Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nick Engstrom. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Nick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard
KCGameOn started 17 years ago as a community of friends who wanted to get together and play some games. We’d like to think we have continued to keep that same culture as we have scaled out to events with over 5000 attendees.
We take a lot of pride in the consistently high level of quality we produce, starting with the local area network, logistics/planning, and tournaments we organize at our events.
What really makes us unique is that KCGameOn is the only large gaming event in the U.S. to provide a catered dinner with free soda, candy, and snacks throughout the 15+ hours of play.
We try to provide an environment where, for the length of our event, the only concerns are gaming and socializing!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
KCGameOn started as a grass-roots gaming community in 2005 as a way to play some PC and Console games with co-workers on the weekend. Starting with about 10 people, it didn’t take long for word of mouth to get around our workplace. 10 became 30, then became 60 and as we reached gigabit switches and online gaming, our small community became quite large and pulled attendees from every sector of the KC Metro and beyond.
Prior to Covid, KCGameOn had a regular cadence of events hosted every two months, with around 300 people attending. We also held End of Year events spanning an entire weekend in both 2017 and 2018 that hosted over 1000 people. In 2019 we held one of our last pre-covid events titled NEXTECHKC, and partnered with other gaming groups in the region to host a 3 day technology and gaming event at Hy-Vee Arena for over 5000 people.
Currently KCGameOn hosts live esports and gaming events, continues to work with partners for private events, and runs online tournaments. We hope to continue to grow the esports and gaming community in Kansas City and look forward to the years to come.
Have you ever had to pivot?
With Covid on the rise, KCGameOn pivoted to more online events. One example of this is the Kansas City Corporate Esports Cup, which we host on behalf of the Kansas City Esports Coalition, pitting some of KC’s best corporations against each other in a weekly gaming league via titles such as Warzone, Rocket League, League of Legends and more.
KCGameOn has also partnered with the Kansas City Royals on three different events in 2021 and 2022, hosting MLB The Show tournaments online, then having the finals LIVE at Kauffman Stadium, streamed through twitch, featuring MLB Central’s Robert Florez calling the 2022 finals.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
Our primary method of communication with our community is through Discord. A chat application that allows us to keep in touch through chat and voice channels.
We’ve used this to facilitate our online presence since it has been more difficult to host in person events. We host a community game night every Thursday night where anyone can jump into the voice chat on Discord and either play, just chat, or watch as we stream the games on Twitch.
Maintaining that feeling of a community of friends in our Discord channel has been the primary way we keep people engaged and playing together in between our live events.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kcgameon.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/kcgameon
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KcGameOn
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kcgameon
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/KCGameOn
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/kcgameon
- Other: Discord: https://discord.gg/kcgameon
Image Credits
Gabriel Munoz, Nick Engstrom