On one warm autumn day, the 1st UCI Game Festival held its grand opening in UC Irvine, California. The ESC 2018 and the UCI Game Festival hosted together with Inven Global were held for 2 days, from October 11th to 12th. There was a variety of entertainment provided at the festival, including esports tournaments, game demonstrations, cosplay contest, etc.

All events at the festival were broadcasted on the UC Irvine Twitch channel so those who could not make it to the site can watch it on the internet.

The first starting event was the Super Smash Bros event, which took participants on the spot; as expected of a popular game in NA, many fans stayed in the demonstration zone even after the event ended.

The next was Hearthstone; visitors could form a group and participate in the Hearthstone Fireside Gatherings. The tournament was comprised of 32 group stages and took place at a pub in UCI, to match the aesthetic of Hearthstone at the Tavern.

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When talking about esports, League of Legends can’t be excluded! The West Coast Invitational Finals also took place; the preliminaries previously took place online. The teams to make it to the finals were UC Irvine and UC Boulder, and the winner -- UC Irvine!

Meanwhile, the 1-on-1 League of Legends event match that visitors would participate in was held in another part of the area. There were so many participants with so many people swarming to watch!

But that wasn’t the end of the LoL events; a very special invitational took place on the 2nd day of UCI Game Festival -- a match between UC Irvine, the NA collegiate team placed 1st, and Korea Maritime and Ocean University, the Korean collegiate team placed 2nd.

At the end of the intense match, UC Irvine, the home team, won the competition, with a 3-1 set score. After the invitational ended, the players gathered around to have dinner together and enjoyed sharing the victory while talking with each other.

There was another special event taking place on the 2nd day of the festival -- the Destiny Child Cosplay Contest! The UCI Game Festival was the first place Destiny Child was officially introduced.

Even though the game has yet to be released in NA, the beautiful game characters caught the eyes of the passersby. Not only that, popular cosplayers in NA took part in the event with their amazing Destiny Child cosplays.

These cosplayers went about the UCI Game Festival, so visitors could take pictures with them and also win prizes like gaming gear in events we prepared.

After the fun photo time event, it was time for the cosplayers to show off their cosplays in the main event. 8 cosplayers came on the stage, acting as the characters they cosplayed.

Along with the online voting that took place prior to the festival, an offline visitor vote and LINE Games editors vote took place; the winner was Stella Chuu with her Mafdet! 2nd place went to Reagan Kathryn’s Bathory, and 3rd place to Lara Lunardi’s Dana. The special reward went to Zerggiee’s Myrina.

Another popular event was the Hyper Universe demonstrations! The demonstration zone was crowded with fans on both days of the festival; there was a long line of gamers who waited for their turn to play in person and win.

The Hyper Universe Collegiate Invitational took place on the 2nd day. The match was between the UC Irvine and UC Riverside teams, and the UC Irvine won. From League of Legends to Hyper Universe, the home team showed their strength.

After all the events and tournaments ended, the closing ceremony for the 1st UCI Game Festival was held. The festival was filled with so much entertainment that visitors and participants were smiling even if they didn’t win in the events. It was heartening to see everyone enjoy themselves even after the festival ended. Thank you all!