Minecraft is a sandbox video game that allows players to experience social interaction along with being an almost unlimited creative outlet. Credit: Courtesy of Liam Boyce
Minecraft, Between Us and other popular multiplayer video games were essential in allowing students to stay social during a socially distant school year.
After restricting student organizations’ gatherings and events to 10 people or fewer, according to the Student Organizations Community Announcement on October 14, Buckeye Gaming Collective aims to give students another opportunity to interact with each other through Friday every two weeks. Nishant Sathy, a third-year electrical and computer engineering student and director of community management at BGC, said the gaming nights are online.
“I think it’s especially important that the BGC have these game nights,” said Sati.
In these present times, Sathe said, many people have a hard time adjusting to being social in an online atmosphere, but BGC game nights provide an easy way to interact with other students. They interact using the Ohio bullet number to access the university’s Discord server – essentially Skype for gamers.
“I think it’s cool,” said Liam Boyce, third year of materials science and engineering and community director at BGC. “It’s really cool to have actual club activities even when things stop.”
BGC hosts game nights with different themes, with an emphasis on competitive or casual gameplay. Saty said competitive games include esports such as League of Legends, Valorant and Rocket League, while casual game nights include team games designed for large groups of players in a more relaxed environment.
“We had“ Halloween Game Night ”over a week ago that was the theme of“ Between Us, ”said Sati.“ It was fun to see new people coming to play who weren’t very active outside of the chats themselves. ”
Between Us is a social antagonist game similar to Mafia and Werewolf where players have to distinguish who is a fraud. Sathey said part of the game’s popularity among us is due to its accessibility as a free-to-play game with both phone and computer versions compatible with each other.
“The ease of play and the comfort of being able to play wherever and whenever have enhanced interactions between communities as well,” Sati said.
Although Powis doesn’t organize Game Night every night, he said he’s responsible for Minecraft themed nights. Boyce said that there are over 200 people in the student organization playing Minecraft and that the club’s Minecraft multiplayer server has been online 24/7 since before the semester began.
Powis said one of the reasons why he thinks Minecraft is good for a multiplayer experience is because the game works like a sandbox, in which players have nearly infinite possibilities in what they want to do with it.
Boyce said some of the server’s highlights include seeing high-quality home designs for others, the statue of a golden gladiator, his entertainment of Tom W. Davis’s clock tower, and a game night where everyone who’s been online dug a giant hole together.
“It sounds boring, but it was actually so much fun,” Boyce said. We all got into an audio chat together, Boyce said, and someone actually wrote a hole scripture – like the script for the hole.
Boyce said the nature of online game nights benefits both healthy and at-risk people of developing severe symptoms of COVID-19.
“If games are something that feels like something you want to do with a lot of other people, then come on, there is always a group of people looking to play,” Sati said.
Sati said the organization is constantly working on reaching students via social media and letting them know there is space for them to interact in Discord server, Which includes more than 2000 people.
