Bright lights flash from a monitor as the battle begins.
One opponent strikes, leaving the player wounded. He replenishes and recovers as he takes another shot at his opponent.
Silence.
Then a roar of happiness from the player. Rejoicing, he turns and sinks back down in the chair with a smile of relief.
The Gamers Guild now calls the updated and renovated LEaP Center its home after several evolutions of the club.
The club began recruiting as far back as January of 2013 as the Major League Gaming Club, or MLG Club as it was mostly referred to.
“A group of competitive gamers wanted to form an official club to begin competing, with eSports on the rise,” says Eugene Hacker, assistant chief information officer.
The first interest meeting was held on Sept. 12, 2013. A draft of the paperwork was submitted in October, but there were still items required for the club constitution. It wasn’t until the Fall of 2014 that the club was official and had an advisor. Corey Glessner, class of 2014, started the club and became the club’s first president.
Later on, Hacker was asked to be the Gamers Club Adviser.
Under changes of the president of the group, it was named the Ferrum College Gaming Club. This change was intentional to include more members not as focused on competitive gaming.
Hacker describes the group of individuals as community servers. The FCGC participates in events around campus such as Trunk-or-Treat and Homecoming events. It also helped with the canned food drive for the community.
In the Fall of 2023, the club began to revitalize with the addition of Stanley Library Manager Rachel Walton and JB Von Preysing, Technical and Public Services Assistant, as additional club advisors.
Recently, these advisers evolved the name from FCGC to just Gamers Guild.
To help facilitate gaming activities on campus, consideration was made to move the Gaming Lab computers from Bassett Hall to the LEaP Studio in the Stanley Library near the start of this semester.
While the Studio is independent of this club, many of its activities center around the use of this space.
The LEaP Studio serves many purposes, such as housing Inquiring Minds presentations, serving as a class room, and acting as a library instruction area.
The Gamers Guild meets Monday-Friday from 1 p.m.-7 p.m.
“At this point in time, all active members of the Gamer’s Guild (and some of their friends) can be found gaming through the week in our open free play,” says Walton.
With the involvement of students in the library, this helps not only the Guild but the staff to see how many are using the resources available.
“We are still in the first stages of tracking the influx of student involvement. Since we only formally moved the gaming tech to the library at the start of the semester, this is really our pilot semester,” Walton says. “I know we are averaging somewhere between seven to 10 kids daily just in the library to use the gaming studio,” Walton says.
Her passion and inspiration was the Board Game Club where a story could come to life.
The Board Game Club was managed by former professor Michael Hancock-Palmer says Walton, however, it was less of a club and more of a group get-together.
“I wanted a place those stories could breathe and come alive that was accessible to all our students, commuter and on-campus dwellers alike, faculty, and staff. I wanted to create a safe space for anyone who gamed in any way to find others like them. But most of all I wanted a way to provide community!” she says.
Von Preysing agrees that the LEaP Studio/Gamers Guild provides a community full of supportive people to have a safe space.
“First and foremost, we wanted to provide our Ferrum family, whether they are students, faculty, or staff, a place to kick back and enjoy themselves. Gaming can be a form of relaxation, collaboration, and/or competition, depending on what your gaming tastes are,” he says.
If interested in the Gamers Guild or getting involved, contact Walton at [email protected].
