“As luck would have it, we were toying with the same idea,” said Julianna Bakker (master’s of Health Education and Promotion), now secretary of esports association MSEA Peritan. She took on the challenge, together with four other students. “We are all reasonably fanatical gamers and knew each other partly because of that. Still, we did feel that Maastricht was lacking a gaming community. We really wanted to create one, not in the last place because there was a lot more free time to game during the lockdowns. Although we would have set up the association even without the pandemic.”
With help from UM Sports, Peritan went live in the summer. Bakker: “But without actual events, it is difficult to make yourself visible. At the moment, we mainly rely on word-of-mouth advertising. The number of members, which is now about thirty, is increasing steadily.”
Competitions
In the meantime, the club is preparing the members for participation in the national student competitions in the games League of Legends and Rocket League. Fixed teams, consisting of three to five players plus reserves and a coach, train together and take on one of the other university teams in weekly match. An approach that is new for most Maastricht participants. “Many of our members have been gaming for a long time, but have never played in a competition,” says Bakker.
That can be quite exciting, says Melle Klaver (master’s student of Biomedical Sciences), who was asked to play in the Rocket League team. “For years, I have been gaming about ten to twelve hours a week, but wonder sometimes whether I am good enough for competitions.” That will be apparent this week, when the first competition duel has been scheduled.
Reaction time
It is not all about competitions though. There is also room for fun. “Every Monday evening, there is an online games evening and we also regularly organise tournaments for all kinds of games,” says chairman Bart Thomas (master’s of Human Movement Sciences). For the time being, these mainly takes place via the online platform Discord, where members can talk to each other. Non-members can also join in. “In this way, we were able to organise events safely for quite a lot of people during the lockdowns.”
The board hopes to soon be able to organise actual events, such as board game nights and parties. “That is the kind of thing that we really miss as an association,” says Thomas. “Many students who joined up after October, we have never seen in person. Now, as gamers, we are used to making ‘digital’ friends, whom we only know online. Still, we can’t wait until members and even fellow team members meet in real life for the first time.” The first step has been taken: starting this week, the weekly game night are organised in a pub.
And now that UM Sports is open again, they are hoping to allow members to also partake in sports without a computer screen. “For example, to train reaction time. That will help them become better gamers.”