Loc Tran is a big man on campus at San Jose State University in Northern California.

洛克·陈(Loc Tran)是北加州圣何塞州立大学(San Jose State University in Northern California)校园里的名人。

“A lot of people stop me when I’m walking,” said Mr. Tran, a 19-year-old sophomore¹, who speaks in quick and confident bursts. “They congratulate me.”

“走在路上，好多人会拦住我，”洛克·陈说。他今年19岁，上大二，说话很快，话语间洋溢着自信。“他们会来祝贺我。”

But Mr. Tran is not a star on the football team, or a leader in student government. He is a top player on the school’s competitive video game team, helping² San Jose State claw its way to victory in June over California State University, Fullerton, in a tournament watched online by nearly 90,000 people. When the new school year started this fall, classmates’ heads swiveled toward him when professors said his name during roll call.

不过，洛克·陈并非橄榄球队的明星，或是学生会的领袖。他是学校电子竞技队的顶级玩家，今年6月帮助圣何塞州立一路过关斩将，最终击败加州州立大学富勒顿分校(California State University, Fullerton)，赢得了一项赛事的冠军。这次比赛有近9万人在网上观战。今年秋天新学年开学的时候，教授在课上点名，洛克·陈总能引起一帮同学侧目。

“I thought that was pretty cool,” Mr. Tran said.

“我那时想，好酷啊，”洛克·陈说。

Video game competitions, also known as e-sports, have taken off on campuses across the country, including Harvard and Florida State University. More than 10,000 students now play in the biggest college league, 4,400 more than last year and 4,600 more than the number of men who play on Division I college basketball teams.

电子竞技正在全美大学校园里遍地开花，哈佛和佛罗里达州立大学(Florida State University)也不例外。在规模最大的大学联盟电竞赛事中，如今有上万学生在打，比去年多了4400人，而且比在大学一级联盟打篮球的队员还多了4600人。

The stakes keep climbing, too: Winning a big tournament can sometimes earn players several years’ worth of tuition money. And in a possible sign of the future, the athletic³ department of Robert Morris University Illinois in Chicago created an official video game team this fall, offering the same sort of scholarships given to athletes playing soccer, football and ice hockey.

奖金金额也在不断攀登：赢得一场重大比赛有时可以为玩家赚取数年学费。一个可能预示未来走向的迹象是，今年秋天，位于芝加哥的伊利诺伊州罗伯特莫里斯大学(Robert Morris University Illinois)的体育部组建了一个官方电子游戏团队，为其成员提供的奖学金种类和足球、橄榄球和冰球运动员相同。

While the college e-sports craze started as a grass-roots effort, game makers⁴ have quickly swooped⁵ in, propelling the sharp rise in interest. The companies now underwrite scholarship prizes, offer team banners and provide organizational support, sensing a possible breeding ground for a new generation of superfans — people who not only play games but also consider them a spectator sport.

虽然高校电子竞技热潮最初发源于草根，但游戏厂商已经迅速跟进，推动着它大幅高涨。这些公司现在为玩家提供奖学金奖励、团队旗帜，以及组织方面的支持，因为他们觉得，这可能会培养出新一代的超级粉丝——这些粉丝不仅玩游戏，而且认为这是一种观赏性运动。

“Game developers are really waking up to the publicity⁶ power of these communities,” said T. L. Taylor, an associate professor of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied e-sports.

“游戏开发商确实意识到了这些社区在宣传上的威力，”麻省理工学院从事比较媒体研究的副教授T·L·泰勒(T. L. Taylor)说。他对电子竞技进行过研究。

Colleges, meanwhile, are often standing⁷ at arm’s length. While e-sports groups are often sanctioned clubs, receiving practice spaces from their schools, the leagues and competitions have few of the student regulations governing traditional college sports, like grade-point minimums or time limits on practicing.

