Tournament Titles - This year’s invitational will be featuring staple game titles from the past: League of Legends (5v5), Rocket League(3v3), Mario Kart 8(4v4), Splatoon 3(4v4), Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (SSBU) crew battles (3v3) and singles(1v1). VALORANT (5v5) will be returning with Overwatch 2(5v5) being added to our FPS titles this spring. We will also be bringing back our over-the-board Chess tournament (1v1). The FPS games will be only open to high school and collegiate teams in attendance. All of the before-mentioned games will have rules & groups/pools that will be decided the weeks before the Invitational dates. We will also be adding our first sports game in Madden NFL 2025(1v1) on PS5, brought to us by Las Cruces High School. We highly encourage all students who are playing games on a Nintendo Switch to bring their own consoles for their matches. Since a majority of these games have account-based unlocks, to mitigate the chances that a player may not be able to use what they want in-game.

Team Limitations - To ensure that this year’s tournament experience is the best it can be, we will be adding team limits to certain game titles. This year Rocket League will be limited to 24 teams. This will allow more freed-up computers in our space to accommodate more League of Legends, VALORANT, and Overwatch 2 teams. With that being said we will also be limiting the VALORANT, Overwatch 2, and League of Legends to 12 teams total. Splatoon 3 and Mario Kart 8 will be maxed out at 18 teams. Chess will be limited to 4 players per school. Super Smash Bros Crews will be limited to 2 teams per school and 8 singles players per school. We will also have our strict one-strike zero-tolerance policy to reinforce the good sportsmanship of all players in attendance. If one player at one school is caught out of line and being disruptive this will result in total disqualification of the entire school’s teams at the tournament. We will also be implementing a new rule regarding forfeits for players playing more than 1 title at the tournament. We are heavily encouraging coaches and players to have students select no more than 2 titles of the same platform (i.e. Nintendo games, PC Games). Tournament schedules will be more solidly defined before the event begins and we would like to ensure that players are not holding their teams back from matches and possibly forfeits during the tournament. Each tournament will have its own rules regarding forfeits due to time errors that will be published closer to the tournament date. Each title will have a chief tournament organizer to reach out to coming soon.

Event Fee and Requirements - For the 2025 NM State Esports Invitational we will be adding an entry fee for all schools entering this year's tournament. The entry fee will be $25 per school in attendance. The reason behind this entry fee is to help cover the costs of the event. In the past, this event has been paid for completely out of pocket by the organization so with this fee, we are hoping to ensure that we can provide the best Esports experience for everyone without a large monetary limit. We will also be adding a requirement for every team signing up for the tournament requiring an on-staff Coach or Sponsor from their school to be eligible to sign up for the Invitational. This means that no single player from a school can attend on their own and must be approved/accompanied by a staff member from their academic institution. We also require all players (above the age of 13) to be added to the 2025 Invitational Discord Server to properly notify teams and players of the matches on the day of the tournament.

Closing Statements - We are excited to bring back the NM State Esports Invitational for another year and we are very eager to play all the teams in the region! As always, we are open to any feedback or suggestions for this year's tournament, and now you can provide that by submitting feedback through the 2025 Invitational Discord server. As mentioned, any changes being made are not final until the registration deadline so please give us any feedback you feel necessary! We will also be generating an updated registration process for all schools entering the tournament so stay tuned for the registration links coming soon! Good luck to all teams competing this spring and stay tuned for more information about the event!