Japan's first esports high school to open its doors in the first half of 2022

Japan's first esports high school to open its doors in the first half of 2022

9 February 2022

The world of international esports is booming these days as more and more communities and industries are starting to realize its immense potential. One of those sectors is academia, where more and more gaming and esports-related courses and programs are being formed. For our British sister website, for example, we recently wrote an article about the opening of a state-of-the-art esports campus in Sunderland by the British Esports Association, while various colleges around the world are starting to offer esports courses. Japan has now taken the next step by opening its first-ever esports high school.

International esports in Japan

The school is called Esports Koutou Gakuin, which translates to Esports High School in English, and will open its door this April. The project is a joint effort by the esports departments of professional football team Tokyo Verdy and Japanese telecommunications giant NTT. As part of the partnership, various professional esports players and managers from both corporations will be part of the staff at Esports Koutou Gakuin.

Students and aspiring pro esporters will be homing their skills in lecture halls with giant screens desks with variable layouts for up to four people, including chairs and headsets. The machines with which the students will have to work are Galleria XA7C-R37 PCs with an Intel Core i7-11700, Nvidia RTX 3070, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and 1TB of storage. Even though it’s not entirely clear yet which games will exactly be on offer on the curriculum, but the website of the school states that students will have the chance to work on their first-person shooter, real-time strategy, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), and third-person shooter skills.

More than international esports

Esports Koutou Gakuin is more than a high school for gamers and esports, though. The idea is for students to have everything they need to improve their esports skills while also following a standard high school curriculum. In that sense, the curriculum at Esports High School should be considered a standard Japanese high school curriculum, but with the additional unique focus on video games, esports, streaming, and content creation. That way, the school wants to become an important step for people who dream of working in the international esports industry in other positions than gamer. At Esports HS, future VR creators, game designers, and special effects creators, for example, will be able to get the best possible preparation for a further higher education in their preferred field at college or university level.

The campus of the school, located in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo, has opened its doors for orientation last month and classes are planned to start in April of this year. Prospective students can already download application forms on the website of the school and tuition fees are expected to be published some time over the coming weeks.

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