SU’s Gaming & Esports Center provides a strong campus community

The growing world of gaming is finding a new home on college campuses, and at Syracuse University, esports is becoming more than just competition.

Syracuse senior and the esports Student Lead, Bri Nechifor, said her journey started during the pandemic, when she realized she might one day have a role in the gaming industry.

“During Covid, I was in my room a lot, attending online classes, and I couldn’t see my friends in person. And I stumbled upon Twitch, surprisingly,” Nechifor said. “It was around the same time Valorant came out. I started watching some streamers [play the game] and I realized, wow, there’s a future in this.”

Nechifor grew up playing tennis and earned her black belt in taekwondo. Sports were a major part of her life. So when she got into her dream school, hoping to study sports management, it was an abrupt shift into the gaming realm.

“I switched my path and didn’t look back,” Nichifor said. “I wanted to combine the two worlds. That led me to my approach with esports academically, on the production side, and on the events side.”

The university’s Gaming and Esports Center, which opened just over a year ago, is designed to be inclusive, emphasizing connection and community rather than just winning.

“Everyone can play the same game, can understand it, can bond over it, which is really what it’s all about,” Nechifor said.

While esports often brings to mind high-level competitive play, the Assistant Director of esports at Syracuse, Megan Danaher, said the goal is to motivate students to excel in other areas outside of just gaming.

“Students who would traditionally not come to class would go home to play video games and skip school. Now they have a reason to want to keep their GPA up…to want to do well for their [esports] team,” Danaher said. “Through esports, you need the same kind of professionalism, communication skills, scheduling, [and] time management that you would see in all these traditional avenues.”

Since its opening, the Gaming & Esports Center had around 5,000 “unique users,” or people who had never gone there, and it received over 30,000 “swipes,” signaling the number of times people returned to the center.

“On a campus of 20,000 [people] that’s really good,” Danaher said. “Being able to have a footprint that is more central to campus is really important, so people can see how accessible esports and gaming are to them.”

The accessibility that the center allows for Syracuse students is evident. For students who come from far distances, it makes little sense to lug around a console. But another reason that student-gamers are starting to favor the center instead of just playing in their dorm rooms is the social aspect of it all.

“People will look over and see someone playing the same game and be like, ‘Want to queue up on the next one?’ And they end up making a friendship right then and there,” Danaher said. “People [are] coming together and making a community and finding commonality in different things that they enjoy.”