Leading esports center management software company ggCircuit revealed details today about their involvement in the opening of a pioneering new esports facility for high school students at Christian Brothers College High School (CBC) in St. Louis, MO. With this revolutionary new interactive space, CBC is one of the first high schools in the United States to take the proactive step to focus specifically on esports, with the goal of better supporting the school’s mission of offering innovative academic curriculum that encourages critical thinking and collaborative work, thus preparing their student body for the future.
Understanding the benefits of a potential pathway to career success, social development, and innovation in education that esports offers to its diverse student body, CBC administrators were determined to make gaming a co-curricular option for their students. Just as traditional high school clubs and sports seek to teach valuable lessons such as leadership, communication, and teamwork, research shows esports helps students learn essential life skills like critical and strategic thinking, goal setting, planning and preparation, and success management. In addition, esports offers future opportunities in careers such as high tech, computer science and programming, digital marketing, animation, content creation, game development, graphic design, marketing, video production, and many more. In 2019, over 80 higher education institutions in America offer esports-related scholarship programs totaling close to $10 million.
The biggest hurdle the school’s leadership faced was how to support this initiative and make it as cost effective as possible within the modest budget parameters they had to work with. After a great deal of research, CBC approached ggCircuit and their SpecOps consultancy division. Having a proven track record of building hundreds of successful esports centers, as well as owning and operating their own facilities, ggCircuit had the experience CBC wanted — and needed — in a partner. Working side by side, ggCircuit started from the ground up to support CBC’s esports initiative, guiding the school through the entire process to ensure the success of the project.
“ggCircuit has advised, built, and maintained hundreds of gaming spaces over the past 15 years, and we are thrilled to use this expertise to assist innovative, forward-thinking schools like CBC who understand the many benefits esports and gaming bring to students,” said Zack Johnson, Co-founder and CEO of ggCircuit. “With our real-world experience, we were able to create a premiere, state of the art facility for CBC at a fraction of the price of other esports center builds. We focused on providing the best equipment, systems, and set-up for the school, all with common sense cost effectiveness. In addition, we provided them with our signature service of dedicated 24/7 on-call support staff, cutting edge game updating and imaging PXE solutions, and ggLeap, our proprietary feature-rich center management software platform. I am excited about the future opportunities ggCircuit will have to support leading educational establishments like CBC realize their dreams of offering these types of innovative programs to their students.”
Beginning with the conversion of space previously used for Athletics meetings, CBC and ggCircuit spent six months designing, configuring, and building out the space to cater to gamers of all types and levels, specifically with multiple gaming teams and streaming areas in mind. The build focused on team play and game streaming, and features 48 dedicated gaming PC stations and four console gaming areas that seat 16 players. In addition to building out the capital budget, the company helped source vendors and equipment, and advised on the best game library for CBC’s student body. With ggCircuit’s industry-leading, cutting edge solution for game center management, ggLeap, the center requires no local hard drives, automating many of the functions needed to successfully run an esports center, making the process effortless and uncomplicated.
“The passion and excitement of our students led us to this project. When we realized the opportunity to develop leadership and problem-solving skills through esports, we knew we had to make it happen,” said Patrick Walsh, Executive Director of Strategy and Student Life. “Our intention was to ‘do it right,’ but also be responsible with budget. After hundreds of hours of research, we knew no one would be a better partner than ggCircuit. Thanks to ggCircuit’s guidance and expertise, our vision has now become a reality. This is such a new and exciting genre, and we are thrilled to partner with the experts at ggCircuit to offer this world-class gaming experience to our students.”
Over the last year, ggCircuit has added nearly 300 dedicated esports spaces around the world, including 75 other education-based locations. To date, ggLeap powers over 19,000 gaming PCs in dedicated esports facilities across 66 countries with over 1.9 million player accounts worldwide. As esports continues to see explosive growth worldwide, ggCircuit is expanding and is positioned to iterate, improve and add services and solutions for centers, business partners and gamers across the globe.
About ggCircuit
With their next-generation, cloud-based management software solution ggLeap, ggCircuit helps esports centers around the globe successfully run their businesses. With this proprietary platform, centers are able to run games and their own local tournaments, reward gamers for playing the games they love, all while offering a year-round schedule of officially managed events and tournaments for the most popular esports games of today. Since ggCircuit’s humble beginnings in 2004, the company has evolved into a fully-fledged esports services company providing center management software solutions, as well as consulting support services through its internal SpecOps team. In addition, ggCircuit is now partnered with Super League (NasdaqCM: SLGG), a leader in bringing live and digital esports entertainment and experiences directly to everyday gamers around the world.
For more information about ggCircuit visit: www.ggCircuit.com
About Christian Brothers College High School
Christian Brothers College High School is a Catholic school committed to providing a college preparatory education to students from all backgrounds. As a Lasallian school, CBC’s faculty and staff are dedicated to helping every student realize the maximum potential of their God-given talents and abilities. For more, go to CBCHS.org