EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — A new gaming center is making its mark to become El Paso’s premier esports organization.
Damascus Gaming is located at the Shoppes at Solana, located at 750 Sunland Park Dr. on the second floor, near the food court.
Damascus Gaming crew. Named from left to right: Craig Carrington, Daniel Teske, Caleb Gillies and William Tevis. Photo taken by Jocelyn Flores/KTSM
The center is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12 to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
Damascus Gaming is a gaming center and esports organization that is run and owned by El Pasoans. Despite the franchise impression the store gives, the center can only be found in the Sun City.
The center hosts different gaming events every day, from esports to TCG (trading card games) and welcomes players of different levels to the center.
Pricing depends on what you are playing and for how long. For playing on PCs (personal computers), rates run from hourly, daily and weekly passes. Console passes are based on your party size — if you are playing solo or if you are playing with a group. Group passes don’t have a limit on your party size.
When you first walk into Damascus Gaming, you see the 16 PCs at the front.
Each PC is a Lenovo Legion with AMD 7700, 16GB of RAM, 1 TB of SSD and has 4060 graphics cards. In addition, all monitors have a 260Hz refresh rate.
What does that mean to the average person, not knowing a lot about computer specifications?
Games can run really fast, really smoothly. These are the types of computers that professional esports players use.
Although not everyone is familiar with computer specs, it’s a quiet push for quality that Damascus Gaming is putting into their services.
In addition to PCs, the center also provides various consoles such as Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, multiple tables ready for any TCG battle or classic board games such as Catan and chess.
Almost daily, there’s an event happening at Damascus Gaming, whether it’s video games or TCG competitions. An employee will gladly help you learn a game or two. Most events are free to play and watch.
Chief Executive Officer Daniel Teske and Chief Event Officer Craig Carrington of Damascus Gaming want to bring the elite esports competition to El Paso, hence the significance of the company’s name.
“Damascus Gaming is actually named after damascus steel. The way you make damascus steel is you take different metals and steels and you wrap them all together into one blade. What we are trying to do here with Damascus Gaming is bringing in all the different elements of El Paso. Taking the high schools and different businesses, we’re trying to really grow the esports infrastructure here for El Paso, wrapping it into one big elegant blade,” Teske said.
Damascus Gaming originally started as a server channel in December 2021 through Discord, a messaging and social media platform where users can create or join channels based on interests.
Teske created the server for people playing Halo Infinite, but slowly turned into a community where everyone enjoyed the atmosphere and energy.
“I was kind of advertising it (Damascus Gaming server) on the main Halo discord and people just started coming in and as they would come in, they would invite other friends. They would say, ‘Hey, you’ve got a really outstanding community. We’re really enjoying the vibe that this place has.’ That’s been a true statement throughout the entire company, that we’ve really built an awesome community that is a part of who we are now,” Teske said.
Then, Damascus Gaming opened its physical storefront and LAN center (multiple computers on one network for gaming) for business in October 2024.
“Damascus Gaming is a very inclusive company. We do not discriminate at all. We make everyone feel very, very welcome to walk through those doors and hang out with you in our Discord or behind tournaments. We want everyone to feel relaxed,” Teske said.
Both Carrington and Teske have gone through bullying and negative comments about making a living by playing games.
“Growing up, I had a lot of people, a lot of naysayers. Even my dad actually just recently remembered saying this to me, that he was like, ‘When you’re growing up, you always said you was going to do it (make a living involving games). And we told you, you couldn’t. And yet, here you are. I can’t believe where you’re sitting at now in comparison,’” Carrington said.
“‘He’s (Carrington’s father) like, ‘You’ve made it so much farther than I have in my lifetime.’ It kind of speaks volumes to what our passion to what we’re doing,” Carrington said.
Carrington and Teske are also military veterans, Carrington serving in the Army and Teske serving in the Air Force and Army.
“I was kind of at that point where I needed to make or break. It was time to decide, do you want to stay in for the rest of or career, or do you want to go ahead and get out? I had kind of made that decision that I want to do something on my own,” Carrington said.
Damascus Gaming is not only a LAN center, it’s also a home for some professional players.
The center is sponsoring seven players to go to national and international tournaments of different competitive games.
Professional esports players with Damascus Gaming.
One of Damascus Gaming’s pro esports players, Allyson Stephenson, is an airman with the U.S. Air Force.
Stephenson made history as the first woman to win in the top eight back-to-back in Halo World Championship Free For All Tournaments, and as the first woman to ever win the 2025 Free For All Tournament.
Other players with Damascus Gaming have won or ranked highly in other competitions, such as employee Caleb Gillies.
Gillies recently ranked in the top 32 in an international Guilty Gear competition. Between working and competing, he also makes time to operate the El Paso Fighting Games community and fighting game competitions at Damascus Gaming.
Gillies puts on Mystery Game Night, where players will compete against one another in a variety of games, but the game chosen is left to chance with a wheel, similar to “Wheel of Fortune.”
William Tevis, another employee at Damascus Gaming, is more involved in the TCG space of the center.
“The first thing I always tell people that are always intimidated by card games, cause a lot of people are like, ‘There’s a lot of rules is this and that.’ And I’m like, ‘No, the first thing (to understand) is it’s a community.’ A lot of people are very welcoming. They’re like, ‘No, come in, we’ll teach you how to play,’” Tevis said.
Tevis also said if people are interested in learning how to play Pokémon and other TCGs, Damascus Gaming provides free demo decks to beginners.
Damascus Gaming is also introducing a new competition: the Borderland League.
The Borderland League is an online competition with month-long seasons. In the beginning, players are put into a “pool” where, based on how they perform, they will receive a ranking.
Once players are ranked and placed in brackets, players will earn a chance to be in the playoffs and be crowned as champion.
As of right now, the competition is only with Call of Duty and is called “Season 0,” but Damascus Gaming does plan to officially kick off Season 1 with more games.
You can watch the competition and more videos through Damascus Gaming’s Twitch channel.
If you’re interested in competing, you can visit Damascus Gaming’s website for more information.
Throughout all the competitions with video games, TCGs, events, the Borderland League and everything in between, Damascus Gaming is passionate about bringing quality esports to El Paso.
“Thanks for everybody who’s been a part of everything that we’ve done so far. Whether it’s been coming out to support us, purchasing something in the store, stopping by to hang out like a family member who supports the person who’s playing in the event or just following us along on social media, it goes a long way for us, as a small business,” Carrington said.
“Once again, thank you, but also, we love El Paso. We are El Pasoans. We really appreciate everyone being so welcoming and kind. We really want to bring this thing (premier esports) for the city. Damascus Gaming is a gift for the city. We really want to bring these large-level events to El Paso,” Teske said.
You can follow Damascus Gaming for updates and more events on their Instagram, X, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Discord accounts or on their website.
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