{"id":165003,"date":"2022-09-13T10:16:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T20:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=165003"},"modified":"2022-09-13T10:41:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T20:41:19","slug":"google-gaming-head-visits-uh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2022\/09\/13\/google-gaming-head-visits-uh\/","title":{"rendered":"Head of Google gaming looks at esports potential with UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"person
Moonlit Beshimov speaks with members of UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa’s esports team.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M\u0101noa\u2019s esports program welcomed the head of Google\u2019s gaming strategy and initiatives, Moonlit Beshimov, to the campus in September. Esports program leader Nyle Sky Kauweloa<\/strong> gave Beshimov and her husband tech executive Ilias Beshimov, a tour of the iLab facility and hosted an informal talk story session with members of the esports team. The students learned about the current trends in the industry.<\/p>\n

This visit came after UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa became the first higher education institution to host the Overwatch League in 2021 and 2022, providing more opportunities for students to learn about the growing global esports industry.<\/p>\n

“For her to see what is happening here, she was quite impressed number one,” Kauweloa said. “This whole idea of college esports is very new to them and so I can tell that they have a lot of ideas of what could happen and the potential of our program here. It\u2019s really brought more of a spotlight to UH<\/abbr> esports, to our iLab, and to our students and our teams overall. I hope to work with her more in the future because they see potential here for Google.”<\/p>\n

More on the esports program<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Global esports revenue is projected to reach $1.38 billion in 2022<\/a>, up from $1.08 billion in 2021. Not only has Kauweloa helped the esports team become one of the top programs in the nation, he has also spearheaded the academic side. UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa now offers an internship credit course for students who volunteered during the Overwatch League tournaments, and a three-course esports series in the College of Social Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“What really struck me to be very impressive is turning esports as the entryway to introduce students to the whole business of gaming,” Moonlit Beshimov said. “Gaming is such a big market, it\u2019s a huge business. It\u2019s bigger than both the movie and music industries combined. Most people think of gaming as not something you do for a living. \u2026It\u2019s a leading industry for technology. It\u2019s a huge market, with a lot of innovation coming out of it. That angle is incredible besides the actual achievement of being a ranked esports team in the nation.”<\/p>\n

Vote for UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa esports<\/h2>\n

The UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa esports program is up for the best collegiate esports program of the year award for the second consecutive year<\/a>, and Kauweloa has been nominated for the collegiate esports ambassador of the year award. The public can vote for the team and Kauweloa on the Esports Awards website<\/a> until November 30.<\/p>\n

Visit the UH<\/abbr> esports team\u2019s Twitter<\/a> and Discord<\/a> pages. More stories on UH<\/abbr>\u2019s esports program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Note: Beshimov visited the campus while on vacation, and her thoughts expressed in this article do not reflect the overall views of Google.<\/p>\n

—By Marc Arakaki<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This visit came after UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa became the first higher education institution to host the Overwatch League in 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[301,1405,1026,9],"class_list":["post-165003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-news","tag-college-of-social-sciences","tag-esports","tag-social-science","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165003"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165076,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165003\/revisions\/165076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}