Fortnite Dominates Online Gaming Summit at Greek Campus
Thousands of young enthusiasts descended on the Tahrir Greek Campus, chanting in support, taunting other teams and heatedly debating who will win the Gamers Lounge eSports online gaming summit on September 29.
The campus was divided into a an area for spectators who were watching attentively the main stage that screens the event, and the Gamers Lounge arena where gamers were transfixed at their computers, fingers at the ready on their controllers.
Initiated by a group of gaming aficionados, Gamers Lounge is a company that aims to encourage and promote the next generation of gamers and give them a platform that is not usually prominent in the Egyptian community.
Esports are a form of competition using online video games. It turns online gaming into a spectator sport, where games are played in front of live audiences or streamed online.
“We estimate the number of attendees to be between 3000 to 5000, and we are planning to get a bigger venue to host the event next year as hopefully, the numbers will keep on increasing,” Hashem Alborno, co-founder of Gamers Lounge, told The Caravan.
Alborno said the event hosts a wide variety of games to serve the diversity of gamers at the event. It had the biggest Fortnite Local Area Network (LAN) tournament in the region, in addition to FIFA soccer, and more.
The Fortnite tournament, one of the most popular at the summit, had spectators jumping out of their seats, in response to unexpected turns of events that happened throughout the game. One of the gamers, known as “Hassan XX,” entertained the entire spectating area with his trolling methods and risky moves, shocking the tournament announcer as well.
Mohamed Osama, 20, said that the event was too focused on Fortnite, and wished more attention was paid to FIFA.
“The event is very crowded and it is surprisingly well organized. My purpose was to come play FIFA, but I found a variety of interesting games that I watched people play, and I played other games as well,” said Mohsen El Turki, 22.
One of these, the Clash Royale tournament, offered the top-ranked among 900 players to travel to the World Championship in Germany in January 2019.
The event was packed with gamers from different age ranges who came to enjoy the games on a larger scale and challenge each other.
“I came to the event with my friend Sohaila because we are gamers. Unfortunately, we did not see any girls an the event,” said Sandra Ali, 17.
Ali argued that most girls would leave even if they were interested in the event because the huge number of men at the event could be intimidating.
The event was also attended by game developers such Di.tri, Bubble Head Games, and Youmaku Games who exhibited some of their newest features at mini-booths peppered around the Greek Campus.
“Our biggest game till now is Skelewton’s First Law. It won the first place at the Run Double Jump event for developers in 2017, which helped showcase our game [at] the Indie Prize event in the US,” Youssef Aly, also known as “Gurin Jaw,” co-founder of Youmaku Games, told The Caravan.
Skelewton’s First Law is a game featuring physicist Sir Isaac Newton as a skeleton called Skelewton who discovers that he can control gravity and tries to survive while collecting as many apples as he can before dying.
Aly Amin, co-Founder of Bubble Head Games, also told The Caravan, said he developed with an international team that he never met in person. He attended this event to receive feedback on behalf of his team to improve their game, “Beats Of Fury.”
“The event is a good platform for raising awareness for the indie developer. [I am] hoping that next year the numbers of indie developers at the event would [grow],” Bassel Mostafa, founder of Di.tri, told The Caravan.
The event was supported by various sponsors, such as Intel, Souq.com, Egypt Laptop, HP, Samsung Gaming Monitor, Noor, Game Zone, and other companies and cash prizes to the top gamers reached EGP 150,000.
