Esports 101: Building the On-Ramp with Garden City Esports

The Question Most People Don't Get a Chance to Ask

When most people hear the word esports, they have a vague sense of what it is — competitive gaming, big tournaments, prize pools, streamers — but very little sense of how a person actually gets into it.

What does training look like? What roles exist beyond "player"? How do you go from playing on your phone after school to building a career around games? What's the difference between casual play, ranked play, semi-pro, and pro?

Most people don't get a chance to ask those questions out loud. Esports 101 is the answer to that.

What Esports 101 Is

Esports 101 is an educational initiative I've been teaching as part of FIGN's collaboration with Garden City Esports, a Port Harcourt–based esports organization focused on growing competitive gaming culture and education.

The premise is simple: most barriers to esports aren't about talent. They're about access to information. If you don't know what a coach does, you don't know to look for one. If you don't know what an analyst is, you don't know that's a job you could do. If you've never seen the inside of a competitive bracket, the whole world feels closed off.

Esports 101 opens the door.

Why FIGN Is Part of This

FIGN exists to make sure women aren't an afterthought in African gaming. That mission has two halves: the community we build for the women already playing, and the on-ramps we build for the women who would play if they knew the path was open to them.

Esports 101 is the second half.

By teaching alongside Garden City Esports, we get to bring an educational baseline to audiences that may never otherwise encounter competitive gaming as a real option — not just entertainment, but a possible career, a possible community, a possible identity.

What the Sessions Cover

Without giving away the whole curriculum, the topics include:

• The landscape of esports — what it actually is, what it isn't, what the global and African scenes look like
• Roles beyond playing — coaches, analysts, casters, content creators, tournament organizers, community managers, brand managers
• Career pathways — what entry points exist, what skills they reward, how to build a profile
• The competitive ladder — casual, ranked, semi-pro, pro, and what differentiates each
• Tools and habits — how serious players actually train, review, and improve
• Community and culture — how to read gaming communities, find your people, and avoid the toxic corners

The sessions are interactive. They're built for people who are curious but new — and they assume the audience is going home with questions, not answers.

Why This Matters for Women

The pattern in African gaming is consistent: women are 45% of players, but a tiny fraction of pros, organizers, and decision-makers. A lot of that gap closes earlier than people realize — at the moment a young woman either does or does not get told that gaming is a real path with real options.

Esports 101 is one place that conversation gets to happen.

When the room hears that there are jobs in esports that don't require being a top-ranked player, something shifts. When women see that the industry has roles that match the skills they already have — communication, strategy, content, organization, leadership — the calculation changes.

You can't apply for a future you don't know exists. Esports 101 makes the future visible.

Garden City Esports — A Real Partnership

Working with Garden City Esports has been one of the most generative partnerships FIGN has had. They bring deep technical knowledge of competitive gaming and a track record of building local esports infrastructure in Port Harcourt. We bring the community, the lens on women in the space, and a network of members hungry to learn.

The combination works because each side is bringing something the other doesn't have. That's the kind of partnership we want more of.

What's Next

Esports 101 is going to keep going — and growing. We're working on:

• Expanding sessions into more schools and campuses
• Bringing the curriculum to FIGN's planned 2026 school tour
• Building a version of the curriculum into our Pathways platform so members can access it on their own time

If your school, organization, or community space wants to host an Esports 101 session, get in touch at contact@fign.org. And if you're a woman who wants the structured version of this content as part of a wider learning path, applications for Pathways are open at fign.org/pathways.

The goal isn't to turn everyone into a pro player. The goal is to make sure no one is opting out of esports because no one ever told them they could opt in.