Four of the top London-based Dota 2 university teams will go head-to-head in the first Varsity Games eSports tournament.
Taking place on Saturday November 26th at the Gfinity Arena in London, the four teams will include King’s College, Imperial College, University College (UCL) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
UCL will face KCL in the first game, with LSE playing Imperial next. All matches, including the finals, are best-of-threes. Teams will be playing for the Varsity Games London trophy.
The tournament is being put on by the organisers behind GameBritannia, who held the Heritage 1 and Heritage 2 Dota events earlier this year.
As well as the Dota 2 tournament, the first Varsity Games event will allow attendees to meet the Gfinity team, and take part in Cluequest – an escape room-style game where teams have to race against time to complete a mission using common sense, logic and teamwork.
There will also be a talk on ‘eSports and competitive gaming in the UK: a summary and future possibilities’, given by professor and researcher Mark Johnson from the University of York, and Jamie Woodcock from the LSE.
Varsity Games is also looking for staff for future events, including referees, observers, casters, as well as a tournament director, stage manager, host and video editor.
Tickets cost £8 and can be bought here – they are also redeemable for a combo (food and drink) or beer on the day.
Doors open at 11am and the games start at midday 12pm.
For more information visit the Varsity Games event page, the Gfinity event page or the Varsity Games Facebook page
The blurb for the talk – ‘eSports and competitive gaming in the UK: a summary and future possibilities’ – is as follows:
‘This talk will summarise the present state of eSports within the United Kingdom, explore the historical, sociological and technological factors that have led to this current state, and explore several directions for the future of eSports in the UK.
‘It will cover the relative distributions of PC and console gaming in the UK, the competitive games that have tended to dominate within the UK and an analysis of why this has been quite distinctive from Europe, and from the rest of the world.
‘It will offer observations of the UK’s success in other areas of competitive gameplay outside of eSports, and why this has yet to transfer into the eSports domain, and the relationship with advertising and sponsorship in the UK context.
‘We will offer an examination of recent developments in this space, such as the opening of the ESL’s new studio, Twitch’s new offices and presence in London, and the proliferation of new UK companies in the eSports domain, and conclude by considering a number of possibilities for what the future of eSports within the UK might look like.’
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
