The Libraries levels up with the new Gaming and Esports Lab

When the NC State Gaming and Esports Lab opened on the fourth floor of the Hunt Library in January, students were excited to play. By the second week, over 300 students had already completed the orientation process and were happily immersed in the Libraries’ latest high-tech space, spamming the buttons on their controllers to score goals and complete levels. 

The lab’s debut was a smash hit, and its popularity is growing fast. But that’s not surprising—the new space builds upon a longstanding commitment to gaming at the Libraries. Since as early as 2007, the Libraries has featured gaming and virtual reality spaces, developed a vast collection of games and game systems, brought in industry leaders and pioneers for talks and workshops and created programming to make gaming inclusive of the whole campus community.

The Gaming and Esports Lab might be new, but when it comes to gaming, the Libraries has been leveling up for years.

Much more than a placeholder
Featuring 35 gaming PCs and four console stations, the lab provides a state-of-the-art outlet for students and faculty interested in gaming. It will also support the university’s new Esports Program until the NC State Esports Arena opens in Mann Hall in 2026. Last year, the North Carolina General Assembly allocated funds to launch the university’s esports program, devoting $12 million to build what will be among the largest collegiate esports arenas in the nation.

The Libraries stepped up to provide a pilot gaming space until that construction is completed, working with the existing, student-organized Esports Club and other partners across the university to design and build the lab in Hunt. The university hired Cody Elsen—the most decorated collegiate esports coach of all time—to be the first director of NC State Esports and to oversee the Esports Program from a position in the Libraries’ Learning Spaces and Services (LSS) department. 

As a coach, Elsen is already a legend in the esports world—in five years at Northwood University in Michigan, he led the school’s esports team to 14 national championships and two world championships. He brings the highest possible pedigree in competitive gaming to NC State, and he’s excited about the expanded role he will play here.

“The hypercompetitive esports athlete is a niche segment of gaming where, overall, casual gaming is the more demonstrable group. That's why you have both gaming and esports in the name of the lab, because we’re going to have a lot of casual gamers in there,” Elsen says. “A lot of people just want to play Stardew Valley, or Roblox, or Minecraft. They want to play games where they can simply just relax and have fun and it's a social thing for them. So it's a partnership between both here.”

Elsen sees that the Libraries is ideally positioned to support this broader view of gaming, especially when it comes to developing skills that lead to career paths for NC State graduates.

Gamer today, gaming employee tomorrow
Everyone knows that gaming has become a huge international industry, but they might not know that the Triangle is a major employer in the industry. RTP is home to Epic Games—the creator of the online behemoth Fortnite, one of the most popular games on the planet with over 600 million active accounts. Epic employs over 5,500 people, and  Insomniac Games, which has sold more than 70 million games, has been around fors 25 years. And new game development startups are popping up in the area all the time.

In order to grow quickly enough to be competitive in such a dynamic industry, these companies need people with ready-made skills and experience, and Elsen is excited to make those connections happen through workshops and industry partnerships. The lab will host game company representatives to do demonstrations for students and to facilitate esports competitions. And it already has—Epic Games and Nvidia have both scheduled events in the lab. But companies aren’t just looking for the next generation of game developers. They need experienced, motivated people for business development and marketing roles as well. They need gaming events people to livestream and sportscast competitions. These future hires are likely playing in the Gaming and Esports Lab right now.

“Being in the Libraries was very intentional, and I think it makes a lot of sense,” Elsen says. “A big reason why I'm at the Libraries is the amount of workshops we're going to do for career development and skill development within the Libraries surrounding esports and gaming. It just makes sense because it builds off of what the Libraries already does. We have the resources to host the workshops, the staff to support instruction in skills development, to support guest speakers and special events. And students are already used to going to the Libraries for events.”

Elsen will also serve as a point person for faculty collaborations in the lab, which might range from class visits to custom workshops to seminars with industry partners. This fall, for instance, the lab plans to collaborate with instructors in Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management to teach about esports event management. This could involve hosting a mock esports event with them so students can see what a tournament setting is like.

“We've already had quite a bit of faculty interest. That started happening on day one and continues to happen,” Elsen says. “We'll be facilitating the space as something the faculty can utilize in a way that fits their instructional needs.”

The Gaming and Esports Lab has had to get up and running as quickly as possible this spring after a fast-tracked renovation and installation at Hunt. Elsen feels grateful for the expertise and commitment of the Libraries team that he’s a part of, especially through such a quick transition from idea to operational space. 

