The Red Bulletin Oct/Nov 2020 (US)

dynamic these days,” says Sari Kitelyn,
who heads up Full Sail’s esports programs.
“Gaming can really bring you career
opportunities.”
Sports, of course, have always offered
avenues to employment. Traditional
athletes have leveraged their skills in
conjunction with sports management
programs to find work off the field. But
now, the skills and tools being developed
within esports are presenting a different
degree of opportunity. “Think about
consumer brands and how they’re
engaging with the public,” says NACE’s
Brooks. “Almost all that is shifting to
an online interaction, to managing
communities, streaming, to livestreaming
in particular, with personalities and
events, and that’s where we see a ton of
advertising, marketing and journalism
interest, and esports is right there
teaching people how to do that.”
By early afternoon, the Fortress
has begun to empty. Danaher,
Hernandez and another Full Sail
student, Erik Alpizar, take a break in
a lounge area. Danaher munches on a
cinnamon pretzel and talks about her
two cats, Cookie and Gazlowe, who
she named after a goblin in World of
Warcraft. The conversation turns to
games. Alpizar, who did a stint in the
Navy, is a devoted player of Dragonball,
a one-on-one fighting game. By his own
reckoning, Alpizar is one of the top five
players in Florida. (He placed 96th out
of some 1,200 players in a Las Vegas
tournament last year.) “When I was really
in the thick of it, there was a month
where literally on a Friday night I was
driving to Tampa, and then on Saturday
I was in Jacksonville, and then the
following week I was in Miami. And then
the week after that, I would be in Orlando
Full Sail student Erik Alpizar is a devoted player
of the one-on-one fighting game Dragonball.
64 THE RED BULLETIN