Japan’s First Esports High School

Video games have become so popular that they’ve become their own school subject! This spring, Japan will open its first esports high school in Shibuya, called Esports Koutou Gakuin. This school is funded by NTT, a Japanese telecommunications company, and the Tokyo Verdy soccer club. This school will defy the standards of modern education and may even change the future.

Students at the Esports High School will take typical high school courses but will also have classes to hone their gaming skills. These classes will be taught by professional esports instructors and players. Games taught include first-person shooter games, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games, and strategy games. The goal is to create a generation that will pursue careers as esports professionals, streamers, programmers, game writers, VR creators, and game designers. According to Brenton Blanchet, “Students will compete and learn on 40 Galleria XA7C-R37 gaming PCs with Intel Core i7-11700 processors and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards.

To many, this concept may seem far-fetched, but it is becoming a reality and represents the future. People can make entire careers out of gaming through tournaments, merchandise, advertising, sponsorships, and revenue sharing. Some professional gamer salaries range from $50,000 to $75,000 per year. Professional gamer Johan “N0tail” Sundstein earned $7 million from competitive gaming in 2021.

Although much of the value in this industry is based on illegal betting, making it difficult to calculate the true value of the esports industry, Japan specifically has the third largest gaming industry in the world. The esports market in Japan was estimated to be worth 8.7 billion Japanese yen in 2020, and this value is expected to have grown since then.
https://esports-hs.com/

Esports High School is unlikely to be the last of its kind, and many more similar institutions are expected to follow, further cementing the importance and legitimacy of esports in modern education and careers.