Achievement Unlocked: Exploring Malden's Growing Gaming District

It's all fun and games these days in downtown Malden! The city has been putting a lot of effort into creating a gamer's paradise around the Malden Center MBTA stop, continually growing the "Gaming District" each and every year with more fun offerings. They say there is something for everyone, from the casual gamer to a console legend. Kevin Duffy and Tess Young join Nichole this week to talk about the initiative and how they're working to bring in even more exciting experiences.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend. Each week
we come together right here talk aboutall the topics important to you and the
place where you live. It's sogood to be back with you again this
week. I'm Nicole Davis. Thesedays, if you make your way to
downtown Malden, it's all fun andgames. Literally, if you didn't know,
Maldon now has a full fledged gamingdistrict. The city over the past

(00:29):
decade or so has been putting alot of effort into creating a gamer's paradise.
They say there's something for everybody whocomes to town. Even if you're
not the one to sit in frontof the TV every night playing Xbox or
play a lot of board games,that's okay. Kevin Duffy is the Deputy
director for Business and Economic Development there. Tess Young is the community and social
media liaison for all this. Greatto have you both here. I am

(00:51):
so excited about this. Kevin.I want to start with you because I'd
love to hear some background about fromthe city perspective, how this whole thing
came to pass. It is andwe have to credit the fortune that we've
had with voter board coming to Americalooking to find a location to open up.
They were considering both la and Boston. We were fortunate enough that they
chose the Boston area and they werelooking for a great space about thirty to

(01:15):
thirty five thousand square feet that wouldbe adjacent to one of the subway lines
around here, and Malden had it. So they moved in in twenty fifteen,
and we quickly realized that experiential retailis the future of downtowns. You
can't get it in a big box, you can't get it from Amazon.
You have to be there to experienceit. And it has a lot of

(01:36):
ancillary benefits because we have a fantasticdining district and people have to pay for
parking sometimes, so it just benefitseveryone across the board. Yeah, you
know, most cities have a restaurantdistrict, or they've got a theater district
or whatever. I don't really knowof any other city that has a gaming
district, except you know, notcasinos. We're talking about, like video
gaming district. Is Malden the first? It has been alleged that we have

(02:00):
first, and we like to thinkwe are a lot of that credit has
to go to the mayor. He'salways been an avid gamer, even from
way back in his day, andso he started out he was a gamer
organizing fantasy sports even before fantasy sportswere a thing. So even though he
moved on and ended up getting hislaw degree and becoming mayor, he always
had that affection for gaming. Sowhen Vodaborg came in and we realized the

(02:22):
value of experiential retail, he said, let's make this a thing. So
we went out, we started recruitingbusinesses, tried to pull them in with
a great help of test. We'vebrought in a lot of unofficial amateur groups,
let them know that Malden has ahome for them, and we've become
quite a nexus of great gaming events. Yeah, Tess, let's talk about
that. Tell me about some ofthe key attractions here that you would find

(02:44):
if you are a gamer and youcome to the district. You what are
you going to see when you gethere? I mean, well, we
have the kind of like the corebusinesses here, we have go to worg
Wich. Kevin mentioned, we alsohave a Project cut which is I also
work for them reach out it aswell their medic golf location. We also
have an esports facility, mixer esports, as well as like a bunch of

(03:08):
like smaller We're also planning to havethe immersive that's like in a skeep room
company. They're going to be openingup soon and I know Kevin is actively
just trying to build that. Inthe business side, for what I focus
on is kind of the community events, which I consider an additional attraction as
well, and it's kind of whatwe've been working to grow. So on

(03:30):
any given day of the week,there are several gaming themed events that they
don't necessarily happen in gaming businesses,but people are bringing out games. And
it's not just video games, it'sboard games, it's magic the gathering.
We have an enormous, enormous PokemonGo community here, which is in augmented
reality games. The mayor also playsthat game. In fact, he's a

(03:53):
he's a part of that community.Oh yeah yeah. But I mean one
of my personal favorite gaming events andit was the event that kind of really
inspired me to maybe work on thingsin addition to the businesses was my friend
Yuquay. He did the Multiplayer Museum, which is a retro gaming He has

(04:13):
like an enormous retro gaming collection andall he wanted to do was bring it
out, set up a console anda television screen, and invite people to
come and play, and so heworked with Kevin. They have it set
up at Idle Hands, which isa local brewery, so it's not regularly,
but he does it about twice amonth. People come out and they
play, and there's like a reallyreally great turnout because you know, people

(04:36):
get to play like these weird,crazy retro video games. Yeah. So
yeah, but we're trying to coverat least with our events, and our
business is like every different type ofgaming community. So if you like trading
card games, we have a fightinggame event that's going to be coming up
next month, you know, tradingcard games, board games, video games.

