By Alejandro Barlow and Sydney Fedinec, Oct. 31, 2023
For the first time since its inception, Bronco Esports Club cancelled Frag Fest, its long-standing gaming event held each semester, due to issues with the submission process of the budget.
The club has hosted the event since 2013, after the club merged with SWIFT and renamed Frag Nite to Frag Fest. This year, however, the club was forced to cancel the event due to the club’s previous executive board, MyBar and ASI all experiencing multiple issues that caused the club’s budget to not be approved in time.
Frag Fest is a gaming tournament with many different types of games, from first person shooters like Valorant, to fighter games like Super Smash Bros. and everything in between. Frag Fest has long been an event offering stress relief for students and an opportunity for gamers to compete and engage with their peers in the weeks leading up to finals.
Rob Ranit, Bronco Esport’s co-president and a computer engineering student, shared what Frag Fest means to Bronco Esports and spoke on the event’s longevity.
“It’s normally something the club does every semester,” said Ranit. “It’s a tradition. It’s a big event. There’s free food, tournaments and giveaways. It’s our club’s biggest event.”
Fall 2023 brought a new executive board that took over planning for Frag Fest 2023. The executive board’s duties include running the club’s daily operations, organizing events related to the club as well as budgeting for the club. This budget, however, must also go through the Student Interest Council. The SIC meets with club executive boards and discusses club protocol and budget paperwork, and in mid-October, the SIC informed Bronco Esports that their budgeting paperwork was not submitted correctly by the previous executive board.
With minimal experience in submitting budgets, current e-board members plan to get one out shortly. However, members anticipate delays from ASI as other clubs who have submitted the budgets are still awaiting approval.
“That problem has been plaguing clubs,” said Ranit. “A lot of clubs that have submitted their budget basically don’t have one yet because of whatever is going on with ASI.”
Budget submittals happen through myBar, which contains many steps and goes through multiple ranks before reaching approval. According to the Esports co-presidents, the delay of budget approval jeopardizes upcoming events for clubs that do not receive the budget in time.
The Poly Post reached out to ASI for clarification and comment on the process of club budgeting. ASI declined to comment or share any information prior to the publishing of this article.
Bronco Esports plans to have events for members as well as attending the gaming events in the game room put on by ASI. ASI is hosting an EA Sports FC 24 tournament on Nov. 17 in the games room of building 35.
As hosting large-scale events seems unlikely without their regular budget, Bronco Esports instead aims to gather the gaming community in casual game nights, biweekly Smash tournaments and collaborations with other schools such as Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Evin Menendez-Vargas, a computer science student and co-president of Bronco Esports, voiced how the club can retain its reputation and maneuver around its limited budget to still provide the campus community with multiple.
“In the meantime, we can still support them as we still have some stuff to give away even without a budget, so we can still maintain our integrity as a club especially at Esports,” said Menendez-Vargas.
As Bronco Esports is unable to provide equipment, the gaming community supports these events by charitably lending their personal equipment. Even in the past, students commonly attended the events with extra controllers for others to use as well as using their own consoles to play the games. During Frag Fest, the club has previously had sponsors supply larger equipment such as the computers and monitors used for the in-person Valorant and Counter-Strike events. Sponsors also commonly provided items for raffles and prize winnings for each competition at Frag Fest.
“We’ve had Frag Fests in the past that had sponsors and basically what they do is, in exchange for promoting their materials and their products, they give us prizes we could give away or use as prizes,” said Ranit. “Which is very nice on our budget because it means we can allocate less towards prizes and more towards other things, like other events.”
Now, with Frag Fest off the table, the club will have to rely on community members to help keep these events running.
Regardless, Bronco Esports plans to give back to the campuses’ gaming community with smaller competitions and events with professionals in the community. According to Menendez-Vargas, in the 15 years the club hosted Frag Fest, excluding the pandemic, this year is the first year they had to cancel the event.
The next big event Bronco Esports will hold this semester is a Valorant event Nov. 9 during U-hour featuring a professional team and showcasing the trophy earned from winning the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT), one of the biggest Valorant tournaments in the world.
Feature image courtesy of Evin Menendez-Vargas
