UWG offers weekly video game tournaments in the Campus Center, including “Super Smash Bros” tournaments for the month of February. Students interested in playing “Super Smash Bros” or meeting other gaming students are invited to the Game Room located in the Campus Center on the first floor every Monday for the month of February, 5-8 p.m.
“We’ve been doing esports with UREC for about a year now,” says Kelli Breed, a Program Assistant for Esports. “We provide events for students to participate in tournaments with multiple different games.”
UREC previously hosted a “Rocket League” tournament in the month of January.
In Rocket League, players drive cars on a soccer field and must score the giant soccer ball in the enemy goal. The game is immensely popular and easy to enjoy and learn for amateur gamers and non-gamers.
“We were able to use the Esports Arena during the semester, which has 10 PCs in the back [of the Game Room] but they are pretty much state of the art PCs,” says Breed. “It’s really fun to be able to see everyone at a speed where there is no lag. It’s a great setup for all of them.”
The Esports Arena allows students to play with less delays and the quality computers allow for ideal graphics thanks to the Local Area Network (LAN).
For the next set of tournaments, UREC will host the Super Smash Bros League, with Nintendo’s popular game “Super Smash Bros Ultimate” because of its approachability for both experienced and inexperienced players.
In “Super Smash Bros Ultimate”, players choose a character from other video game franchises including “Pokemon”, “Legend of Zelda” and “Super Mario” among many others and fight against other players in a platform arena. “Smash Bros” holds a similar reputation to “Rocket League” in that the game allows anyone from any background and most any age to play and enjoy.
“[Video games] are something shared that can bring us all together,” says Breed. “You don’t have to be good at Smash to know how to play Smash, you just ‘smash’ the buttons, it’s in the name.”
After the Smash Tournament in February, they plan to host tournaments for the racing game Mario Kart and the NBA game 2k22. Come April, UREC plans to host an Esports showcase where students are invited to drop by the Game Room and just play and see what will be offered throughout the remainder of the semester.
“We’re open to all students,” says Kelli, “We try to be beginner friendly but we also host tournaments where there are actual tournament rules that you would find in a tournament with a prize of cash.”
UREC offers gamers and even non-gamers the opportunity to connect and find communities with common interests.
“There’s basically three pillars of esports on campus, there’s us, the university recreation portion,” says Kelli. “The second pillar is the Esports Club and they work under us. They go ahead and compete through their own teams and we don’t control what they do but they work with us. The third pillar would be the Varsity Team.”
UWG has a few Varsity Esports teams put together by students, including a League of Legends Varsity team. There’s four main “Super Smash Bros” teams. All the Varsity teams are coached by Joseph Lee, the university’s inaugural E-sports coach.
Whether students are wanting to compete in Esports or simply make some friends, UWG provides a platform to connect and compete in the Campus Center’s Game Room.
Students can attend as many Monday tournaments as they want for the chance to compete in the final championship on Feb. 28.
