eSports at UCLA: Hearth of the cards

Traditionally, when someone thinks about eSports, the games that come to mind are fast-paced action titles, be they first-person shooters or strategy games. However, Blizzard Entertainment has been challenging that notion in the last few years with the uncanny popularity of their free-to-play online card game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

Hearthstone was the 4th most-watched game on twitch.tv in 2015, and for good reason. It’s super easy to get into, features a lot of beloved player personalities, and it’s free. Whereas most other competitive games require around an hour’s time commitment for a single match, a Hearthstone match can be over in less than ten minutes. Most of the game revolves around building decks of cards and leveraging interactions between these cards to defeat your opponent. This is similar to other popular card battle games like Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Similar to the Defense of the Ancients and Counter-Strike scenes on campus, Hearthstone cemented itself as an official UCLA organization on campus in 2015. It too fields a Collegiate StarLeague team that has seen great success in competitive play. The team currently sits at a 5-0 record on the season, putting it atop the Western division and securing a playoff seed.

This group has gone beyond just playing in CSL and has also organized its own tournament for UCLA players to partake in, dubbed “The Grand UCLA Tournament.” This ongoing event is a double-elimination tournament for Hearthstone club members to participate in, for free, and offers real prizes for the winners. This is in part made possible by the club’s affiliation with TeSPA, a network of eSports organizers across the country that provides resources for on-campus events and eSports networking.

Hearthstone club president Alex Tao, a fourth-year biochemistry student, has been a driving force in unifying and spreading eSports on campus this year, as he is also the founder of AUGment, the overarching campus eSports organization. He feels that Hearthstone helped him get through college in regards to both dealing with stress and making friends. “I was sure there was other people were out there that needed the same crutch. We’re here to bring them together into a community of support and show the haters that eSports is the next big thing,” said Tao.

While Hearthstone is a radically different game than every other popular eSports title, there is no denying that it has a place in the eSports community and a large player base on campus.