Triton Gaming Expo celebrates tenth anniversary, opens to public and college students this weekend

This weekend, Triton Gaming Expo celebrates its tenth anniversary. Organized by UC San Diego college students, the gaming conference is now open to the general public.

For a decade, UC San Diego college students have been operating Triton Gaming Expo, serving up a multiverse of enjoyable that features an artist alley, cosplay, business and voice-actor panels, and a promise of insane tech.

“Triton Gaming Expo is our annual gaming convention,” mentioned Jewelle Tatad, the exterior vp for Triton Gaming. “We’re basically taking over all the open space in the Price Center. We’re going to be having fundraisers downstairs as well as some partnerships with the bookstore. We’re going to be having the majority of our programming on the second floor, with the East Ballroom housing our different gaming clubs as well as some of our partner organizations and programs such as esports. The West Ballroom will be having some of our artists, and up on the fourth floor we will be having our cosplay café.”

Magnolia Hyon is the chief officer for ArtSpark Pre-Professional Art Club.

“ArtSpark is a pre-professional art club, the very first at UCSD, and we’re focused on helping students break into the art industry,” Hyson mentioned. “So becoming professional artists, whether that be in animation or video games, we’re just trying to help them get art education, kind of more structured education than you get here in the art program, and build their portfolio through many of our portfolio projects, and build community. So as a pre-professional art club, being around art in the industry is really important. So we’re going to be tabling with some of our members’ work. We can share what we’ve done as a club and what our individual members have done in the company of these really huge game industry giants like Riot, Supergiant, Behemoth. It’s actually worthwhile for our members to get networking with individuals like that.”

And gaming firm professionals welcome the prospect to be on campus.

“Some of them are also UCSD alum — and some of them are even Triton Gaming alum— a lot of them are really excited to see what kind of art talent, as well as marketing talent, as well as all this other stuff that is applicable to this industry, is on display,” Tatad mentioned. “A lot of people in Triton Gaming do want to go into the games industry, whether that’s on the esports side or in the video game side, where they are creating games. So I think that the talent is all super duper excited to be there just to talk to these people and kind of see like where students are at.”

Hyon factors to the work of one more pupil group, the Video Game Development Club.

“The whole club’s base comes together to work on one game,” Hyon mentioned. “I was a huge part of that this quarter. It was an incredible experience, really helped me build my portfolio and make connections with the members. The Video Game Development Club is just constantly running projects and game jams to really be that video game presence on campus where curriculum kind of falls short.”

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UC San Diego college students are fast to arrange and take motion once they see a necessity. Since the college is finest often called a STEM faculty, Tatad needs to focus on its extra creative facet.

“As someone who runs a student organization that is so focused around gaming, which I think is in and of itself an art form, I think it’s really important to kind of uplift these student artists, especially in a school where I feel like we kind of get sidelined,” she mentioned.

But artists gained’t be sidelined this weekend. In truth, attendees will likely be rewarded for visiting artist cubicles.

“A lot of artists organized this thing called Stamp Rally,” Tatad mentioned. “This one is specifically transportation theme centered. We were making a Riso-printed map specifically for it. So that’ll be organized by some of our artists. If you make a purchase from each of these artists, you get that stamp as a special prize.”

Tatad additionally needs to make attending a conference inexpensive for college students.

“I feel especially in an era where like con culture and fandom culture is becoming more and more gatekept and more and more inaccessible, I think providing these spaces for people to be able to engage in gaming, engage in anime, engage in art is super duper important, especially for university students, which many of us are low-income,” she mentioned. “Many of us don’t have this access to fandom without having to shell out a lot for it.”

Hyon agreed: “I think it’s really helping or supporting con culture here. People love art and media, and it helps bring people closer together through their interests and even through their specialty careers like voice acting and video game development, art, of course, and just being able to put it all towards this big event and then having so many people involved with it. Then getting the engagement, and engagement supports the community. I think it’s a message to students — not necessarily from the university, but from students — you’re not alone and we’re all here together and we all love this stuff and we can bond over that.”

Triton Gaming Expo takes place Saturday and Sunday at UC San Diego’s Price Center. The occasion is free for UCSD college students and $12 for the general public for a two-day cross.