- February 3rd, 2007, 11:07 am
#57809
And no, I'm not referring to poker ...
College hopes to attract new students with online gaming competition
Ron Brown and Matt Busse
The News & Advance
February 3, 2007
Liberty University is laying the groundwork for a spring and summertime festival designed to attract potential students through computer game competition on the Internet.
Cyberfest, the event’s working name, would be a counterpart to Winterfest, a New Year’s music festival sponsored by the school for the past five years.
In Cyberfest, students would use the Internet to compete against each other in preliminary rounds the first few months of the year. The championship round would involve a gathering of hundreds of winning students on the LU campus sometime in July.
The ultimate winner would be awarded a full four-year scholarship to the school, a prize valued at $80,000. Those high schoolers who do not win the grand prize would be eligible to win lesser scholarships.
“Liberty, in its recruiting efforts, is constantly looking for new and more effective ways to communicate with potential students,” said Ron Godwin, LU’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “We probably have a dozen ways we reach out to potential students.”
Large-scale gaming tournaments can attract hundreds or even thousands of players. For example, the final rounds of the World Cyber Games last year brought 700 gamers from 70 countries to Monza, Italy.
But few schools, if any, sponsor an online computer gaming competition for scholarships. Cyberfest would provide LU a unique niche in its recruiting effort.
Godwin said LU may sponsor some type of limited gaming tournament this year and gear up for a full-fledged event next year.
“We already send recruiters to visit potential students in their home cities, their home churches and their schools,” Godwin said. “We are open to any and all ideas that might work for our recruiting. Our goal is to involve the largest number of potential students possible.”
Cyberfest, which would take place over the first half of the calendar year, would plug a significant hole in LU’s recruiting calendar.
It already has advantages over Winterfest, which has been the school’s chief recruiting event.
Cyberfest would be held at a time that LU’s students are not on campus.
Winterfest is limited in its attendance by the lack of available hotel rooms. Potential students attending Cyberfest could stay in one of the campus’ 2,711 dorm rooms.
“We have learned that the most effective recruiting events we hold actually bring students to the campus,” Godwin said.
By design, Cyberfest could provide the school with even greater outreach to potential students.
By holding the preliminary rounds on the Internet, Cyberfest could become a bona fide national competition.
“We would try to get potential students involved online throughout the country,” Godwin said. “This will not be a spectator sport. We have dedicated a lot of time thinking about communicating with high schoolers in ways they most want to be communicated with. We think Liberty needs to be on the cutting edge of how to communicate with potential students.”
Godwin is consulting with some of LU’s younger managers in an attempt to ascertain what games would be attractive to high school students.
Because of its religious beliefs, LU would not sponsor games with excessive violence or sexually explicit themes.
Some of the most well-known multiplayer video games, such as the action shooter Halo 2, contain enough violence to receive a rating of “Mature,” the equivalent of an “R” rating in movies.
Others, like the popular Madden NFL series, are rated “E,” for “everyone.”
Matthew Zealand, LU’s chief information officer, said the Madden games are being considered for inclusion in Cyberfest.
Cyberfest could include computer games and console games (like those played on systems such as Microsoft’s Xbox or Sony’s PlayStation 3).
“We’re in the brainstorming stage,” Godwin said.
Godwin’s planning team involves five different managers, most associated with the school’s information services department. Their average age is just over 24.
“I think this has got a lot of potential,” said Zealand, 28. “There are a series of markets where we are not demonstrating ourselves. Gaming is one of those.”
Zealand said the school must be flexible if it wants to communicate effectively with high school students.
“We are trying to go to where they are instead of forcing them to communicate through our mediums and our methods,” he said. “This is definitely a step in the right direction.”
Godwin said Cyberfest would add a new pillar to the school’s recruiting philosophy.
“Dr. (Jerry) Falwell has said for years that we reach potential students through music and sports programs,” he said.
“Those have been the two legs, but we’re going to add a third leg to the stool and that’s computer interactivity.”
The computer games are just a means to achieve the school’s recruiting goals.
“Our idea is to reach out all across America with some sort of gaming offerings,” Godwin said. “My objective would be to make potential students aware of Liberty, make them aware of the education opportunities here and make them aware of scholarship opportunities. We would, probably through the national preliminary competition, expose Liberty to far more people than those who would end up on campus.”
Contact Ron Brown at (434) 385-5542 or rbrown@newsadvance.com.
Contact Matt Busse at (434) 385-5533 or mbusse@newsadvance.com.
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- By Chippy