Michigan State’s Esports program faced a daunting task on Nov. 16-17 – it hosted Pantheon 2024, a multi-game extravaganza that featured many of the top players in the Midwest. It was the first of what they want to be an annual competition.
Pantheon 2024 had nine open events with 251 total attendees – four different brackets for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (the singles bracket had prize money at stake), two for Super Smash Bros. Melee and one each for Rivals of Aether II, Mario Kart DS and Street Fighter 6.
There was also a collegiate competition as MSU welcomed seven other colleges from across the Midwest to East Lansing (Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Grand Valley State, Lawrence Tech, Minnesota, Siena Heights and Wichita State). Each team competed in three games – Rocket League, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Valorant. MSU won all three collegiate events. That gave the Spartans the Triple Cup Trophy, which is awarded to the team with the most total points. Teams get points based on the result of each game.
MSU has two Esports facilities on campus – one in Hubbard Hall, a residence hall with classrooms, and another in the Communications Arts and Sciences building. Both facilities were used to host events. Also, gamers for the open competitions were spread throughout the ComArtSci building including in classrooms and WKAR’s studios.
MSU relied on the help of student workers during the event. There were four workers running the front desk to help register players, six students worked in production, three worked on the media team (two photographers and one videographer) and 10 worked to organize the tournament. There were some volunteers helping as well.
“The student workers were phenomenal,” Jono Eaton, Esports Content and Production Coordinator, said. “They even ran one of the (Twitch) streams by themselves on both days (of the event).”
The student workers are on payroll, but some of them only work a few hours per week. For Pantheon 2024, they were asked to step up.
Another key person in making sure the event ran smoothly was Grayson Harding, who coaches MSU’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate team. He compared his role to being a firefighter.
“The biggest fires that I had to put out were mistakes that were made during the planning stage,” Harding said. “A lot of the execution was pretty great, but if you have some flaws in the planning phase of it that become realized when it does get executed then there is not a whole lot you can do about that.”
As for Eaton, his main task was to run the broadcasts on the MSU Esports Twitch channel. They ran multiple streams per day and bounced around from game to game trying to keep the viewers informed on what was happening in each event.
Doing that comes with several challenges. Three student workers helped Eaton run the roughly 11-hour streams on both days. They also had commentators that helped guide the audience through each game.
Maybe the most difficult task was switching the broadcast feed from game to game. Games like Rocket League and Valorant were easier to broadcast because Eaton was able to join the game lobby from his computer no matter where the game was being played. Broadcasting Super Smash Bros. was a bit more difficult.
“Smash you have to be physically connected to the (Nintendo) Switch, which is a lot different,” Eaton said. “What we can do is have something capturing the Switch in that location and sending the signal to the main stream. That way if a Rocket League game ends early and a Valorant game is about to start we can hop over.”
MSU Esports does not monetize its Twitch channel. Signing a contract with Twitch which would allow for monetization would prevent them from multistreaming on other platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.
“Something that I found is we will get more sponsorship revenue by reaching more people by using all the platforms as opposed to trying to get subscriptions on Twitch,” Eaton said. “I used subscriptions at my last school and we very rarely got any.”
Instead, merchandise and donations are the program’s way to generate revenue.
Overall, Pantheon 2024 was a great way for MSU to showcase its Esports program.
“I think it’ll be great for the program,” Harding said. “We had a high school bracket as well, so get some recruits on campus to meet the team and everything like that. Getting students work experience in things that they’re passionate about is great, being able to use our beautiful campus to host seven other schools that are coming in to compete from across the country. This is definitely an event we’re very excited about and I definitely think we’ll be able to make it bigger and better for next year as well.”