On Feb. 18, the MSU E-Sports Student Association brought these five clubs for a local area network, or LAN, event.

President of the association Steven Truong said the original scheme of the event was to bring together all of these clubs together.

“Our goal right now is to help other clubs,” Troung, a biomedical laboratory science senior, said.

Truong said another goal of this event and future events is to not only encourage new clubs for new games — such as For Honor — but also to bring other individuals to the MSU esports community.

“There’s a ton of people who sit in the dorms, and they’ll play with each other … and some people just don’t want to come out,” Truong said. “But if we build an area where they don’t need to bring their computers, they can just come. There’s people with setups and stuff already, they’ll easily be able to come out.”

Chemistry junior Paul Harvey said people who like esports and video games as hobbies will eventually come out because of the fun, competitive nature.

“People take their hobbies as a way to express their passion,” Harvey said. "Once they're passionate to make a living out of those passions ... it comes down to the people thinking they have the confidence.”

One of the ways the group is looking to accomplish getting more people to join the esports community is by utilizing the new game development room in the Communication Arts and Sciences Building.

Instructor Andrew Dennis said he was trying to think of different ways the room could be used that aren’t necessarily directly related to the game design program at MSU. One such way was the esports LAN event.

“We’ve always been looking for places to do things like this,” Dennis said.

Then the idea arose to give esports teams at MSU a regular place where they could practice.

“Nobody has to worry about a roommate kicking them out, or losing their internet connection in their apartment,” Dennis said, who’s also the adviser for the Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams, as well as the academic adviser for the esports board.

Truong said another goal of his is to try and integrate each gaming community by going to the leader of those communities and having them convince their members to come to future events. He is talking to other esports groups at other universities, such as University of Michigan and Grand Valley State University, to set up an event.

“That’s our plan right now, but it’s still not set in stone,” Truong said. “I still want to get all the collegiate teams ready ... get people into other games.”

Dennis said there’s still more to learn for future events.

“This is sort of a first test case,” Dennis said. “We really hope to see this expand further and be able to use this as a platform for showing off people, gamers and the games that are made here.”