Prior to the Student Life Cinema Gaming Committee’s annual Noles Play for Child’s Play charity event, I had the opportunity to interview Joshua Miller, the main chair of the Gaming Committee and a senior psychology student at FSU. Child’s Play is a charity that gives money to improve the quality of pediatric hospitals by fundraising through gaming events. The event happens every spring semester after spring break. We sat down at the ASLC and talked about the how Noles Play for Child’s Play got started, its growth since its inception seven years ago, and what the future may have in store for the event.
My first question for you is how did Noles Play for Child’s Play start?
I think it was back in 2012. It was way before my time here, so I don’t know the exact details, but I think [SLC Gaming] was contacted by Child’s Play and were like, “hey, you guys do gaming on a college campus, do you want to support us?” and we said “yeah!” So, we had the Falcon Punch-A-Thon, which was basically like we had Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64, and it was a small tournament where [everyone played as] Captain Falcon and you had to donate to participate. Then 2014, 2015, like right before I came here, we thought, why does it have to be just Captain Falcon? So, we opened it up to all [Super Smash Bros. characters] and the newest Smash game that had come out was Super Smash Bros 4, so we called the event Smash 4 Charity. When the first charity event we did happened, we got like $700. Then in 2016, the spring of my freshman year, the second Smash 4 Charity got around $1,200. After that, we were like, why limit it to Smash when we can get a wider audience and bring more for charity? So, that’s where it became Noles Play for Child’s Play.
Sweet! So, what games will people expect to see? If someone comes to the event, would they see Smash or some other games this year?
Yeah! So basically, we’re taking over the whole building this year. We’ll have the courtyard, the Cyber Café, the theater, and we’ll have the meeting rooms. You’re going to find honestly any game you can think of, primarily multiplayer games. Outside, we’ll have ladderball and a cornhole tournament and some chalk drawings, and some origami workshop in the Cyber Café. In the theater we’ll be playing Resident Evil 2 playthrough* on there for the first couple of hours, then we’ll be doing an 8-player Smash tournament in there, and some other playthrough. In the 101 meeting rooms, we’ll have a VR set up, Just Dance 2019, and then in one of the corners we’ll have around 7 fighting games set up like Tekken 7, Street Fighter, stuff like that, as well as Super Smash Bros. Melee and Ultimate.
That’s a lot! It seems like it’s grown quite a bit. So, every year do you and the rest of your board meet and figure out how to do it or what to change?
So basically, after every event, the current leadership who put on the event will take note of what can change, what can be better, stuff like that. Then, we give it about a month break or so before we start talking about it again. That’s when leadership usually transitions, so last year I went from being Vice Chair of the Gaming Committee to the Main Chair and some other people did the same, so it wasn’t a huge leadership change. But this year, on April 20th or so, is when we’ll be changing people since three of us are graduating. So, we’ll start telling them about stuff we thought could be better, they’ll get all our documents, and we usually start planning some preliminary stuff for fall and wrap it up as the semester comes to an end.
What’s the largest amount you’ve made from this event?
Our totals have actually doubled from every year that we’ve done it. Last year, we made $5,526.18, I’m pretty sure.
Wow, that’s great. What do you see in the future for Noles Play for Child’s Play?
Definitely more involvement with different parts of campus. Because as of now, we have campus involvement, but it’s more of, they just bring people out here. Actually, this year, we partnered with Human For Zombies, E-Sports at Florida State. Getting more corporate sponsors, because I think our biggest sponsor right now is Ubisoft, but we would like to have, like Nintendo and stuff like that. Also, partnerships with other universities around Florida. Originally this event was going to be later in April, but some things came up with the ASLC building so we had to move it forward. We were going to partner with Gator Gaming at UF and they were going to bring some people out here, and we were going to bring some people to their event, Gatorland. Their event is next week and since ours got moved sooner, they couldn’t do it. Just more partnerships with different companies, different campuses.
This year’s Noles Play for Child’s Play was held on Saturday, March 30, and raised over $8,700 in donations to Child’s Play Charity and Shands Children’s Hospital. The event is expected to happen around April of next year with the goal of providing fun, multiplayer game experiences and raising more money than before.
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