support and organization. We don’t have a transfer portal in our world or any of the stuff that is regulated by the NCAA. We’re still too new for that, but that is something we’re actively working on, and we’re making some progress towards that.

Aaron Orlowski:

Yes, making progress towards getting more rules to govern yourself. You mentioned one of your top recruits this year is a woman. Tell me, are esports popular among women? And, you know, if they’re not, what kind of actions are you and UC Irvine taking to increase that popularity?

Mark Deppe:

First of all, they’re absolutely popular among women, and I would say we typically see in our events and our student staff in the club about 25 to 33 percent of participants being women. That’s pretty consistent across the country. We’ve had women on our scholarships team for the past five years, and I mentioned Lacey being our first recruit. We have had other ladies walk on the team to earn scholarships and starter roles. But Lacey was the first one that stood out as a professional that we actively pursued. It’s a struggle to make esports what we all want it to be, which is this level playing field where the best and most talented can all compete on an equal footing.

I think there’s a broad understanding and belief that there shouldn’t be a disparity between scale and across gender identity. The final state we want is for all people to compete on a level playing field. But in college, high school and professionally, the sport hasn’t found that kind of representation yet. We’re very interested in trying to be a place that provides access, that supports women, that supports underrepresented folks. We do a lot of things. We have a code of conduct on our wall, so we talk about and train our students on welcoming people and not discriminating and being very mindful of our language. I would say the two factors I see most that kind of make it hard for those who feel underrepresented to be welcomed is one on the gender side – we think young boys and girls are encouraged and allowed to play video games at different rates.

It’s just been, I think, more accepted among parents and uncles and aunts and grandparents that young boys will play video games for hours. And certainly, there’s some tension between parents and kids who play a lot of video games. But we’ve seen and heard anecdotally that it just feels different at a young age based on who’s allowed and permitted to play a lot. And then the other factor is, as you get good and you play on all these ranked games, there’s often voice communication involved. And there’s a lot of harassment of underrepresented folks in online games on Twitch streams on the internet. And it can be really hard to feel like you’re not part of the mainstream. And so people will intentionally lose games if they know girls are on their team. They will harass them, they’ll hit on them, and they’ll make unwelcome advances.

So there’s this extra burden of existing underrepresented people have. So yeah, we lead bystander training, so we’re trying to help our athletes and our participants counteract some of that toxic behavior when they come across it, even if they’re not the target of it. But it’s a big goal. It is a long-term pipeline issue we need to start when people are very young and encourage them to play at a higher rate and make sure that they feel supported and welcomed as they get closer. We’ve done events for women in games. We have a fall program for women in gaming that’s going to be coming up this fall. But overall, it is a challenge. Something we’re really passionate about at UC Irvine is inclusive excellence. And so we’re trying to do our part to make esports as welcoming and accessible as possible.

Aaron Orlowski:

Especially for an underrepresented player or a woman player joining an actual league and competing for a team like UC Irvine, where it’s not the wild of the internet. They’re in a more structured environment where moderators can tamp down harassment or forbid it. Maybe that’s a welcome relief to be able to play in that environment and compete in that environment that is free of some of that type of negative interaction.

Mark Deppe:

You’re totally right. It’s not just women that appreciate an organized environment. Everybody does when they play. But in a solo queue, you log in by yourself, and you get matched with equally skilled players. And that environment can be so hostile to everybody. So everybody I know likes knowing their teammates, having a coach, having a standard of communication, knowing that you’re not going to be bullied or harassed because there are repercussions when there’s a coach in the room. So, absolutely, I think it’s good for the underrepresented folks. I think it’s good for everybody.

Aaron Orlowski:

Yeah, definitely. Well, we’ve kind of talked about one of the areas of esports that needs to be improved. Maybe one of the positive aspects of college sports that the NCAA is working on is athletes’ rights to their name, image and likeness, and how they can profit from that. Are there any changes in how esports athletes can use their name, image and likeness to make a little extra money or not? And how does that inter interact with the college environment that they’re competing in?

