Would you like to learn how to be an esports pro? Well, if you live in Japan, you can now pay Konami to teach you how!
The school offers lectures and hands-on learning with Pro Evo, eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball (Konami’s big-headed baseball game), Dota, and Fortnite. Students not only practice playing, but they also learn how to create their own content, learn about the business angles as well as how to plan their own gaming events, and even study English. The teachers are actual esports pros, so they should have helpful advice to pass on.
While there are part-time classes, students can also enroll for a year, five days a week.
This does not seem cheap. To give you an idea on pricing, for example, twice a week for coaching alone is 41,800 yen ($396), while a four-times-a-week business seminar is 79,200 yen ($750). Full-time students have morning sessions and afternoon ones, with class starting at 9:40 am and ending at 3:10 pm with an hour-plus break for lunch.
The first school year began this month at Konami’s Esports Ginza school in, wait for it, Ginza. The school’s students have already started class this September.
DISCUSSION
Has Japan’s laws eSports salaries and pot bonuses laxed at all in recent years? I always hear about it being relatively hard to earn money as a pro player in Japan compared to Korea or The West, and if I’m not mistaken Riot never started a Japanese league partially due to red tape with player salaries (the other major reason being that PC games aren’t as big there to begin with).