With remotes in hand and game faces on, avid gamers transformed St. Clair College into a 12-hour battleground on Saturday. The regional Pressure Point esports tournament attracted approximately 130 top-level competitors from across Ontario and the United States, who battled it out in games such as Smash Bros., Street Fighter, Mario Kart, and Pokémon.
Second Year at St. Clair College
This marked the second consecutive year that St. Clair College hosted the Pressure Point tournament. Organizers cited the campus's high-tech amenities as a key reason for bringing the event back. Nikola Tan, event director for Pressure Point, praised the venue's facilities. "A big draw is the venue here and the production here," Tan said. "What we have in Toronto isn't as beautiful, as high class as this. There's a load of high-quality PCs, a bunch of monitors. They have the most insane stream production setup in Canada."
Student Involvement
Students from St. Clair College's esports program played a crucial role in organizing and setting up a live stream of the tournament, according to Tan. "I think a lot of the students in St. Clair's program are pretty knowledgeable in esports," he said. "The people that work here are really nice to work with. I love working with them."
The esports industry continues to expand, noted Alexa Kovacevich, a tournament administrator and recent graduate of the esports administration and entrepreneurship program at St. Clair College. "And honestly, I don't think it's going to stop growing either," she said. "There's always new games that come out and some games, they're such staples in the industry that they're just going to keep getting bigger and bigger."
Program Benefits
Kovacevich highlighted how the two-year program at St. Clair exposed her to the marketing, broadcasting, and business management dimensions of esports, providing opportunities to work on "some huge events." Her capstone project involved planning and running an esports tournament that drew around 600 people. "I think the best part of events like this is the sense of community that it brings," Kovacevich said. "Even though we all may not be similar, we might not all play the same game... we all still share like the common love of video games. And I think that's something that's very important because it makes you feel like you're part of a community."
Building Friendships
Tan emphasized that many participants form friendships through gaming. "I think it's very important, for esports and gaming in general... they don't have many opportunities to meet up with each other," Tan said. When it comes to fighting games, he explained that there is a "special" element in in-person events. "You get to interact with other people. Basically, the face-to-face is so much better than playing an online bracket," Tan said. "It's like, if you have a shared interest for anything here, it's a good way to make friends. For people that are like socially awkward, it's pretty easy. You've just got to go up to someone and ask, 'hey, do you want to play,' and they're instant friends."