Mark Deppe:

As I mentioned earlier, the NCAA is not governing esports at the moment. They actually looked at it 5, 6, 7 years ago and opted to stay hands-off. So I’ll say from an outsider’s perspective, the NCAA has been the only organization that prevents college students from making money off their ability and talent. As long as you’re not governed by them, and you’re a college student, you can benefit from your skill and ability. All of our athletes have played in tournaments where there’s a small cash prize, or they’ve won a keyboard, a mouse or a monitor. And for our athletes at UC Irvine, there are often cash prizes for our events and tournaments. Often there’s hardware as an incentive to enter. Our athletes play under a scholarship with us, which is between $3,000 and $6,000 a year.

But they also might double or triple that through other scholarship money. They can win through college tournaments or amateur tournaments that we participate in. So yeah, our athletes are completely unrestricted in what they can do to monetize their success and their charisma. We have athletes who are popular streamers. We have people who coach on the side. Some create content. I think it’s how the world should operate, and the NCAA is really getting out of the business of regulating that and enforcing amateurism.

Aaron Orlowski:

For the athletes at UC Irvine, how do they train? What’s the training regimen to stay at the top of their game and to stay healthy?

Mark Deppe:

We try to limit official team activities to about 10 or 15 hours a week which will include scrimmages with the team. So nights and weekends are when our students are typically free together. We’ll schedule some practice matches against semi-professional professional teams or top college teams, and we’ll have a coach listening in and participating. All of our athletes will meet one-on-one with our coaches, set some goals for the week and talk about little things they will work on improving. We have video reviews we do with the whole team. We might watch one of our matches, go through it and look at what went well, what didn’t go well and what we can improve on.

We have a team psychologist, Dr. Elmer Guardado, from the counseling center. So all of our teams meet once or twice a month with him to talk through communication issues and team dynamics and work through some conflict in a productive kind of system. Historically we’ve had an exercise physiologist, so we have workouts for our athletes. We have a lot of different tools and resources for our athletes. But overall, they’re doing about 10 to 15 hours of structured play. And then they’re probably putting it in another 10 or 15 hours of solo practicing, making sure they’re keeping up with the game So, yeah, it’s a significant time commitment for our students. But they do get lots of time off, and we kind of ramp up in the fall a little bit and then we hit the ground running in winter. Our main season is winter and spring. They’ve been mostly relaxing over the summer, and we’re just about to ramp up for tryouts.

Aaron Orlowski:

Why should a university like UC Irvine invest in recruiting these esports players and bringing them on board?

Mark Deppe:

Esports has made UC Irvine a school of first choice for the many young folks out there who love games and want to be in an environment that welcomes them. If you look around the country, hundreds of schools are using esports to drive enrollments, recruit STEM students and just be more relevant. When we find a stellar esports athlete who gets into other UC schools and we recruit them, they choose UC Irvine hands down. Yes, it’s a difference-maker. It really puts us on the map by doing something innovative and new that isn’t copying or trying to imitate one of our peers. We are really leading the way. At UC Irvine, it’s been a leadership opportunity for the campus to demonstrate that we’re forward thinkers and that we support the many young people who are passionate about video games.

Aaron Orlowski:

You mentioned that fall is the season for tryouts. Can anyone try out?

Mark Deppe:

We do have open tryouts. There are ranking requirements. So if people are interested in trying out, we have a recruitment page on our website so that they can indicate that they’re interested. But we do have highly ranked students at UC Irvine. But typically there are a few students who do walk on successfully to our teams. We’ll invite a few highly ranked esports athletes to participate in tryouts for each game. And then they get to play against our returners and our recruits and a spot on our team potentially.

Aaron Orlowski:

And how can other students cheer on the UC Irvine esports team?

Mark Deppe:

We’d love for folks to follow us on our socials. We’re at UC Irvine esports. We have a really beautiful Twitch broadcast all run by UC Irvine students. That’s Twitch TV slash UC Irvine students. We have our beautiful arena open for recreational play in the Student Center. Our biggest event of the year is our fall kickoff, and that’ll be on the Friday of welcome week on Sept. 27 from 4-8 p.m. Everything’s free. Come play some games, meet some people and win some prizes – things like that. There are lots of ways to be involved – from our website to our Discord community. We have a newsletter. , So if people want to look around for us on online, they’ll certainly be able to find us.

Aaron Orlowski:

That sounds like a great opportunity. Thank you so much, Mark, for coming on The UCI Podcast today.

Mark Deppe:

A pleasure. Thanks for having me.