University of Manchester have been selected as the November 2024 'Society of the Month' for running new and exciting social events to bring the community together. We spoke to the president of the society Reclaimer, to ask
him a few questions on upcoming events and the society's biggest achievements this month!
Congratulations on winning society of the month! Can you tell us a few of the different activities / projects you have been up to?
Firstly, I would like to thank NSE for picking us as society of the month! This is a really special moment for myself, the committee and the society as a whole.
It's been a pretty busy month for us I would say, but you could've said it's been like that since the start of the academic year! This year, we've really been trying to get upstarted on a few "community tournaments", where we play games that are a tad more casual but with a proper tournament format. This month, we kicked off with a fun in-house Geoguessr tournament that people really enjoyed, and a lot tuned in to watch it on our twitch as well! The next community tournament that we have scheduled will be a Clash Royale one which should go down pretty well!
I'd also like to talk a bit about the development of our WNB space this year called the "Tea Party". This was an idea that came into fruition last year, however Huliia (Our Vice-President) has done a lovely job of developing it, and for the first time in our society's long 12 year history, we have been able to submit some WNB teams to participate in the WNB tournaments this month! They are also set to have a nice Tea Party exclusive bowling social at the end of the month which is cool! We're really passionate in Manchester about showing that gaming and esports is for absolutely everyone.
And lastly, I've definitely got to talk about our "UoM Rivals Championship". This is a really fun in-house tournament that we actually ran 2 years ago, and have brought back for this year! The basis of the tournament is that you will be put onto a mixed team with other UoM students, and will play a mixture of League of Legends, Overwatch and Valorant. The idea is that most players will have only really played a lot of one or two of them games, meaning that each player in a team will get their chance to shine when it comes to their main games! We held a LAN event at pixel bar to kick start this tournament off, and everyone had an absolute blast. Some of the tactics that have come out have been really interesting too! Putting your Valorant players on DPS in Overwatch, putting you unknown league players on champions like Yuumi, it's been great. The championship is scheduled to run until some point in the 2nd semester, so it'll be fun to see how the tournament unfolds and I can't wait to host the Grand Finals at LAN in 2025! 
What has been your biggest achievement for the society this month?
Getting onto NSE's society of the month is the biggest one I think, I've been eyeing that one up all year and it's a nice feeling to have all of our efforts be recognised. But aside from that, being selected to feature on our Student Union Radio "Fuse FM" was a really fun experience. Since the start of the year, Fuse FM have been running a show every Tuesday at 2PM called "Meet the Society". The host of that show really wanted us on there, and when they messaged us we instantly said yes. I took myself, along with Huliia (Vice President) and Tengune (Social Rep) and we had a really nice chat about all things esports, including stuff about the growth of the industry, women in esports, and whether or not games like chess.com count as an esport! You will be able to catch that episode on-demand on the meet.thesocietyfm Instagram page!
Do you have any plans with the upcoming projects for the society?
Absolutely, we've got a lot of plans and projects lined up over the coming months. I've already talked about the Rivals Championship and how fun that's been, but we're also in the works of organising a big end of year ball in collaboration with a few other societies at the University of Manchester. At the start of the year, I reached out to a couple of societies that I thought were somewhat similar to us to get working on this idea, and we've got the likes of the gaming society, anime society, Minecraft society, TTRPG society and a few others on board with it! The plans are still really early, but we're leaning towards a geek-themed ball and are expecting over 100 people to turn up to it! It should be a really fun event and I can't wait to share some more details with our members once I have them!
For people looking to get into esports at UoM, how can they get involved with what you do?
The best place to start would be by joining our discord server, which is our main platform for communication. We're always on the lookout for new players to join our teams, but if playing on a team isn't your thing, then do not worry! You can still connect with others who share your passion for gaming and join us for our fun social events or casual game nights. We also hold a few casual PUGS/Custom Game events, and the one that I would like to bring up and advertise is Overwatch's "Fallowfield Fridays". If you're an Overwatch player, chances are that you've already heard of it! But if you haven't, join our server and come and play with us every Friday at 7PM! They are open to everyone, not just UoM students!
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