November sounded like a packed month for you all, can you tell us a bit more about the events you ran and how they went?
We ran four of our weekly meetups every Friday in November, running tournaments of Halo, WarioWare Smooth Moves, Just Dance, and Gang Beasts. These events all went by without issue, the main problem was having to change room for three of the events because of concerts being hosted in the Guild closing our normal room. I feel like our tournament games covered a nice variety of genres and consoles, and our usual suite of consoles were available for people to play every week as well.
As for the other events we ran this month, there was quite a variety of things we got up to! The first extra event we ran was a watch party of the 2025 League of Legends Worlds Final at our local branch of Pixel Bar. It was an obnoxiously early start from a British perspective, with the match starting at 7am GMT. Because of this early start, the turnout was modest, but it was still good to host an in person event tailored towards our esports players. The second extra event we ran this month was a coffee morning. This was a much simpler affair, just getting some people together to go to a café and talk about games for a bit. I enjoyed it as a good break from my uni work.
The third extra event we ran was a collab with two other societies, the Skydiving Society and the Trading Card Game Society. The event was mainly designed to be an icebreaker session for all of our members to mingle together and get to know each other. It worked really well, most of the people in the room had overlaps in their interests, so it ended up being easy to meet new people. The fourth extra event we did was a trip to the Birmingham Comic Con. A group of nine of us went, and we all had a great time there. It was great to see our members bonding and getting to know each other while they were there as well, and we had some good fun messing about on the train back as well. Navigating everyone through Birmingham New Street on the way back probably took years off my life, but it was worth it!
Out of all the events you hosted, was there one that really stood out to the community? Any memorable moments?
From the weekly meetups, the most memorable moments definitely came from the Just Dance tournament. Out go to Just Dance game is Just Dance 4 for the Wii. The use of Wiimotes makes it easy for new players to understand, and it has a lot of music that comes straight from our members’ childhood. It’s a tournament game that seemed to get everyone smiling, no matter how good they were at actually following the dances. It’s also a game that’s very entertaining to watch even when you’re not playing, which makes it a very fun tournament to run as well as participate in. The highlight of the evening for me was definitely when people decided to start dual wielding Wiimotes, trying to match the movements with both arms simultaneously. I don’t think they were very successful, but it was certainly funny to watch!
The big highlight from the other events this month was definitely our trip to the Birmingham Comic Con. It took a lot of work on the committee side to make it happen, so I was just glad to see it happen in the first place! We had a group of 9 go to the convention, with the society organising and paying for the train travel there and back, and we had a great time there. The highlight was just getting a photo of all of us at the start of the day. A few people even went to the lengths of doing a cosplay for the event, which was great to see!
How do you decide what events to run each month? Do you rely more on committee planning or member suggestions?
For most of our weekly tournaments, the committee decides what games are used. This is mainly done for logistical reasons, as the game’s multiplayer mode must have some specific requirements to make a good tournament game. To run a good tournament with the game, we ideally want it to have a consistent and relatively short run time, be quick and easy for new players to understand, and give a clear order of players at the end.
Something like Mario Kart is a perfect example of this. Every race only lasts a few minutes and is very unlikely to drag on for much longer, most people already know how to play a Mario Kart game, and the controls are very simple for any new players as well, and there will never be any ties for position, which is great for us running the tournament because we can let the as many people through as needed without having to use rock paper scissors for ties. Some of our big tournament games are Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Halo, and Just Dance, and some of our left field indie favourites are Towerfall, Gang Beasts, SpeedRunners, and Ultimate Chicken Horse. As for the other events we run, they are usually decided on by the committee. They may be based on ideas that committee members have, like with the coffee morning and the Birmingham Comic Con trip, or they may be based on collab offers we’ve had from other societies, like with the Nerd Out social we did with our Skydiving and Trading Card Games societies.
For other university societies looking to level up their event calendar, do you have any advice on planning, collaborations, or trying new things?
In terms of doing new things with your Gaming Society, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you can confidently run anything you’ve already got planned, or any events that happen regularly. If you can’t make sure that these are under control, then you will not have the time to organise and run things on top of that! As for the kind of events to run, it’s always worth asking other societies at your uni for collabs. Gaming is a broad enough area that it’s quite easy to find some overlap between you and other societies, or at least enough of an overlap to have an excuse to get you all in a room together having fun.
As for trying new things, it’s always worth polling your members for interest in the idea before you put too much work into it. We did this for our Comic Con trip to initially gauge interest, which helped us plan transport options for it as we already had an idea of how many people we would be taking. It’s also worth taking reasonable suggestions from your members into consideration as well, whether that is for new games to play, or for larger events you could run.
Any exciting plans for 2026 that you can tease?
The big event for us in 2026 is going to be our Charity Stream. We do one every year around Easter time, raising money for the charity Special Effect. We raised nearly £500 last year, so we’re looking to outdo that this year and raise even more money! I contributed to the stream last year with a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe speedrun, and we had another society member contribute an Ultrakill speedrun as well. We usually fill the rest of the time in the stream by just having fun, playing games of Mario Party, or silly things like playing Tetris using a Wii Balance Board.
The other thing I’m really looking forward to in the second semester is the new hardware we’ve just got as a society. As of last week, we have now got a Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch 2 for the society! The Steam Deck has been a long long time coming, we started the process for getting one over a year and a half ago. I’ve gone and done a whole placement year in that time! We started by trying to get a full on gaming PC, but the IT department at the Uni wouldn’t allow it, so a Steam Deck ended up being a good compromise for all parties. The Switch 2 was a lot simpler to get, but it should hopefully keep the society fed with great multiplayer games for years to come. From a committee perspective, we are very very happy to have a Steam Deck, as so many of our go to tournament games have been stuck on our Steam library for well over a year now, and we are just glad to be able to use them again.
And of course, the most important question: if your society as a whole was a Pot Noodle flavour, which one would you be and why?
This one is certainly the weirdest question to answer! Out of all the Pot Noodle flavours, it would probably be Bombay Bad Boy. It’s the best match for the high energy chaos of our weekly meetups, and also represents the variety of members that we have in our wider society.
