Female gaming community GCON to hold virtual summer tournaments
With Covid putting real-world events on hold, gaming is staying strictly online…
GCON, Saudi Arabia’s all-female videogame convention, was set up by a pioneering trio of young Saudi girls, Felwa, Tasnim, and Najla back in 2012.
Level one
The inaugural GCON event took place that same year, made possible by some enterprising pitchwork to Nintendo and PlayStation Arabia. The girls suspected gaming was hugely popular amongst Saudi’s female population but there wasn’t much data to support or refute their assumptions.
They were shocked when nearly 3,000 attendees arrived at the event. And it’s a community that’s snowballed is size since.
Sadly the GCON convention was unable to take place this year. Like many other events across the world, Covid has thrown a discarded mask into the works.
But the great thing about videogames is, that they take place in the virtual world, and can be played safely online, from the comfort of our own homes.
Taking full advantage of this GCON will be uniting female gamers across the Kingdom this summer with a series of esports tournaments.
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Check your load-outs and prep your perks because the rosta is looking deliciously first-person shooter.
There’s a PS4 Overwatch tournament scheduled for July 21 to 23, 2020.
خلونا نشوف مهاراتكم ياللاعبات في بطولة كود!
تواصلوا معنا على الرسائل الخاصة للتسجيل في البطولة ? pic.twitter.com/cwS2ODcqJc— GCON (@GCONEvents) July 23, 2020
A cross-platform Call of Duty: Modern Warfare tournament that’ll be hosted between July 28 and 30, 2020.
In development
Earlier this year GCON helped organise Saudi Arabia’s first-ever female-only event at the Global Game Jam (GGJ), which was held at King Saud University’s female campus in Riyadh.
It was part of a larger event that took place between January 26 and 28, 2020, which invited gaming enthusiasts to take part in live game development tasks.
In an article written in the days leading up to the event, Arab News quotes Najla Al-Ariefy, organising member of GCON: “We are thrilled to be hosting over 100 female game developers this year … we hope to create a collaborative and fun environment for our burgeoning community of female game devs.”
Images: Unsplash