NATIONAL NEWS
John Marshall Jones Leads eGaming at National Guide Right Centennial By Damon Peebles
ok, we found something. This is the first time we've been able to get together since COVID…to get a gaming company to come in and to do this at a really high level.” Playing video games is just the start. Exposing the young men to the careers within the industry is the big picture. “So, when a kid starts getting involved with gaming, his first exposure is play- ing, but there's so many other exposures in this as an emerging industry, that now he can feel comfortable entering in other places, because he's had success with it at the base level. So, that's been a really exciting thing to watch,” said Jones. “It’s been an incredible weekend…and I think it is the perfect place to start the next 100 years of Guide Right.”
John Marshall Jones (with cap) with Kappa Leaguers at the eGaming Competition.
K appa Leaguers across the man, John Marshall Jones’s exclama- tory “Kappa League TV!” intro to each Kappa League TV video published on the Kappa League TV YouTube channel. However, for the Guide Right Centen- nial in St. Louis, his primary goal was to spearhead an eGaming competi- tion, which Jones said went over and above expectations. “The Guide Right committee probably worked for over a year. My part of it was about five or six months, and so I saw a lot of concepts, but it isn't until you see them all work together, that it really makes sense. So, everything came together for these kids, and it was it was amazing watch,” he said. country, since 2019 have been accustomed to hearing Na- tional Kappa League Spokes- Enlisting Unified Esports Association to conduct the competition, the Kappa Leaguers began the morning assembling the consoles, and later competed in games such as Fortnight, Call of Duty, NBA 2K, Madden, and Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. “We went into a building at St. Louis University, and we turned their lounge into a gaming lounge. Then the Kappa Leaguers hung
out and they played games, they ate pizza, they drank sodas, then they went upstairs and did podcasts, and went next door to watch movies. I think it was an incredible success…I'm super excited by what happened here this weekend,” Jones recounted. “One of the things that was really amazing to me, was in the middle of the gaming tourna- ment, at the height of it, I just went and stood in the middle of the room, because I wanted to feel the energy of these kids.” Reflecting on the success of Kappa League TV and how it led to eGaming at the centennial celebration, Jones said, “Kappa League TV has been an evolution. We started off just wanting to have content…and then COVID hit. And suddenly, we had to become both functional and relevant, because those young men were locked inside, they weren't getting to interact with their friends. And we wanted to make sure that they still had a chance to have some type of social outlet, so we got together a few brothers, and we created an online gaming tournament for about nine states. It went amazing, and the kids loved it. And that's when we knew,
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