Patrick Neff is a gamer masquerading as a PhD candidate in Sports Management at Texas A&M University with a focus on esports organizations and scholastic esports. Previously, he has taught every technology area at the middle and high school levels. He hopes that his research will bring new perspectives and understanding to the value of esports in schools.
He has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Sam Houston State University and a master’s degree in Educational Technology from Texas A&M University. His passions revolve around educating students and supporting scholastic esports in Texas and nationwide. He has served as a VP of the Board and Gaming Director for the Texas Scholastic Esports Federation since early 2020. In addition to starting an esports program at Ball High School in Galveston, he presented to the University Interscholastic League Legislative Council on adding esports across Texas, and has presented to a group of ADs at the Texas Athletic Directors’ Association’s main office on how to incorporate esports into current programs.
What follows is an exclusive interview with him.
Question: What is the Texas Scholastic Esports Federation and what is its mission?
Answer: The Texas Scholastic Esports Federation is, to quote our mission statement, dedicated to making esports an accessible, inclusive, and equitable path to college, career, and military readiness for all Texas students. To put it more simply, we want kids in Texas to have the opportunity to participate in esports in whatever way they want so that they can get the same kind of benefits we see in other team sports and extracurricular activities. The organization itself is made up of, on the operational side, current and former educators who volunteer their time and efforts to make all of our events happen, from seasons of play online to in-person local tournaments to big state-wide championships each year.
Q: What are the biggest challenges to achieving that mission?
A: There are a couple of major challenges that we have faced in getting this off the ground and then expanding it. The first big hurdle was just making the case for the existence of esports programs in schools. There is a general view in education (and society, really) that video games are at best a waste of time, students spend too much time in front of screens, and that video games have a host of bad effects including laziness and violence. Overcoming these views is often a school by school and district by district process that involves showing the benefits, getting buy in from administrators, and finding passionate teachers who are willing to do the job for free.
The second major challenge is that putting on events and having adults willing to support programs costs time and money, and strongly believe in keeping things as cheap as possible so that kids don’t get priced out of participation. We have gotten by on the goodwill and volunteer hours of educators, but our growth has meant that we need to find more sources of income to make things work.
Finally, the esports industry is a complex space with some unique challenges that most of us didn’t understand when we started this, and that have continued to pop up from time to time. We have had to manage working across school districts, dealing with state laws in Texas related to certain foreign companies (I’ll discuss later in another question in detail), and the ownership and copyright legal landscape that we never even considered when we started this thing.
Q: How do you support the students (just participation, or do you also support them when it comes to being entrepreneurial in terms of new businesses or games)?
A: Our main pathway of support is through providing participation in esports. This looks like everything from putting on our own events to providing support when schools want to put on their own events. In addition, we do a lot of teacher training and provide support for starting new clubs and teams that help the students. Right now, we are piloting curriculum with the state of Texas to have esports courses that cover the industry and provide students with an understanding of the opportunities and careers available to them. Finally, we work to connect our students to collegiate programs, many of whom offer scholarships that can help pay for college.
Q: Does the Federation interact with the legal community in any way?
A: On a day-to-day basis, we don’t have much interaction with the legal community (and hope to keep it that way!). Joking aside, there have been some interactions around setting up our organization as a 501(c)3 non-profit, and we have occasionally asked for guidance and advice as we come across things that we don’t know about. Some very kind and supportive parents or friends in the legal profession have done some pro bono work for us in the past.
Q: Are there legal issues that come up at any point, and what would they be?
A: There are a couple of very big legal issues that have come up and that we have done our best to navigate. The first is around ownership and copyright of games and how we interact with them. In 2020, Riot Games changed their community guidelines to limit who could offer scholastic competitions of their game League of Legends. This change specifically barred us from offering the title except under very restrictive limitations. We as an organization determined that we would be better off not offering the title at all, and did not do so until those guidelines were changed a couple of years later. During this time, we had a number of conversations around the idea of fair use in education. It is my belief that there is a case to be made that scholastic esports would meet the criteria for a fair use exception and that we could run it without permission, but we have never made the attempt to break the rules and litigate that claim.
