By Alexander Gilbert
It is the start of a new semester, which is the perfect time to join new clubs and make new connections on campus. WARP Gaming is an extremely fun club where students can come together to play video games, board games, and card games. With multiple meetings a week highlighting different types of gaming, it provides an excellent space to bond over shared interests.
WARP Gaming meetings are spread across the entire week, divided into subsections of games, including card games, dungeons and dragons, handheld, PC, Smash Bros, and Minecraft. Card game meetings can vary from playing Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other various games with similar concepts. At Dungeons and Dragons meetings, students can work together to create a fantasy role-playing experience with their own characters, stories, and campaigns. On handheld nights, people can face off against each other in several console games such as Mario Kart Wii, and Mario Party. PC nights highlight different multiplayer computer games such as DOOM, while Minecraft and Smash Bros have their own specific weekly meeting times.
Like all the other clubs on campus, WARP Gaming is run not by faculty members but by a small group of experienced students who share their passion for gaming with the student community. The leader and president of the club is Jacob Vautrain, a senior information technology major. Vautrain runs the club in close association with fellow E-Board members: Ben Jacobsen, Vice President; Caylen Hunt, Treasurer; and Owen Feindel, Secretary.
WARP Gaming has been extremely special to Vautrain ever since he began attending Western New England University. He told The Westerner, “When I first came to college, my hometown friend and I, who by chance went to the same university, heard of WARP. We thought it was right up our alley and every Friday it just became a fun part of our week.” Vautrain continued attending more WARP meetings and events and eventually became a part of leadership, first as the subsection lead of Smash Bros Fridays.
The weekly Friday night Smash Bros subsection meeting is a staple of WARP Gaming, where many students come to socialize and compete against their peers in a multiplayer fighting game, which features a vast amount of iconic video game characters. Vautrain explains that “we all get together and play the game” and that “when more people show up, we do a friendly tournament.” The Friday night Smash Bros tournaments are a great way to test your video game skills while making social connections with other gamers who share your passion.
Although many people are experienced, some people who don’t regularly play will show up just to have fun with friends. During the tournaments, there are sometimes consoles on the side where you can play for your own enjoyment outside of the tournament bracket. The tournament matches are showcased to all on the projector screen in a CSP lecture room, making for a fun and competitive environment.
Vautrain and many other students involved with WARP Gaming passionately believe that the club is an essential and invaluable experience for college students at the University. He explains that “WARP is a necessity for WNE because it acts like a safe place for people with similar interests to come together.” Many students, including Vautrain, have made many friends through the WARP Gaming club, making their entire college experience much more special. It can be very difficult at times for college students to make friends, so having set times throughout the week where you can meet people who share your interests is a crucial resource in making social connections away from home.
As the president of WARP Gaming, Vautrain wants to “make sure WARP is a safe place for everyone” and that no one is left out. Everyone who joins the club is welcomed and accepted, so it is very easy to bond with other students there. Vautrain believes that “this sort of thing has been lost lately. It’s so hard to find a place where people can come together and do what they want to do without facing backlash or interruptions.”
Although the weekly subsection meetings provide an excellent and consistent way to connect with people over games, WARP Gaming also hosts various larger-scale events during the semester. The next event will be the Mario Party event next Saturday, October 14, from 5-11 p.m. Vautrain describes the event as a physical, life-sized version of the popular Nintendo video game Mario Party. He explains that there will be “three life-sized Mario Party boards available to play throughout the day” based on various Mario characters. He continued by saying that “people can win more raffle tickets by obtaining stars while competing in various minigames hosted by different on campus clubs.” This event will be a lot of fun, so be sure to keep an eye out for posters around campus and University Posts with more information regarding the event.
