Mike Dahle: Welcome back to another installment of Future Fridays. Here today with us is Talon Wilterdink, who is formerly from Random Lake. Talon, thank you for taking the time today in order to join us.
Talon Wilterdink: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Dahle: All right, Talon. Let's go ahead. We'll jump back. Just give our audience a brief background of what your involvement in high school esports was, a little bit about what your program looked like there at Random Lake, games that you played, and if you did any other extracurricular activities.
Wilterdink: Yeah, absolutely. I come from Random Lake High School. It's a division five school for esports, at least when I was playing, and it was not the biggest school. We had just under 70 people in my graduating class, and we had small esports teams and the esports program in general was pretty small.
I ended up playing a lot of games for our teams. Primarily, I played Rocket League in high school. I also played on the Smash Bros. team where we went to State a few times, and we won once. That was a great experience. I was part of the Smite team. We were runner-ups in the Grand Finals. I also played Overwatch for a year. I played, oh boy, so many games. Fortnite as well. I might be missing one or two, but I played a lot of games in high school.
Dahle: What made you want to play on all of those teams, out of curiosity? Because we do see a lot of students tend to specialize in a game or two, but you were "Yeah, give me all the Infinity Stones here. I want to collect them all."
Wilterdink: Yeah. Originally, I think my freshman year, I only played Smash and Rocket League, and Rocket League was my main game at the time. Smash Bros, it was just one of those games. I joined in my first semester of high school, and there were two games at that time for that semester. It was Smash and League of Legends, and I wanted to be on the esports team.
I was, “well, I've played Smash Bros before. I can join that team.” That's how it started, and then as games kept getting added, I got more experience with them, and I realized I could help our teams out if I got good at all the games. My main motivation was I want to help the teams as best I can. I'm going to play all of them.
Dahle: That's essentially my approach as well. That's why I tried to play ranked in every single game that we offer. I can at least say I know enough about this to be dangerous. I'm not always great, but I can at least help others get to a certain point.
Wilterdink: Yeah.
Dahle: Senior year of high school's coming around, can you talk about what your post-secondary selection process looked like? I know you're in a unique situation at your school as far as the major that you've chosen. Can you walk us through not only what you chose to explore, but also how you came to picking where you're at?
Wilterdink: Yeah, absolutely. Originally, as far back as sixth grade, I had wanted to go into game development, coding games, because as far as, when you're a kid at that age and you're really into video games, that's the only career path that people around you recommend as going into for a job because it's the most obvious one, go into coding video games.
And I had lined up all my high school to prepare to do that, and then I got to my senior year of college. I applied to around 10 different colleges for computer science and game development programs, and then I realized in December of my senior year, I don't really want to code for the rest of my life, which was a big realization for me because I had prepared to do this for six years or so.
And then I was just in a weird spot where I didn't know where I wanted to go for college then because that's what I had prepared for. What I eventually stumbled upon was that there's a whole career sector in esports and gaming, and when I searched the college market for this, I came upon the University of New Haven, which is where I'm currently at. At the time, it was called the esports and gaming bachelor's degree program, and it just got rebranded this past year to be esport and digital game management. and I ended up coming here to do that.
Dahle: Can you give us a little bit of insight into what some of those classes may look like or what some of those outcomes are going to be?
Wilterdink: Yeah, absolutely. In my freshman year, I had my first class. It was Introduction to Esports and Gaming and it gave an overview of what the esports and gaming landscape is because it's not just esports in the market. Video games are a very large industry on their own, and mostly what the degree focus on is the business side of video games because there's a lot of people who are prepared for the coding side and then there are people who are prepared for business, marketing the game, but there's a little, I can't find the word right now, but it's the intersection of those two disciplines, and it's a decent opportunity for anyone looking to do business and video game stuff.
And then I had a class later. It was Business of Gaming. We went really indepth on how business works in the games industry. We ended up, for our final project for that class, we made a full funnel marketing campaign for a made-up video game.
A couple other classes I've had, Governance and Regulatory Environment of Esports and Gaming, which, esports is very interesting because there's no governing body that oversees all of esports, kind of there would be for MLB or NFL with traditional sports, and we looked at how that creates unique circumstances and some difficulties in the esports world. I also had a class on the global landscape of esports and gaming where we went over the differences of gaming culture and esports in all the different regions of the world.
Dahle: I don't think I have enough time to ask a bunch of follow-up questions to each of those because I would be fascinated to learn just some of the intricacies behind some of those classes as well. That may be something that we take offline here that I just keep picking your brain because I'd love to learn a little bit about that. You are playing for your collegiate team though, correct?
Wilterdink: Yes, I am. Yeah, I started out in my freshman year. I joined the JV Rocket League team and I also tried out for Overwatch, and that was mostly just because everyone in my little suite in my freshman dorm, we all had played Overwatch before. I just thought, eh, I'll try out, see what happens, and I made the academy team for that, which is the step below the junior varsity level.
And then I ended up getting promoted to JV in my freshman year for Overwatch and I got moved to captain of that, and then moving forward to my sophomore year, I also got promoted to captain of the JV Rocket League team. We had a very successful year that year for Overwatch and we ended up qualifying for nationals after winning our conference in the second semester. We didn't do too well at nationals or in the playoffs but great experience.
And then this year, I ended up dropping Rocket League as a title, and I'm only doing Overwatch this year.
Dahle: Am I correct in saying that you're pretty good at Overwatch now?
Wilterdink: I have gotten to a point where I am comfortable in saying I know what I'm talking about with Overwatch now. I still have a lot to learn, but I just hit Grandmaster 5 just under a week ago for the first time.
Dahle: I would say that's pretty good talent. [laughter]
Wilterdink: Thank you. I'm still getting there because I'm still not varsity.
