November Community Events Schedule - 2024
Our Community Events for November are here! We have a huge range of titles, there's something for everyone this month with NSE.
2 months ago
Since the explosion of games such as League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike, Esports has been an unignorable industry. When we browse across Twitch today, we’re greeted with a huge plethora of massive team esports, sustained by huge prize pot tournaments and a massive viewership culture built around the personalities and entertainers of the communities. But far back before we had sponsors and livestreams, esports found its origins in the arcades.
The release of Street Fighter II in 1991 sparked a genesis in the arcade culture - as it turns out, people rather enjoyed beating up their friends and family. And with this spark, came competition. A fire had been lit under all players with a little too much competitive spirit, which began the formation of a wide, inclusive community that spanned continents. Regardless of whether you had played each other or not, all members of the community were united by the arcades.
The intensity of one-on-one competition, your opponent sat close enough to literally breathe down your neck, and the clacking of arcade sticks and buttons rattling around you - these all formed the foundations from which esports has risen. The fundamental notion that anyone could be the best, that the only thing stopping you was if you had the coins to play, remains the same of the largest games today - the chance to be someone or do something great, even if it was only in a local arcade.
Though today the numbers from MOBAs or first-person shooters trump that of Street Fighter V, the dedication of fighting game players persists. Titles such as Mortal Kombat, Tekken and Smash Bros. have joined the fighting game community over the years, and make up one of the most diverse genres in the modern gaming landscape. Brutal finishers, flashy and chaotic combos, intense mindgames and blinding speeds are hallmarks of fighting games, and nothing else out there is anything quite like it. But the most impressive aspect of these games is that they were sustained almost entirely by grassroots events and community passion, and it’s the work of every member of the community that means they can still stand today.
University Fighting Games was ultimately born from this notion. Not every community can be represented in collegiate competition by one organisation, and this is especially the case for the grassroots fighting game community. In the wake of this, UFG was formed in the summer of last year as a means to bring together the online university competitors of all fighting games together. Within a month, we’d gathered 200 members on our Discord server, far beyond our initial expectation, and naturally saw the opportunity to expand. Today, we take our first big step forward, as we’re now live on the National Student Esports platform! It’s thanks to the NSE and Grip Esports that we can make our first season as great as possible, so make sure to show them your love too!
The legacy of fighting games is only as strong as the community, so we hope that as many of you as possible join us as we build our own place in the University Esports scene!
Make sure to join our Discord!
