Waipahu Public Library will soon be a hub for esports and technology learning opportunities.
Local nonprofit TRUE, or Technology Readiness User Evaluation, is launching the TRUE Esports + Tech Lab at the library on July 27.
Equipped with state-of-the-art gaming PCs and displays, the lab will be open to anyone in the community. Plus, TRUE is also putting together an esports team for 10 high school students.
But the TRUE Esports + Tech Lab is designed as more than just a place for gaming. One of the nonprofit’s the main objectives for the lab is for it to serve as a learning tool for game and software development skills.
An initiative of the Hawaii Executive Collaborative, TRUE aims to accelerate the adoption of technology within local businesses while also tech-enabling the workforce, and Executive Director Leilani Farinas said that the esports lab fits right into that goal.
“We’re putting the community in touch with technology through something that they want to engage with,” Farinas told PBN. “By putting it through a framework of esports and video games, I think it’s something that can really connect, and by doing that … the output is that they can actually have some foundational skills in software development.”
The TRUE Esports + Tech Lab was created in a public-private partnership of 12 organizations that also include the State of Hawaii and the Hawaii State Library System, Office Pavilion, UH Esports, HPU Esports, and Hawaiian Telcom. Pacxa and Central Pacific Bank Foundation are providing hardware and technical guidance.
Farinas said the project cost about $10,000.
During a launch event held Thursday at Waipahu Public Library, representatives from the partnering businesses noted that the esports industry is estimated to be worth $300 billion.
As Paul Yonamine, the chairman of TRUE and executive chairman and CEO of Central Pacific Bank, noted, gaming is connected to other tech-related fields, and gamers can upskill to “go into digital fields, to learn how to become coders, programmers and things like that.”
With the goal of helping esports enthusiasts transition into a tech career path, the lab also will feature a formal learning curriculum for the students on the high school team. In addition to practicing and competing in League of Legends, the esports team also will participate in two hours of training per week on software development facilitated by GameDevHQ.
“The goal with GameDevHQ is that we use game development as a gateway to software engineering. So while they are spending time learning, playing, and communicating through strategy games, we will go ahead and show them the backdoor to that, which is how these games are made, and then look at the career possibilities for that,” GameDevHQ CEO Jonathan Weinberger said. “So while it’s really fun and exciting to play video games, it can also be even more exciting to make them, and that becomes a whole career.”
Weinberger also noted that these skillsets can be applied to a wider range of career opportunities, including virtual reality, simulation software design and more.
“At the core of it, it all starts with learning to code video games,” he said.
Beyond the esports league team, similar learning opportunities are available for anyone —whether they’re a student exploring future careers or an adult wanting to pick up new skills. At the lab, any library member can access educational content curated by GameDevHQ. TRUE also said it plans to launch additional programming, including talks with tech and gaming professionals and demo sessions.
Farinas noted that workers who can learn tech skills have the opportunity to enter a new field and increase earning their potential. TRUE noted that tech-enabled jobs earn, on average, 53% more than non-tech jobs.
TRUE said that it plans to launch additional esports facilities at other public libraries within the next year.
In a speech at the launch event, Gov. David Ige said that he hopes to eventually see similar facilities in all of the state’s 51 libraries.
“This is the first of hopefully 50 others that will follow because I truly do believe that it should be in each and every community,” Ige said. “It’s exciting to see high-powered personal computers here in a library that can provide a platform to access esports and this learning opportunity. … This becomes the classroom of the future. ”
