User:Xenjade/sandbox

Waffle Games is an annual gaming convention and conference held in late March/early April at Hunter College in New York City. First held in 2018, Waffle Games is the only gaming convention and conference that is free for all attendees and exhibitors. Featured events include talks, panel discussions, esports tournaments, game development workshops, free-play gaming, and an exhibitor hall. Students from nearby public universities are encouraged to take part in the planning and execution of the convention, with student organizations often sponsoring specific events that relate to their mission's intersection with gaming. Waffle Games is jointly run by EGD Collective (shorthand for Esports and Game Design Collective), a tax-exempt educational foundation, and the EGD Collective of Hunter College campus chapter.

History
The first Waffle Games was held on March 23rd, 2018 on 2 floors of the Hunter College Baker Theater Building by the Esports and Game Design Collective of Hunter College. The event had over 250 attendees, mostly students from Hunter College, but also some gaming clubs from other CUNY colleges. Talks were run by Hunter College students and faculty. The event also featured a free-play gaming library with over 200 games, as well as tournaments in League of Legends, Hearthstone, MarioKart 8 Deluxe, Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon Showdown, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Super Smash Bros for Wii U. During the event, student organization leaders from other CUNY colleges discussed co-hosting Waffle Games as a CUNY-wide convention, and plans were made.

Waffle Games 2.0 was held on April 5th, 2019 at the Hunter College main campus on 2 floors of the North Building, using various Film and Media Department screening rooms and Music Department classrooms, as well as the Blackbox Theater. The event had over 500 attendees from across CUNY, with 12 student organizations collaborating. Talks, panel discussions, and workshops were run by CUNY students, faculty, and alumni, as well as gaming industry professionals. Tournaments for League of Legends, MarioKart 8 Deluxe, Pokemon Showdown, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Yu-Gi-Oh! were also held. This year was the first year an exhibit hall was introduced, where students showcased their work alongside local game development studios and esports services.

Waffle Games 3.0 will be held April 3rd, 2020 at the Hunter College Brookdale Campus to accommodate increasing attendee numbers. Both CUNY and SUNY colleges, as well as other nearby public colleges will be invited to collaborate. This year will be the first to open attendance to the public.

Name Origin
Waffle Games was conceived as the (at the time) unofficial club's headlining spring semester event. Due to the Esports and Game Design Collective's status as an unrecognized student organization, the team needed to come up with a way to run an event with no budget. The club president had a lot of extra waffle mix in her dorm room, and offered to use that as the main source of food. The name stuck, and free waffles are now a staple every year at the event.

Mission
The Waffle Games "supports and celebrates all of us who are working towards a better future for games and their communities". The Waffle Games has 3 main missions:


 * To support accessibility in the games industry through affordable education opportunities and public programming
 * To support the legitimization of esports on college campuses
 * To support game development as an art form and the intersectionality between games and other sectors

In line with these missions, the convention is free to attend, and there are no fees for exhibit hall spaces. Students and amateurs showcase their work alongside professional developers, and speaker applications are open to the public. Students have a significant role in organizing the event, with some students holding upper management positions each year. Speakers and activities are not restricted by sector or topic, and students are encouraged to show how games are relevant or can be applied in their areas of study. At the Waffle Games 2.0, students from the Japanese Visual Culture Club of the College of Staten Island held a video game translation and localization workshop to show how language has to be changed for Japanese and US audiences, and students from Lesbians Rising of Hunter College held a Gay Jeopardy event about LGBT representation in video games.

Throughout the planning of the convention, special attention is directed at making the event available to all and removing any barriers to entry. The spirit of CUNY can also be found, as CUNY "is of vital importance as a vehicle for the upward mobility of the disadvantaged in the City of New York". Because of this, EGD solicits donations and sponsorships from food and beverage companies to feed every attendee, volunteer, speaker, and exhibitor, and ensures all exhibitors who do not have funds for their own AV equipment can showcase their games.