The League Lives

STORY BY MARK ELGIE

The League is almost here.

The League of Bruins, that is.

After testing the waters with two pilot events last season, the Sheridan League of Legends intramurals are set to begin in October.

It’s a project that has been in the works since 2013, when the idea for an e-sports team was brought up.

“It was probably two years ago where we really sat down and went ‘okay we need to actually figure out a way to get more people involved on campus,’ “ said co-op job developer Mike Thornton.
Thornton, along with associate dean Matt Rempel, Trafalgar fitness coordinator Nadene Boothe, and peer mentor Adam McInnis, sat down that year and brainstormed ideas.

“I guess just because of the familiarity, myself, Adam and Matt [had] with League of Legends, we figured it was probably a first good starting point. It also, I would say, is probably the largest game in the world, or at least one of them,” Thornton said.

The group needed game with a considerable amount of popularity. And compared to some other niche games such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends was the obvious choice.
“We figured if we’re looking at demographics and target market size, League of Legends is probably going to be the easiest sell on campus. If you’re playing some kind of niche game, it’s probably going to be tough for some to get into it.”

League of Legends was chosen, and two pilot events were scheduled.

“We wanted to test the waters, because we figured if we just did a cold opening and like ‘okay we have a new intramural,’ no one would know, it would be really tough to market,” Thornton said.

“So we did Bruins nights, which were going to be testers for what kind of response we were going to get.”
Thornton believes that the two nights held were both very successful.

“The room was at capacity for both of the events.  Maybe 30 to 40 people. [Some] people brought their own computers, we had a stream going, we even had a guy who was at home, but he was shoutcasting the games on Twitch. It was great. It was awesome. We had our own Sheridan Bruins Twitch, and we were streaming the games out to the wild which was fantastic.”

Twitch is an online streaming service marketed towards the gaming community.

After the two events, the group worked out what event attendees enjoyed and didn’t enjoy, and spent the summer working out marketing, logistics, and schedules for a seven week League of Bruins intramural team.

“We have advertisements that have been going through our Twitter account, we’ve been approaching the gaming clubs to share with their membership, we’ve got our website up for the first time, which I think looks pretty good now, with a lot more information,” said Rempel.

“We’ve been trying to get an ad up on Sheridan TV, and as far as I know, those are the places where students might see the information.”

Rempel hopes that the saturation of advertising across the college will translate into a good turnout for the coming intramurals.

“I’m hoping that this year we’ll have enough participation, because it also depends on how many students sign up, that we can run a proper league where every Tuesday night, students are in their teams competing against each other for a series of seven weeks in total.”

Sign up here.

League of Legends intramurals are set to begin Oct. 6.