History
Peter Lam, Creator Strategist & CEO of Hansei GG, and Winnie Chen, Creative Director of Hansei GG, founded RIT Esports in 2016. The RIT Dota 2 team won the club its first national championship, and working with RIT Intramurals helped a lot with boosting RIT Esports growth and their great relationship with Electronic Gaming Society during the start of RIT Esports’ development from 2015 to 2016.
Visions of the Founders
I wanted a place for kids to live out their dreams and maybe one day be professionals at the game.
We had a lot of students who were really cracked at the games that they played, and we also wanted to try to find common ground with people who liked what we liked. EGS (Electronic Gaming Society, another student-run club at RIT for gamers) wasn’t similar enough, and finding people who were like-minded in a safe-space who wanted to do what I wanted to do was super important to me. One of my other dreams was to build an environment within the school to create a place for students to be able to do something big. We wanted to make sure that we had that opportunity after we left to prepare us for the world to come - our “Training Arc'' per say! At the end of the day, we wanted to play games. We wanted to bring that experience that I felt going to majors, and other large tournaments, to this school.
Peter Lam, first president of RIT Esports
Winnie Chen, Graphic Design
I initially joined because a lot of my friends joined, I thought to myself “I like video games, I’ll join!”
I wanted to become president because when I was in the club, I first got started as a community team member (what the Operations Branch was back then). My friend, Ron Dodge, was the person who made the old RIT Tiger logo (shoutout Ron!) and Jacob Marcovecchio was one of the many people who believed that I would make a good president. At the time that I had joined the club, there was someone on the Eboard who I thought wasn’t doing everything they could, and I wanted to help the club reach the heights that I knew it could. There was a lot in those early years that we didn’t have, like a fleshed-out constitution, which I oversaw the rewriting of. I had the confidence that I knew I could do a better job than the previous E-board members before me, and thought I could make the club succeed and grow more so than it was already. I’d like to believe that I was very influential in my roles as treasurer and secretary. I got a lot of stuff done, and planned on doing more as president, but unfortunately covid stopped a lot of that. The club for me was very socially-oriented and was something that I wanted to foster further than what I had seen in my time there. I believe and wish I could’ve done more while being president, but being so involved in RIT Esports and being so involved in the club was something that I had not originally thought I would be involved in during my time at RIT but having been through the experience, I’m very glad I did. For anyone looking to join RIT Esports, there’s various ways to get involved, even if you’re not competitive! Being involved in club life, specifically RIT Esports, heightened my college experience and I would heavily recommend it to anyone looking to join!
Hillary Li, fourth president of RIT Esports