(04:57):
We want to have it all likeit. We really wanted to it
be like a full gaming district.Yeah, and I appreciate that because people
might hear gaming district and think,oh my god, my gaming extent is
like pac Man at most, andI don't really know what I'm doing.
Maybe I play Monopoly once. Butthis is really open to anybody, and
I appreciate that test because you don'thave to be deep into fallout, you
don't have to be leading a Dand D campaign to be welcome here.

(05:18):
Everybody's welcome, absolute, yeah,absolutely, yeah. And one of the
great things that we've done is wecreated our own augmented reality game, again
at the Mayor's direction. And thewhole idea here was that we took Maldon's
tremendous history and we augmented it withthis game where you can kind of bring
the youth together. So it's amulti generational game that actually gets you outside

(05:41):
exploring the city, finding these historicalmarkers all over the place, and it's
just another example of this room foreveryone under our gaming kent. Yeah.
And there are lots of great restaurantstoo in Malden's Center. I love going
there to eat. A lot ofgreat small businesses too, so I'm sure
there's a lot of collaboration. Youwere touching on that a little bit,
Kevin. Tell us about the collaborationbetween those businesses. Well, it actually

(06:02):
started as a response to the pandemic. The mayor said that we need to
help these businesses get their customers back. So we came up with the idea
of a pub crawl based upon somehistorical events in Malden's history, and what
it did was would bring about eightyto ninety people through a restaurant on a
Saturday night and it would usually befull restaurants over the course of the evening,
and the restaurants loved it. Itwas a lifeline when they needed it,

(06:24):
so we've continued it. We're aboutto start our third year of the
pub crawls this evening. Excuse me, this Friday night. It's Murder at
the Malden Bank based upon the conversemurder back in eighteen sixty three. But
the idea of what Jeff Tess isdoing with the gaming community is the same
idea. These folks have had ahome and maybe it was just someone's living
room that got a little old aftera while. So what we've done is

(06:46):
we've connected them with restaurants. Theyhave a fantastic space, they have facilities,
they have food and drink if theywant it, and the restaurant gets
all of these bodies coming through andkind of seeing what they have to offer.
So it's been a win win winacross the board. Sounds like it.
So test tell us a little bitabout what you have to offer for
the next few weeks, getting intothe summer. Some events that might be
sticking out. You mentioned the pubCrawl. What else is happening in the
district. Yeah, the pub Crawlis definitely the big one. That's the

(07:10):
one that we kind of promote allsummer. It runs all the way to
the end, so the tickets arepretty fast selling, so we're always trying
to push that. But in termsof like additional community events, we have
the aforementioned the Multiplayer Museum, whichI love. Every weekend, we have
Magic the Gathering on Saturday and Sunday, so I believe. On Saturday it

(07:34):
is a draft so you can comeand get new cards, and that's a
paid event. But on the Sundayit's Commander play, which means it's free.
You can just bring your deck andcome and play with other people like
minded stuff. And actually they wereso inspired by the Gaming District and kind
of getting connected with communities. Isthat the Magic the Gathering group they wanted

(07:55):
to put together a free event,so they had all of these extra cards
that they didn't need, they gaveaway free decks, and they are teaching
the community how to play to getpotentially even more gamers. Pokemon Go.
We are having regular events every Wednesday. That group does raids. They're walking
all around the city trying to stayout of the extreme heat when it gets

(08:16):
super crazy. But if you'd beamazed at, you know, the turnout
with all these crazy weather, peopleare still people are still showing up.
The Fighting game tournament that's happening inJuly, I believe, and we're doing
several at least one a month,I believe. But that's a big exciting
one that's hosted by the Traveling Controller. They are a company that already does

(08:39):
these types of like sort of popup fighting game events, so they're bringing
that to Malden. We're really reallyexcited because that's been kind of a big
gap in kind of our roster.And when we were talking with Dan and
Laurel, they're they're the ones whohosted They're like, oh, yeah,
a lot of the fighting game communityalready lives in Malden. They just they
have to come out to go tothese other events, so having one here

(09:03):
would be great. I believe.We're also probably going to get another board
game event and a D and Dgame event with the Danger Wizard. He
hosts uff in Summerville, but he'sbringing it also to Malden. I'm basically
working hard to kind of steal allthe stuff from around the city. And
get it. You're not stealing,your just sharing. There's something expanding there.

