Chris Williams is a video gaming business owner, teacher, coach, event organizer, tournament host, and board member. But a little over a decade ago, he was a security guard with a dream. “I wanted video games to be part of my life forever,” he says. “I wanted to wake up every day and love what I do.”
Eventually, Williams vented his frustrations to a friend who suggested starting his own business. “After that the idea started rolling through my head, and I wrote a thirty-page business plan… anything I could think of that I thought could be part of my company or what I wanted to embody,” he recalls. “I wrote all of that down.”
The idea of his own company continued growing on Williams until he got a DBA and leased a storefront, which he describes as a 750-square-foot hallway. “But it was my store, and I was so excited. It blew my mind, like, this is mine. I’m not working for anybody else. I’m not punching a clock. I own this.”
After a grand opening with friends and family, Williams entered a painful nine-day stretch with no customers. “I started to think, ‘holy crap; I am not good at this.’” Williams was so focused on the minutiae of his business plan, he wasn’t thinking about getting people through the door—or what he’d say when they did. “I was so busy with what a tournament would look like, what a league would look like, what costumes would look like, overhead, equipment costs, etc.,” he lists, “any time someone did come in I didn’t know to start the conversation or lead off with anything . . .I’d just wing it. I didn’t have a mission statement crafted clearly and concisely.”
Realizing the need for some community and support, Williams began reaching out to other gaming organizations and groups on Facebook. He heard back from Rochester Fighting Game Community (RFGC), whose home base had recently closed. “They were looking for a new home when I popped up,” he says, “so it was perfect timing for two organizations—two entities—that needed each other at the time.” A Gamer’s Nostalgia offered a physical space for RFGC, who in turn taught Williams what it really takes to run a tournament. “I learned so much in that first year with the Fighting Game Community,” he says. RFGC taught him the technical sides of video, audio, and live streaming in addition to the structure of a good event. “I just knew I love gaming. But I had no real understanding of how an event has to look, flow, sound.”
His first tournament was a hit, with a turnout of forty-two people. “We were definitely over the fire code limit that day,” he smiles. “I had a little window air conditioner, but it was so hot. It was like ninety-three degrees out, and it was cooler outside than it was in my store.” Partnering with RFGC was a game-changer for AGN. “So once people started to see my store was worthy of being in, that attracted other folks.” Williams started looking for a larger location, the first of several moves to continuously better-suited spaces. These early days took a lot of adjusting for Williams. For example, he planned to never host birthday parties. “I was like, ‘kids, pizza, controllers? Hell no, they’ll ruin everything I have!’” Over time, however, he saw the value in hosting events like this. “I realized there’s a real opportunity to get kids in the store, talk to parents, change their mindset about video games and esports . . . we’re talking 2012–2013, when people were closing arcades all over the city,” he emphasizes. “And I remember when I first opened, I called myself a modern-day arcade . . . I got a lot of pushback.” Ultimately, Williams says, he only used five pages out of his thirty-page plan. “A lot of figuring out what to do, what not to do, and connecting with good people and good organizations.”
As an esports coach for AGN and Bryant & Stratton College, William has brought his teams to tournaments and conventions around the country. In 2022 he founded Upstate Uproar, a regional annual tournament hosted in Rochester, to beckon gamers from all over to upstate New York. “We’ve had players that come from Chicago, New Jersey, Delaware, Arizona,” he says, “who come and say, ‘Oh, Rochester’s not too bad.’” Williams views hosting gaming events as an opportunity to showcase the positive parts of Rochester and is working together with tourism organizations to make that happen. “How do we get the people to see the sights and hear the sounds we want them to when they’re here for an event?” he asks. “When you run a quality event, it always bodes well for the city you’re in.”
This December, Williams launches the first annual Rochester Game Awards, a ceremony celebrating members of the local gaming community who are often overlooked. “I realized there are so many people who do good work and go unrecognized,” he says. “I think it’s a good way to bookend the year, to show love and appreciation for people who do the dirty work— the less sexy jobs—which are necessary for the day-to-day and year-to-year to happen in these gaming communities.” With so much going on in Rochester, he says, it can be hard for smaller studios or individuals to get their name out there. “When you’re so busy trying to grow and build, you don’t think about the part where you scream to the mountaintops who you are. And it’s tough because there’s so much happening in Rochester, too; there are lots of festivals, there’s Hochstein School of Music, there’s U of R, there’s RIT, the City of Rochester and what they do, all these organizations and schools and sometimes, man, you just get caught in the matrix of everything happening.”
