When I was a kid, my first video game console was an Atari. Then came along the Nintendo NES. Remember Duck Hunt?
Fast forward 30 years and welcome to PLAYlive Nation. "This kind of open social lounge is definitely new. We are really breaking ground and doing something different. We are bringing gamers together rather than separating them with partitions and leaving them to be," manager Ace Glynn said.
The store in the Ingram Park Mall is one of three in Texas and 30 across the country. Glynn told us, "We had the arcades. We had a comic book shops. We never had a place where we could go and congregate together and kind of co-mingle so this is a way for everyone to do that."
They've got lounge chairs and a screen each for gamer with their fingers doing the walking, well, really running and shooting and whatever else they do.
Meet 18-year-old Marshall Dickinson. He's been a gamer since he was a little kid. "It was always my older brothers they had the Xbox PlayStation and I would just go play with them," he said.
Even though there's tables for anyone to play games like Magic The Gathering and Pokemon, Marshall's specialty remains with the video games. He even came in second in a national Call of Duty against others in the PLAYlive world. Dickinson told us, "I did win an Xbox One S brand new, which is a $500 system, top of the line. I won a year membership here and then I won a copy of Call Of Duty.
But like many gamers, his focus is shifting to Fortnite. He told us, "The tournaments started popping up because the game just blew up out of nowhere on social media in the gaming community."
Glynn added, "While they are competing in the store they also still have to deal with outside competition as well in their game so it really creates this atmosphere where you never know what's going to happen."
You may be fighting the guy to your left, the one to your right, or maybe even Prince Harry, if he likes video games that is. But besides trying to make money in their tournaments held every other Saturday, this open concept store makes it east for gamers to make friends too. Dickinson said, "It's a great concept. It's a great idea to bring the gaming community closer together while being able to compete."
PLAYlive Nation in the Ingram Park Mall is hosting its next tournament Saturday, July 7th.