Girl Gamer Tournament a Success

On Saturday 25 October London Metropolitan University hosted the first Grl Gmr Tournament in London as part of the London Games Festival Fringe. The event was conceived and organised by Vanda Corrigan and Andrew Cutting from the Faculty of Humanties, Arts and Languages, and Fiona French from the Faculty of Computing with support from Gamelab London, Elena Moschini from the Department of Applied Social Sciences, Media Services, Information Systems and Services and current students on degrees.

The unique tournament was held at London Met’s Rocket complex on Holloway Road and attracted a large crowd of gamers, prospective students, journalists and staff.

The event aimed to encourage female gamers to consider applying for BSc Computer Games and BA Game Studies courses as well as celebrating the contribution that female gamers can make to the industry. Contestants battled it out playing five different, challenging games: Wii Tennis, Tekken, Unreal Tournament, Kuri Kuri Mix and Mario Kart. Five winners were named and the overall champion, Andy Balogh was then crowned.

Fiona French said: ‘Our degrees offer a vibrant and welcoming environment to women. This was a way to wave the flag. Typically tournaments are male-dominated. So why not have a girl gaming tournament?’

‘We were pleased; everybody that was there had a great time and it went very smoothly,’ said Fiona. ‘We had a very diverse selection of girls playing the games which was brilliant.’

18 November 2008

Communications and PR Office