Article Written by Collin Rutkowski. Photo by Collin Rutkowski.

Esports hosted their first Halloween event Wednesday with themed games, treats, and a costume contest. They went all out for the event with many people dressing up in their favorite pop culture costumes, and video game characters which ranged from Rey Skywalker to Spider-Man.  

When stepping into the Esports arena in the basement of Atwood Memorial Center, the spirit of Halloween could immediately be felt. With orange lighting, cobwebs hung around, and Freddy Krueger in attendance while Halloween music played in the background, the event set up a perfect representation of Halloween meets video games. 

Calvin Ripplinger, president of the Rocket League club and a member of the Varsity Rocket League team on campus, said the vibes of the event were “fun, silly, goofy vibes.”

The silliness and comradery were very much evident as dozens of people came to play and have a good time with friends. The plan was also to play Dead by Daylight but unfortunately due to connection issues, the game had to be scrapped for the event. 

“It was sad that there was no Dead by Daylight, but Deceit was still fun to play”, said Ripplinger. 

The costume contest had over a dozen entries with a diverse pool of costumes with the winner being Calvin Ripplinger as the Octane car from Rocket League. He had made his costume out of cardboard with a plastic windshield and painted gray. 

The Esports team put roughly 30-40 hours into making the event happen with many different moving parts to create their vision. From lighting, setting up multiple PCs, and the decorations, the event was described as a success by the Director of Esports at St. Cloud State Chase Neukam. 

“Quite a bit of effort went in, any new games we introduce into the arena, which Dead by Daylight was a newer game, requires a lot of testing on our IT team to ensure the success of….   We retained a lot of the people that were still around, I think we counted it at about 30 people showed up, we were very happy with the turn out tonight.” 

When asked about how Neukam felt how the event, he was very happy with how all the aspects turned out. 

“I would say the event was a B. We got everything set up that we wanted to besides Dead by Daylight, Deceit ran fine, costume contest ran fine, everyone loved the food, the orange lights looked great, I think it was a great event.” 

The Esports community has continued to grow on campus as the group has been a part of over 30 events in the last two months. The Rocket League and Smash Brothers teams participated in their first-ever LAN events in Mankato from Oct.19 – Oct. 23 which the Rocket League team finished first. They’re also planning to host a regional Smash Brothers tournament in Iowa where they expect about 400 people to attend with a date to be decided. 

The event went from 6-9 p.m. and people were playing the game Deceit which is a first-person shooter game where you must figure out who in the group is infected. The two groups of infected and non-infected fight to be the last group standing in order to win. 

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