(09:28):
We go. There's gaming for everybody, and I just love the fact
that you've got these little parades ofpeople on their phones with Pokemon Go trying
to catch like a Chari's art orsomething like wandering into the street. But
groups are enormous. It's crazy.Yeah, I was. I was personally
really shocked when I went down thereto meet with the community leader, Calvin.
He's down there and you were like, oh, yeah, well we'll

(09:48):
get like twenty people for like arandom event. I'm like, oh my
gosh. That's We had an inklingthat there was a great response from the
community here. Because if you cangoogle it, you can go back when
wordle was all the rage. Maldenwas in the top five cities in the
country for wordal proficiency. That's right. I remember that. I think we
did a story here on WBZ aboutthat and we're like, Malden, huh,

(10:09):
But now it all makes sense.It all makes sense. So you
know, Kevin, I mean,obviously putting together an entire district and you're
pulling these businesses together. Have therebeen any roadblocks? Like what does the
city had to deal with when itcomes to maybe some setbacks or whatever to
put this together. It's actually beenfascinating because we hear from gaming businesses and
the Mayor and I have gone andspoken to a national convention of room escape

(10:31):
people. Everyone says elsewhere they haveissues trying to get open in cities,
They're always running into obstacles. Andthe Mayor and I both look at this
as thank you for coming to Malden. What can we do to make your
job easier? So we have nothad any obstacles. I think there was
maybe some reluctance from some of ourrestaurants thinking well, all right, we're
going to bring in this group,but how popular and how successful will it

(10:52):
be? And it's been overwhelming.In fact, we actually have some of
our greater restaurants in the city nowembracing this concept and bringing in their own
mystery dinner theater if you will,Murder Mystery at Exchange Street Bistro is this
Thursday night. So you're seeing otherpeople starting to embrace it, and the
business community really realizes it's access tocustomers and that's what we're bringing them exactly

(11:13):
consistent customers. If these groups arecoming time and time again, and I
guess you know what's your end gamevision, so to speak. For the
district to continue to grow, Iwant Malden to be known as the place
not only in the Eastern Seaboard,but maybe all of America for you to
come and start your games. Iknow that the legislature is considering some tax

(11:35):
breaks potentially for game developers, soI want a branch into getting the game
developers here. We've got some ofthe best minds in the country, some
of the newest tech that's here.Let's get them set up in Malden,
right on the Orange Line. You'refive minutes from downtown Boston, so let's
make this the hub of all thingsgame. I love that, all right,
So, tess, how can peoplelearn more about the Malden Gaming District.

(11:56):
Oh? Absolutely. You can hitus up on our website site Malden
Gaming District dot com. And we'realso on social media. We are on
Instagram at Malden Gaming District, Facebookat Malden Gaming District, Twitter or sorry
it's x now I call it atwicks. I guess I call it it's
Molden Gaming, so it's it's nodistrict. But oh and we also have

(12:20):
a discord community. If you messageus on any of our social media I
can give you the link. Thatis probably the place where you know if
you want to have conversations with localpeople, you can absolutely do that there.
So that's that's forget So Kevin,I guess my last question to you.
If somebody's listening they want to contributeto the gaming district, they want
to maybe set up shop, howcan they do that and how can they

(12:41):
get in touch with you? Thesame way every business who wants to come
in to the mall, they canget started. Just contact me. I
can be reached here at Malden CityHall. You can catch me on my
email Kduffy at Cityamalden dot org.Whether you're a regular business, but especially
at gaming business, we're going todo our best to get you up and
running as soon as possible. Testand Kevin, thank you so much for
your time and congratulations and all thebest as you continue to expand the gaming

(13:05):
district and I cannot wait to comeand play some games. Thank you,
Nicole, Thank you. Have asafe and healthy holiday weekend. Please join
me again next week for another editionof the show. I'm Nicole Davis from
WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio