(Updated at 2:35 p.m. on 2/14/2024) A two-day gaming convention will take over George Mason University’s Fairfax campus this month.

Organized by GMU’s student involvement office, game design program and GMU Esports, GAMEmason 2014 will take place on Friday, Feb. 23 and Saturday, Feb. 24 from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Center for the Arts (4373 Mason Pond Drive).

The event will feature guest speakers from Bethesda Game Studios, Monument Sports Entertainment, and faculty and staff. Other attractions include free arcade games, tabletop and console gaming, augmented reality and virtual reality demonstrations, an artist alley featuring the work of artists and students, and gaming industry vendors.

Here’s more from GMU, breaking down the program:

On Friday, February 23, the day-long events will lead up to keynote speaker, voice actress and Guinness World Records holder for “Most Prolific Video Game Voice Actor (female)” Jennifer Hale. The morning begins with educational sessions including “Game without Pain and Work without Strain” featuring co-founder of One Health Point (1HP) Dr. Caitlin McGee, followed by voice actor Wes Johnson in “The Many Worlds of Voice Acting.” Next, Mason Associate Professor in Computer Game Design Greg Grimsby leads a discussion entitled “Developing Board Games” and after, Vice President of Esports at Monumental Sports & Entertainment Andrew McNeill leads “Journey through Esports, Hosting Large Events and the Esports Professional Scene.” The evening begins with “Getting a Job in the Game Industry,” led by Associate Producer at Bethesda Game Studios Nathan Hahn.

On Saturday, February 24, varsity level collegiate Esports teams from across the region will compete in tournaments. Games featured in the tournament will include Rocket League, League of Legends, Overwatch 2, Valorant, and Super Smash Brothers crew battles. GAMEmason attendees will be able to watch the teams as they compete live on the Center for the Arts stage. In addition to George Mason University, participating schools include James Madison University, Ohio University, Old Dominion University, Radford University, Saint Louis University, Shenandoah University, Syracuse University, [Northern Virginia Community College], Virginia Tech, Virginia Wesleyan University, Wake Forest University, and William and Mary University.

(Correction: GMU included a “University of Northern Virginia” among the schools participating in the esports tournament. Once based in Annandale, that university has been defunct since 2013. A GMU spokesperson confirmed Northern Virginia Community College was the intended reference.) 

The convention is $20 for Friday passes and $15 for Saturday. Attendees must be at least 16 years old, and those aged 16 or 17 must be accompanied by an adult. The event is free for GMU students, faculty and staff.

The event kicked off in 2009.

“Unique events such as these connect Mason students and the public with professionals in the field, and offer innovative opportunities for students to learn, grow, and create community during their time at Mason,” a university spokesperson told FFXnow.

(Updated at 11:05 a.m.) Adventurers will band together in Springfield this Saturday (Nov. 4) in support of a noble cause: raising money to help sick children.

Wizards and rogues, bards and druids alike have been invited to Curio Cavern (6701 Loisdale Rd, Suite 15) for a multi-table Dungeons and Dragons session — known in the role-playing game as an “epic” — that will raise funds for Children’s National Hospital in D.C.

Set to start at 1 p.m., with doors opening at noon, the event is one of many fundraisers planned around the country tomorrow as part of an annual Game Day organized by Extra Life, a nonprofit that uses gaming to raise funds for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, which includes Children’s National.

Derrick Chelikowsky, one of the Curio event’s organizers with Alex Manavi, says Extra Life’s Game Day offers an opportunity for individuals to “pool our resources” together to help tackle an issue — in this case, children’s health care — that directly affects their local community.

“The ability to directly give back to a community that has accepted me is something that I really like to do,” Chelikowsky said. “I try to give back to the communities that I’ve been in, every place that I’ve lived, and this is one day that I found that allows me to give back, and as an aside, have some fun playing D&D.”

A Franconia resident and regular at Curio Cavern’s weekly Monday D&D sessions, Chelikowsky started participating in Extra Life in 2016 to support Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, New York, where he lived at the time. He began visiting Curio after moving to Fairfax County for a job and soon found himself serving as dungeon master (DM) for the store’s first charitable Dungeons and Dragons epic on July 22.

That fundraiser benefitted the Against Malaria Foundation and was put together by Grant Babcock, who co-organizes Curio’s Adventurers League (an ongoing campaign officially sanctioned by D&D owner Wizards of the Coast).

