Gamers gather at The Pointe for BeachCon

Roughly 400 people packed into The Pointe at the Walter Pyramid Saturday to attend BeachCon 9, one of Cal State Long Beach’s most popular annual events.

From its “noob” beginnings in a dorm common room, BeachCon celebrated its ninth anniversary over the weekend. Organized by a group of seven CSULB housing techs, BeachCon has turned into a fully sponsored event and is one of the biggest events in Southern California that hosts a LAN video game competition.

Cole Peterson, director of marketing for BeachCon and coordinator of the event, said it just started making a name for itself.

“It started with just like, 20 people in one of the common rooms in the dorms [and] from there it’s grown and grown,” Peterson said. “This time it’s going to be one of our biggest showings for sure.”

Every corner of The Pointe was filled with game consoles, such as Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3s, Nintendo GameCubes, and arcade machines.

Players interacted throughout the lobby’s many video game stations while playing classic games, such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

However, the center of the action took place in the main conference room where approximately 70 people could simultaneously participate in the Local Area Networks tournaments or pick-up matches.

In typical LAN fashion, participants brought their own over-sized gaming towers and monitors preloaded with the featured PC games.

For participants, such as senior mechanical engineering major Derek Mazer, BeachCon was exactly what gamers were looking for.

“I just like the atmosphere overall,” Mazer said. “It’s not just one game, there’s so many different games, so many different people involved and so many different groups of people here.”

This year’s LAN tournaments featured PC games such as League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 4 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

Championship matches were streamed on a giant projection screen in the conference room.

For Mazer, the best part of the event was meeting and playing League of Legends with people face-to-face.

“When you play at home and stuff it’s just like, ‘Oh hey, I’m playing by myself, cool,’” Mazer said. “I know [the other players] are online and it’s not here, but it’s cool because you get to talk to the person while you’re playing with like, the guy across from you,” Mazer said.

The event wasn’t exclusive to CSULB students either. The “5v5 League of Legends” tournament, in which five players competed against five other players, drew professionally ranked teams. Team Dama, one of the professional teams from Irvine Valley College, won the 5v5 League of Legends tournament.

While some came to compete, others came for the fun and sense of community.

“I like how they bring in so many people together,” Mazer said. “It’s not like it’s a small event with a few people, they have people who come in from outside and I think it’s really cool.”

The event was held from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. with plenty of free Red Bull and pizza to keep gamers sustained into the early hours of the morning.

Many of the participants stayed the whole night for the hourly raffle that was sponsored by several companies, including the computer hardware company EVGA Corporation, which provided prizes such as a top-of-the-line PC graphics card.

“It’s really cool,” Mazer said. “I like it. I’ve been coming here for a while now and I’m probably going to keep coming back if I can.”