The Southampton Game Fest will feature a host of free-to-enter esports tournaments for the local community.
The event is entering its third year and is sponsored by Arcade Europe, who will be bringing a selection of custom-made arcade machines and running a tournament.
A ‘large proportion’ of profits will go to charity – last year the fest raised more than £1,000 for charities including the Southampton Hospital Charity.
Tournaments include:
- 1-2-Switch
- CoD 4
- FIFA 17
- Mario Kart 8
- Street Fighter 2 Celebration Edition (on an arcade machine hosted by Arcade Europe)
- Local indie game Laser Drift: Over Drive
Tournaments are expected to be livestreamed to Facebook. They’re all free to enter except for the Street Fighter 2 competition which costs £2 (100% of this goes to charity).
Organiser Patrick Day-Childs told Esports News UK: “The event was set up by myself and a few mates, most of whom have gone onto work for Multiplay and GAME.
“Now I run it with a bit of a skeleton crew, myself and my fiancée then some friends who help on the day. We do the events for several different charities but the last two years have been for Piam Brown Ward, our local hospital’s children’s ward.
“We don’t usually get a super hardcore esports crowd, but we do get a decent level of competitiveness!”
“We are trying to cater to everyone, we have a great university for gaming down here – it’s where Peter Molyneux studied – so we support the local devs. But we knew people wouldn’t just come for small indie games so we loaded in tournaments too – we don’t usually get a super hardcore esports crowd, but we do get a decent level of competitiveness!
“I think by handing out trophies to the winners, if you do it for charity you get a lot more bang for your buck. We did a Hearthstone tournament and got a laser-etched glass tankard with ‘Hearthstone Hampshire Champion’ on it.
“So prize pools are really cool and personally I prefer some money when I win a tournament, but we want to get as much to charity as we can!”
On the 1-2-Switch tournament, Patrick added: “Who doesn’t want to see two people milk a virtual cow on stage?”
Southampton Game Fest takes place this Saturday (May 6th) at the 1865 in Brunswick Square from 10am to 5pm.
Tickets cost £7 advance or £8 on the door – kids under 11 get in free with a paying adult.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
