PEOPLE
MONDAY, AUGUST 18,2008
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VIDEO GAMES (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 59)
Three years ago, he left Topeka for Lawrence and opened his own store. When he purchased the property three years ago, he planned to turn the second floor into a video game lounge. He also sold pre-owned merchandise and collected obscure video game artifacts.
In December 2007, Nutt opened the Gamer Loft on the second floor of his store. The loft features 14 HD TVs equipped with every video game console ever sold. Gamers play anything from the original Nintendo, released in 1985, to Playstation 3.
released last year. Nutt offers a snack bar to keep gamers refreshed as they compete in video games. He said most of the gamers were men ages 18 to 25.
Nutt said he did not intend to make a profit with the Gamer Loft, but wanted to give gamers a place where they could play together like he did in the arcades.
"I grew up in arcades," Nutt said. "They do not really exist anymore and there has been nothing to replace them, I just wanted to try and bring it back."
As the host, Nutt does not compete with the gamers who come to the Gamer Loft, or participate in any gaming tournaments.
"It wouldn't be fair if I went up there and schooled everyone," Nutt said.
Nutt said places like the Gamer Loft existed on the East and the West Coasts, but in the Midwest there was nothing like it. Nutt said that if he could play host to national gaming tournaments at his store, people from neighboring states would drive hours to participate.
He said online gaming reenergized him for playing new video games. New games feature online gaming, where players around the world compete against each other in popular games like Grand Theft Auto IV, Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.
Nutt's next step is to try and link gamers at the Gamer Loft with other gaming communities around the nation and be a host site for national tournaments.
When he is not attending to other gamers at the Gamer Loft or working downstairs in his store, Nutt is a
married father of three girls. He said being a family man forced him to balance his gaming time with family time, but still found time to continue gaming.
Nutt said he played Atari when he was a kid and Asteroids was his favorite game. Today he owns an Xbox 360, which he uses to play popular first person shooter titles such as Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.
"I just want to shoot stuff," Nutt said.
Edited by Rustin Dodd
Chatting with freshmen about incoming college life Four freshmen talk about expectations and concerns for their first year at a major University
BY RUSTIN DODD dodd@kansan.com
Two girls sit at a table in the corner of the Kansas Union fourth floor. One unfolds a pamphlet offering information about Jayhawk traditions and when the libraries open. Young faces float around the rest of the floor.
Kylinn Gerstner and Paige
Stephens are in no hurry.
"We're just hanging out," Stephens said.
They're just waiting. You sit around a lot when you go to summer orientation.
Stephens and Gerster learned the truth about summer orientation on a humid July day. They chose classes, finalized living arrangements and waited. But they'll never have to do it again. They're about to be freshmen, full-time students at the University.
and members of the class of 2012.
They're two of thousands, part of a group on the precipice of college.
Stephens and Gerstner's home town, Colby, is home to five to six thousand people.
"6,000 on a good day," Gerstner says.
The University can almost multiply that number by five.
But Gerstner's not worried. She's thinking about majoring in biochemistry. She wants to go into medicine. But mostly, she is looking forward to dorm life - she's living in McCollum - and a "wide selection of guys," Gerstner says.
In July, Gerstner had talked to her roommate once.
"She seems nice," she said. But she's worried about living
with someone she's never met.
Stephens is worried too. But for another reason. She says she doesn't want to live at G.S.P, and as of July, that's where she was scheduled to live.
Stephens will be on the KU Crew team, and she's a second generation Jayhawk. Her mom went here. Her sister is coming here too, a transfer from Colby Community College.
"It'll be nice to have her," Stephen's said.
Gina Cohen listens to music on her headphones amidst the organized chaos of orientation. She's from Overland Park, just 30 minutes away.
Cohen's brother will be a senior this year. Her older sister already graduated. She didn't need to take
one of those campus tours, she says. She knows Lawrence, and she loves it.
"I like the vibe," Cohen said. "It has a lot of culture, even though it seems like a small town in the middle of nowhere."
But Cohen says another thing pulled her to the University. She was at her Overland Park home in early April, with the television on. She watched Kansas beat Memphis for the National Championship and she saw how the students reacted.
"I was thinking, I'd like to go there," Cohen said.
Up the stairs from Cohen, Tim Ellis, an incoming freshman from Manhattan, waits for his Mom. He's about to walk into another presentation.
Mario Chalmer's shot didn't affect Ellis' college decision.
The University just gave him more scholarship money than anywhere else, he says. He's majoring in chemical engineering. He wants to go medical school, or maybe just focus on research, he says. His test scores and grades put him in the honors placement program. He's a little concerned about taking sophomore English as a freshman. But he said he was looking forward to living off-campus with friends and being on his own.
The presentation is about to begin, and Ellis needs to go.
"Yeah," he says. "Just being in college."
For Gerstner, Stephens and Cohen, it's the same feeling. College, at last.
Edited by Sachiko Miyakawa
WWW.KANSAN.COM | THE UNIVERSITY DARRY KANSAN
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