League of Legends becomes CU Denver’s first ever e-sport

The club hopes to keep expanding with new members and gaming laptops.
Photo: Ayden Adair · *The Sentry*

An expansion of student-run club sports

League of Legends is a free multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) that originated in October 2009. As of January 2019, Newzoo, a market intelligence company for games and e-sports, ranked League of Legends as the most popular Core PC game. CU Denver has recently started their own League of Legends Club that will work as its first ever collegiate e-sport.

In this third-person, top-down perspective game, two teams of five players go against each other using a selected character called a Champion. The amount of playable characters is always growing, but currently, there are about 143 from which the player can choose.

Fighting the opponents and destroying their base is priority number one in a match. However, there are also neutral objectives to spice the battle up, such as killing a dragon. The end goal is to reach the “Nexus” in the very back of each team’s base and destroy it.

Ayden Adair, photographer at The Sentry and VP of the club, said that “Just like other sports, such as soccer and football, League requires an immense amount of teamwork, individual skill, mechanical outplays, strategic thinking, and creativity. While there may not be a physical strength component to the game, it does not make it any less difficult than a game of chess, soccer, or football.”

Every aspect of the game requires five people working together, and those who work the best together, even if they aren’t the best players, are more likely to win.

Ryan Cuscaden, the president of the club, said that the reason for its inception was to “escape the toxic community of league and have a place where [students] can play with friends and meet new people with the same interests as them. We hope to grow the club into the staple gaming club of CU Denver and grow in numbers and games we support as a club.”

The main goal right now for the CU Denver club is to build a player base and prepare for the collegiate competitions. That doesn’t mean, however, that they won’t currently compete—the club will participate in online, local, and in-house tournaments, which currently are free play among group members while the numbers of the club grow.

Those uninterested in the competitive aspect can still join the club and play casually with other members. CU Denver and the club are currently working hard to get 10 gaming laptops for those who don’t have a computer to bring to the meetings.

The League of Legends club meets bi-weekly, alternating Mondays and Thursdays.

CU Denver League of Legends
Ryan Cuscaden, President
ryan.cuscaden@ucdenver.edu
Ayden Adair, Vice President
ayden.adair@ucdevner.edu