He credits Jill Sexton, the Libraries’ Associate Director for Digital & Organizational Strategy, and David Woodbury, the Department Head of LSS, for pushing the program from the beginning to get to this point. Elsen can only imagine the committee meetings and presentations and consensus building it has taken to get the lab equipped and opened.

“And I mean, that whole LSS side of things has been amazing, and it's not just the people I work with in esports; it's all the coworkers that I've gotten to collaborate with,” Elsen says. “The collaboration aspect has been the most refreshing thing for me coming to NC State. We really all share the same goal of trying to give the students the best experience possible through spaces where they can learn and grow and be inspired to go down a certain career path one day. That's the biggest thing about the Libraries that has set things apart.”

Gaming has always lived at the Libraries
Sexton knows that Elsen has embraced the Libraries’ core organizational value of being student-focused—and that the growth of gaming at the Libraries has only enhanced that. 

“We've got a long history of engagement in technology that's adjacent to co-curricular skills development,” Sexton says. “In terms of gaming, to most people's minds, it's obviously like a social outlet, a way for students to blow off steam. But it also helps to support students to develop these different skills.”

Sexton notes that video gaming first became a part of the Hill Library when the East Wing was renovated in 2007. That original space—devoted exclusively to gaming—brought gaming very visibly right into the center of the Learning Commons. The Libraries also started its gaming collection, which now features around a thousand games, with Super Smash Bros. and FIFA being the most popular over time. Over time, the Libraries also made game consoles available for checkout.

When the Hunt Library opened in 2013, a Game Lab space was one of the building’s centerpiece high-tech spaces. The result of collaborations between the Libraries and  faculty in the Department of Computer Science and the College of Design, the Game Lab represented a step forward in the Libraries’ focus on gaming and skills development.

“We had students develop video games that were set in the Hunt Library where they had to obtain knowledge as they explored spaces throughout the building,” Sexton recalls. “It was called Library Run—there were goals that they had to reach in the video game, and it was all about using Libraries services to gather knowledge. That was pretty cool.”

In 2016, the Virtual Reality Studio opened in the Hill Library, which has provided access for faculty and students to play and create games. “They can learn how to use game design platforms like Unity and Unreal video game engines,” Sexton says. “And it's provided opportunities for faculty to come and bring their classes in to explore ways to design and use software that is built on those platforms.”

Student-created games and immersive video environments developed with these design platforms and game engines now appear regularly in other Libraries spaces. Stop by the 360-degree Cyma Rubin Visualization Gallery during exams to experience the immersive "Aquarium," a virtual oasis of vibrant marine life developed with the Visualization Spaces Development Kit (visSDK) for presentations in high-tech spaces.

More recently, the Libraries has taken an active role in developing programming that promotes inclusivity in the often competitive and male-dominated world of gaming. Making Space—a series of public talks and workshops that center diversity and inclusion in STEM—has brought in entrepreneurs in game development and esports to talk about their experiences in the industry. Raiders of the Lost Arcade events have provided a platform for students to play video games to promote experiential learning, empathy building, and storytelling. And Femme Game Nights have opened up gaming activities and spaces to women and those who identify as feminine or nonbinary and their allies. With inclusivity in mind, the Libraries has developed the Gaming and Esports Lab standards for behavior that align with general Libraries priorities and standards.

The gradual expansion of gaming at the Libraries has led to this moment of the lab’s launch, and it informs how the Libraries uses sthi new space as a lens through which to look at the future needs of students and faculty. Sexton is used to opening a space or starting an initiative and then asking what else it might someday grow into.

“One area of potential is the sheer power of the computers in the lab,” Sexton muses. “They've got extreme processing power, really powerful CPUs, which makes them well-suited to do a variety of computationally intensive work. Not just gaming—that could be programming and data analysis, it could be graphic design, it could be video game design. We're interested in seeing what needs faculty might bring to us that could really harness that power.”

“We have a history of nurturing this kind of professional growth that benefits students with portfolio and skills development that they can take into their internships and their jobs after they graduate. It's an important part of our investment in some of these technologies that might otherwise seem unusual for a library—this active engagement of gaming technologies with student learning and faculty research. And we're really hoping that the Gaming and Esports Lab and the NC State Esports Program will just be another kind of launchpad for those kinds of collaborative learning projects.”