For many, entering or attending a video game tournament might feel unfamiliar or even out of reach. In the common imagination, competitors hunker with their computers in isolated dark rooms wearing headsets and pounding energy drinks. And, sure, that describes some players, but many video game enthusiasts celebrate their shared interests in popular venues across Richmond.
The number of people in the U.S. who play video games is growing, according to the Entertainment Software Association. As of 2025, more than 205 million individuals, or about 64% of the population, know their way around a controller. The ESA notes that 76% of adults feel that engaging with video games brings people of all backgrounds together, and 72% have played with others in person or online.
Fueled by the desire for a stronger social community post-pandemic, local meetups and tournaments have been on the rise. It’s currently possible to find a game-related public event in the Richmond region every week. Corey Ingles, the public events coordinator and assistant brewer at The Answer Brewpub near Willow Lawn, says they open their doors for gaming meetups to provide entertainment and a place for players to gather, as well as to be a community hub.
It’s a mission shared by Dakotah Coates, co-owner of the video game store and arcade DawnStar in Scott’s Addition. “Anybody can just play games with their friends over at their house. It’s more about cultivating community around a singular game or a singular thing that’s incredibly important, because there’s so many people who are so passionate about it and want to go and experience a competitive scene,” Coates says.
Austin Okeefe, a volunteer assistant organizer for DawnStar’s Thursday night Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments, says the experience can help individuals break out of their shells. “A lot of people come out and they’re able to talk to people and do social interactions and stuff like that, which I feel like is pretty big, especially in an online era,” Okeefe says.
The socialization aspect attracts many to join events, including local pros. Cory Hong began playing Melee, a 2001 fighting game featuring Nintendo characters, casually at age 7 and started entering competitions at age 14. He has traveled across the country and internationally to tournaments, achieving a worldwide top 100 ranking in 2023; he is currently ranked No. 6 in the game within the Maryland and Virginia area. Now 32, Hong says these days he mostly plays for enjoyment. “I still want to win, but I used to be way more hardcore — like, I’d practice every day,” he says. “But not anymore; it’s just for fun. I love the game still, and I play, and I like to see my friends.”
Richmond is home to a robust Smash scene, with weekly tournaments drawing players from Virginia and out-of-state who range in age, skill level and background. “If I went back and told myself as a kid, ‘There’s going to be a tournament in Richmond that has about 30 people,’ … I would be in disbelief,” Hong says. When he first began competing, there were only a few dedicated players in Richmond, he adds. “We were driving around two hours to get to a 30-person tournament, and now it’s like I’ve got a 20-person or 30-person tournament that I can walk to. That’s mind-blowing.”
More than 30 participants regularly attend the “It’s Not You, It’s Melee” monthly tournament at Vasen Brewing Company to compete in Super Smash Bros. Melee. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
It’s a Smash
They come armed with custom-modified controllers and strategies honed by both mistakes made and successes achieved. They wait for their bracket to come up, take their seats, and start mashing buttons and making calculated moves with clacks of their joysticks. Selecting recognizable Nintendo avatars such as Mario, Pikachu and Kirby, players take on their competitors to be the champion (usually winning a small monetary prize). This is a Super Smash Bros. tournament.
Those looking to join a Super Smash Bros. Melee (played on the Nintendo GameCube) or a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (a 2018 Nintendo Switch title) event don’t have to wait very long. Melee tourneys are hosted on Thursday evenings at DawnStar, once a month on rotating Sundays at The Answer, and the last Sunday of the month at Vasen Brewing Company in Scott’s Addition. Ultimate competitions are held on Thursday nights at The Answer and every Sunday at DawnStar.
In 2019, co-owners Coates, Meaghan Riley and Andrew Griimoiire opened DawnStar in Scott’s Addition. They hosted pop-up tournaments mostly using Coates’ personal Switch console and projector. Even before they opened the business, however, the trio had been fueling the budding local tournament scene by hosting events at The Veil Brewing Co. and Mexican restaurant TBT El Gallo. After a two-year hiatus forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, DawnStar revived its gaming events in 2021, this time at The Answer. They hosted competitions at the brewpub until 2023, when they relocated to a larger space on West Clay Street in Scott’s Addition and moved their events to the new venue.
Competition in esports and gaming is about fun, it’s about community, it’s about making friends and finding people to play with.
