Esports - Some questions

[Dos_Box]

Last night, whilst musing how much I kinda regretted getting an Xbox One X when first released and keep finding myself playing older games on it still, some questions popped into my head which may have been sparked by my having spoke to a potential sponsor who specialises in esports hardware recently.

Mainly because esports is an up and coming activity for schools, and I think there is still not quite enough info out there on the nitty-gritty of it all.

 

And my question(s) are these:

 

1. What specs are your gaming PC's vs what you could actually get by using i.e. are they overpowered for what is required?

2. What have you found to be more important, resolution (are you using a lower resolution that allows for better FPS for example), fps or latency etc. ?

3. Did you feel you had overspent on hardware or underspent, and should have gone for a higher spec for the gaming PC's?

4. Will your new hardware be relevant for about 4-5 years and capable of competing still?

5. What were the hardest parts of getting your school esports hardware up and running?

 

I know a few of you out there are managing esports setups in your schools and am very curious as to how you are getting along with them, or what issues you faced. It may be we'll have to get British Esports back to speak to you all at some point this year

[mavhc]

From attending that esports webinar a while ago my conclusion is they know nothing of proxies, domains, locked down systems, multiple users, not running as admin or licensing. And they're not willing to learn

[BKGarry]

From attending that esports webinar a while ago my conclusion is they know nothing of proxies, domains, locked down systems, multiple users, not running as admin or licensing. And they're not willing to learn

 

Really? Because British Esports provide a nice list of ports etc for firewalls etc on their Student Champs websites, and I have found them very cooperative when I am asking questions for my potential setup that could be coming in September

[Rob_D]

Many years ago now, we joined the Digital School House esports liege. At the time they were using Overwatch, and I remember it being an absolute pain to get working and keep working. We never really invested in it as a school it was just running on our regular IT suite PCs, which actually ran it okay at 1080p low.

These days, DHS uses switch games for their Esports tournaments (this year was Splatoon, and I think last year was Smash Bros), and it's so much easier. We've gone from having to have a dedicated support person at the club, to pretty much no involvement.

So while it's kind-of sidestepping your main questions, I think the best way to bring e-sports into schools is through consoles. It's just so much easier to pull out a dedicated box that everyone is familiar with.

[PotNoodleTech]

The main issue in Wales has been the local authorities not providing proper access through firewalls and filters to actually deliver the e-sports courses.

 

The PCs are the easy part!

 

I know schools that have literally had to buy in a seperate broadband line because the LA refused to help. Atrocious.

 

Totally ironic when Welsh Gov has been pimping e-sports left right and centre only for their sub-minions to be the people who actually stop it from working.

[Dos_Box]

So, when it comes to the internet side of things, and I can appreciate that most schools have multiple hoops to jump through (firewalls, filtering etc.) before you can get out onto the net, what is the biggest problems you have encountered connecting, and what has your internet provider done to help things (if any)?

[ColonelPanic]

Hi - I'm the IT/thing with a plug manager at our school, and I did 4 years of P16 teaching (for my sins). We're running esports as an extra-curricular activity, and we're introducing the Level 3 BTEC in September, with it being so popular.

 

The PCs we've installed are Ryzen 7 5900X with a RTX3060, 32GB memory, 1TB SSD. Monitors are 27" 1080p 100Hz 1ms interval.

 

As most esports titles are optimised for 1080p, we specced the computers to be able to handle 100FPS in our esports titles (Valorant and League of Legends). Although it's difficult to predict what future requirements will be.

 

We've got a clean internet connection coming into our Smoothwall appliance, so all filtering/whitelisting is done by us. The British Esports association publish a list of ports and URLs that need to be open, and a cursory Google/Reddit search found the rest. I set up a VLAN specifically for those machines, and they're not used for timetabled lessons, which helps.

 

The 2 main sticking points were arguing with the teaching staff who *insist* we have Marvel Rivals on there, but I'm not giving admin permissions to users to they can run the launcher for it (which it requires), or punching a great hole in the firewall to let of the data back to China (where the launcher is published from). The other difficulty we have is getting Riot's Vanguard to work - it required TPM to be configured properly, and won't allow us to use screen monitoring/recording software (specifically Impero Edu Pro).

 

Apart from that, it seems to work very well, the kids love it, and certain teaching staff love having the end of term 'knees-up' where we shoot each other for 2 hours and get pizza ordered to the school.

[Dos_Box]

Hi - I'm the IT/thing with a plug manager at our school, and I did 4 years of P16 teaching (for my sins). We're running esports as an extra-curricular activity, and we're introducing the Level 3 BTEC in September, with it being so popular.

 

The PCs we've installed are Ryzen 7 5900X with a RTX3060, 32GB memory, 1TB SSD. Monitors are 27" 1080p 100Hz 1ms interval.

 

As most esports titles are optimised for 1080p, we specced the computers to be able to handle 100FPS in our esports titles (Valorant and League of Legends). Although it's difficult to predict what future requirements will be.

 

We've got a clean internet connection coming into our Smoothwall appliance, so all filtering/whitelisting is done by us. The British Esports association publish a list of ports and URLs that need to be open, and a cursory Google/Reddit search found the rest. I set up a VLAN specifically for those machines, and they're not used for timetabled lessons, which helps.