Despite the synergy Williams has found with other gaming organizations in Rochester, he describes the local industry as a whole to be particularly siloed and averse to working with larger groups. “A lot of people are afraid of being swallowed up or overshadowed by a bigger organization,” he explains. “For example, if AGN is working with RIT, of course you’re going to notice RIT over AGN. So the contribution that we made to RIT might not be as recognized as it should.” As AGN has grown as a company, Williams has witnessed the other side of this dynamic, too. “There are a lot of smaller esport teams that are like, ‘we want to work with AGN, but we want to make sure what we do counts.’”
Williams is doing his part to make that happen. He sits on a committee called the DGIA—the Digital Gaming Industry Association—populated by “high-ranking” folks from the City of Rochester, local schools, and smaller entities with a unified goal. “We each have our own careers, but we’re trying to create incubators and opportunities, as well as doing what we can to get other gaming communities to come to Rochester. So one thing we talk about is coming together and getting out of our little silos.” Williams thinks it’s working. “It’s making more people comfortable to come to the table knowing that a bigger organization will make sure you get your respect and recognition . . . I’m glad we’re really starting to work as a collective now where everyone can have their own unique identity, but we can also have one solid, unified voice.”
One culprit for Rochester’s fractured gaming community is the personalized nature of the sport. “A lot of people don’t understand it’s not a one-size-fits-all, and some people try to take what works for the fighting game community and apply it to the mobile gaming community,” he explains. “And it doesn’t work like that.” Some gamers want to travel and place highly in tournaments; some want to livestream from home. Some want their name recognized; some just want to make money. “So it’s about finding out who they are, what they want, and what the goal is,” he says. “I deal with the fighting game community, the first/third person community, the sports community, and I have to understand they’re all different. They want similar things, but the way they go about it is different than their counterparts.”
Williams applies this philosophy—of forming community without compromising personal identity—across the board, whether it’s at the industry-level, as gamers, or as human beings. “I want people to understand there’s going to be different types who walk through the door, and there’s going to be a level of empathy, respect, and acceptance that needs to happen,” he says. “No matter the race, color, creed, sexuality, if you’re a gamer and you can play, you belong here.” Williams even extends this rule to the specific games that people play. “I want people to always feel like there’s a post for them, and however they play—whether it’s tournaments, speed runs, high scores—whatever and however you play, there’s a place for that.” Williams’s slogan for A Gamer’s Nostalgia is “Game Better Together. “And I really believe that,” he says.
Williams currently works as esports and gaming teacher for Vertus High School, a charter school for young men focused on character development and career preparation. The school also serves as the current home for A Gamer’s Nostalgia. “Literally since day one they’ve been so embracing; I just feel like the staff, message, vision, goal … you can kind of tell when people are just saying stuff. But here they really walk what they talk.” Williams has found that part of his job now is teaching kids and teens the valuable real-world applications of gaming, just like he had to define and defend his company’s mission when he started out. “It’s not only teaching them but showing them the different careers that branch off from gaming and esports, whether it be coding, programming, TOing, voice acting, mocap—all those things that are available now that weren’t around or well-known back then.” A big part of his job is explaining to parents the opportunities that exist within gaming. “There’s still a lot of skeptical parents,” he sympathizes. “Like, ‘this video game thing, is there really a career in it?’”
Williams takes his answers to these questions very seriously. “It’s important for people to have talking points for discussions with their family and friends about why they chose what they chose in life, why they do what they do.” As a teacher, coach, and mentor, Williams continues to apply his philosophy. “It’s already hard enough to choose it sometimes when it’s not something that’s considered normal in society, but it’s even harder to then present that to your family when they expected you to have a different path.” His gaming classroom is across the hall from a fully outfitted barbershop classroom. “You can see what students are going to go to college, and which ones want to work with their hands, maybe as electricians, plumbers, or carpenters . . . we explore those things because we understand each person is different. Each person has their own reason for it, and there is no one cookie cutter path for each child.” Williams believes that, for himself, entrepreneurship is in his makeup. His family wanted him to go to college, “but once they saw how passionate I was and how much I loved it, then they started to lean with me into my passions.”
“And I want more people to have support systems,” he says. “Because sometimes the folks around them won’t lean into it, but the people in the community will.”
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