Students file in to a deserted lecture hall. It's a rainy and gloomy Saturday - and yet, no one seems disgruntled despite the fact that it's well before noon. In front of the class sits a bearded and bespectacled professor, hidden behind the bulk of two monitors, staring ponderously at the screens before him. As the last few students trickle in, the professor flicks a switch.

The lights dim.

"Welcome to FallCraft 2011."

A familiar loading screen flickers blue on the projected screen. Jim Raynor stares out benevolently from above, looking comfortable on a screen in the basement of 721 Broadway, otherwise known as Tisch School of Arts in New York University.

Song: Batman by Castles (http://castlesmusic.net/)

"I teach Game Studies and Game Design at NYU and I consider myself to be extremely lucky to be alive while all of this and all of what's happening in the SC2 scene is happening - I mean, right? It's amazing. You do not - you know, most people don't get to live and watch a sport just turn up on its own. So it's incredible. Especially for a game designer - to see a game, a video game, reach this kind of status and this kind of play. It's incredible." - Professor Charles Pratt, New York University Game Center

"When I was from my early 20's, no one played video games and when I played them everyone thought, 'Are you crazy?' To see that this is actually happening, evolving, gaining momentum..." - Professor Andy Nealan, Rutgers University

"It's nuts not only that in the future, people need to understand games. It's that in the future, people need to understand our culture as a whole - and that they can't do that if they don't understand games." - Professor Henry Lowood, Stanford University

ESPORTS lecture by Professor Henry Lowood and Frank Lantz, the Director of the NYU Game Center

FallCraft 2011: New Jersey's finest collegiate players challenged NYU's best on their home ground in an epic Bo7 showmatch. It was a clean sweep for NYU - 5-1 or 6-1 if you count the Duel of the Professors from NYU and Rutgers. The games, mostly one-sided, inspired only half-hearted cheers from the handful of New Jersey fans in the audience.

From a SC2 fan's perspective, FallCraft was nothing special. These were college students. No Grandmasters were in sight and the play was unimpressive, uninspired, and amateurish. Players were frequently supply blocked. Professors engaged in an agonizingly slow war of Battlecruisers versus Hellions.

The infamous 20:00, two Battlecruiser timing push

But FallCraft was more than an event. FallCraft was an undocumented, magical moment in eSports in which for the first time, collegiate eSports and SC2 entered academic discussions. And you know what? When we have three John the Translators gracing our higher institutions for education, we know we're going places in Western eSports.

---

A series of light-hearted interviews with our team captains (PG-13)

Interview with the NJ team captain

Interviewer: So you will be captaining the Rutgers-Princeton joint team today...
RUChemiker: Oh shit, I'm captain? OKAY, I'm doing it!

RUChemiker: By intermission we're probably going to be down 1-2, but then we've got the real people coming. Which is all of Rutgers. And we're just going to sweep the rest of second half.

Interviewer: Caprisun? Is that the source of your power?
Rutgers Korean: No. My blood is my power.

Interview with the NYU team captain

NYUKinkY: And over there we have Zephyr`Prime...he works with Prime and he's really good but won't admit it like most Koreans.
Dabu: I am the Mario 2010 and 2011 World Champion.

Interview with Professor Charles Pratt, from the New York University Game Center

Professor: We all play StarCraft together here at the Game Center.

And with that, CSL would like to leave you with a heart-warming text message from father to son (incidentally, the only one from New Jersey to win a set for the team).

Thanks, ESPORTS dads. You make all this possible.