A Local Gamer Turns His Hobby Into Lucrative Business

Kevin Fair is the owner of I Play Games, a business that provides staff, consulting and equipment for people who want to host video game tournaments. Photo provided by Lydia Eady
Kevin Fair is the owner of I Play Games, a business that provides staff, consulting and equipment for people who want to host video game tournaments. Photo provided by Lydia Eady

 A Local Gamer Turns His Hobby Into Lucrative Business

By Tia Carol Jones

Kevin Fair always enjoyed playing video games and making friends while playing them. He turned that love of playing video games into a business, I Play Games.

Fair graduated from Morgan Park High School and the LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tenn. After he graduated from college, he worked at an accounting firm. It was then that he started to think about what he was passionate about and how he wanted to start his own business.

Fair started to reflect on what he liked to do. He had a moment where he asked himself, “if I could do whatever I wanted to do and get paid for it, what would that job look like?” It was really easy for him because he liked video games.

Competitive video games were not really mainstream at the time. Fair hosted video game tournaments in high school and decided to go back to that.

“The more I thought about who I was as a person, someone who brought the fun to events and made ways to create icebreakers, socialize with people; and it was video games,” he said.

Fair moved into the space super green. He didn’t know anything about starting or running a business, but he did know how to start events. He took those experiences with starting events and made gaming tournaments professional.

‘I Play Games’ provides video game equipment rental, consulting, planning, and staffing for video game events. Fair and his team do their best to provide experiences where people have fun at the events.

The pandemic and quarantine really caused people to look at alternative ways to have fun. Esports and competitive video games have been around for about 40 years. Fair believes its growth is because more kids are talking about their experiences in video games. Before it was a local activity and now it is a global activity, with connectivity to the internet. STEM and STEAM also have made way to Esports being embraced more.

“I fixed my very first computer when my regular Nintendo broke at home. For me it was like, ‘hey, I’m going to take this apart and figure out why it’s not working anymore.’ I don’t think we had the context of what I was doing in 1992, which was that I put my hands on my very first motherboard as a kid,” he said.

Fair puts this query to parents: Can you tell me any other thing that inspires kids to problem solve without any inherent reward? Video games get kids to sit down, read and apply their own type of solution to it. Fair said adults are becoming more keen to children using problem solving in video games.

The Surge Esports Arena is set to open in Bronzeville in the future. Fair is excited about the project. ‘I Play Games’ travels all around the country to put on video game tournaments. Fair has seen the value and efficacy for having an Esports Arena in Chicago. It has the potential to be a great draw for the City and enables the city to host national and international tournaments.

Fair wants to see how everyone will be included in the process of building and having an esports arena in the city. During the workshops in schools, Fair and his ‘I Play Games’ team talk about career pathways. There is a value in young children and teenagers learning about the gaming industry. Fair tries to find out what students like to do and from there, using the love of video games as a way to direct their career path.

“In order to find my career in the space, I had to reflect on who Kevin Fair was. I could think back on bringing my Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast to high school and trying to organize these Madden and 2K tournaments.  I realized how much fun building a community was,” he said. “When I became an adult, I built a community again and I didn’t even plan on it.”
For more information about ‘I Play Games’, visit ipgnation.com.

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