INNOVATE® Gaming & Esports

GIA STORY“What if learning felt like a game?” This initial question was actually the starting point for the Games Institute. When Thomas Kunze stumbled over the topic of Game Based Learning in 2010, it was a question that never really left his thoughts again. Learning, especially in a digital world,...

Transmira is the innovative company behind Omniscape™, the first true Metaverse platform that blends augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) together in a unique synthesis while connecting the real world and digital information, data layers, and holograms together. Transmira goes beyond simply creating 3D spaces and games like most other “metaverse”...

READY PLAYER ONE“What if I actually owned my digital games and in-game items?” That’s been the question on most gamers’ minds.   With limited solutions and some gamers resorting to the shady secondhand grey market to make use of their content outside of the game, David Hanson and Nicolas Gilot,...

Innovators rarely consider themselves to be pioneers within their own industry. And Andrew Augustin is a prime example of this axiom. Augustin is a graphic designer who, in 2011, founded Notion Games, an Austin-based video gaming company that creates games for people of all ages. But that brief description fails...

Nerd Street Gamers is a national esports infrastructure that puts accessibility, integrity and opportunity at the forefront of everything they do. As gaming communities slowly began to gain traction on a small scale, the CEO of Nerd Street Gamers and Localhost, John Fazio, knew that individuals nationwide would soon realize...

Innovative, science-backed product portfolio with cognitive health ingredients for esport athletes, gamers and streamers to consume before and during games and streams, designed to meet the needs of the gaming community.     Our team started studying esports athletes in 2018 and quickly saw a need to provide a healthy...

Just Esports is an organization that is dedicated to working on justice initiatives in the esports and gaming space. Much of their work focuses on educational programs aimed at empowering others to promote justice in their respective groups and providing individuals with the best tools to build out esports communities...

High Point Gamer (HPG) was founded in 2015 by two military veterans, Derek Watford and Dion Wrenn. HPG was the first black and veteran owned Esports consulting company in the world. They established their presence in the Esports industry early on by producing competitive video game tournaments. These competitive tournaments...

Hey Listen Games was born out of my passion for gaming and my desire to find ways to best teach my students. I teach at Ellis Preparatory Academy, a public high school in New York City dedicated to a one hundred percent immigrant and ENL (English as a New Language)...

Starting as an esports talent agency in 2017, Gold Standard Gaming has become a full-service marketing company that caters to brands, influencers and corporations worldwide. The founder, Sebastian “Chosen1” Burton is a former professional gamer and spent many years as a consultant to some of the largest brands in the...

CAPSL is the developer of BAASH, the mobile social gaming platform helping game influencers engage and monetize their fans via competition. Starting out in Southeast Asia, BAASH targets the 300 million mobile gamers in the region. By using a combination of chat and integrated competitions, BAASH reduces operational efforts by...

WHAT INSPIRED THE CREATION OF DRONE CADETS? In 2016 Sgt. Tony Reid, was a corrections officer at Rikers Island, a jail in New York City, working with incarcerated adolescents 16 to 18 years old. For 8 long years, he witnessed first-hand the plight of young men of color who became...

The world of esports is still young: the community is expanding, business models are fluid, and innovation never stops, as the industry looks to stay fresh and exciting.   Esports BAR is the world’s esports business arena, and our mission is to transform the sport of the digital generation into...

This is the story about a company with such potential, it could become a top 10 startup. A bold claim? Sure! Backed by facts? Stay tuned. It has adventure, love, death, and much, much more. It’s the story about a company with a concept so innovative, its creator accurately predicted...

But Newzoo wasn’t its founder’s (Peter Warman and Thijs Hagoort) first venture into the world of business. Far from it. After becoming friends playing basketball in high school, the industrious duo sold custom-designed t-shirts. Those early days taught them a valuable lesson: custom production based on manuals does not scale...

Coalition of Parents in Esports is a 501c3 nonprofit founded by parents of pro esports players and content creators who recognized a need of engaging parents in the growing esports industry so more kids are able to pursue their passions with the support they need....

MetArena provides an easy and positive way for communities and companies to engage using gaming and esports. Democratization and education are the driving forces behind our mission to provide the world with an opportunity to experience all the good games can bring. If you’re working in esports, one of the...

Onward Play is a nationwide game staffing agency specializing in freelance and direct hire. Onward Play’s niche is linking up creative, technical and production talent with incredible game, XR, and esports studios. Onward Play recruits talent for segments like PC, Console, Mobile, VR, AR, XR, esports, toys, casino and tabletop....

What does work is the act of providing a reason for why they should come. That is the central theme of Oakwood University’s Entrepreneurship Center, OU Launchpad, and it is why gaming is at the heart of the center’s success. OU Launchpad is structured around ideation and microentrepreneurship. These two...

As is common with many of the great things that universities do, it all started with the students. The UK Esports Club was organized around 2017 by students who were interested in growing the community and helping different clubs focused on individual games to pool their resources and better leverage...

GAMING APPEALS TO OUR INNATE SENSE OF HUMANITY. IT INSPIRES CREATIVITY, PLAY, CONNECTIVITY, AND COMMUNITY These also happen to be the fundamentals of today’s video games. This wasn’t designed by accident, either. Playing video games empowers people no matter their backgrounds, religion, politics, race, gender or location. Sugar Gamers exemplify...

In February 2019, a mere conversation that I had with a JCSU athletics administrator about the paucity of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that possessed structured on-campus esports programming became the impetus behind my development of a proposal later that day for an esports and gaming academic program. The...

Their core product, Gameplan, helps players of all ages acquire real-world skills that aid professional development, cognitive abilities, promote healthy habits, and more.   Rasmus Sandstöm and Dan Andreasson started Learn2Esport in 2016 with the vision of engaging students through esports, and teaching them valuable life skills to prepare them...

When consumers and students think of the video game industry and esports, they think of the excitement and entertainment of it all – but rarely about the data that guides the strategy of a business and of the game development plan. A market research firm provides the data that helps...