Touch Grass: An Esports Wellness Evaluation at Champlain College
What do you think of when you imagine a “gamer”? Most people would associate them with being antisocial or unhygienic, the epitome of “Make Love, Not Warcraft”, a South Park episode in which a game is shown to be all-consuming. And while I’m sure some people like that exist, when discussing the Collegiate Varsity Esports players at Champlain College, these depictions could not be further from the truth. An esports player is someone who plays a multiplayer video game competitively for spectators. These players are driven, passionate, and dedicated to performing at the highest level they can manage. When players were winning trophies in the name of Champlain College, their highs were in the stratosphere, but when they were falling short of their expectations, their lows were at rock bottom. They not only recognized this issue but actively wanted to change. When I presented my project to them, I was met with gratitude and enthusiasm. The title of this article, “Touch Grass”, is an insult used in the gaming community; at its core it tells players to go outside, implying the person is spending too much energy on the game and it is negatively affecting their well-being. I wanted to reclaim the word for my capstone and use it as an active state of improving well-being. Champlain Varsity players are ready for change — here we are, touching grass.
I have been playing games since I was in elementary school. I currently have 1,786 hours played on Steam, 780 hours on Overwatch 1 & 2, and many more on Call of Duty, Minecraft, and other games. The majority of my high school social existence was sitting in front of a computer playing video games with people from all over the world. My college choices were impacted by gaming. Not only do I play, but I do so competitively, peaking mid-masters in Overwatch (top 3% of players). We gamers are used to being overlooked and our hobby being seen as less than others. However, as I embark on new journeys and depart from my time at Champlain, I created my final project in hopes of bettering the esports space.
Esports are rapidly growing in popularity, so much so that ESPN has begun televising matches. Causally, research in esports has also begun picking up, but there continue to be glaring holes in data due to the topic being relatively obscure to the average person. Continued research is paramount in order to get ahead of the curve in improving the mental health and overall well-being of collegiate esports teams. Especially when traditional sports are awarded more coaches and more support systems. Hundreds of colleges have created esports teams within the past decade and numbers are only increasing as it continues to be a big draw for incoming students. Let’s give our current and incoming students the support they need to thrive in the endeavors of their choosing.
I collaborated with the Champlain Varsity Esports teams in surveying, observing, and interviewing Varsity players to encapsulate the glaring issues within Champlain’s teams. The program is still relatively new, finishing its third school year of being operational. The teams are consistently improving year to year, but my goal was to pinpoint reoccurring problems and create empirically based recommendations to streamline their success and improve their overall well-being. For the purposes of this article, I am defining well-being as the state of being comfortable, happy, and healthy. My recommendations centered around physical body adjustments, nutrition, sleep, emotional regulation, team dynamics, and what Champlain College as an institution can do to better support players. These recommendations are primarily for management and coaching staff to incorporate into their programs, but also acknowledge the college’s role in the program as the primary funder. These recommendations are based on previous research on Esport communities and direct feedback from players making the recommendations tailored to Champlain but could be generalized to other collegiate teams in some aspects. My goal is for incoming players like myself who competitively strive to be the best player they can be to have access to support in order to soar on open wings.