Another major legal issue that arose more recently popped up when the state of Texas passed a law around the use of software developed and owned by certain companies based in China. The most obvious and well-known example is that TikTok, owned by Bytedance, is banned on pretty much all state networks. That same bill also included a company called Tencent. Tencent Gaming owns, fully or partially, a number of developers who put out esports games, and those games can be restricted on state networks as well. This has been a concern for both public school IT departments and colleges, and it seems to still be somewhat vague, with different groups interpreting things in different ways.
Q: How would you describe your role in the Federation?
I am lucky enough to have been one of the founding members of TEXSEF and have served in a number of roles. In our early days, I was the competition director and oversaw our broadcasting. I have served on the board of directors since the creation of the organization as well. Much of the day-to-day has shifted to others who are still active educators, as I left teaching to get my PhD and am now a college professor. I still attend board meetings and some of our bigger events, contributing where I can to the organization.
A: Does betting or wagering ever come into play in esports and the work of the Federation?
In our work, betting and wagering isn’t something we address or deal with most of the time. Given our focus on middle and high school competitions, we don’t see much in the way of wagering. In the broader professional esports setting, you absolutely can gamble on everything from who will win a competition to stat outcomes, just like any professional sport.
Q: If so, what trends are you seeing?
A: I can’t speak to specifics around gambling in esports, but the growth of the industry and the increase of money in the space is almost guaranteed to see more gambling around the competitions that happen. I suspect we’re going to see a “point shaving” type scandal in one of the big games in the next couple of years. An interesting point of uniqueness around esports is that the game developers often own and operate the competitions, and they rarely make money on the pro scene itself. It’s effectively a form of marketing for their in-game product, so they don’t necessarily offer the same oversight as a traditional sport that is concerned with the integrity of the game. This could open the door to more abuses down the road before anything becomes standardized.
Q: Anything we missed?
A: Probably the most important thing is what I just mentioned around gambling, but on a broader scale. Right now, esports is not self-sustaining yet and is seen mostly as a way to market these games by the developers. This means that there is no consistency around how things are run, no oversight authority beyond the developers themselves. The NCAA decided not to try to do esports because it was too complicated to deal with each developer. More recently, the Saudi Public Investment Fund has begun to partner with groups like the International Olympic Committee and just recently hosted an Esports World Cup that saw games across a number of developers being played by teams from all over the world. It’s anyone’s guess as to what impact this might have or what comes next, but it might finally signal a shift towards more traditional sport approaches being applied to esports competitions in the next few years.
Q: Is there a national Federation?
A: Not in the sense most people would likely picture. A number of states have a similar organization to ours, that is educator run and non-profit. Some states have hired an outside organization like PlayVS or Generation Esports to manage their state esports competitions, and many states don’t have anything official, so they participate in an online competition run by one of those above-mentioned groups or one of the others that exist. TEXSEF and a number of other state organizations have come together to form the Interstate Scholastic Esports Alliance, or ISEA, that advocates for scholastic esports and provides a forum for mutual support. There are more than a dozen organizations that are official members, and a few more that participate on some level but haven’t joined (yet). In many ways, it’s the wild west out there.
Q: Any other states that are as advanced as Texas?
A: There are a number of other states with similar, well-developed organizations doing esports. New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma and many more have done amazing things in their own space around esports and education. Wisconsin has one of the longest running scholastic esports organizations in the nation. No two look exactly the same, from offering different titles to running their organizations in different ways. But we wouldn’t be where we are or who we are without their support and advice. One of the best things about the ISEA and scholastic esports in general is that everyone just wants to see it succeed and see kids benefit. Because of this, when we try something that works, we share it. When we make mistakes, we warn each other. This space is growing because it is collaborative.
