When large parts of the world went virtual for work, socialization and education in spring 2020, recreation followed a similar trajectory. Despite mounting supply shortages of consumer electronics, console and PC-based gaming still saw a massive uptick as people of all ages looked to fill the void left by in-person activities and athletics.
There are plenty of stats to back up what many households experienced anecdotally. According to market research firm The NPD Group, in North America alone video game sales were up 34 percent in March 2020 compared to one year prior. Twitch, the foremost livestreaming platform among gamers, saw its total viewing hours increase by 83 percent — marking over 5 billion hours' worth of content — between the second quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020. And in late 2020, gaming analysis company Newzoo projected that worldwide annual video gaming revenue would hit a record $174.9 billion — $15.6 billion higher than its initial estimate earlier that same year.
Although the sudden jump in overall screen time has raised valid concerns over its broader impacts on health, some organizations are looking to channel the shift in a positive direction.
"Kids need help with skills like self-awareness, self-management, self-discipline, awareness of others and building social relationships," says Rebecca Yacono, head of the middle school at Worcester Academy in Massachusetts. "I was looking for ways to meet our kids where they were socially, knowing that they were spending a lot of their downtime during COVID playing video games."
As Worcester Academy was busy preparing for its own transition from in-person to remote learning, Yacono was forwarded a timely e-mail from Vanta Leagues, a Boston-based company that operates like a Little League for competitive online gaming, known as e-sports. Vanta offered Worcester Academy students the chance to participate in their beta testing phase as the company refined its e-sports program.
"We started partnering around how their coaches could start teaching those social-emotional skills in a really intentional way, especially given the fact that [our students] have missed socializing due to COVID," she says.
The school's current team of six students includes a competitive gymnast, the lead in the school musical and a basketball player, among others. They practice twice per week with Vanta coaches and then compete against peers in popular third-party games, such as Rocket League or League of Legends, albeit within the Vanta program.
Yacono says she's encouraged by the fact that the team members have become increasingly fluent in the social-emotional learning (SEL) vocabulary that signals healthy development. "They're talking about mindfulness, managing their stress and regulating their anger when they don't win."
Good sportsmanship is also helping to legitimize e-sports as a pursuit in its own right. According to Yacono, Worcester Academy's athletic director is considering how e-sports might be folded into the school's athletic department rather than its student life department. That change in mindset is similar to what's already happening in post-secondary education. More than 175 colleges and universities across America are now members of the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE), with many offering students full or partial scholarships based on their skill.
Vanta Leagues is well aware of the mainstreaming of e-sports, a phenomenon that has not only fueled today's multibillion-dollar industry but will lead to a growing number of scholarship and career opportunities in the future. In fact, the company's co-founder and chief operations officer, Zack Fabi, is quick to point out that the 2019 League of Legends World Championship drew more viewers than that year's Super Bowl.
But Fabi also says that Vanta emerged out of a real and pressing need for a supportive gaming environment. Few experiences highlighted that need more than that of the company's co-founder and chief revenue officer, Ed Lallier, whose 12-year-old son wanted to participate in pandemic-safe fun but was instead subjected to cyberbullying.
"In 2020, during the height of COVID, his son came into the room crying because he was playing e-sports online and was getting bullied by 20- to 30-year-olds. There weren't any controls in place to prevent you from being matched up with much older players. So the idea behind this was essentially, how do we eliminate some of the toxicity that exists in the online gaming world?"
By pairing young gamers with trained coaches in a structured online setting, Vanta is looking to cultivate a new crop of "gamer-citizens" who will provide positive role models for future generations.
"We're trying to create a safe place for kids to game. And to try to teach them, so that, 10, 20 years from now when they're the old guard in the online gaming community, they're treating people with a bit more respect than you see right now," says Fabi.
That's the prospect that appealed to Adriano Eva, a recreation supervisor and wellness specialist with the City of Spokane's Parks and Recreation Department. Eva saw his own son spending more time online on account of the pandemic, and it therefore seemed as though his department had an obligation to offer vetted online options for a world that had gone largely virtual.
"We knew we needed to offer e-sports as a program offering to the community," he says. "But the world of gaming doesn't need to be wild. This gives them the opportunity to be molded into a culture of courtesy. When they are playing in an environment that is monitored, where you have some expectation of behavior, participants will learn a code of conduct. Vanta and organizations like it can help build a different culture around gaming."
To be sure, Eva admits to wrestling with mixed feelings about online gaming. Even with an increased emphasis on socialization and sportsmanship, does something as sedentary and screen-based as e-sports truly promote health and well-being? But he argues that digital recreation deserves to be seen as one of the many "dimensions of wellness" — not as a substitute for traditional in-person activities but rather a supplement to them.
"It's important to recognize that this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing situation," Fabi adds. "Just because you participate in a competitive e-sports league doesn't mean that you're not going outside and getting exercise and doing all those things that kids have always done."
Paradoxically, the prospect of participating in organized e-sports might even serve as just the leverage parents need to encourage kids to leave their chairs and spend a few hours outside.
Online Games To Try
Best visualized as soccer but with nitro-boosted RC cars, Rocket League has been cast as the ideal stepping stone between the worlds of traditional sports and e-sports. It's been a part of Major League Gaming (MLG) since 2015.
Known as an FPS, or "first-person shooter," Valorant puts the player in the role of an agent who has to attack or defend a target with the aid of four other teammates. It has some similarities with another popular tactical FPS, Counter-Strike.
First released in 2009, the competitive battle arena game League of Legends has one of the longest pedigrees of any title mentioned here. Its popularity among the e-sports community also comes with a reputation for being one of the harsher environments for young gamers.
A bit like digital Lego, Minecraft allows its community of over 140 million active users to build entire worlds out of an ever-expanding palette of blocks. Spinoff series like Minecraft Dungeons have expanded its style of gameplay.
The multibillion-dollar Fortnite franchise can be a very different game depending on what version you're playing. Players can choose from a collaborative defense game, a massive open-world battle royale or a freeform creative mode.
