Baldwin gamers to host charity tournament

After the shooting deaths of two players at an NFL Madden 19 tournament in Florida on Aug. 26, gamers must keep gaming, Baldwinite Alex Holcombe, 23, said. “I think the best thing I could do on my end is to continue to fight against this and continue to attend these events,” he noted.

Joe Marchesse-Schmitt, 24, a lifelong Baldwinite, said gamers must support one another. “We need to remind everyone that the video gaming community [is] just that — a community,” he said.

Both will be among the attendees at a Sept. 23 video game tournament at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City. The event is being organized through their group, Mid-Tier Summit Gaming, in partnership with other Long Island gaming groups. “We want to be able to show that the gaming community is cohesive,” said Marchesse-Schmitt, who heads the Mid-Tier Summit group.

The event will be a fundraiser for those affected by the Aug. 26 Jacksonville Landing shooting, in which gunman David Katz killed two people and injured 10 others before taking his own life. Proceeds will be donated to a fund set up by the gaming company Electronic Arts.

The idea for a fundraiser, Marchesse-Schmitt said, came to him after the initial shock from the shooting wore off. “My first reaction was the standard one, which was to emotionally grapple with it,” he said. “After that, I thought, we have to do something about this, which I think is how we should all feel when a tragedy occurs.”

There will be a variety of games at the tournament for people of all skill levels. “We want to connect the competitive community with the more casual gaming community,” Mar-chesse-Schmitt said.

Competitions will be held in games such as Dragon Ball FighterZ, Super Smash Bros. 4 and Rocket League, among others. There will also be an area for casual play of retro video games. Specific times for the event were not finalized by press time.  

Holcombe has taken part in video game tournaments for three years, he said, and in that time has never feared for his safety. “It never once in my life crossed my mind,” he said. “It wasn’t something I thought about. It just hits so close to home to think it could happen at a place like that.”

Katz reportedly was a participant in the tournament, and after losing a game, he left without shaking the winner’s hand. He returned minutes later and started shooting.

While “there’s always the worry that something like this could occur,” Marchesse-Schmitt said, he has thought it improbable, never imagining that the loss of a game could lead someone to start killing people.

“In these tournaments, there’s always a desire to win and always the hope to achieve some glory,” he said. “But even if you do lose, we’re still a community, and we would never do something to hurt anybody.” Katz, according to published reports, had a history of mental illness.

Violence has been nonexistent at the annual Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, lead organizer Joel Albino said. “We’ve had probably almost 5,000 people attend, and we’ve never even had a fight,” Albino, of Garden City, said.

Albino, whose group is partnering with Mid-Tier for the event, said he worries people will claim that video games cause people to be violent. “It’s a dumb thing people say,” he said. “I think it’s been proven that they absolutely do not.”

Shortly after the Jacksonville shooting, video gamer Justin Wong, one of the world’s best, tweeted, “This really makes me scared of going to any event in America.” He later said, “I think any event in USA that doesn’t have proper security, I probably won’t go to them right now.”

In response, Holcombe said, “Because he comes from the USA himself . . . for him to say that, it’s really sad and disappointing.”

At the same time, he recognizes the need to keep all players safe. “I have a 14-year-old on one of my teams,” Holcombe said. “I don’t ever want to put my 14-year-old player’s life in jeopardy.”

Fun and security must be balanced, he said.