Understanding Esports as a STEM Career Ready Curriculum in the Wild

Abstract

There are myriad ways to participate in esports that go beyond just competing on a team: event organizing, legal protections, web development, shoutcasting, game analysis, and many other integral activities. These roles are paramount to the growth of the tournaments and surrounding community. They also have strong ties to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics related content and careers that are rarely made explicit, even though they develop skills valued in high tech careers at the intersection of STEM and Entrepreneurship. In this paper we present a framework for understanding the Esports Ecosystem from the perspective of diverse and divergent roles within high school and collegiate esports communities. Based on two years of qualitative participant observation of esports communities in Southern California, we detail the ways in which these forms of participation connect to valued high school academic and career ready curriculum standards that together represent STEM Entrepreneurship. It is on the basis of these connections that we have developed a year-long high school course that ties the skills esports participation fosters and the careers that they lead to.