 

The 2 main sticking points were arguing with the teaching staff who *insist* we have Marvel Rivals on there, but I'm not giving admin permissions to users to they can run the launcher for it (which it requires), or punching a great hole in the firewall to let of the data back to China (where the launcher is published from). The other difficulty we have is getting Riot's Vanguard to work - it required TPM to be configured properly, and won't allow us to use screen monitoring/recording software (specifically Impero Edu Pro).

 

Apart from that, it seems to work very well, the kids love it, and certain teaching staff love having the end of term 'knees-up' where we shoot each other for 2 hours and get pizza ordered to the school.

 

Thanks @ColonelPanic, that's very helpful, can I ask how you handle the games and licensing? Do you have 'x' amount of Steam accounts and use them all individually or is there a group account type of thing you can use instead?

[ColonelPanic]

Thanks @ColonelPanic, that's very helpful, can I ask how you handle the games and licensing? Do you have 'x' amount of Steam accounts and use them all individually or is there a group account type of thing you can use instead?

Students are expected to have their own Riot accounts (both our games use the Riot launcher). We do have steam installed on the PCs too, and students are expected to have their own steam login if they want to use it. They can log in to the PCs using their normal Active Directory accounts - the filtering is done based on the location of the PCs rather than the account (the esports PCs get student filtering transparently). What also helps is that our school is only Year 9 - Year 13, otherwise we'd have to stop Y7 and Y8 logging in (min age requirement for Steam is 13)

[Dos_Box]

Students are expected to have their own Riot accounts (both our games use the Riot launcher). We do have steam installed on the PCs too, and students are expected to have their own steam login if they want to use it. They can log in to the PCs using their normal Active Directory accounts - the filtering is done based on the location of the PCs rather than the account (the esports PCs get student filtering transparently). What also helps is that our school is only Year 9 - Year 13, otherwise we'd have to stop Y7 and Y8 logging in (min age requirement for Steam is 13)

 

So pupils are expected to own a copy of whatever game they are to compete in?

Not a criticism and as many of these games are relatively cheap anyway it makes sense, especially when it comes to practicing* at home.

 

*Playing video games.

[ColonelPanic]

So pupils are expected to own a copy of whatever game they are to compete in?

Not a criticism and as many of these games are relatively cheap anyway it makes sense, especially when it comes to practicing* at home.

 

*Playing video games.

 

Yes, we made sure the games we picked were all free-to-play. The British esports main student championships run with Overwatch 2, Rocket League, League of Legends, and Valorant, so is inclusive by design.

[slugshead]

We use the British e-sports associations list of games, that we enter the tournaments for. All free to play, students are free to create accounts with their school email addresses or log in with their own (They love to show off their in game skins).

 

Got gaming rigs, i7, 3060Ti's, 8GB mem and 144hz 1080p monitors, nothing too overkill, but sufficient.

 

They are standard domain joined computers, with their own OU, their own VLAN (ACLs in place to only allow what's needed between servers), same UAC level as the rest of the school, SCCM imaged etc, impero monitored like everything else.

 

What's different?

* They have their own AppLocker policies to allow the games

* Different firewall/filtering rules applied on Smoothwall for their VLAN (If you don't want to use a dedicated VLAN, use an ip range).

* They have their own group setup on our AV solution to allow the games and the anticheat software

* They also have their own config from Impero to allow certain things

 

Now the real challenge to overcome was updating and elevation. AdminByRequest worked wonders here, first 25 licenses are free. The approved game launchers are whitelisted and students are able to run as admin.

 

Haven't had to go down to the room in about 4 months.

[Rob_D]

Now the real challenge to overcome was updating and elevation. AdminByRequest worked wonders here, first 25 licenses are free. The approved game launchers are whitelisted and students are able to run as admin.

 

Back when we first did gaming club, we lost the first 5-10 minutes of the session to downloading updates. Did you have a way around that (scheduled OOH updates or something)?

[mavhc]

https://partner.steamgames.com/pccafe https://lancache.net/docs/faq/ https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43 https://github.com/tpill90/steam-lancache-prefill options for Steam stuff

[slugshead]

Back when we first did gaming club, we lost the first 5-10 minutes of the session to downloading updates. Did you have a way around that (scheduled OOH updates or something)?

 

I'm fortunate enough to have an internet connection fast enough that a 2-5Gb update on 25 computers is barely noticeable.

 

It's a different story though when Fortnite drop an 80Gb+ update. This has maxed out our internet a few times. Albeit, it's outside of lesson times so it's not the end of the world. E-Sports tournament nights though, there's plenty of time to get everything updated before the rounds start.

[PotNoodleTech]

Sounds like you've got it nailed slugshead. Well done.

[Fawthrop]

Has anyone managed to get xbox cloud working in a school? We seem to run into issues with it and have opened all suggested ports but still keep getting a black screen when it attempts to open a game.

[Dos_Box]

One question I forget to ask is, what keyboards and mice are school esports teams using? Does the school pay\provide these, or do they encourage pupils to bring their own?

I can imagine that per item, this can get expensive for schools to be funding.

[slugshead]

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/corsair-4-in-1-gaming-bundle-2024-edition-10266645.html

 

The most cost effective solution I could find.

 

We do however on tournament night allow students to use their own peripherals. All mass storage is blocked so no concerns and we will not install proprietary software.