—Andrew Gnux, ImmerseCon operations manager
On Sundays, Madison Turner, in the guise of RVA Smash, hosts Ultimate tournaments at DawnStar. Turner started RVA Smash after The Forge, a game shop that had held tournaments, closed in 2020. She partnered with Castleburg Brewery until it, too, permanently closed. Seeking a new location, Turner offered to organize DawnStar’s Ultimate tourneys.
A competitive player herself, Turner thinks most in-person tournaments have an empowering atmosphere and that unsportsmanlike conduct among competition gamers is mostly a misconception, although there are always exceptions. “I think that it’s not just playing the game that people love, and I think that Super Smash Bros. as a whole has always been a series that people really cling onto and just love and want to continually get better at. ... I do think that we provide a sense of community for that,” Turner says. “I always try to foster a very friendly, welcoming environment for everyone. I want everyone to feel comfortable and to know that they belong.”
The atmosphere is similar at Vasen’s “It’s Not You, It’s Melee” monthly tournament, which has been organized by Kyle “Ego” Baskette and Kay “BabyRat” Morgan for two years. The event regularly hosts 30 to 40 participants and, on occasion, more than 100 people come out to play. They might include out-of-towners looking for a tournament, top East Coast Melee players (many from the area), novices and newcomers. One of the hallmarks of the series is that, win or lose, everybody fist-bumps after their match.
Morgan is a gamer, but they still needed assistance from Baskette when when learning the Melee world prior to hosting the series. “It took me probably five months of playing to be able to watch it and know what was going on on the screen,” Morgan says. “Even though I struggle with competition — I’m very competitive, and this is a game that is very hard, and people are very good at it — people’s passion for it is infectious.”
Madison Turner (bottom left), founder of RVA Smash, organizes the weekly Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competition at DawnStar Video Games every Sunday. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Choose Your Fighter
Smash isn’t the only game in town.
RVA Fighting Game Community hosts “The King Returns” at DawnStar on the first Saturday of each month. The series originated at the former Castleburg Brewery in 2022 and was moved to DawnStar the following year. The competition offers a rotating roster of fighting games, such as Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and Mortal Kombat 1.
One of the lead organizers, Aaron “Psychoblue” Pinsky, has a background as a competitor, commentator and volunteer at some of the world’s largest FGC tournaments, including Capcom Cup, Evo and Combo Breaker. He uses that knowledge to help organize TKR’s brackets and stream the competitions online.
Pinsky says TKR started small and grew to satisfy the desire of local players to participate in a regular tournament. “We’re approaching 28 months [of RVA FGC]. So, I’m pretty excited about that, and how, not just how tenacious we’ve been, but how the [participant] numbers have not really gone down since we started,” Pinsky says. “What typically happens with fighting game locals nationally is that you have some momentum for a few months, and then things die out, and before you know it, you don’t have the locals anymore. Richmond is not that case.”
Retro Room regularly offers vintage gaming pop-up events around the Richmond area, including at Funktastic Meads in Midlothian. (Photo by Nicole Cohen)
Rated E for Everyone
While a casual gamer may not enjoy going up against a seasoned player in a head-to-head competition, aspects of almost every local event allow for novice participation. Spectators are welcome, and free-to-play setups are often available for people just to have fun.
Groups such as Retro Room offer a more classic video game experience. Organizer Luke Baab regularly hosts events in Northern Virginia and around Richmond, including at Funktastic Meads in Midlothian. His creative competitions challenge players to get the highest score on Ms. Pac-Man on a Sega Genesis, go head-to-head in Mortal Kombat on the Super Nintendo, and make it to World 8 of the 1985 Super Mario Bros. game. Winners receive a variety of prizes, including gift cards, vintage gaming consoles and free drinks at the bar. “It’s more community-focused, and it really takes you back to the ’90s, where, in my opinion, gaming was a social experience in person,” Baab says.
The Answer periodically offers free Halo LAN parties, where the brewery provides each participant with a CRT TV and game console; all of the setups are connected via a local area network. On Aug. 8, the featured title is Halo 3 on the Xbox 360, and on Sept. 6 the brewpub will host a Halo 2 tournament. For the most up-to-date event information, join The Answer’s Discord channel.
Last year Holly Clark started “Sidequest RVA: A Video Game Party,” a gaming experience and competition held annually at The Broadberry. Combining music with the electronic arts, the March 2025 event saw participants battle it out in Street Fighter 6, Guilty Gear Strive and Mario Kart 8, among others. Clark is also the founder of Rewind Vintage, a retro goods business, and the Retro Vibes Market, an assemblage of vendors offering classic video games, collectibles and fandom merchandise. The market usually includes a playable component, such as a mobile game truck or consoles set up on a CRT TV.
