Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it worksSteve Jobs
A technical engineer, as the name suggests, is a technology specialist. Their job is to make sure that all the technical aspects that are needed for an event are working like they are intended to.
Imagine all the possible consequences of not having a technical professional working on your events! It could potentially create delays in the event plan, kick players out of the games, pause the matches, make players play in disadvantageous scenarios and it could even mean cancelling the entire event!
Generally, a technical engineer makes sure that the network is set up and working without any issues.
Basic eSports LAN setup
Key Responsibilities
- Event set up: a technical engineer is responsible for setting up and configuring the necessary equipment and systems for events
- Network management: a technical engineer oversees the network infrastructure to ensure stable and reliable connections for online and LAN gameplay
- Equipment Management: regular maintenance and troubleshooting of gaming equipment.
- Technical Support: during eSports events, they provide on-site support to players, broadcasters, and production crew
- Software configuration: technical engineers may be responsible for gaming software used during competitions.
- Event planning: Technical engineers may collaborate with event organizers to plan and coordinate technical aspects of eSports events
Now, you may be wondering how can we make this happen in an online eSports event?
We know that hosting an online event is much easier than a Face-to-Face event- like this course on the online campus you can access it from anywhere, at any time.
Watch: How to Live Stream an Esports Tournament (8:24 minutes)
This simple but informative video will instruct you on how eSports tournaments are created from a technical engineer’s perspective. Watch the video and take notes.
We would like you to be prepared for many of the challenges ahead. You should be able to prevent and fix issues you encounter when you run your eSports event from a distance, that is a remote eSports event. Therefore, the best tool to equip you with is TeamViewer TeamViewer – The Remote Connectivity Software
Watch: Getting Started with TeamViewer, Remote Control (1:31 minutes)
Watch the video below and download TeamViewer. Practice using it with your teammates.
Technical Engineer Skills: Evaluate and Recommend
Before any eSports event starts, we must evaluate the event’s particular technical needs. This means confirming our attendee numbers. Why? Because how do we know how many computers we need if we do not know the number of participants? Or how do we know which broadband service to use if they do not have service in the areas where our remote participants are located? Evaluating is crucial to creating an event. It allows us to know what we could be facing, how to handle different scenarios and to be prepared for them.
After evaluating the technical needs of an event, we then need to recommend to whoever oversees the event which tools and technology are best to utilise to ensure a successful event.
Portfolio Checkpoint 2I: Teamviewer Practice
Record your TeamViewer practice on OBS. Partner up with any student in your team and perform a TeamViewer intervention as if you were the Game Administrator.
Your partner should secretly change some settings on their computer which will not allow them to play comfortably.
Your job is to identify the problem and fix it while recording the intervention in OBS.
Add it to your Portfolio.
Portfolio Checkpoint 2J: Glitches and Bugs
Research 3 common software-related problems that can occur at an online eSports event.
Find out the best strategies to fix these glitches and bugs.
So, your research should include how to detect the problem and how to tackle it or solve it.
Add these to your Portfolio.
Technical Engineer Skills: Design
Once we have evaluated the technical needs of the event, we need to design a plan. However, we cannot do everything by ourselves, and we need a team to help us out. We should ensure that everyone knows what is going to happen and plans for different possible certain scenarios.
Technical Engineer Skills: Install and Test
Perhaps the most time-consuming task of the responsibilities as a technical engineer, yet one of the most important. Computers must be ready for players, casters, analysts and observers to use and it is the event’s technical engineer’s responsibility to ensure that happens without any issues. Cleaning all the computers of malware or unwanted software, knowing what to install, patching the software and games is just the tip of the iceberg. It is far more time-consuming than that. You must create in private servers (Publishers often give you keys for this).
Technical Engineer Skills: Monitor and Fix
Now that we have everything ready, we cannot let our guard down. In most events, problems may occur in the middle of the matches. Bugs, wrong configurations, software patching, bad hardware performance are just a few issues we could mention. In eSports mental fortitude is needed when this sort of problem happens, yet we must act swiftly to fix them. We must be conscious about how this affects the event for both the players and the viewers.