高校往往对此敬而远之。虽然电子竞技团队往往是学校认可的俱乐部，学校也为它们提供了活动空间，但与传统高校体育项目不同的是，电子竞技联赛和比赛几乎没有学生管理方面的规定，比如最低成绩要求、练习时间限制等。

The rise in e-sports has been so abrupt⁸, many schools have not determined⁹ what to make of it. Carter Henderson, a spokesman for the University of Washington’s athletics¹⁰ program, said no one from the department was familiar enough with e-sports to discuss the topic. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which oversees¹¹ college athletics, said it had no comment about e-sports on campus.

电子竞技的兴起如此突然，很多学校尚未决定如何对待它。华盛顿大学(University of Washington)竞技项目发言人卡特·汉德森(Carter Henderson)说，该部门没有人熟悉电子竞技，因此无法讨论这个话题。负责监督高校体育活动的全美大学生体育协会(National Collegiate Athletic Association)表示，他们对校园电子竞技活动无可置评。

Game companies say it is too early to predict how university administrations will become involved in e-sports.

游戏公司说，现在预测大学管理部门将如何对待电子竞技还为时过早。

“This is just how basketball was in the 1940s,” said Christopher Wyatt, senior manager for North American publishing at Riot Games. “A lot of the structure and organization you see in more formal athletics, that groundwork is still being laid down here.”

“20世纪40年代时，篮球也处在这样的状况，” Riot Games公司负责北美发行的高级经理克里斯托弗·华特(Christopher Wyatt)说。“更加正式的体育项目拥有的很多结构和组织，电子竞技也有，它的基础仍在奠定之中。”

But it is unclear whether becoming a more formal part of a school would help or harm the growth of college e-sports. The time commitment required for serious competitive gaming could lead to concerns about whether e-sports leave enough time for academic study. In addition, formal recognition could diminish the autonomy that companies and teams have on campuses, bringing about rules like Title IX, the gender¹² equity¹³ law.

但目前还不清楚，在学校中变得更加正式，对于高校电子竞技的发展来说究竟是利是弊。认真参与竞技游戏需要耗费不少时间，可能会令一些人担忧，学生是否还有足够的时间用于学业。此外，把它正式化可能会削弱公司和团队在校园中的自主权，令其受到一些规定的约束，比如性别平等法律《教育法修正案第九条》(Title IX)等。

About the possibility of more official recognition, Dr. Taylor said, “I don’t think collegiate e-sports players are unified¹⁴ in any way that this is a good thing.”

关于官方是否可能给予电子竞技更多认可，泰勒博士说，“对于这究竟是不是一件好事，我认为高校电子竞技选手的看法并不统一。”

For game developers, however, the lure¹⁵ of being on campus is simple.

但是，对于游戏开发商来说，校园的诱惑相当直截了当。

“We think that’s where a lot of our players are,” said Michael Morhaime, the chief executive and co-founder of Blizzard¹⁶ Entertainment, which develops and publishes entertainment software.

“我们的很多玩家都是高校学生，”迈克尔·莫怀米(Michael Morhaime)说。他是娱乐软件开发和发行公司暴雪娱乐(Blizzard Entertainment)的首席执行官和联合创始人。

In September, Blizzard flew eight finalists from the College of Staten Island, University of Massachusetts-Amherst and other colleges to Seattle to compete for $5,000 in scholarship money in a tournament of Hearthstone, a virtual card game from the company. Last year, Azubu, a games media company, sponsored a competition that awarded $40,000 in prize money to six students on a StarCraft II team from University of California, Berkeley.

今年9月，暴雪安排八名入围者飞到西雅图，参加虚拟卡牌对战游戏《炉石传说》(Hearthstone)的决赛，争夺5000美元的奖学金。这些入围者来自史坦顿岛大学(College of Staten)、马萨诸塞大学安默斯特分校(University of Massachusetts, Amherst)等高校。去年，游戏媒体公司Azubu赞助了一个比赛，加州大学伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)六名学生组成的一个打《星际争霸II》(StarCraft II)的团队赢得了4万美元奖金。

Last February, Riot Games hosted its first North American Collegiate Championship, something like the Final Four for League of Legends, Riot’s popular online battle game. A team of five students from the University of Washington won in front of a roaring audience at an e-sports studio that Riot operates in Manhattan Beach, Calif., with 169,000 more people watching online at the tournament’s peak.