Curio, which also has locations at Springfield Town Center and Centreville Square, has hosted charitable events in the past, but its original Loisdale Road location didn’t have the space to accommodate the number of players and tables needed for an epic until a recent expansion, according to Manavai.

The first epic drew about 20 people who raised $570 for the Against Malaria Foundation, all while battling “a vengeful three-headed giant” — played with a costume and props by Manavi — and his army of monsters at an ice-fishing competition.

“A modest start, but we learned a lot about the process of holding events like this,” Babcock said by email. “We decided to try making it a quarterly thing, and Derrick stepped up to organize the next event.”

The upcoming epic, “Peril at the Port,” will task players with rallying townsfolk to defend their home against devil and ghost pirates. All proceeds from the $15 entry fee — which also grants access to a pre-made character if needed and a magic item trading post — and the $1 that players can donate to roll the dice again after a critical fail go to Children’s National Hospital. Read More

With autumn just over the horizon, Capital One Center has lined up an expanded roster of events, vendors and musicians for its fifth Perchfest.

The biannual weekend festival will return to The Perch (1805 Capital One Drive) in Tysons on Sept. 15-17, marking about two years since it launched in 2021 to celebrate the skypark’s opening.

In addition to the usual live entertainment and lawn games, the upcoming festival will feature a mini golf tournament called the Perch Putt Open to benefit Miriam’s Kitchen, a D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness that will serve as the event’s charity partner.

“Each year the program grows,” Meghan Trossen, head of Capital One Center’s public affairs, said of Perchfest. “We are thrilled to team up with Miriam’s Kitchen, which has served our community for over 40 years to end chronic and veteran homelessness in the DC Metro Area.”

The tournament is open to event sponsors and anyone who buys spots for four people at $500. Noting that there are only a few sponsorships remaining, Trossen says interested participants can register by contacting her directly at meghan.trossen@capitalone.com.

The Perch Putt Open will kick off the weekend’s festivities from 3-7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 15.

For those not participating in the mini golf tournament, this fall’s Perchfest will still offer a new attraction in the form of a Shop Made in VA pop-up market showcasing apparel, home goods and other products from local artisans.

The 18-hole Perch Putt mini golf course, its accompanying food trucks and Starr Hill Biergarten will also be open throughout the festival.

The full schedule is below, though Capital One Center says it’s subject to change depending on the weather:

Friday, September 15th

• 3-7 p.m. — Perch Putt Open, Tysons community vendors on the Great Lawn
• 4-6:30 p.m. — Starting Early at Starr Hill Biergarten
• 7-10 p.m. — Run for Cover at Starr Hill Biergarten

‍Saturday, September 16th

• 12-12:45 p.m. — Free “Sweat Sesh” fitness class from Body Fit Training (BFT) on the Great Lawn
• 12-2 p.m. — Free Flowing Music Experience at Starr Hill Biergarten
• 12-7 p.m. — Shop Made in VA and Tysons community vendors on the Great Lawn
• 2:30-4:30 p.m. — Texas Chainsaw Horns at Starr Hill Biergarten
• 3-6 p.m. — Four Roses (Wren’s private label) barrel release party
• 5-7:30 p.m. — Sidemen Band at Starr Hill Biergarten
• 8-10:30 p.m. — Kleptoradio at Starr Hill Biergarten
• DJ/MC afterparty with Captain/2nutz at Starr Hill Biergarten until closing at midnight

‍Sunday, September 17th

• 10:30-11:15 a.m. — FitCoach Caroline HIIT Workout at Starr Hill Biergarten
• 11 a.m.-5 p.m. — Tysons community vendors on the Great Lawn
• 12-2 p.m. — The Vandalays
• 2 p.m. — Pie-eating contests sponsored by Wegmans and Capital One Center
• 2:30-5 p.m. — NovaKane at Starr Hill Biergarten

Coming from Wren, the Japanese restaurant in The Watermark Hotel, the Four Roses barrel release party will require separate registrations. More details on that particular event will be coming soon, Capital One Center says.

Perchfest is free to attend, but advance registrations through Eventbrite are encouraged.

In the past, the festival has drawn about 15,000 people over three days, according to Capital One Center. The most recent edition in May offered a preview of three restaurants — Sisters Thai, Stellina Pizzeria and Ox & Rye — coming to the mixed-use development, though now, they’re not expected to open until next year.

Shrouded within the mists of Fairfax Centre, a new world is being born.

Tables with exciting new technology are being set into place. Permits are being sought within the labyrinth of Fairfax County’s bureaucracy. A games store unlike any other in the region is being forged.

