News
Gamers Alliance to host PointCON
The Pointer
nmeye177@uwsp.edu
The Gamers Alliance of Stevens Point will be hosting the 16th annual PointCON: Olympian Adventure gamers convention this weekend in the Dreyfus University Center starting at 7 p.m. on Friday.
The Gamers Alliance, formerly the Gamers’ Anonymous, has been active on campus for 18 years providing people with a passion for games of all kinds an outlet on campus.
“We provide a venue for people to engage in a friendly gaming environment,” said Carl Olson, GASP president.
Throughout the year, GASP meets every Wednesday night in lower Debot room 073 to indulge in their favorite pastime, typically role-playing games but all types of games are welcome.
“We support any of all forms of games, card games, board games, video games: even disc golf, anything that’s just a game and just a distraction from real life,” Olson said.
PointCON is the group’s biggest event, bringing in gamers from all over the surrounding area for three days of role play, video and board games. The event takes over six rooms in the DUC for three straight days.
This year’s PointCON will feature four different gaming vendors selling all types of gaming paraphernalia. The vendors include Chadam games out of Wausau, Coutts Enterprise, an anime vending company run by a UW-SP student, Hell on Wheels from Minnesota and Family Video, which will be selling discounted games.
It will also offer full days of games like Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons and Castles and Crusades. Local game store Gaming Generations will offer their collection of used video games to the convention for the weekend to give people a chance to take part in some of their favorite classic games. There will also be Mario Cart and Settlers of Katan tournaments.
Most of the gaming will be tournament-style play to bring a level of competition not normally present in the groups weekly meetings.
“Casual gaming is great. It’s a lot of fun, but in our experience, at conventions people want to have an experience that they don’t get under normal circumstances,” Olson said.
Olson and the rest of GASP have been working hard to make sure people know about PointCON and stress that it’s not just for people who want to be involved in role-playing games.
For the club, there is nothing better than when someone just wanders in unknowingly and decides to get involved in a game. The social interaction that takes place in the midst of a game is where a lot of the passion for gaming comes from, according to Olson. PointCON is special in that it’s inevitable that people end up playing games with a lot of people they’ve never met before.
“When you sit down to play a board game, usually people know it. If they don’t know it, someone does and they can teach you,” Olson said. “You don’t need to know the people that you’re with, you can get to know them through playing the game. I think you can learn a lot about people by the way they approach playing games.”
The convention will wrap up on Sunday with a chance to win prizes in a raffle. More details can be found on the PointCON Facebook group and the GASP Web site.