今年2月，Riot Games举办了其第一届北美大学生锦标赛(North American Collegiate Championship)，它类似于该公司人气对战游戏《英雄联盟》(League of Legends)的四强决赛。比赛场地设在Riot Games在加州曼哈顿比奇经营的一个电子竞技室，观众席上人声鼎沸。华盛顿大学五名学生组成的一个团队最终赢得了比赛。在高峰期，有16.9万多人在线观看了这场比赛。

The prize was $7,500 in scholarship money for each team member.

作为奖金，团队每个成员获得了7500美元的奖学金。

Riot recently announced that first-place winnings at the next championship, to be held in the spring, would rise to $30,000, enough to pay for about three years of in-state tuition at the University of Washington.

Riot Games近日宣布，在明年春季举办的下一届锦标赛中，冠军奖金将升至3万美元，本州学生足以用它支付华盛顿大学大约三年的学费。

“A lot more people than I expected came forward and said, ‘I’d like to try out for the team,’ ” said Jackson Brown, the manager of the University of Washington’s team, the Purple Caster Minions¹⁷.

“很多人找上门说‘我想来试一试，参加你们的团队’，人数比我预想的多得多，”华盛顿大学电子竞技团队Purple Caster Minions的队长杰克逊·布朗(Jackson Brown)说。

The growth of competitive gaming at colleges mirrors the broader rise of e-sports as entertainment. A thriving international professional e-sports circuit routinely draws tens of thousands of spectators to stadiums for competitions, with millions more viewers online. Top prizes for some events are now in the millions of dollars. Twitch¹⁸, a video streaming service that made its name broadcasting e-sport matches, was acquired this year for close to $1 billion by Amazon.

高校竞技游戏的发展反映了电子竞技作为娱乐活动日益崛起的大环境。一项成功的国际专业电子竞技赛事，往往能把数以万计的观众吸引到体育馆里现场观战，外加数百万名的网上观众。目前，有些赛事的最高奖金可达数百万美元。今年，亚马逊(Amazon)以将近10亿美元的价格收购了成名于播放电子竞技比赛的视频流服务Twitch。

The college scene is largely organized around the Collegiate StarLeague, which started at Princeton in 2009 and is the biggest college league. The organization is now active at 450 schools, up from 260 last year, according to Duran Parsi, the head of the league. Many of those players also participate in matches organized by another collegiate league, IvyLoL. Large West Coast schools like the University of Washington and University of British Columbia tend to dominate the competitions.

高校电竞圈的活动基本围绕“大学星际联盟”(Collegiate StarLeague)进行组织。它于2009年创建于普林斯顿，是目前最大的高校电竞联盟。负责人杜兰·帕尔西(Duran Parsi)表示，联盟目前在450所学校开展活动，去年则为260所。这些玩家中有许多也会参加另一个大学联盟“常春藤英雄联盟”(IvyLoL)所组织的比赛。华盛顿大学和不列颠哥伦比亚大学(University of British Columbia)等西海岸的大型高校往往会在竞赛中称霸。

The money that game companies are pouring into the college scene has persuaded many students to become much more serious about e-sports. College scholarships from corporations, including Coca-Cola, Ford¹⁹ and Google, have been around for decades, usually to encourage students to enter a particular field, like engineering. The money that game companies are giving to students, in contrast, is meant to deepen the companies’ relationship with a whole generation of players, one that is inseparable from their products.

游戏公司投入到高校电竞圈中的资金已经说服许多学生要更严肃地对待电子竞技。由可口可乐(Coca-Cola)、福特(Ford)和谷歌(Google)等企业赞助的大学奖学金已经存在了数十年之久，而这类奖学金通常用来鼓励学生进入特定领域，比如工程学。不过，游戏公司为学生提供的资金则是为了加深公司与一整代玩家之间的联系，而这种关系与他们的产品可谓密不可分。

Today, most professional players skip or delay college, because the college-age years are considered the prime period for players in the big leagues. Playing at the professional level requires far too much time for practice and travel to tournaments to allow them to also attend school.

