During the Spring 2023 semester, I was approached by the Pittsburg State University Varsity Esports team and was asked to produce broadcasts for some of their matches throughout the season. After organizing a team to cover the matches, the broadcast group streamed a Rocket League match between PSU and the University of Missouri.
After learning from my first Esports Broadcast, I continued to find ways to improve the quality of the productions for the two other Rocket League broadcasts that were produced that semester. For the final Rocket League production of the semester, I worked to create photo-realistic graphics based on a free-to-use template inside Unreal Engine 5. This addition to the broadcast helped add quality background video for graphics and was used for transitions in and out of breaks.
Using open-source graphics tools made for League of Legends, I was able to create an Esports production toolkit to broadcast Pittsburg State University's playoff match against the University of Georgia.
During the summer 2023, I continued to research new broadcast tools for Esports broadcasting. While researching I found multiple tools that would become the foundation of the broadcast toolkit for the Fall '23 broadcast season
The Fall 2023 Esports broadcast season was the first full season of matches that I organized and produced. During the semester, I worked to cover 47 Esports matches. Pittsburg State University fielded 6 teams across 5 games. PSU competed in the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) league and Midwest Collegiate Esports Conference (MCEC). The breakdown of the teams is as follows:
Varsity Rocket League (NACE Conference)
Varsity Valorant (NACE Conference)
Varsity Super Smash Bros Ultimate (NACE Conference)
Varsity League of Legends (NACE Conference)
Varsity Overwatch 2 (NACE Conference)
Varsity Overwatch 2 (MCEC Conference)
Matches were streamed live to Twitch.tv and during the season the Pittsburg State University channel grew from 10 to over 120 followers. Viewership rose from an average of 3 concurrent viewers to 15 concurrent viewers per broadcast.
During the season, the Pittsburg State University Esports broadcasting group was chosen by the MCEC executive board to provide live coverage of the conference's playoff games. This would include the Fall '23 conference championship match between Emporia State and Missouri Western.
The spring 2024 season allowed me to experiment with player cameras and remote production operations as the production process developed. Remote broadcasting saved my group hours of setup and teardown time. When multiplied by the number of broadcasts produced, the switch to mainly remote productions improved the efficiency of the broadcasts.
Using the open-source project VDO.ninja, we can send camera, microphone, and return video signals over the internet using Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). This removes the need to use port forwarding or VPN services to connect all production equipment. VDO.ninja was also used to add players' webcams to broadcasts.