A national video gaming tournament is coming to the Capital Region. The effort is being supported with taxpayer money.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy is hosting the 2025 Eastern College Athletic Conference eSports Spring Showdown. The three-day event starting April 3rd is being supported by $50,000 from Rensselaer County, with an additional $50,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding from the City of Troy.
ECAC Commissioner Dan Coonan spoke at RPI's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.
“We'll have three different games, three different titles that we run here, Rocket League, Valorant and Overwatch. 12- we'll have a qualifier to get here, but 12 schools for each of those three titles will actually come here,” Coonan said.
Mayor Carmella Mantello, a first-term Republican, has emphasized using money raised through tourism efforts to “domino” into revitalization. She says this time is no different.
“It's going to go to the hotels, to the boutiques, to the businesses. A lot of families will be in town because they want to see their kids playing. And so it's really going to attract, you know, enthusiasts, spectators, families, and then the students themselves,” Mantello said.
Mantello says she’s hoping putting city and county dollars behind the project will get other businesses on board.
RPI President Marty Schmidt says his institution is the perfect home for the tournament.
“We have a really strong computer gaming cluster in this region for RPI, it's been a big part of our academics the computer gaming degree, the fact that we have a center of excellence in this area, and obviously lot of passionate students that want to participate,” Schmidt said.
Alex Kim is co-president of RPI E-Sports and captain of the Rocket League team. For those who have never heard of it, Kim explains.
“Rocket League is a soccer-based game, football-based game, where you play- we play a 5-minute match with those cars that have propelled boost. I think the Boost is the right term- and we'd be competing against, in a three-v-three setting, in an online match to against different schools, and also, also in different collegiate leagues,” Kim said.
Abdul Muizz, a grad student at RPI and fellow club co-president, has been a club member since 2020, winning trophies in Overwatch at HV Gamer Con, an earlier iteration of the tourney.
“HV Gamer Con was the first LAN [local area network] event I went to, so being able to go there and win a trophy with my team was a phenomenal experience. Definitely, every tournament win is always a huge adrenaline rush after the fact, even if we're in a Discord call online, you know, we’re all screaming and shouting,” Muizz said.
Marco St. Denis is studying economics and media design at RPI. A member of the Class of 2027, St. Denis captains the Overwatch 2 team. He says the gold is Rensselaer’s to lose.
“This last qualifier, we made it to the semifinals. We ended up losing in the semifinals, but this time around, we're almost guaranteed to qualify for the Overwatch team. So that's gonna be good,” St. Denis said.
By way of disclosure, EMPAC has been a WAMC underwriter.
