On Sunday, December 4th over 350 students come together at the College Avenue Student Center at Rutgers University-New Brunswick to
attend the Fireside Open, the largest and most successful event that Rutgers Esports has hosted yet.
With over 350 attendants, The Fireside Open proved to be the most successful event that Rutgers Esports has hosted since its inception. The MPR and lounge of the College Avenue Student Center were packed with people watching, playing, and socializing. Our Tespa chapter surpassed 200 members during the event, a big milestone in our continuing and accelerating growth.
This event saw a shift from the typical prevalence of Computer Science, Engineering, and IT majors. While many of those attending were in those fields, the majority of the people at this event actually consisted of a variety of other disciplines such as mathematics, business, and psychology. We made an effort during this event to create more emphasis on an environment that appeals not only to those interested in gaming, but to the community at large who may be interested in exploring something different and interesting.
With a competitive tournament event comes the need for prizes and giveaways for the winners. We would like to give a huge thank you to all of our partners: Tespa, Gunnar Optiks, Discord, Logitech G, CSL, Twitch, HyperX, Vasculogic, and Kite+Key, the Rutgers Tech Store. It is with your help that we were able to offer such amazing products and reward our players for their skill and dedication. We would love to work with all of you again in the future to make our next events even more incredible. We also want to give a massive shoutout to the people who helped us stream the event: Perimo Gaming and Master Hand Gaming. On top of all that, this was the first time we ever had artists or vendors at our events. We want to give a special thank you to Dynamic Custom Beadwork and Leafsaw for being our very first artist and vendors.
Lastly, we would like to thank everyone who came out to the event for making the Fireside Open our most successful event to date. A community is nothing without the people in it, and we are incredibly lucky to have such an amazing group of people coming out to our events and creating such a positive and enjoyable atmosphere. We promise that we will always keep growing and improving to make Rutgers Esports the premier name for incredible gaming events on the east coast.