The Gaming Fair will host the final of the UB Alma Mater e-sports tournament
From left to right, Francesc Xavier Vila, Mercè Segarra and Eloi Planas.
News
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Institutional
(23/07/2024)
The first intra-university e-sports tournament, UB Alma Mater, organized by the University of Barcelona, will hold its final at SAGA, the Salón del Gaming (Gaming Fair), on Friday 29 November. This was explained this morning by Mercè Segarra, Vice-Rector of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Transfer of the UB, and Eloi Planas, member of the executive of the Plataforma per la Llengua, at a press conference in the UB’s Historic Building, accompanied by the secretary of Language Policy of the Government of Catalonia, Francesc Xavier Vila.
From left to right, Francesc Xavier Vila, Mercè Segarra and Eloi Planas.
News
|
Institutional
23/07/2024
The first intra-university e-sports tournament, UB Alma Mater, organized by the University of Barcelona, will hold its final at SAGA, the Salón del Gaming (Gaming Fair), on Friday 29 November. This was explained this morning by Mercè Segarra, Vice-Rector of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Transfer of the UB, and Eloi Planas, member of the executive of the Plataforma per la Llengua, at a press conference in the UB’s Historic Building, accompanied by the secretary of Language Policy of the Government of Catalonia, Francesc Xavier Vila.
UB Alma Materis a League of Legends video game tournament between UB faculties, which will kick off on 10 October and aims to promote innovation and wellbeing in the field of e-sports, as well as disseminating values such as equality and sustainability. In collaboration with Omashu, a company born out of the UB’s business incubator, the tournament organizers will use artificial intelligence to analyse players’ performance metrics in real time to optimize their strategies during the games. In addition, biometric data will be used to monitor live stress and fatigue levels to know the optimal combinations of rest and strategies, and thus prevent the exhaustion of the participants. The tournament, which asks all registered participants to follow a manual of good practices and to form mixed teams, should also serve as a springboard for the Catalan language in the field of online games.
The tournament should also serve as a springboard for the Catalan language in the field of online games.
Mercè Segarra, UB Vice-Rector for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Transfer, stressed that “UB Alma Mater places the University of Barcelona at the forefront of Europe: it is an important step forward in the University’s commitment to new technologies, to one of the emerging sectors of the Catalan economy, such as video games, and also to parity and the Catalan language”. “It is also a project that promotes university talent, as it is made by and for the students, and that advances biomedical research on the impact of video games on the health of the participants”.
Under SAGA, Gaming Fair, on Friday 29 November, the final four — which will pit the first team against the fourth and the second against the third — and the grand final — which will include three games between the best team of the two previous games — will take place. The collaboration between UB Alma Mater and the Fair will enrich Friday’s session, which will be dedicated mainly to students, with workshops and information sessions for them to discover training possibilities and job opportunities. As a novelty, a game jam will also be organized for students from training centres, a meeting consisting of a competition to develop video games in situ, based on a specific premise, which will contribute to making the fair even more gamified and give greater visibility to training centres and future professionals in the industry.
Programme of the Fair
As far as the rest of the programme is concerned, the show is once again focusing on the great attractions of previous editions, in a space of almost seven thousand square metres. Thus, SAGA continues to offer a large exhibition space with stands of development companies, which will show the latest developments in the world of video games in Catalan, as well as training centres, players’ associations and e-sports clubs. There will also be a LAN party, where up to two hundred people can play dozens of video games for fifty-six hours at a time, and a programme of top-level competitions, on a large fourteen-metre stage, with the best teams in Catalan in the League of Legends LOP competition. In addition, dozens of gaming points will be scattered throughout La Farga to discover current and retro video games; it will host talks and training sessions, and it will be possible to listen to several live podcasts.
During the press conference, Francesc Xavier Vila, Secretary for Linguistic Policy of the Government of Catalonia, which supports SAGA, pointed out that the Department of Culture has, since last year (2023), announced an annual line of specific subsidies to increase the presence of the Catalan language in the field of video games. He also stressed the importance of publicizing the video games available in Catalan and, in this regard, he highlighted the VDJoc, a database of video games in Catalan, which currently contains more than 200 video games available in Catalan. The Head of Language Policy also gave the latest data on the video game sector in Catalonia. As stated in the White Paper on the Catalan video game industry 2023, published last week with data from 2022, the sector continues to grow: it has more than 4,600 workers (8.7% more than in 2021) and has doubled its turnover since 2016, reaching a total of 700 million euros per year. Catalonia generates 52% of the business in the whole of Spain and concentrates half of the workers. In addition, Francesc Xavier Vila stressed that the work shared between the industry and the Department of Culture “makes us optimistic about a future in which we hope to incorporate AAA games in Catalan, which would be a great boost for the Catalan language”.
Finally, the press conference was attended by the Hoippu Games team, made up of students from the ENTI-UB school, who showed the game Sugary Falls, winner of the Demoday 2024, the awards for the best games of the year at the school.
Under SAGA, Gaming Fair, on Friday 29 November, the final four — which will pit the first team against the fourth and the second against the third — and the grand final — which will include three games between the best team of the two previous games — will take place. The collaboration between UB Alma Mater and the Fair will enrich Friday’s session, which will be dedicated mainly to students, with workshops and information sessions for them to discover training possibilities and job opportunities. As a novelty, a game jam will also be organized for students from training centres, a meeting consisting of a competition to develop video games in situ, based on a specific premise, which will contribute to making the fair even more gamified and give greater visibility to training centres and future professionals in the industry.
Programme of the Fair
As far as the rest of the programme is concerned, the show is once again focusing on the great attractions of previous editions, in a space of almost seven thousand square metres. Thus, SAGA continues to offer a large exhibition space with stands of development companies, which will show the latest developments in the world of video games in Catalan, as well as training centres, players’ associations and e-sports clubs. There will also be a LAN party, where up to two hundred people can play dozens of video games for fifty-six hours at a time, and a programme of top-level competitions, on a large fourteen-metre stage, with the best teams in Catalan in the League of Legends LOP competition. In addition, dozens of gaming points will be scattered throughout La Farga to discover current and retro video games; it will host talks and training sessions, and it will be possible to listen to several live podcasts.
During the press conference, Francesc Xavier Vila, Secretary for Linguistic Policy of the Government of Catalonia, which supports SAGA, pointed out that the Department of Culture has, since last year (2023), announced an annual line of specific subsidies to increase the presence of the Catalan language in the field of video games. He also stressed the importance of publicizing the video games available in Catalan and, in this regard, he highlighted the VDJoc, a database of video games in Catalan, which currently contains more than 200 video games available in Catalan. The Head of Language Policy also gave the latest data on the video game sector in Catalonia. As stated in the White Paper on the Catalan video game industry 2023, published last week with data from 2022, the sector continues to grow: it has more than 4,600 workers (8.7% more than in 2021) and has doubled its turnover since 2016, reaching a total of 700 million euros per year. Catalonia generates 52% of the business in the whole of Spain and concentrates half of the workers. In addition, Francesc Xavier Vila stressed that the work shared between the industry and the Department of Culture “makes us optimistic about a future in which we hope to incorporate AAA games in Catalan, which would be a great boost for the Catalan language”.
Finally, the press conference was attended by the Hoippu Games team, made up of students from the ENTI-UB school, who showed the game Sugary Falls, winner of the Demoday 2024, the awards for the best games of the year at the school.
Multimedia gallery
The press conference took place in the Historic Building. Demonstration of the Sugary Falls game.
