There are only a number of ways you can turn a negative college experience into a positive one, and one of them is by playing Jenga with members of Quinnipiac University’s Game Club.

The Game Club offers a variety of different genres of gaming. From card games, board games, video games, role-playing games or sports games, Game Club’s all-inclusive library connects to every type of gamer, from casual to competitive.

James Dobson, a third-year law in society major and president of Game Club, said the organization is a substantial way for students to rub shoulders with fellow gamers of a multitude of different backgrounds, personalities and gaming abilities.

“You can find all sorts of people at the club,” Dobson said. “We have people that are outgoing, the people that are shy, but they tend to open up when they get to know us …I’ve made some pretty good friends there myself.”

Deveney Paine, a third-year advertising and integrated communications and graphic and interactive design double major, is the Game Club’s public relations lead. She can often be seen in the Carl Hansen Student Center Piazza handing out meeting flyers for Super Smash Bros. tournaments or the Minecraft servers.

“I don’t usually advertise just the Game Club vaguely because I feel like that’s too broad and doesn’t say a whole lot,” Paine said. “I like to dig into specific events because I feel like that’s what people come to see us for.”

The Game Club also has an associated Discord server, an online communication platform for gamers, where students can communicate outside of their weekly meetings and bond over anything from school to inside jokes between members.

“School is stressful, a lot of us are in upper years or even in grad school and it can quickly become overwhelming, especially if you’re not one of those people that goes out,” Paine said.

College can be downright maddening, but Game Club is an escape into an alternative reality — bonus points for making real-life friends in the process.

“Sometimes you want something a little bit calmer,” Paine said.“You want to go play board games with your friends. And so I think we’re a really great place for people to come together and just relax a little bit, scream at their friends over a game of Monopoly.”

Though Game Club is open to all educational credentials, the weekly meetings can also act as a proficient way for game design and development majors to test play some of their work.

“It’s a fun experience just playing another student’s game,” Dobson said. “And it also helps that student perfect their game, (while) seeing what a lively test actually entails through that game.”

The Game Club is not looking for members to always come in first place in Mario Kart, but instead a group of friends to throw red shells at each other during the game.

Dobson wrote three articles for The Chronicle between 2020-21.