如今，大多数专业玩家都会主动放弃或推迟进入大学，因为念大学的那几年被视作玩家参加大型赛事的黄金期。要达到专业水平，需要耗费大量时间来进行练习，并且要去各地参赛，实在没法同时上学。

Conan Liu, a student at Berkeley, took a year off from school to play StarCraft II professionally after his school team won the Azubu championship. Mr. Liu returned to school this fall to focus on pre-med studies because he did not perform as well as he had hoped in the pros²⁰. While even bench warmers in the National Basketball Association make more than $500,000 a year, the same is not true of professional gamers.

伯克利学生柯南·刘(Conan Liu)在校队赢得了Azubu组织的锦标赛冠军后，为了能专门进行《星际争霸II》竞技而休了一年学。柯南·刘今年秋季重返校园，将精力投入到医学预科的学习，因为他在专业比赛中的表现没有预期的好。虽然美国职业篮球协会(National Basketball Association)的板凳球员每年能挣到逾50万美元，但职业游戏玩家却拿不到这么多。

“You have to really be at the top, top to make a nice living,” Mr. Liu said.

“你得成为真正的顶级高手才能过上好日子，”柯南·刘说。

Game companies and collegiate league organizers predict that college e-sports could become a pipeline²¹ for the growing professional circuit. Game companies say they are awarding scholarship money at college tournaments, rather than unrestricted cash prizes, to give students an incentive²² to continue their studies.

游戏公司及大学联赛组织者预测，大学电子竞技可能会成为向不断壮大的职业巡回赛输送人才的一个渠道。游戏公司称，他们更青睐为高校电子竞技提供奖学金，而不是不设上限的现金奖励，以便鼓励学生们完成学业。

“We really want e-sports to become as ingrained in the academic environment as anything else — speech competitions, football competitions,” said Tyler Rosen, president of the e-Sports Association, which helps organize college events with the financial support of Blizzard Entertainment.

电子竞技协会(e-Sports Association)主席泰勒·罗森(Tyler Rosen)说，“我们真心希望电子竞技能像演讲比赛、橄榄球比赛等活动一样，成为校园里不可或缺的组成部分。”该协会帮助组织赛事，资金由暴雪娱乐赞助。

A test of what happens when schools embrace e-sports started recently at Robert Morris University Illinois. The first 35 students to receive athletic scholarships under the school’s new e-sports program began training this fall in a room decked out with jet-black walls, mood lighting²³ and leather gamer chairs with red piping.

伊利诺伊州罗伯特莫里斯大学最近启动了一项试验，看看学校接受电子竞技活动后会出现什么情况。首批35名学生接受了学校新设立的电子竞技项目的体育奖学金。他们今年秋季开始在一所专门的房间里进行训练，那里设有黑色的墙面、烘托游戏环境的照明，以及带有红色缝线的玩家专用皮革座椅。

The students, all League of Legends players, are getting up to 50 percent of the price of tuition and room and board, which runs about $39,000 a year, according to Kurt Melcher, the university’s associate athletic director. Mr. Melcher said he had received more than half a dozen calls from athletic directors at other universities who are interested in incorporating e-sports into their programs.

据该校体育部副主任库尔特·梅尔彻(Kurt Melcher)透露，这些学生都是《英雄联盟》的玩家，他们已经获得了最多相当于一半学费和食宿费——大约一年3.9万美元——的奖学金。梅尔彻表示，他已经收到了六七通来自其他大学体育部主任的电话，有意将电子竞技纳入他们的项目。

The idea came to Mr. Melcher, a gamer, this year after he started reading about the Collegiate StarLeague. A conversation with his wife dispelled²⁴ any doubts he had about awarding athletic scholarships to gamers.

梅尔彻是游戏玩家，他在今年看了有关“大学星际联盟”的报道后产生了这个想法。与妻子的一席话，让他打消了为游戏玩家提供体育奖学金的疑虑。

Mr. Melcher said his wife asked, “Why should it only be given to some kid who can put a ball into a hole?”

梅尔彻称，他的妻子问他，“为什么只为那些能把球弄到一个洞里的孩子提供奖学金呢？”