On Saturday 4th-Sunday 5th March, Durham University Esports and Gaming (DUEG) welcomed around 120 people from across the UK to the North-East Esports Festival, a student-led celebration of esports and gaming. Aiming to highlight the strengths of the industry in the local area and the north in general, it featured a range of talks, networking opportunities and tournaments.
Check out the wrap-up video below:
Guest speakers discussed topics ranging from career pathways into esports to showcasing esports organisations based in the north and the UK university/collegiate scene. Clique Esports and Xcalibur Apparel gave out freebies at their stalls and there was plenty of time and space for attendees to meet and socialise in between activities. We also hosted a VCT finals watch party in a lecture theatre and invited everyone along on a classic Durham college bar crawl in the evening!
The weekend also featured tournaments for Rocket League duos, Overwatch 2 6v6 GOATS and Smash Ultimate. The PC tournaments were made possible thanks to the Event in a Box kit provided by NSE and Intel which included all the PCs and peripherals we needed to run our event, with plenty of Monster Energy also available! NUEL also kindly sponsored tournament prizing and giveaways while Sweet Cabin made sure no guest left without satisfying their sweet tooth.
Visitors from Roehampton Monsterdrop took the top spot in Rocket League beating Durham Offenders 3-1, while the all-Durham finals for Overwatch saw winton nap securing a clean 2-0 sweep over Bridge. Meanwhile CurryGovernor proved his dominance in King of the Hill #4’s Smash Singles bracket with a 3-1 victory over Mittens.
Overall the event was very well received and hopefully will be the start of many more events and opportunities being available in the north and north-east! DUEG is very grateful to everyone who made the trip to attend, and those who gave up their time to help organise and run the event. We hope to continue to run bigger and better things in future to bring opportunities to us and do our part to challenge the London-centric nature of UK esports.
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