“I’ve always had a passion about hosting stuff in general and just creating spaces for people to come together,” Clark says. “We have so many different age groups coming to our tournaments, and so for the future I have thought about, ‘Well, what if we do a kids’ tournament as well as an adults’ tournament and just expand it in different ways?’ [Some] kids don’t want to get into sports, and that’s OK. Esports is there, and that’s awesome, and I think this type of stuff should be absolutely celebrated and embraced.”
Brewpub The Answer hosts Halo LAN Party nights on rotating Fridays. (Photo courtesy Corey Ingles/The Answer)
Career Sports
Esports — professional gamers playing competitively for spectators and winning prizes — is a growing industry. As a result, numerous colleges across the commonwealth field varsity esports teams, and Shenandoah University in Winchester offers degrees, including an MBA, in esports management as well as certificates in esports management, coaching and medicine.
In the Richmond region, Virginia Commonwealth University, Brightpoint Community College, and Randolph-Macon College in Ashland offer club teams; Richard Bland College in South Prince George opened an esports arena in 2024; and Virginia State University launched an esports initiative earlier this year. Starting this fall, Virginia Union University will partner with Rize Education, an online college consortium, to offer a degree enrichment certificate in esports and gaming administration.
At the secondary school level, after the launch of a 2019 pilot program, esports is now a sanctioned activity through the Virginia High School League, which governs high school sports across the commonwealth.
The inaugural ImmerseCon in 2024 hosted the first RVA Esports Championship in Richmond. The event returns Aug. 30-31. (Photo courtesy ImmerseCon)
Missing Levels
Despite the growing esports infrastructure in the region, Richmond lacked a large championship until last year, when ImmerseCon, a STEM skills expo and gaming convention, hosted the inaugural RVA Esports Championship. According to Andrew Gnux, operations manager for ImmerseCon, the organizers wanted to create a competition that brings together gaming communities across all genres. “Our ultimate goal is to build the RVA Esports Championship into … its own separate event and build something large-scale,” Gnux says. “We focus on opening this event up to the amateur gamer, the semi-pro gamer, the pro gamer — anyone can compete at this event. Competition in esports and gaming is about fun, it’s about community, it’s about making friends and finding people to play with.”
ImmerseCon and the RVA Esports Championship return to Richmond on Aug. 30-31 at the Hilton Hotel & Spa Short Pump. This year’s tournament titles are Call of Duty, Mario Kart 8, Rocket League, Street Fighter 6, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Tekken 8. Participants can enter a maximum of two game tournaments, and winners will receive a trophy and prize money. A $55 ticket grants two-day admission to ImmerseCon, registration in two games and access to the Cyber Dungeon Challenge (a mobile app scavenger hunt).
There’s also room for expansion in the local tournament gaming community, despite its rapid post-pandemic growth. For example, games such as Super Smash Bros., Tekken and Halo are often played, but popular esports titles such as Rocket League, Fortnite and many sports collections (Madden NFL, NBA 2K, etc.) have yet to find traction in the area.
“I’ve tried doing FIFA. I know there’s a big following with FIFA and all of these sports games and stuff like that,” The Answer’s Ingles says. “I’d say there isn’t really much of a market. … Forza Horizon is a really big multiplayer [racing] game, but yeah, it really depends on the game. But I also think a part of it is, a lot of those games you can already get that multiplayer experience at home.”
Building on the idea that home online gaming may be a reason some titles haven’t taken off in the local in-person tournament community, Ingles says there’s a difference when it comes to “old school” nostalgic multiplayer co-op. He cites Halo night at The Answer: “I think a lot of people who are coming out, they grew up going to their friend’s house, carrying their CRT and then just staying up all night. Whereas a lot of the sports games it’s like, you can do that, but a lot of those people are like, ‘Well, I can just do that home kind of thing,’ which makes sense. I think it takes the right kind of game, and I think Super Smash Bros., a little bit of Call of Duty and, if I’m being biased, Halo is one of those games that you can’t really get that experience online.”
Conversely, there’s concern that some games may be overrepresented, especially within the local Smash community. There are at least three public tournaments per week, which gives players flexibility but also may force them to choose specific events because they can’t attend all of them.
“It’s like a double-edged sword,” Super Smash Bros. Melee player Hong says. “We’re getting so popular in Richmond. More people are running events, so then the events’ attendance gets spread too thin. Back in the day, we had what was called a monthly, so we would just have one tournament a month and it made it more special.”
