UC Santa Barbara’s Gaucho Gaming club hosted its annual “Game-a-thon” on Nov. 15 and 16. The event included a series of raffles, board games, video games, tournaments and pizza.
Gaucho Gaming’s community engagement team set the rules for all the tournaments. Sherine John / Daily Nexus
The event had an assortment of gaming-related prizes. Attendees played the trivia-based game Kahoot! to test their gaming knowledge and to compete for a Corsair Mouse. The questions consisted of gaming trivia from a variety of game genres, from first-person shooter games like Valorant and life simulator games like The Sims.
The Game-a-thon was a 12-hour event made possible by their staff and contributing sponsors, according to fourth-year film and media studies and psychological and brain sciences double major and Gaucho Gaming President Katie Elliott.
Elliott said the purpose of hosting these big events is to bring a community together with a passion for gaming.
“I love making new friends and that’s kind of my goal with this. Just to make it so that people who have maybe never met each other before are able to kind of come and chat,” Elliott said.
Gaucho Gaming’s community engagement team set the rules for all the tournaments, such as the Super Smash Bros. Tournament, which was open to players of all skill levels.
There were attendees who don’t attend UCSB at the event as well.
Holden Klingel, a first-year computer science major at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, said he wouldn’t have heard about the event if it weren’t for the Super Smash Bros. Tournament.
“I heard it from some people in the SLO [San Luis Obispo] Smash group chat. [They] told me that there was a big event here tomorrow,” Klingel said.
Elliott expressed how they didn’t receive as many sponsors as they would’ve liked.
“This year, it was a little bit less than we would have liked, but that’s the name of the game,” Elliott said. “I just really love when people come by and sometimes with our other events, they’re a lot smaller, so there’s less pull to go. There’s not all these big prizes, there’s not always free food.”
Although Gaucho Gaming is centered around video games, Elliott explained that the organization is more than just gaming. They expressed that when everyone gets busy with work, it’s hard to find time to play video games. However, the club has been able to form a community around it. “I feel like for me, [gaming is] more of an umbrella where it’s this hobby that I love even though I don’t always participate in it, and now it’s become a community of people that I think are usually chill,” Elliott said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 6 of the Nov. 20 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
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