E Sport Arena

A circle for future skills – inside one of the world's first school esports arenas

Project: Esports arena, GEMS School of Research and Innovation

The esports arena at GEMS School of Research and Innovation was one of the first purpose-designed esports spaces in any school worldwide, and a true experiment for the independent sector. Day to day, it is a classroom for the wide creative and technical territory behind games: design, storytelling, character definition and development, programming and code, and the physical technology that brings it all together. It also had to work as a real competitive venue, with the energy and atmosphere of live tournaments. We arranged the arena as a circle, placing every player within one shared space around a common centre. That form reflects how gaming works at its best – teams talking constantly, solving problems together and helping each other through failure. It makes that collaboration visible to spectators, and when the tournaments end, it gives educators a natural setting for discussion and group work.

Gaming is still a contested subject in education, and many parents are understandably wary of it. Concerns about screen time are real and deserve to be taken seriously. At the same time, the sheer scale of gaming worldwide is impossible to ignore, and much of what happens within gaming culture goes unseen by families. Games offer a medium for real mastery – the chance to become highly skilled at a craft and to build confidence through the long pursuit of a perfect game. They connect players with a global community, where people from all over the world collaborate to overcome problems, learn to talk openly about their own difficulties and help others through theirs. And they give players an outlet for self-expression and creativity, as they develop and refine strategies that are distinctly their own.

The arena gives the school a way to show families this side of gaming, and to connect learners with the creative, technical and collaborative skills the wider industry depends on. We see it as a prototype – the first of a new standard space in school design, and one we expect other schools to follow.