The Gaming Hub: A New Space to Play and Learn More About Video Games at uOttawa

The Gaming hub represents this sense of community that gamers have been looking for for a very long time. It’s a place to form connections with people who are both casual gamers, competitive gamers, or people who are just starting out gaming. I am Jennica Adame. I am the co-president of uOttawa eSports, and I’m a fourth year in psychology with honors at University of Ottawa. The Gaming Hub has been built basically like from the ground up by the students who make up the executive team of uOttawa eSports. And it’s a space where people can compete in a healthy environment to support each other, encourage each other to do better or improve at their game, but also just to have some fun, to enjoy a passion and to share that time with people who are also passionate about gaming. I’m Jad Kreit. I am a second year student in software engineering, and I am a co-president of the uOttawa Game Dev Club. A game dev club is a community of people who come together to not just play games, but to make games. So every month we have game jams where we invite people to basically follow up a theme and then to get together in groups and they get to pick their favorite engine. And within that short amount of time with all the schoolwork and activities they’ve got, they have to come together and make a game that’s fun and exciting for everybody to play. The Gaming Hub basically serves as a way for a room for all of our creators and developers to come together because it gives us the space and the computers, especially for people who don’t have, like, personal machines that are strong enough to make better games or create games. So basically it gives them these resources so that they can come in, you know, freely without having to think about what they need to bring in or what kind of budget they’re worrying about. Then just get together and make the game. It also allows us to run bigger activities that get more people inside a room so that there’s less planning behind the scenes so that they can just worry about get in the room, make the game, just focus on having fun and making better experiences. My name is Eric Bercier. I’m the Associate Vice President of Students Affair at the University of Ottawa. The Game Hub really represents an environment where the students themselves took control of their experience at the university. A lot of the experience that they will gain here is experiential learning in one way or another. It’s about developing competencies. It’s what they will learn through the opportunity of creating a hub like this one. It’s the opportunity of managing a hub like this one. It’s an opportunity to socialize and interact with a lot of people, not only at the University of Ottawa, but around the world in an environment that will allow them to learn, connect, and socialize. We hope to have some workshops as our biggest highlights in order to push more learning about how to make games because a lot of people have never touched a single line of code in their life. So we want to slowly introduce people in how to develop, especially using like Unity or Unreal, you know, using these computers can host live sessions in order for these people to follow along and make their first project. And most importantly, we wanna host more live single day jams where people can come in and team in person so that it’s more of a networking environment so that people can learn and create new friends while also creating some fun games. We will have watch parties, we will have teams practicing for their various league matches that we compete in. You can definitely look forward to one-on-one coaching, even collaborations with the Game Development Club where they make the games and we get to play them as well. I think what we have to learn being a member of the University of Ottawa community is that when you give control to students, they actually accomplish very great things. And that’s what is happening here. And when I look at this, this is really what I’m observing. The students took control and we have to remember that we have to facilitate the opportunity for them to create a wonderful experience like the one that they’re creating at the Gaming Hub. Inclusivity and community have always been the root of eSports, and I can say that it has been that community for me as someone who plays competitively, casually, and just for fun, anyone is welcome. Being part of the Game Dev club and even just part of the room, you need to have zero experience at all. We’ve had actually one person in our summer Game Jam came who’s never made a game before, opened Godot, learned and through our community, made a game and actually won for a competition. So, no, we are welcome to all kind of skill levels, veterans and new beginners.