SELU Gaming Joins Campus!
Here at Southeastern, there are many clubs and organizations to join for all students who attend; however, there is one there is a brand new club that now aides gamers as well as Twitch streamers in coming together. Communication major Kevin Thompson created SELU Gaming and is the president of his own organization.
“SELU gaming is an organization where people who want to compete competitively can come and develop a team and go compete for a game they wish to compete for,” Thompson said. “SELU gaming is also a community to where anyone who does not want to play competitively can play in a safe non toxic environment other than people who want to make the game not as fun.”
SELU Gaming already has over one hundred and ten members and continues to grow each week. Thompson believes the biggest success he has is the amount of people that have showed interest in SELU Gaming. “The amount of people that want to be apart of this club is insane,” said Thompson. “The friends that I have made from this organization from when I was starting out to helping it develop is amazing.” Thompson believes the friends he has made here will be a life lasting experience. “I have made plenty of friends in high school but I can honestly say all of the friends I have made from this club I can stay friends with for a very long time.”
The Main Goal
Within Thompson’s first year of being a student, he wanted to build a community that fit an overlooked niche, the gaming and streaming community. “We wanted to develop a community that would be fun for people who play games and whoever wants to do it competitively can do it together they can play together to gain a scholarship,” Thompson stated.
Students have the opportunity to play competitively with people who care about the games they play as much as others do. Students will have chances to learn about different games as well as make new friends while doing so.
SELU Gaming also provides an outlet for streamers on campus. With Twitch being a very aggressively competitive market, it grows every day. Thompson understood this and made SELU Gaming twitch approved, meaning anyone who streams on campus and becomes a member is welcome to advertise their twitch streams to gain a recognition and following. Thompson also has his own twitch username which can be followed, Kevinthompson.
“I wanted to stream because I wanted people to see what I was able to do,” said Thompson. “I wanted my stream to enable people to join this organization and be apart of it” Thompson does not believe being bad at a game should hold anyone back. “Even if you start from the absolute bottom playing on a game you have never played before and seeing how far you can accomplish with that, that’s what made me want to stream it.”
Thompson understands it takes a lot to gain a following on twitch, it can take up to months to years to obtain a following or make a living on streaming. That is why he includes advertising from other twitch users in his organization. Thompson wants to ensure there is a connection for every student and everyone has an equal chance to gain a bigger following and help others out. “I would like to have 50 to 100 people willing to watch us and cheer on southeastern,” said Thompson. “We want to be open to people who want to stream, or compete, or people who just want to make a life of doing something they love.”
Thompson wants to set up SELU Gaming to where if Southeastern competes in competitive matches, they will be streamed on twitch. “I want to stream it on twitch so people can view us competing and hopefully gain a following of people that want to watch us play, compete, and join our organization,” said Thompson. He is aware people who play competitively will have more attention drawn to them. “I know viewers watching us play competitively will like it to where if we play good, they want people to see what we have accomplished and see what we can do as a team,” said Thompson. Thompson wants to show what the organization can do as a team, even if they fail against another team, with twitches streaming capabilities the organization has an upper hand in seeing what went wrong.
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