Not all events are held in a traditional venue like a convention center or a hotel. For years, events have been held in unconventional places like parks, restaurants and even botanical gardens. But for video game events, more and more are starting to be held at gaming lounges and in this video, I want to talk about a gaming event I went to over the weekend at gaming lounge called Ignite.
LAN gaming centers have been around for decades. In South Korea, they’re known as PC Bangs which have been around since the late 80s. In the US, the first known gaming center was set up in Eastern Michigan University’s student center in 2006. They had PCs, consoles, arcade machines and even held Halo tournaments. Since then, hundreds of LAN centers have been popping up all over the United States.
Ignite Gaming Lounge is one of them. They currently have two locations: one in downtown Chicago and one in Skokie, just a few miles north of the downtown area. On Sunday, my husband and I went to the Skokie location for an Overwatch meetup hosted by Ignite in collaboration with a friend of mine tengu and his gaming organization, kaiju corp.
If you’ve never been to Ignite in Skokie, it’s super easy to get to from downtown Chicago. Of course you can drive or take an Uber directly to the venue, or you can take public transportation directly to the place. From downtown, you just hop on the Red Line north towards Howard. Once you’re at at the Howard, get off the train and wait for the Yellow Line train. Take the Yellow Line up to the first stop, Oakton-Skokie and voila, Ignite is literally right across the street from Ignite. From Jackson to Skokie, it took us about 50 minutes.
Unlike arcades, gaming center have been the epicenter of local lan events and meetups. The Esports Arena in Santa Ana, California was one of the first venue of its kind where it focused on gaming events and tournaments in addition to having PCs for customers. Ignite, and more particularly, the Skokie location, has found a great balance for this kind of venue. They have a separate large open room specifically for a main stage for events and tournaments. That way they don’t have to put away the PCs and consoles when they have a large event with staging and seating. I remember the Esports Arena would have to pack away their set up when they held large events.
So again, the reason I was here was for the Overwatch Meetup. I got to meet a lot of Overwatch players who live in Chicago. I love small local meetups like this. You know that these are people who are close by and can end up being really connect with. These are people you can get to know, meet up for non-gaming related things and eventually gain lifelong friends and maybe even professional connections.
If there are any small local meetups and events like this in your area, I highly recommend going to them. Gaming centers will usually post public events on their websites. If they don’t have it up there, check their Facebook pages as they will usually have it on their events tab. They’ll also announce events on other social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.
I hope you guys enjoyed this post! But that is it for me, I’ll see you all next time!