Hong notes that a small percentage of attendees join all of the events, but it’s more common for players to choose one each week or month. “That’s the pros and cons. It’s nice that we have events, but it makes them almost too saturated in a way. Obviously, everyone tries to come to every event. I go to everything,” he says.
It’s in the Game
With more people playing video games and seeking connections beyond the screen, finding events to enrich the hobby or support a potential profession is only getting easier. Diverse offerings appeal to both casual and hardcore players and the field is wide open to anyone who wants to organize events for games not yet represented on Richmond’s competition calendar.
“Locally here, there is a really great incentive to come out and play with other people, which is the camaraderie. We have community events that we like,” Morgan, the Melee tourney organizer, says. “Not everybody needs a thing to connect over, but I think for a lot of people … this is a place to go make real friends shoulder to shoulder, where you don’t have to be so vulnerable. You just say, ‘Hey, do you want to play some games?’”
Ready, Fight!
A sampling of RVA’s gaming tournaments
DawnStar Smash
Super Smash Bros. Melee presented on Thursday nights by DawnStar. Singles and doubles tournaments. 7 to 11 p.m. $10 admission fee; $5 entrance fee. start.gg/dawnstarsmash
GG Bi-weekly
Super Smash Bros. Melee hosted every other Wednesday at Game Grotto located inside Toy Lair. Singles and doubles tournaments. Begins at 6:30 p.m. $5 admission fee; $5 entrance fee for singles (free entrance for doubles). GG Bi-weekly on start.gg
‘It’s Not You, It’s Melee’
Super Smash Bros. Melee hosted on the last Sunday of the month at Vasen Brewing Company. Singles and doubles tournaments. Noon to 8 p.m. $5 entrance fee. “It’s Not You, It’s Melee” on start.gg
‘The King Returns’
RVA Fighting Game Community competitions in Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and more titles at DawnStar. 1 to 7 p.m. $10 admission fee ($15 day of); $5 entrance fee. start.gg/hub/rva-fgc
RVA Smash
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate held every Sunday at DawnStar. Singles and side bracket tournaments. Begins at 2 p.m. $10 admission fee; $5 entrance fee. rvasmash.com
‘Sidequest RVA: A Video Game Party’
Annual tournament and gaming experience including titles such as Guilty Gear Strive, Mario Kart 8 and more, plus free-to-play games. For updated details about the next tournament, visit instagram.com/sidequestrva.
Solution
Super Smash Bros. Melee held on rotating Sundays once a month at The Answer Brewpub. Singles and doubles tournaments. Begins at 1:30 p.m. $5 admission fee; $5 entrance fee. Solution on start.gg
Photo by Justin Vaughan
Easy Mode
Join in on some casual noncompetitive play
‘Answer These Hands Casuals’
RVA Fighting Game Community offers matches in titles including Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and more every second and fourth Wednesday at brewpub The Answer. 6 to 10 p.m. Free admission. start.gg/hub/rva-fgc
DraftCade
More than 75 classic arcade games including BurgerTime, Donkey Kong and more located at Short Pump Town Center. 4 to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday-Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday (21 and up after 7 p.m.) $10 admission includes unlimited plays all day. draftcade.com/richmond
Halo LAN Party
Free-to-play Halo nights hosted at The Answer on rotating Fridays. Begins at 6:30 p.m. facebook.com/theanswerbrewpub
Retro Room
Classic free-to-play games on a rotating basis including Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros. and more titles on select dates at Funktastic Meads in Midlothian and additional area venues. instagram.com/retroroomrva
Retro Vibes Market
Presented by Rewind Vintage and Furnace Pizza, peruse classic games, collectibles and more for sale from local vendors, as well as some opportunities for casual gaming, on select dates at locations around Richmond. Free admission. instagram.com/retrovibesmarket
Retro Video Game Night
Presented by Replay Music & Games, purchase games and play interactive titles such as Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and more every other Tuesday at Crazy Rooster Brewing Co. in Powhatan. 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Free admission. instagram.com/replaymusicandgames
RVA Retro Gaming
Purchase, trade and play classic video games during the group’s Retroswap events on select dates at The Answer and additional area venues. Free admission and free-to-play games. rvaretro.org
StarCade
Dozens of arcade games including Battletoads, The House of The Dead and more located inside DawnStar Video Games. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. $10 admission ($15 on Saturdays) includes unlimited plays. dawnstarvideogames.com
