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Running a gaming club on campus
DrakeRunner
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've just recently finished a year of university, and as I recoup my sanity, I'm left wondering about the fall. This last year also marked a full year of me being president of my school's gaming club, and things have been... well, trying to do things with gamers is a lot like herding cats sometime. We're a busy commuter campus, and while I'd love to see the club grow and change, I know that I don't have the energy or drive to carry it on my back. While I'm also trying to drum up more people who want that, I also want to make sure I have some decent ideas to move forward with it.
Now we do all kinds, video, board, and card games, and every week we have our "meetings", which boil down to Fridays at Noon until... well, until everyone goes home (Two people routinely say until 3-4am) so its not like we're not available. Aside from that, we also do a tournament every semester, usually Smash Bros, but I want more. I've come up with fund-raising and advertising ideas, but I'm concerned about things to do aside from that. Launch parties, and sponsored gameteams are pretty much the light at the end of the tunnel, and I feel that there's more we can do.
tl;dr, what can I do with my gaming club?
Now we do all kinds, video, board, and card games, and every week we have our "meetings", which boil down to Fridays at Noon until... well, until everyone goes home (Two people routinely say until 3-4am) so its not like we're not available. Aside from that, we also do a tournament every semester, usually Smash Bros, but I want more. I've come up with fund-raising and advertising ideas, but I'm concerned about things to do aside from that. Launch parties, and sponsored gameteams are pretty much the light at the end of the tunnel, and I feel that there's more we can do.
tl;dr, what can I do with my gaming club?
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "This taste funny to you?"
DrakeRunner on
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Is it no longer fun? Are you just interested in trying new stuff? Are you getting complaints? Has the club started to dwindle? Do you just feel like it's what you should be doing?
Then buy giant flatscreens and LAN it the fuck up.
Deebaser: Fundraising serves double duty, both of getting money, and people's attention. Every fundraising activity is also focused on advertising. Selling Mountain Dew and Red Bulls, both of which the campus is not allowed to sell due to contracts, with an advertising sticker on the side. Gamer merchandise. etc. Everything with our information. As for the undergrad student government, everytime I bring that up, members of the club who've been around far longer than I have start ranting about how corrupt it is. I've convinced them that we need to at least get some senators, for no other reason than to have a voting presence, but it leaves me worried, especially with their overt favoritism of ethnic student clubs. $13,000 was spent last spring on a single dinner for the African American Women's Club.
A few ideas:
1) An experience system of some sort which spans accross multiple activities. Smash bros tournaments, card games, etc. Whatever it is has to be moderated. Make only the small tournaments/events have experience that way the members always have something to look forward to to build 'progress'.
2) Some kind of reward for top experience at the end of the year.
3) Marathon game nights. Maybe spend one night trying to get through as many zelda games as you can. Maybe make teams and whichever team completes the most games within the time wins?
4) Co-op game nights. Playing left 4 dead, castle crashers...other games I can't remember. Co-op games are always tons of fun.
5) Organise pen and paper games unless there's already a PnP club. You'll need someone to DM/GM the game though sooo...yeah.
Of course your student government is corrupt. Any organization that entrusts 20 year olds with allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars is going to be corrupt. I'm guessing that they 'overtly favor' ethnic student clubs because a lot of the senators and most of the executive board belong to those ethnicities. They're just favoring the clubs that they personally have an interest in, and the supporters of those clubs are motivated enough to show up for stupid boring pointless senate meetings.
If you don't already receive monies from student government, you should make that a priority. There is probably a friendly bloc of senators that could get you added as a minor budget line. If not, you can always go around to other groups looking for some money to co-sponsor events. I did this when I was an undergrad and was able to take about 300 people paintballing off campus for a grand total of $10 per person for the day.
You might want to consider how to run things more effectively within the club. I'll recommend a Email list to all members just to inform them of event and schedules. You might even want to plan what games you guys are running months in advance so ppl who are interested can show up.
Try doing different things and running different games.
I'll also recommend a FundRaising Lan Party, you can probably pull this off by using the school Computer lab. In my high school back in the days we would open our computer labs after school, and change like 1 dollar per person so we can play Quake or Warcraft after school. Unfortunately I do not know what games are still cool with lan support... Counterstrike is out, and Starcraft 2 doesn't support lan.
Go with classics, Quake, Unreal, Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires.
Everyone loves classics because if gives them a chance to flex their 'leet oldschool muscles'
Start small, and start with the current member's interests. Put feelers out into the local, non-student gaming community, get vendors, set up a LAN, some CCG or RPGA tournaments and events, and the next thing you know, you'll have 200-1000 people coming to your school for a weekend of awesome.
Do a Google search for Running GAGG. Yup, that's our baby.
The starcraft thing I think would be a good idea. It made me a little sad when a Korean guy ran up and asked us if we play Starcraft.
Judge-Z: That is freaking awesome, actually, And I definitely want to take a crack at that. Especially since... well, if we held our meetings on the other side of the building, we could SEE Gen-con.
If you decide to go ahead with a convention idea, PM me and I'll shoot back the address to GAGG's message boards, where I'm sure there will be people willing to give you some advice on how to get started. I'm not one of the con organizers, myself. I run an event or two every year, help with the auction, and game. But several of my good friends are the con gurus, and the current batch of students put on a pretty good show the last couple of years as well.
You will need money, but as has been mentioned, most universities have a pretty decent amount of student activities cash just waiting to be used. One of the guys who first approached our SA with the con idea was actually hushed in the middle of the proposal, taken out in the hall, and told, off the record, to ask for considerably more student association money to organize the first con they did.
Being that close to Gen-con, I'd be willing to bet if you got a local con off the ground, you'd be able to do some fantastic networking and promotion there. I hope to get back to Gen-con next year, as a completely unrelated aside.
Wait a minute ... this sounds like World of Warcraft...
I suddenly realized...
Pick a game that a lot of people like to play.
Set up brackets.
Create entrance fee of 25 bucks to get in the tournament.
Suppose you had a street fighter 4 tournament: 32 fighters join up.
This brings in $800
The prize for winning will be $500, you pocket the other $300.
Repeat these tournaments once a week. Get sign ups in advance.
$300 a week for your gaming club.
12 weeks of tournaments = $3,600 for the semester.
GG.
Want to make only $1,440 a semester instead? Charge 10 bucks entrance fee. Might get you more volume, so you might actually make more money.
They reserved a ballroom in the university's student center for a three-day-weekend in March and stuffed it full of pen-and-paper, board, card, video, and LAN games, not to mention some vendors of truly awesome gaming/anime/geek stuff.
As far as stuff you guys could do, the ever-popular Halo 3/COD: MW2/FPS tourney is always a good moneymaker, especially with entrance fee.
You could maybe all go out for a game/console launch with some sort of gimmick (wearing school shirts and behaving well so you can look good to the administration and student government).
Maybe you can make it a point to all go to a student government meeting and ask for cash, every single meeting until you get some. Get to know some student government people and invite a few to stop by for some games and pizza some Friday. Get a budget and some ideas together and show them what you're planning to do.
If your school government really favors ethnic stuff, partner up one Friday with the Asian Studies/Japanese club and find some Japanese games and do presentations on how games from over there make it over here.
I can has cheezburger, yes?