The NYU Game Center at the Tisch School of the Arts today announced that Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, one of the world’s leading professional competitive gamers, has donated the entirety of his $60,000 in winnings for the recent Capcom Pro Tour to support the Center’s Evo Scholarship.
The NYU Game Center at the Tisch School of the Arts today announced that Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, one of the world’s leading professional competitive gamers, has donated the entirety of his $60,000 in winnings for the recent Capcom Pro Tour to support the Center’s Evo Scholarship.
A partnership between the Evo Championship Series and New York University, the Evo Scholarship was established in 2012 to provide financial assistance for students to study game design at the NYU Game Center. The Evo Scholarship has previously been awarded to two students, Tony Kao and Christian Sutton, and Umehara’s unexpected gift will help solidify and expand the scholarship, for which applications will be received until January 15, 2016.
In an email to the Game Center, Umehara wrote:
“I would like to donate all my prize winnings from the Capcom Pro Tour Finals to the community. It’s simply because I would not have existed without community and I owe you. My “professional” gamer life has given me such invaluable experiences. I get to give all myself to fight against top players around the world and meet and engage with fans across the globe. I can express myself through my gameplay to the audience, the community. Just as you need an opponent in fighting game, the community is equally important to me.
My pro-gaming life started with Street Fighter IV. The Capcom Pro Tour finals were to conclude one chapter of my life. I worked hard everyday. I grew a lot. I had so much fun in the process over the year. I felt fulfilled. Being content, I came to the finals. I was thinking that if I had had won any prizes, I would want to give it back to the community, which has supported me all these times. Not only was I able to win the prize, I was able to play my game and express myself. I had great matches, and I had a great fun.”
“Daigo’s donation demonstrates the capacity that competitive games have to bring out the best in people,” said Frank Lantz, chair of the NYU Game Center. “On an individual level, the scholarship helps members of the fighting games community channel their passion and mastery into avenues beyond just becoming a professional player. On a communal level, it will foster the long-term health of competitive games as a whole by enabling individuals from within the community to lead the charge.”
The Evo Scholarship is available to anyone wishing to study game design at the Master’s or Bachelor’s level at New York University. All applicants for the fall 2016 class will be considered for the scholarship, and the deadline for applying is January 15. For more information about the program visit gamecenter.nyu.edu/evo or e-mail at: gamecenter@nyu.edu.
About the NYU Game Center
The NYU Game Center was established in 2008 at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts to explore the design and development of games as a creative practice. The program offers two-year Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) and four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degrees in game design, as well as numerous open to the public events on the design, production, and study of games as an aesthetic and cultural form. For more information, visit gamecenter.nyu.edu.
About The Evolution Championship Series (Evo)
Evo is the world’s largest fighting game event. Going on for now over a decade, Evo is the must-attend event for fighting game fans and competitors all over the world. Over three days, Evo hosts a variety of fighting game tournaments, exhibitions, and a ‘bring your own controller' area where gamers can compete, meet up, and generally have a good time. For more information on Evo visit: http://evo.shoryuken.com/
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