There are already a couple of tabletop game stores around the area — though fewer of late — but The Dragon’s Concord at 11215 Lee Highway is something of a bold new experiment in gaming. The store is in the Fair Oaks area, just outside the Fairfax City boundaries.

Rather than focusing on merchandise, Michael Gruver and his wife Amanda aim to create a game store where the storytelling and play space are the central selling points. While the store will have books, miniatures, dice and more, the real draw is its various Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), Warhammer or other tabletop campaigns.

Michael says the store came out of common complaints he heard while working at The Guild in Fair Oaks Mall.

“One of the common things we kept hearing was: it’s great they come in and can get the books, but there wasn’t really anywhere to play,” Michael said. “You end up with that forever GM problem.”

The “forever GM” — Game Master, or sometimes “DM” for dungeon master in D&D — is a player who’s always expected to run campaigns and never gets to play in them. The Dragon’s Concord is designed around fixing that issue.

“We took a look at that and realized: that’s been a problem for the entire history of gaming,” Michael said. “You have online resources and some stores have a little register to [look for a group] and maybe someone will call you six or seven months down the line, but nobody had put a business or a gaming center together — at least not in this area — to host games.”

Michael hopes construction will start by the end of the month — depending on how quickly Fairfax County can process the store’s permits. The initial permits have been paid already.

“We’re expecting three weeks to a month for building, with doors opening sometime mid-to-late March,” Michael said.

Many game shops host campaigns, but The Dragon’s Concord aims to be a place where anyone can visit and find a campaign.

“The hope is that we can have an on-staff GM during all normal business hours for multiple systems, things like D&D or Pathfinder,” Michael said.

Players will be able to pre-schedule sessions in private rooms at the store, either bringing their own GM or book one on staff. The GM system is designed to be friendly to new players, while also providing a new experience for veterans of the field.

“We’ve built a two-session new player startup orientation sort of game,” Michael said. “For D&D, we use Dragons of Storrmwreck Isle so players can get accustomed to mechanics. If they have a custom campaign, if they have Curse of Strahd or Princes of the Apocalypse or something, they go ahead and just put that in the schedule.” Read More

McLean High School teacher Jeffrey Brocketti can’t wait to tell everyone what he discussed with host Pat Sajak during a “Wheel of Fortune” commercial break.

He will soon be allowed to share that story and more after his episode — the 10th of the game show’s 40th season — airs at 7 p.m. Monday (Sept. 26) on ABC.

When it comes to solving the hangman-style word puzzles, though, even Brocketti may draw a blank when he turns on the TV next week — a common phenomenon, based on conversations with fellow contestants.

“They don’t remember all the puzzles from their show, which sounds ridiculous,” Brocketti told FFXnow. “You’d think this would just be burned into your brain, but it’s not. So, I’m kind of looking forward to seeing the episode, just seeing how it went and does it match my memory of it.”

Brocketti, who has taught physics and astronomy at McLean High for over a decade, describes the experience of filming a show he watched as a child as “surreal.”

He applied to become a contestant “on a whim” in April 2021 at the suggestion of his wife and one of his kids. Initially, he dismissed the idea, but while “sitting around” a few weeks later, he decided it couldn’t hurt, especially since the pandemic had pushed the entire tryout process online.

After submitting the form and a 30-second video pitch, Brocketti admits he forgot about the whole enterprise until this past January, when an unexpected email appeared in his inbox: he’d been selected to participate in a virtual audition.

“The first thing I did was check the email address to make sure it wasn’t some sort of phishing email,” he said. “I thought it was a scam, and once I figured out it was legit, then I realized, oh, this might actually happen.”

Told in February that he made the cut, Brocketti set his DVR to record “Wheel” and watched each night with his family, pretending to compete against the contestants on screen with a pen as a mock buzzer.

He fell out of the routine around mid-April, though, so a backlog of over 70 episodes had accumulated by the time he was told that his episode would film at the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California on July 28.

“I watched over three months’ worth of episodes in two weeks,” Brocketti recalled with a laugh. “So, that was my preparation. Just watch the show and play against the people on TV and try and get better at it.”

In some ways, competing in person was easier than at home, Brocketti says. Unlike on TV, contestants can always see the boards displaying each puzzle and the used letters, and after going through two dress rehearsals, his nervousness evaporated once the real game started.

However, the “flood of information that you have in your brain” made it hard to focus and fully digest the experience, he added.

Brocketti isn’t the first person to represent Fairfax County on “Wheel,” following in the footsteps of a former Chantilly Little League coach who won nearly $123,000. He encourages anyone interested in competing on the show to give it a shot.

