The University of California, Irvine is excited to announce the first annual Esports Conference (ESC 2018) to be held  on the sunny Southern California UCI campus. The ESC is the first academic event of its kind to focus on esports research and practice. Building on the momentum of our smaller summit meeting last year, the ESC will feature academic research presentations and symposia, collegiate program professionals panel discussions and post-mortems, and a public festival featuring vendor booths, a private reception, and a live streamed collegiate esports match in the UCI esports arena.