It's game on for e-sports at colleges

In September 2016, the Ministry of Education listed "e-sports and management" as a major for colleges, paving the way for higher-education institutes to offer e-sports-related courses and official diplomas.

However, creating more world-class e-sports gamers is not China's priority, with the courses focusing on the need to produce more game designers, tournament managers and e-sports broadcasters.

According to an e-sports industry survey released by internet giant Tencent's Penguin Intelligence think tank in June, 570,000 positions will need to be filled in league management, media production, data mining, commentating and training. It also said 85 percent of positions in the industry were understaffed.

Fourteen years ago, Communication University of China became one of the first colleges in the country to offer degrees in game design, and it added an e-sports-dedicated subject, digital media art, last year aimed at further developing gaming management and design talent.

The Shanghai Theater Academy, meanwhile, is offering an e-sports commentating course. Forty students signed up for its launch in the fall.

Among all the universities offering e-sports classes, Peking University has received the most attention.

Chen Jiang, associate professor at Peking University's School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, started an e-sports class in the spring semester that proved extremely popular.

"The class was originally designed for 120 students, but about 160 showed up on the first day," Chen said. "The students asked me to bring more people into the class and change to a bigger classroom, which I did. Two weeks later, there were about 200 students."

Chen said the course was not a gaming training camp, but included in-depth study of the gaming industry, technical designs and user experience.

"When I prepared the class before the semester, I did a lot of research on how foreign universities have incorporated e-sports courses," Chen said.

"A typical example is the University of Southern California, one of the best universities in the United States. Students there can earn around 14 academic degrees at different levels associated with games and e-sports, including game design.

"I was totally shocked when I saw how far USC has come. They were already offering so many degrees, and we didn't even have an e-sports course in any of our top universities."

Booming market

Although university-level e-sports development has just got started in China, the country's e-sports market is now huge and its value has skyrocketed in recent years.

According to Penguin Intelligence's 2017 China Game Industry Report, released in June, the annual market value of China's e-sports sector reached 20 billion yuan ($3.19 billion) in 2016, generated by gamers' spending, copyright distribution, merchandising and e-commerce. The number of registered online gamers jumped to 220 million in 2017 from 170 million in 2016.