Dear NIU Gaming Community,
As we begin an exciting academic year, a new varsity season and my first full academic year as Director of NIU Esports, I want to welcome you all back! I want to share the vision guiding us into what comes next.
From its inception, NIU Esports has been about more than games and competitions, or a room filled with PCs burring. NIU Esports has been built on the belief that gaming can create community and bring people together who may not otherwise have found one another.
Our legacy has directed a standard we will continue to carry forward: Hard Work. Growth. Kindness.
This standard asks us to exchange ego for excellence. It challenges us to compete with purpose, pursue greatness without losing our humanity and measure our success not only by what we accomplish, but also by how we help others grow alongside us. Our standard means choosing respect, peace and kindness over pushing boundaries at someone else’s expense. Excellence and belonging are not competing ideals in our arena. The best version of NIU Esports requires both.
As we look ahead, we want to broaden the way people understand what an esports program – and an esports arena – can be. Competitive gaming remains an important part of who we are, but our potential (as with all gamers) reaches much further.
I see NIU Esports existing at the intersection of gaming, interactive arts, production, storytelling, design, research, emerging technology and a new kind of “technology recreation.” I envision a place where students from across campus can bring their interests, skills and ideas into contact with one another – and where campus partners and organizations can imagine new forms of engagement, learning and collaboration.
NIU Esports has the opportunity to help our region recognize just how large the world surrounding gaming has become, and how many students can find opportunities within it.
Our ambition is for NIU Esports to lead at both the collegiate and industry levels. As Huskies, we try to lead the pack in every endeavor. It will not be easy, but NIU Esports aims to shape gaming and interactive technology for decades to come.
As artificial intelligence and increasingly powerful computational tools change how we create, compete, learn, work and connect, our responsibility is greater than simply using technology because it is new. We must continue asking what that technology is for – and how it can serve people.
My vision is for NIU Esports to be a space that thoughtfully uses innovative and powerful technologies to connect people to purpose, human ingenuity to meaningful action and communities to opportunities for doing good. Technology is at its most powerful when it helps bring forward the very best of us.
Please understand, that future will be built together. It will be shaped by students, staff, faculty, alumni, campus organizations, community members and partners who believe in what this space can represent. Every person who enters the NIU Esports Arena contributes to its culture and helps create the experience of the person who walks through the door next.
But while we are building toward a larger future, we must not sit idly and wait for tomorrow to arrive.
We will not postpone excellence until every plan, resource or relationship is perfectly in place. We will not shy away from being remarkable right now. There are students here today, opportunities in front of us today and an entire academic year waiting to be made memorable.
Every match played with integrity, every event that welcomes someone new, every student who takes a creative risk, every new connection and every act of kindness that transforms a room into a community is part of that work. While we continue building toward something greater, we will keep creating meaningful opportunities and memorable experiences in our NIU Esports Arena today.
If you have an idea, bring it to us. If you want to learn, create, contribute, explore, or try something you have never done before, come see us. You do not need to be an elite competitor, an expert or even know exactly where you fit. Curiosity is enough to begin.
The NIU Esports Arena is a place where you can study. You can play. You can compete. You can create. You can experiment. You can connect. You can simply be.
And maybe – just maybe – you will find a place where you belong. A place that makes NIU feel a little more like home.
Every student deserves the opportunity to make NIU their home. We want the Esports Arena to be one of the places that makes doing so a little easier.
Welcome back. Bring your ideas, your curiosity and your best.
Let’s build what comes next together – and make this year remarkable while we do.
Russ Devereaux, NIU Esports Director
