SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — High school students got ready to put their game faces on with an esports festival at Western Iowa Tech Community College.

The festival was hosted by the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council’s northwest region. Over 80 students were given a chance to obtain information about possible career pathways in the gaming industry and ideas on courses such as video game design, graphic design, shoutcasting and newscasting.

Northwest Regional Manager Mary Trent said that the esports festival lets students know what kinds of esports-adjacent courses they can take.

“It gives them an idea of when they are interested in gaming,” Trent said, “and esports is just really a growing passion and interest of our students, and schools are looking at creating more esports teams and it also gives them an idea of what is beyond the gaming.”

Some students already make their own video games. Student Adrian Acevedo said that he does not play games, but just helps people make them.

“For me, I wanted to learn more about games, and I thought one way I could help is by playing them, and here in this community, I could play more games,” Acevedo said.

For students living in rural communities, this festival allowed them to think of pursuing a higher education with gaming degrees.

“We are hoping that they will walk away with just really a good idea of, you know, ‘I really like gaming, I might have never thought about possibly going to college for this and now I have some ideas of three or four different colleges that I might go to, and pursue gaming and esports,'” Trent said.

The festival taught students about life skills as well.

“We learn teamwork, cooperativeness, like competitiveness,” student Caleb Pitcen said. “We also learn how to like do things alone and all together so we can learn new skills and stuff forever.”

Western Iowa Tech Community College offers resources for students who want to start their own esports gaming team.