Last week, FAU’s second-annual Geek Week came to a close, featuring a variety of tournaments and free-play events.

On Monday, March 25, the Student Union partnered with FAU’s College Gaming League to host a Super Smash Bros. Melee Tournament. Tuesday, it hosted a trivia contest, the Geek Bowl. On Wednesday, in conjunction with Program Board, a Madden 2013 Tournament was held, and a second partnership with the College Gaming League on Thursday lead to a free-play session of Dance Central. Finally, on Friday, a free-play event for Magic: The Gathering was held in the Union.

Here are some of the highlights:

Smash Bros. Tournament:
The Student Union was abuzz with the clacking of buttons and muttered swears as characters on three different screens duked it out in a battle for supremacy.

A board, adorned with rules and a large bracket, stood to the side. Geek Week kicked off with a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament, co-sponsored by FAU’s own College Gaming League (CGL).

“This year, I feel that we’re going to be a little more organized, as opposed to last year,” says Michael “Mickey” Williams, senior international business major and vice-president of CGL.

The players themselves are a varied bunch. “There’s going to be people that are really good that are going to go far,” says Andrew Donica, a sophomore psychology major. “And then there’s me who’s just gonna be, ‘Yeah, I’m already gonna lose, but let’s do it anyways.’”

As the rounds wear on, a crowd of 12 to 15 onlookers take guesses as to the final result of the tournament. Charlie Park, a junior computer science major, muses that “out of the players here, I’d probably say [Ryan] Chapman and Diego [Rodriguez]” have the best chance of winning out of the whole pool.

His predictions ring true, as those two soon end up as the final two in the tournament. After three intense matches, which pitted the pink Pokemon Jigglypuff (played by Chapman) against the masked Captain Falcon (played by Rodriguez), Chapman proved triumphant, winning a $100 Target Visa gift card for his victory. Rodriguez received a $50 Target Visa gift card for his efforts.

“I plan on spending it on, like, probably gas money to drive to school to finish my degree,” says Chapman, a senior geography major, after receiving his prize. “We had a lot of fun, and I think it was a great event and they should hold these more often … It’s good to have healthy competition between classmates.”

Madden 2013 Tournament:
The sounds of a football game including yelling, cheering, and jeering, echoed through the Student Union on the night of March 27. The source wasn’t from watching ESPN, though — it was from a video game tournament.

The game was Madden 2013, the latest version of Electronic Arts’ yearly-updated sports video game franchise.

“It’s something that everybody plays,” said Malik Creary, senior marketing major. Creary is the traditions vice president of FAU’s Program Board, the organization co-sponsoring the event with the Student Union.

The accessibility of the game was a factor in drawing the roughly 42 players to the tournament. The winner would receive a $100 Visa gift card and the runner up would receive $50 in Flex bucks. “You really have nothing to lose,” said Marc Burnside, freshman pre-business major. “If you lose, you just lose. If you win, you get something out of it.”

The tournament featured about eight console stations, featuring both the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360, allowing multiple games to be played simultaneously.

Competitors began by choosing a team, who they would be playing as for the entire tournament. Since this Madden uses stats from the beginning of the latest NFL season, many teams that were favored last August were found on the tournament board; the entirety of the NFC East (Cowboys, Eagles, Giants, and Redskins) were well-represented in player picks, as were the eventual Super Bowl champions, the Baltimore Ravens.

Some surprise picks also appeared, including the Jets and Steelers, and one student even picked to play as the Miami Dolphins.

The rules of the tournament were simple: rounds were single elimination, the play clock would be set at less than 20 seconds, and quarters would be two minutes long (for reference, a regular quarter in Madden lasts five minutes, and a real game of football takes 15). “When it’s two minutes and it’s an accelerated clock, you don’t really get a chance to play a whole game and show how good you can be,” said Dexter Changa, junior computer science major.

With such short windows for play in each game, competitors were forced to pursue very aggressive, risky plays, leading to tense moments, and some intense competition. “I love you bro, but I’m gonna kick your ass!” said Jeff Williams, junior engineering major, just before a game against fellow junior Elijah Adams, a sports management major.

In the end, Changa won the XBox side of the tournament, and was quite pleased with the outcome. “I’m good, I’m happy. It’s cool, I got to play Madden at school.”

George Ramos, a sophomore pre-business major, took home the prize for the PS3 side of things, and was also very happy. “It was fun. I mean, I caught some breaks, but I’ll take the W!”

Dance Central:
The Student Union is typically a vibrant place in the afternoon, but it’s not exactly the place one expects to find loud music and dancing, at least outside the occasional fashion show or other similar special events hosted there from time to time.

But things were different on Thursday, March 28. That day, the Student Union partnered with the College Gaming League to host an hour-long Dance Central free-play event, where anyone could show up, show their best dance moves, and then get shown up by a better dancer.

“We just wanted to do something cool with the Student Union,” said Rashean Graham, senior biology major and president of the College Gaming League. “We felt it would be a good way to expose people to video games and stuff like that, and show them that it’s not all people sitting in a corner in the Union, playing video games. You can be active and a gamer at the same time, and practice skill that you can use in a lot of other instances in life, like dancing!”

The event was not a competition, but novelty sunglasses (styled to look retro 8-bit graphics) were given to whomever had gotten the highest score at the end of every song, with two participants per song.

Participants were pleased with the tournament, even if the only prospective prize was a pair of sunglasses. “Oh, I think it’s great. Just for avid gamers to come out, or just people in general to come out.” said Sean Trivitt, a freshman biology major. “If they ever had it again, I would [definitely] come back again.”
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[title type=”h4″]Headcount[/title]

Here’s an estimate of the number of students who came out for each Geek Week event this year, according to Lauren Adamo, the Student Union Administration’s Geek Week organizer:

Monday Super Smash Bros. Melee Tournament — 30
Tuesday Geek Bowl — 12
Wednesday Madden 2013 Tournament — 50
Thursday Dance Central Free Play — 20
Friday Magic: The Gathering Free Play — 35