WORCESTER — A professional esports coach who helped steer Becker College’s esports team to two championships last year has big plans for building esports and recreational gaming at Clark University.
Nicholas “Shifty” Travis, 35, is relocating from Plano, Texas, to take on a new role of director of esports and recreational games at Clark University. For the past two-and-a-half years, Travis has been coaching esports teams at the collegiate level.
He coached a team at Becker College and currently coaches for Boise State University. This past spring, the Becker and Boise State teams won a combined five esports championships.
Travis said he first got into video games as a child when he saw his brother play the football game Tecmo Super Bowl on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
“I’m a big sports fan as well as esports, so mix the two together and I played the heck out of that game,” Travis said. “Got really good at it, too; really, really good at it. That kind of fueled my competitive aspect, the sports aspect, the video game aspect.”
Travis first got into playing competitively through the tactical shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and was an early adopter of the popular multiplayer shooter Overwatch.
With Overwatch, Travis said he was performing well at some of the early tournaments, but found that esports teams lacked necessary cohesion.
“I noticed that the teams that were competing at the time, they had a lot of talent, but they didn’t have any sort of cohesion,” Travis said. “They had a lot of problems of inner turmoil. They had different viewpoints. Even my own team at the time was having issues with that.”
Transition to coaching
That lack of internal focus was what motivated Travis to initially become a coach, becoming successful enough to start coaching for Creation Esports, one of the biggest Overwatch teams at the time.
Creation was eventually brought into the esports organization then known as Team Dignatas with Travis joining them to serve as a coach for about a year.
Dignatas’ Overwatch team disbanded after big esports organizations were required to pay a hefty price to be a part of a high-level league, Travis said. After Dignatas, Travis started a team of European players that were picked up to become the Overwatch league London Spitfire’s academy team British Hurricane.
Travis eventually moved on to collegiate coaching, with the Becker team winning an NECC championship and a Spark Series championship in spring. The Boise State team won an NECC championship, a PlayVs championship and a Mountain West championship.
That spring was also Becker College’s last semester before closing. Travis said it was an unfortunate time, but the students were able to rally to emerge victorious.
“It was a really unfortunate time, but at the same time it was emotionally charged both positively and negatively,” Travis said. “I feel like one of the reasons why we played so well and won a championship was because of that.”
Clark University absorbed Becker’s well-regarded game design and esports programs to establish the Becker School of Design & Technology, and Travis is among the Becker staff and faculty to transition to Clark.
In order to coach a collegiate esports team, Travis said that a coach needs to be knowledgeable about the games that the team is playing and a good manager of the student players.
“You want to make sure that you know what you’re talking about. You want to at least know as much, preferably much more, of the game than the players you’re coaching,” Travis said. “But also, being able to manage a team, manage players, manage young people to be able to become better at something that they are trying to achieve and accomplish.”
Travis said he needs to ensure that players do not lose their focus and are in a good mental space when competing and playing. A coach should also have a good read on the players so they can assist them with managing any problems that arise from schoolwork or personal matters.
“Part of being on a collegiate team isn’t just being on that collegiate team, but making sure that it fits in their life in college,” Travis said. “And it’s in a way that it’s a benefit to them as opposed to something that takes too much time. I make sure that school always comes first, family second.”
Teamwork key to success
Some esports players may not have experience with being members of an athletic team, and Travis said they may need help learning how to take gaming a step beyond casual play, communicate with fellow teammates as a cohesive unit and learn how to play so they are benefitting the full team.
“It’s one of those things where you really play the game in a different way than you ever have before because you have resources at your disposal that you’ve never had before,” Travis said. “You have teammates that will have your back trying to accomplish something. And if you fail that’s OK because your teammate might be able to succeed because of your failure.”
Players also need to be able to deeply analyze the video game and their playing to get better and be prepared to play against competition that requires more refined playing than they may be accustomed to, Travis said.
As an esports director, Travis said he needs to be on top of what video games have potential for cultures to grow around and lead to the formation of clubs and teams to form around.
“If the kids are going to be interested in, say, the new game that comes out and it has legs in the collegiate scene, I want to promote that. I want to learn about that, I want to be on top of that,” he said. “So it’s really important for me to know about that so if we have something at Clark that can use that new game and grow either from a casual perspective like a club team or for a more competitive aspect like a varsity team, that we don’t let that racehorse go to waste.”
In order to track gaming trends at Clark, Travis sent out a survey to students to see what games students are interested in and may want to play competitively. He said over half of the over 60 respondents so far have expressed interest in competitive play.
Travis said a good game for varsity play requires interest from students and an existing collegiate scene. He said games such as Rocket League, Overwatch and League of Legends are the most popular for varsity play, with some also liking Rainbow Six and Hearthstone.
Ready to lead Clark
In his new role at Clark, Travis said his goal is to create an inclusive gaming community that gives anyone interested in video games at any level something they would enjoy. He said he wants the casual crowd to know they will have something to enjoy, adding that some esports programs tend to only focus on the varsity program.
However, Travis said Clark fully intends to develop a tier-one esports program where teams can be competitive in tournaments. That effort will include offering scholarships for recruitment, Travis said.
Travis said another part of his new job will be overseeing recreational and tabletop games at Clark such as Dungeons & Dragons and poker.
Travis said it can sometimes be frustrating to not have direct control of his players when they are in the midst of the competition and he has to step back and take on the role of a supporter. However, watching players under his wing improve is one of Travis’ favorite parts of coaching.
“When they accomplish something that they couldn’t do previously that’s just amazing,” Travis said. “Sometimes it takes me reminding them of doing something several times, but eventually they get it and when that happens, when it clicks, they’re like ‘Shifty, I did it.’”
Becker’s NECC victory was a prime example of such a moment of growth. The team went against tough opponents who used a play style that Travis said was the team’s “kryptonite.”
The team’s victory over a seven-game series was even more satisfying to Travis than winning a $100,000 championship with professional players.
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