By Micah Wheeler

Students at Quincy University now have a gaming club on campus. The QUGG, Quincy University Gaming Group, hosted a gaming night to kick off their new on campus activity on Jan. 31. 

Gaming Group is considered to be an extracurricular activity whose goal is to get students to socialize with each other by sharing a common interest in gaming. 

 “I just thought that it would be a good sense of community because when it comes to a college campus I think we as faculty can do as much as we can to get people to want to be engaged and hang out with each other which makes everyone happy and excited to be here,” Gary Meacher said.

Meacher is an assistant professor of graphic design who has a heart for QU’s gaming community.

“I know people like to play games but there’s a weird balance of gamers that just shut themselves up in their room versus going out and interacting with other gamers to compete in games like 2k,” Meacher said. 

The goal was to get the students to engage with the event by having both console and board games that the students loved to play while being treated to free food. Meacher, with the help of others, provided both the board games and consoles while athletic director Marty Bell provided the food. 

Both of their attempts ended up pioneering the success of QUGG’s first event. The event had 30 people attend which was more than anticipated according to Meacher.

“I thought it was going to just be me and a few other faculty members playing card games the whole time but there were definitely more students than I expected,” Meacher said. “Hopefully we can get more students to engage as time goes on.”

There were three different gaming areas. One had a playstation, board games were set up in the middle of the room, and a Wii U was set up in the far corner of the Student Union Lounge. Students playing the Wii U held a Super Smash Bros tournament. Also set up by the playstation area was a Twitch livestream that tested a stream of the students playing the popular game “Rocket League.” 

Esports has been a widely used platform for competition using video games. Its design is to copy the experience of watching a real sporting event but instead of physically playing a sport, spectators watch as players from all over the globe compete professionally in video games.

“This whole idea about esports journalism and streaming content on Twitch was just a way to just show people all the cool stuff we’re doing on campus,” Meacher said.

One  student, BJ Wilson, thought that the idea of streaming the games was a good way to bring exposure to not only the gaming group but the campus as a whole.

“I actually livestream myself and it’s just good to see that we’re showing interest in other student preferences to make the campus more enjoyable,” Wilson said.

The Smash Bros tournament had a multitude of players participate and the winner received two $25 gift cards and a plastic medallion of the Super Smash Bros logo. After many contestants battled to climb the ranks the winner who ended up taking home the prize was freshmen basketball player Trent Champagne.

“It was a lot of fun. I played a lot as a kid and now got to show my skills to my peers and basically got free money from it,” Champagne said.