Video Game Association brings home victory from Spring Showdown invitational

Binghamton University’s Video Game Association brought home a major victory at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Spring Showdown invitational, outperforming dozens of universities across the East Coast.

After hours of weekly late-night scrimmages, the club’s Overwatch 2 esports team qualified for the tournament held earlier this month at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Ryan Calhoun, the Video Game Association’s president and a senior majoring in mechanical engineering in the 4+1 Degree Program for a master’s in business administration, said esports is just one of the club’s five subgroups, including the game development group, the GeoGuessr club, the Pokémon Go club and the Smash and Fighting Games club.

“The week prior, I’d say we probably spent about 10 to 20 hours practicing and reviewing in one week, preparing for this tournament,” said Trevor “Hank” Leone, a senior majoring in biochemistry. “We definitely put a fair bit of effort the week prior, but before that, we didn’t have a lot of time.”

Leone is one of eight members from the Overwatch 2 “A Team” who traveled to the invitational. According to Leone and Luka “Realz” Ero, a senior majoring in art and design, the team has won six SUNY Overwatch competitions and ranked in the top 50 out of 500 teams in official college tournaments.

“We, as the VGA, were lucky enough to be able to put this team together on minimal resources, being both financial and logistical resources,” said Calhoun. “The team funded itself to go to this LAN [Local Area Network], which is a decent risk for them.”

Over the past few years, esports have become increasingly popular worldwide, with players dedicating similar amounts of time and resources as traditional athletics. The Eastern College Athletic Conference held its first esports season in 2017.

Throughout the competition, the team’s strategy revolved around Ero’s performance as Sigma, an astrophysicist who can control gravity, said George “MrMann” German, a junior majoring in computer engineering.

“Only running Sig, like one team composition, definitely felt a little difficult at times,” German said. “We did just keep forcing it, though. We kept playing the same maps, we tried subbing out the tank player for another high-level tank player, and it didn’t work the same because everyone’s so used to running the same thing.”

“I think we just kept drilling the same composition until we basically got it down perfect,” he continued.

The team regularly communicates with each other through the organization’s Discord, a messaging platform popular in the gaming community.

Players can select three character classes in the Overwatch 2: damage, support and tank. For his role in the team’s strategy, Ero earned the MVP award in the tournament. Along with the team’s prize of $2,500, he received $500, a headset, a mouse pad and an MVP placard. As the team’s tank, Ero takes damage from the enemy team to protect his teammates in the game.

“I didn’t know I would get all these things,” Ero said. “I was overwhelmed in that moment, and it’s probably not something I’m ever going to forget.”

Despite facing the College of Staten Island in the final round, German and Ero said that playing against the home team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was the most intense match of the night.

“I don’t want the VGA to fall into the shadows of esports,” Calhoun said. “If Binghamton does get a real program supported by the school, I would love to see, because VGA is effectively my child. I feel like I’ve built it up over the last three years and I would really like to see students collaborating with administration or University staff in order to make our esports program great in the future.”