The University of Sheffield's society, SLUGS, have been selected as the Pot Noodle Society of the Month for March!
We spoke to their social secretary, AJOEZ, to find out more...
Massive congratulations on being chosen as our Pot Noodle Society of the Month! Could you tell everybody a little bit about what SLUGSoc got up to in March? (Iconic name btw)
SLUGSoc is the Sheffield University Gaming Society, with a name lost to time, although legends say it was supposed to be SULGSoc (Sheffield University Lan Gaming Society) however the person who wrote it mistyped it into the SU when creating it (I personally think SLUGSoc is better anyway). During March it was a big month for us with our 3rd and final LAN of the academic year and our 91st LAN as a society. We also had our stapled Tuesday socials at Firepit with games including golf with friends, Wii party and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. On top of this we had our other quiet socials which we run every other week where we played Overcooked and 51 Worldwide Games. We announce the games we play a day in advance so if you are free, please come and say hi!
Wow, 91 LANs is no small feat! What was that like to organise and (maybe more importantly!) what's it like to attend? Do you have any plans for future LANs?
The LANs are our big events that we run each year, with 2 in the first semester and 1 in the second. The setup can be quite a long journey with many of us getting there for 9am to setup in advance many of us having carried PC's from quite far away, with me personally carrying my laptop, switch and monitor along with so much more that it's hard to describe for about 15 minutes up to the Edge (it's more tiring then it sounds!). The setup of the network is done by our wonderful tech officers, with special thanks to Owen and Kiran and our alumni friend Fred, the process is beyond my capabilities. For me playing at the LANs is by far the best bit, being able to run matches with your friends right next to you, whether you join the massive Overwatch community, want to join in with Unreal Tournament or play in the in person Smash Tournaments. Attendance was very high as usual, with us having well over 40 attendees. (We even have a super secret new system in place for next time, to reduce the chance of errors as more and more people attend). If you are looking at coming to the next LAN we will be running one near the start of the next academic year, likely around early October and another one later in November, make sure to get the tickets when they come out approximately a week in advance!
I believe your society also recently set up a new Deadlock server! Currently NSE doesn't support this title, so it would be great to understand a bit about plans for the server and community engagement.
We have a lot of interest in Deadlock, with many people that I know, especially in our Overwatch community playing it very regularly, we hope to continue to grow the community as deadlock has many aspects which likely appeals to many different gamers who enjoy different Genres like shooters and MMO's like league of legends. The server is still a work in progress and with all new things it will continue to get better over time. We hope to run PUGs sometime after the Easter break (friendly in house games where we select captains who then pick teams and we play against each other). These will be free for everyone and in the SLUGs main discord server and we also do this for many of our other esports or party games so keep an eye out!
In terms of your other social events, could you explain exactly what a 'quiet social' is and how you came about running these?
Our weekly socials are hosted at the firepit between 7:30-10pm on Tuesdays, these can often be a bit louder due to them being run in a bar with music, although most people there are often society members since we have an agreement with them where we can fully use the back half of the bar and set up our games. This kind of environment, although very fun, is not for everyone so our quiet socials in the Students Union, usually committee central are a great place to hang out, chat and play some games together with a slightly more relaxed environment, these also run slightly early in the day, quite often from 6pm-9pm although times may sometimes vary. These socials run every 2 weeks instead of weekly! For any future events, you can visit our webpage at https://www.slugsoc.co.uk/events/ to see when and where they will be or our discord server where an invite can be found on the same website. We hope to see you around!
Thank you very much for answering my questions! Final one: if you had to pick a Pot Noodle flavour to represent your society, what would it be and why?
Although a basic answer I will have to go for Pot Noodle Original Curry as we are one of the oldest university societies, with most of the current committee members being much younger than the society itself, we have been going strong for a long time, I personally hope to be around for our 100th LAN, as that milestone will definitely be one to remember!
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