Theses and Dissertations

When examining the average college campus, it becomes obvious that students feel rushed from one place to another as they try to participate in class, clubs, and extracurricular activities. One way that students can feel more comfortable and relaxed around campus is to introduce the aspect of gaming. Studies show that “Moderate videogame play has been found to contribute to emotional stability” (Jones, 2014). This demonstrates that the stress of college can be mitigated by introducing the ability to interact with video games. This same concept has been applied in the workplace, where studies have shown that “Gaming principles such as challenges, competition, rewards and personalization keep employees engaged and learning” (Clark, 2020). This means that if we manage to gamify the college experience, students will be more engaged which will increase and stabilize the retention rate of colleges which utilize this type of experience. Gaming allows students to connect with their peers in a casual environment while also allowing them to find resources around campus and find new places to eat and relax. We plan to gamify the college experience by introducing augmented reality in the form of an app. Augmented reality is “. . . a technology that combines virtual information with the real world” (Chen, 2019). College students will be able to utilize the resources and amenities available to them on campus while completing quests that help them within the application. This demonstrates the ability for video games to engage students using artificial tasks but real actions and experiences which help them feel more connected to campus. Our Founders Lab team has developed and tested an AR application that can be used to connect students with their campus and the resources available to them.

The esports scene has been constantly evolving ever since its inception in the early 1970s, growing from small arcade based tournaments to the multibillion dollar industry that can be observed today (Bountie Gaming, 2018). In fact, the term esports was not widely used until the early 2000s, decades after the first gaming tournaments had taken place. Decades prior, the earliest large-scale gaming tournament was hosted by Atari in 1980 for the game ​Space Invaders ​ . While still primitive by today’s standards, games such as ​Space Invaders ​ inspired fierce competition and effectively laid the foundation for what would grow into the booming industry that we see today (Edwards, 2013).