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Marlborough Boys College students Jacob Gray, left, and Junior O’Brien, right, of the ‘Jamaican Joysticks’ Rocket League team, play the ‘Synergy Energy’ team from Richmond View School.
A new esports and coding festival for young people in Marlborough has officially pressed play.
Marlborough youth got the chance to build robots, play video games, design a virtual school, explore career pathways within the tech industry, and even play an ‘E Black’ in the event.
Held at Blenheim’s ASB Theatre, the first full day of Empower Te Rangapikikotuku eSports and Coding festival’s on Friday featured a live esports competition, representatives from tech companies around the top of the South Island, and workshops across a range of areas within the tech industry.
Marlborough Boys’ College year 10 student Raheem Mir, 14, successfully built and coded a remote control for a drone at the festival’s robotics workshop, which he said only took him 15-20 minutes.
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Marlborough Boys College year 10 student Raheem Mir built a remote control for a drone at the festival on Friday.
It wasn’t Raheem’s first time making something robotic, he said. His family used to buy mini robot assembly kits, but in terms of tech, he was most interested in creating digital art, using 3D modeling technology, he said.
“Like modeling an entire landscape, the mountains and stuff like that,” he said.
He thought the fact this type of festival was happening in Marlborough was “very cool.”
“It’s an opportunity for people to get into more tech-focused stuff and see what they want to do with their careers,” he said.
Anthony Phelps/Stuff
Marlborough Girl’s College students Michala Ross, year 10, left, with Holly Bowhill, year 9, building their drone remotes.
Marlborough Girls’ College year 10 student Michala Ross, 14, who was busy using a laptop to code her drone remote control, said it was the first time she had created something like this, and she “enjoyed the experience”.
She thought it was interesting to see what the world of tech had to offer, in terms of the career paths that were being explored at the festival.
“This is what the world is going to be like very soon,” she said.
The festival also featured a live esports competition, where the ‘Jamaican Joysticks’ team from Marlborough Boys’ College were competing against the ‘Synergy Energy’ team from Richmond View School in a game of ‘Rocket League’, a video game where players used vehicles to try and knock a ball into the opposing team’s goal.
Anthony Phelps/Stuff
Festival attendees had the chance to play a video game against E Black Josh King, who competed at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
If they were brave enough, attendees had the chance to play Rocket League against New Zealand E Black Josh King, who finished in the top eight of competitors in a tournament at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham playing ‘eFootball’, a football simulation video game .
The E Blacks was the esports team, organized by the NZ Esports Federation, who represented New Zealand by playing video games competitively on the world stage,
King said he was disappointed with his result at the Commonwealth Games, but he thought it was “pretty cool” to have competed in his first major international esports event.
Anthony Phelps/STUFF/Marlborough Express
Bohally Intermediate students taking part in the ‘AR’ or ‘augmented reality’ workshop at the festival of Friday.
He said after playing games like eFootball and FIFA casually with mates, he decided to start taking esports seriously in 2019.
“You get people who think it’s not a real sport, but you’re still just moving different parts of your body, and at the end of the day, you’re still training for something,” he said.