“I can’t wait to start taking marketing classes,”
says Wigal, who recently transferred from a local community college. “My education will give me the chance to see if what I’ve learned on my own matches with standard marketing concepts. I took a two-year break between high school and college. Formalizing my education now will allow me to close any [knowledge] gaps.”
All We Really Wanted Was a Halo Tournament Wigal was introduced to video games at an early
age, but it wasn’t until high school that his interests shifted from traditional sports to the video screen. “My parents bought a Super Nintendo system for
me when I was in kindergarten,” Wigal says. “I used it for about 20 minutes before I got bored and went outside to play. The first game that really captured my attention was Warcraft II [a fantasy-themed game] when I was in fourth or fifth grade. But I was still interested in sports. I ran track and played football until I was a high school junior. I used to talk about gaming with my teammates on the sidelines when we were supposed to be paying attention to football.” Like so many other gamers, Wigal became
captivated by Halo, a sci-fi combat series that is played through the eyes of a first-person character. The engaging storyline and highly developed audio/ visual effects made Halo 2 extremely popular with gamers upon its 2004 release. “Video games have the potential to be as
captivating as a good book or movie,” Wigal says. “When I came home from football practice, I’d play video games with my friends. Then a group of us decided to hold a Halo 2 tournament.” Wigal, then 17, spent three months helping
organize and raise funds to stage the event at Saline High School. Their only motive was to have fun. They secured permits and prizes, obtained gaming equipment and rented school space. Through flyers
Zach Wigal’s basement is the unofficial Gamers Outreach headquarters and is pretty much every gamer’s dream come true. When it’s fully set up, it serves as a local area network (LAN) center for private gaming events, capable of seating 32 individuals simultaneously.
and online advertising, the teen organizers pre-registered about 300 gamers. Everything was set, until a retired township public safety officer threw a wet blanket over the event just four days before it was to begin. “Killing as a form of entertainment at a school isn’t appropriate, I don’t think,” the officer told the Saline
14 Eastern | FALL 2011
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