Marquette’s Gaming and e-sports club held one of their social events last Saturday night in the AMU, a local area network or LAN party.
“(A LAN party means) all these guys are coming around to hook up their computers and play together,” said Patrick Glogovsky, a junior in the College of Communication and the event’s organizer. “Everybody’s bringing their computer systems and gaming systems together and we’re all going to play games here together.”
Students brought everything from custom-built PCs to Nintendo GameCubes to the first floor of the AMU to spend an evening playing games with their fellow students. Popular games included “Super Smash Bros.,” “League of Legends” and “Counter-Strike,” with students playing other games on their own personal devices.
Glogovsky said Marquette’s Gaming and e-Sports club involves both competitive teams and social events like the LAN party.
Tony Weidel, a freshman in the College of Engineering, said this event was a nice introduction to the MGE.
“I just saw the poster, and I play video games a ton, so I thought I should tell some people about it, so I brought a few friends over,” Weidel said.
Weidel said his favorite games to play at similar group events are “Dark Souls” and the “Call of Duty” franchise.
As for the other side of the club, Marquette has been adding varsity-level e-Sports teams to compete at the next level. “Our club team made them the varsity team,” Glogovsky said.
“We’re going to compete in ‘League (of Legends)’ and ‘Rocket League’ for the BIG EAST season,” Glogovsky said.
In December, Marquette finished in the semifinals of the BIG EAST e-sports Winter Challenge in “Rocket League” in the first-ever BIG EAST winter tournament. The “League of Legends” team is currently competing in their regular season.
For Mario Hackney, a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences, the club provides a way to get involved and befriend other students from various grade levels.
“Joining the club has exposed me to a different culture of camaraderie because I have a lot of friends now who are juniors, seniors and graduate students, all from playing video games,” Hackney said.
Hackney said before the LAN party started, he was a little nervous there would not be enough setups for the games people would want to play.
“Everyone has the specific game they want to play, and if we don’t have it here, they can’t,” he said. “We were a little scared we wouldn’t have setups for the ‘(Super Smash Bros.) Melee’ community, but we ended up having two ourselves.”
Hackney said “Super Smash Bros. Melee” is his favorite game to play, and it is one of the more popular games within the club.
Some games and consoles can be difficult to accommodate because of their age, but luckily, the club managed to have everything from projectors and TVs for the Nintendo Switches and Xboxes to old TVs that could connect to the GameCube, a console from 2001.
Glogovsky said the LAN party is just one of the many social events the club puts together. Other events include a “Super Smash Bros.” tournament, a “League of Legends” tournament, and an “Overwatch” tournament, all of which are open to all students.
