In a time where nearly everything has been shut down, the Slippery Rock e-sports club is providing an escape from reality for a few hours. The SRU e-sports club will host a community game night Saturday night on Discord and Twitch from 8-11 p.m.
“Even this week, we’re still on break and people might not even know what their workload is going to be next week, so we want people to de-stress before they stress,” club President Zeve Olbum said.
The community game night, which will feature Minecraft and Jackbox games, will be held on the club’s Discord page — which can be joined via a QR code on any of the club’s social media pages. For those who would rather watch, Olman said the games will more than likely be streamed on Twitch.
Olman encouraged all Slippery Rock students and staff, anyone from the community, to get involved with the club’s event.
“We mostly just want to make our server available and our club available for people to have as much interaction between students as we can because we’re not able to now that we’re not going back to school,” Olbum said. “That’s pretty much the main purpose of it, to get the word out that we’re still here, we’re still playing games.”
Discord and Twitch, a social media and streaming platform, respectively, are relatively easy to join, and the e-sports club has made it even easier to join.
“For Twitch, you don’t even have to sign up,” Olbum said. “You just go to the website and see us playing. Discord, you do have to make an account once you get into our server, but it’s extremely easy. It’s like making a Twitter login.”
For those who have questions or are finding it difficult to join from the Twitter or Instagram link, Olman said to just message either account.
And for those less than tech-savvy people out there, Olman clarified that Discord, in his opinion, is basically “the Skype for gamers.”
“Discord is an online social media platform,” Olbum said. “There are multiple voice channels. If you want to make a channel, you can. The e-sports club has its own server dedicated to the Slippery Rock e-sports club, so we can have multiple channels. It’s where all of our teams communicate, it’s where they play their games, it’s where they talk to each other during the games, whether it’s practice or not.”
Minecraft and Jackbox, which will be free to everyone to play since the eSports club owns a copy of the game, will be played over the club’s Discord page.
Minecraft is the popular sandbox video game that has become one of the most popular games in the world since being launched in 2009, and Jackbox Games are a collection of “party-like” games in which groups of people team up to play games like Quiplash, Fibbage and others.
Twitch will provide people who wish to enjoy the games without actually playing a way to still be involved.
“Twitch is a streaming platform, kind of a live feed of us playing the projection of what we look at,” Olbum said. “We most likely will be streaming on Saturday, Jackbox and Minecraft, but it’s pretty much so that if you don’t want to play but want to watch, there’s still an available option.”
While Olbum said the community game night will not be a replacement for a previously scheduled Rock the Weekend event, he feels as though the event will likely continue next month as well.
Olbum said community game night will not be a big event, but he encouraged everyone to experience just what the club has to offer.
The event will begin Saturday at 8 p.m. The link to the Discord and Twitch channels can be found here and here.