“Just try it out, and see what happens,” he said.

A former Chantilly little league coach has another title: “Wheel of Fortune” winner.

Mike Halpern won $122,903 in cash and prizes during his appearance on the TV game show yesterday (Monday), an outcome that he mostly kept secret even from his family and friends.

“I wanted them to be surprised,” he said. “They had a little bit of a hint of the fact that I didn’t completely bomb.”

With over half the letters missing in the final puzzle, Halpern guessed a two-word phrase that won him $100,000, leading him to make a snow angel in the prize confetti that rained down around him.

Talking with host Pat Sajak at the beginning of the episode, Halpern said he was a baseball coach with Chantilly Youth Association Little League for 14 seasons. He coached both of his sons there, too.

“I loved being on the field, and it was great to watch them grow up,” Halpern said on the show.

Halpern filmed his appearance in Culver City, California, near the Los Angeles Airport on March 23. He arranged a watch party at Mustang Sally Brewery in Chantilly, which found a way to open on a closed day for them.

Early in the game, both of his competitors lost their prize earnings with a spin and mystery wedge that led to bankruptcies. One contender lost her earnings twice.

Halpern also won a $9,003 trip to Aruba, which he’s never visited before.

A regular viewer of the show since he was a kid, Halpern and his wife decided to share the news of his appearance on the show with their two teenage sons by creating a “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle on a piece of paper. The boys took turns guessing until they revealed the answer: “I got picked to spin the wheel.”

The family also helped him prepare.

“We would pause every night’s episode before the bonus round,” Halpern said. “They would watch it. I would…leave the room.”

To complete the simulated experience, one of their sons set a 10-second countdown with a timer on his iPhone.

At the brewery watch party, Halpern’s friends also released confetti cannons to help recreate the experience.

“I knew what happened, but like, no one else in the entire place had any clue,” Halpern said.

When Sajak opened the envelope with the prize, the Chantilly watch party lost its mind.

“It felt like a dream,” he said. “It was just awesome.”

Fairfax County Public Schools is preparing to level up its esports offerings, expanding an activity that started last year with a handful of rogue student clubs into a full-blown program.

The esports club at Fairfax High School started as a general-interest group while students were learning virtually in 2020. It was run from students’ homes and through an online messaging and voice website, Discord.

Students have still kept their academic priorities, but with in-person learning expanding to five days a week this fall, in-person events became more prevalent: a tournament organized last week involving Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers drew dozens of students.

“It’s the largest club in our school,” said Fairfax High School English teacher David Greene, the club’s advisor, noting that the group has over 200 active members. “A lot of the students who came into the room were not even part of the room yet and were asking how to sign up.”

FCPS plans to make esports available this spring for all 25 high schools and has spent the past few months recruiting coaches.

The expansion will require some adjustments for students in the existing clubs, which include one at Centreville High School.

Where Fairfax High School offered a variety of video games for students to play, FCPS has said its esports program will be limited to the soccer-like car-driving online game Rocket League. The Virginia High School League, which is exploring whether to make esports an officially sanctioned activity, has three titles for its pilot year that started this fall.

Greene says he has advocated for FCPS to consider incorporating two games that his students have been playing, either through the club or on their own: Super Smash Brothers and the multiplayer online battle arena fantasy game League of Legends.

FCPS also intends to have students participate at school facilities rather than remotely, and the introduction of a countywide program will make esports more like other extracurricular activities with coaches, teams, and formal competitions.

Greene says Fairfax High’s esports club gave students a social outlet during the pandemic, as participants talked incessantly on Discord. The games remind him of people watching sports on TV, where people understand the rules and know who they’re rooting for.

“Most students are going to be going home and playing these games anyway,” Greene said. “It’s something that they’re passionate about.”

Though research suggests gaming can improve mental health, extensive screen time remains a concern for many parents and doctors. In China, youth are now restricted to three hours of gaming per week.

Greene says overall screen usage can be a health concern, especially after online schooling launched screen time to new levels, but parents shouldn’t dismiss the intellectual and developmental benefits that activities like video games can provide.

“When I was growing up, parents very much thought of video games as a negative, a dead-end thing, something that you didn’t develop skills by playing,” he said. “And I think that parents should realize that you’re actually developing critical thinking skills when you’re playing these games. I have not seen a student who’s playing these games who doesn’t eventually develop skills to understand, to communicate, [and improve] their fine motor skills.”