Nearly $300K in college scholarships given away at largest retro gaming expo in Carolinas

GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – Thousands of people gathered in Greenville for the biggest gaming expo in South Carolina.

Over the weekend, the Greenville Convention Center transformed into 125,000 square feet of gaming activities. It’s all a part of the 8th annual Southeast Game Exchange Expo.

“We are the largest and longest running gaming expo in South Carolina and one of the largest in the whole southeast region,” Austin Bell, with Southeast Game Exchange said. “This is kind of like a Comic-Con but everything is gaming related. So, we even have live wrestling, but it’s got a little twist, we call it ‘Smash Brothers in real life’ so all of our wrestlers are dressed up like Mario, Luigi, Picacho…”

The event featured a vender hall, e-sports and a variety of retro games.

“My favorite thing I saw was ‘Halo Mega Blocks,’ I had those when I was growing up and I haven’t seen them since,” Christoper Stewart said.

Expo-goer John Romeo said the event also brought back childhood memories,

“I like a lot of new games but the ones I grew up with were like Pacman, Asteroids, seeing all those is pretty exciting for our childhood nostalgia,” explained Romeo. “It’s going back to see what our childhood was like and now we can come back and relive those experiences.”

Some of the gamers at the expo weren’t just playing for fun, tournament winners were awarded college scholarships totaling $290,000 from Barton and Louisburg College.

“We partnered with Carolina Game Summit who works with a couple of different universities and all of the winners for all the different tournaments will be receiving a couple of scholarships to these two universities,” Bell said.

Organizers said it’s a way to help pave a future career for those passionate about games.

“A lot of kids that are big into esports and stuff do go into technology fields and this gives them an easier pathway into that,” Bell added. “Especially for our younger generation being able to provide scholarships for gamers helping them use their passion and hobby to afford to go to school is really important to us.”

Bell said they estimate that around 6,000 people attended this year’s expo.

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