Dahle: Can you give us a little bit of insight about your practice scrimmage and your teamwork that goes into prepping for some of this stuff?
Wilterdink: Absolutely. This year what we're doing, we have two days a week where we have a 2-hour long scrimmage block. We play against another team for two hours. We try our best and we try to implement strategies we might have created or just in general practice our teamwork. That's a major part of what gets practiced in scrimmages.
And then one day a week, we do a VOD review, which basically we look at a bunch of maps that we've played over the past week, and we try to figure out what we can do better, maybe learn how to play the map better, and sometimes we'll just instead of watching our gameplay, we'll just go through a full map and learn how to more effectively play that map, and then we have one day a week where we have all of our matches. We play in two leagues and we have two matches then every Friday.
Dahle: Can you give us a little bit of insight too as to how you're balancing the academics to go with that kind of esports workload?
Wilterdink: Absolutely. This is the part that I struggle with the most personally, but what I have found helps me out a lot in terms of balance is to schedule in blocks on my calendar where I can get class things done outside of class because my major thing, I procrastinate a lot and esports stuff for collegiate usually happens really late in the day which means that I don't have much time between after esports and midnight to just cram everything in. I've ended up blocking in time much earlier in the day and sometimes it can be hard for me to get started on doing whatever work I have or studying, but I've found it to be a bearable way of doing it and I can get stuff done still.
Dahle: You got to do the time if you wanna play. That's...
Wilterdink: Yes.
Dahle: I will say that that's, I think, just the natural learning curve as you're going from high school to college, and can you give us a little bit of insight to what was your biggest transition from going from high school to college with this kind of change?
Wilterdink: I guess the hardest part was the workload, I would say, because there's a lot more stuff you have to do outside of class in college than there is in high school, at least for me, because normally I was able to get my high school work done in a couple of hours so , and that was only maybe once or twice a week, but then moving to college, you have so much free time and it's so easy to waste that time just practicing for eight, ten hours a day instead of splitting your time and making sure you spend time on classes and on esports as an esports student athlete.
Dahle: Does your esports program have any requirements around eligibility?
Wilterdink: Yes we do. You have to have above a 2.0 average GPA and you have to be taking a full credit load which is or you have to have at least 12 credit hours. Most students take 15. If you end up dropping from one class midway through the year, you'll still be able to play, but if you get into the territory where you drop two, you can't play anymore.
Dahle: Okay. I know that you're currently a junior standing. And...
Wilterdink: Yes.
Dahle: As you said earlier, this time next year, you're going to be preparing for graduation already. Can you provide a little bit of insight as to what you are hoping for as far as getting out, and what does the market look like as you're starting to prepare yourself to get out?
Wilterdink: Yeah. Currently my goal out of college is to become an esports director at a college and help facilitate these kinds of esports programs at the collegiate level because I'm sure there are many students coming into college who want esports to be a big part of their experience just as it has been for me in high school and college. It's been a great experience for me, not only with making friends, but also just as a fun thing to do.
The market in general, I would say esports and gaming, it's a very interesting market, and I would say the biggest thing, also as a piece of advice to anyone looking to go into the market, connections are key. There's not going to be a ton of job postings on LinkedIn or any other job posting boards specifically for the esports industry. There's a few and you should probably apply to them if they come up, but most of the stuff you're going to find comes through connections, which is just other people you have interacted with either casually or professionally, and most of my friends here at college also are doing similar things in the esports industry, and that's allowed me to find a ton of opportunities that I otherwise wouldn't have seen.
Dahle: I can't stress it enough that if you can find internships or at least some small freelance work here and there in order to get some experience, I can't stress that enough. The last question here to wrap this up a little bit here, but you're on your way out, those about to start to come in, what is some of that advice that you would give them about either playing at the collegiate level or just even the transition to college from high school?
Wilterdink: Yeah, I guess in terms of playing, my biggest advice would be it's not always your in-game rank that matters when it comes to placing people on teams. What can be more important is your dedication to improving as well as your communication and teamwork skills. Coming into last year when I tried out for JV, I was trying out for the tank roll on Overwatch and there were four tanks trying out and I was the fourth rankwise and I ended up being placed second out of the four after tryouts, and the main reason for that is just because communication is key, especially when you play a role tank in Overwatch.
You have to be able to fight plan around other teams' ultimates and where they're set up and make decisions on the fly, and you have to be a commanding voice. I use that as an example because even though I was the lowest ranked out of all the tanks trying out, communication is just so important that it made me enough of an asset for the team to be put as the starter.
Communication is absolutely key, and you can build that through playing with friends and just communicating, or if you find scrimmages, you can participate on an unofficial team and scrimmage just to get that communication down because what happens in organized play is very different from ranked, and that goes for all games. The strategies are different, the gameplay, it's a bit of a shock when you first transition to organized play.
In terms of just academics and stuff, I already said it, but block out your time. That's what's helped me a ton with managing my course loads and playing at the same time.
Dahle: I think that's really good advice. I'm going to go ahead and clip some of that so I can share that out to a lot of individual people, too. Talon, I would like to thank you very much for your time today. Before we close it out here, I just wanted to give you an opportunity if there's anything you'd like to promote, shout out, or any other words of advice that you have for our audience. I'll give you a second.
Wilterdink: I guess I'll just go ahead and shout out my university's esports streams. We stream pretty much every day of the week at https://www.twitch.tv/unewhavenesport or https://www.twitch.tv/unewhavenesport2. For Overwatch, we have matches every Friday at 6 and 8:00 p.m. Eastern time that are streamed on those channels.
Dahle: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much, Talon. I appreciate your time today.
Wilterdink: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
