How we run tournaments

FutureGuy

OK the tumbleweed gif didn't load here in work.

If I could suggest that we take a single issue that was raised here and discuss it in a new thread?

Mods, if it's ok, I'm going to post a new thread so we can have all these great ideas flushed out to their fullest? If not, please just merge. The problem with debating all these issues here is that they are hard to follow and therefore difficult to fully realise.

Doctor DooM

By all means go ahead futureguy.

Here's the thing: Talk is one thing, action is another.

I'd really like it if people could think about if they can practically help and how as part of this, not that I want people to also not just voice their thoughts and concerns.

FutureGuy

Doctor DooM wrote: »

By all means go ahead futureguy.

Here's the thing: Talk is one thing, action is another.

I'd really like it if people could think about if they can practically help and how as part of this, not that I want people to also not just voice their thoughts and concerns.

Absolutely Doom, ideas on paper are useless without implementation.

Goody2shoes15

FutureGuy wrote: »

Absolutely Doom, ideas on paper are useless without implementation.

I think a meeting should be called by the current committee to vote for a new committee, and form a plan of action. This is actually something someone on the current committee should implement though.

Sabre0001

Interesting article re: MLG & CEO

IPlayWinner wrote:

As I watched Mago fight Romance, listening to open microphones pick up the roar of the crowd, I found myself dwelling on Major League Gaming’s King of Fighters conundrum. Since introducing the title at Columbus, KoF13’s performance as a tournament attraction has remained consistently underwhelming. After Columbus, the conventional wisdom dictated that the disappointment of the first outing was the result of several factors, such as location and short notice, and that Anaheim would prove to be a much more successful showcase for the game.

It made sense : Anaheim is in KoF country, and the tournament had been on the community calendar for months. However, as the event drew near, organizers and observers were alarmed by the relatively low number of pre-registered attendees. Attendance remained low, even after many claimed that the fighting game community was just being their normal, procrastinating selves.

Even before Anaheim had finished, many wondered if this would be the last time we would see King of Fighters at MLG. Some seemed certain, including event staff. Frustration was evident everywhere. How did things come to this point? What was wrong with the King of Fighters community? There was a lot of money up for grabs at both Columbus and Anaheim. Why weren’t the tournaments attracting players or viewers? In the week leading up to Anaheim, even I took to the issue, imploring KoF players to sign up, to represent their game. We all missed the point.


The setting for most sudden moments of striking clarity, I realized I’d gotten it wrong while sitting on the toilet, this morning, humming a jaunty tune. This weekend, we had a fighting game tournament outshine anything that the major productions have put on this year, fighting games or otherwise. Why? What does Alex Jebailey slip into the Kool-Aid in Orlando that allows him to attract such a stacked roster of talent and make CEO the most watched fighting game stream of the year thus far?




On paper, CEO 2012 isn’t remarkably different from most fighting game majors. It’s a bunch of guys packed into a ballroom playing fighting games. However, the event’s name sums the issue up nicely.

When contrasting event performance between tournaments like Anaheim and CEO with a game like KoF, one striking difference rushes to the foreground. CEO attracted top KoF players. In fact, I was not alone in stating that, outside of Evolution, CEO featured a talent roster for its games deeper than any other tournament you’ll see this year. Arcade Edition’s competition was so fierce that Mago, arguably one of the five best Street Fighter players to ever live, did not crack the top eight of the event’s tournament. All of this without the allure of five figure pots and with an event production budget sizably smaller than the six or seven figures it takes to produce an MLG or IPL tournament weekend.

Money and players? Are they symbiotic? Does one draw the other? No. CEO is not an anomaly, though it did serve to illuminate a possible cause for MLG’s fighter troubles.

A trip to Orlando is not a cheap thing. Though there is a strong scene in the south, the holy land is still the holy land; Mecca in Southern California, Medina in Northern California, Bethlehem in New York, Jerusalem in Japan. A lot of the players had to travel out of pocket, just as they did for Adam "Keits" Heart’s Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament last month. It’s something some of the attendees have done for five, ten, or twenty years. Many of these old road dogs have never, will never win a major prize pot. They’d be the first to tell you that. Yet, still they come, attracting like-minded souls like moths drawn to a neon sign.

Simply put, a fighting game event is a thing to experience, a thing that once experienced causes you to realize this is where you belong. Thousands of guys and girls will attend events this year for the experience of being there. This is something that men like Jebailey, Keits, the Cannons, Joey Cuellar, and Team LevelUp understand intimately. The trick to driving loyal participation isn’t money, or flashy production, or any other sort of spectacle. It is community. It is creating an event that screams, “You want to be a part of this.”


This simple element is what the major productions seem to be missing. It is something that is lost in the translation in events produced by outfits more familiar with FPS and RTS games and the cultures of those games.


MLG has created something that is a sight to behold. It is, certainly, a thing one would enjoy attending. In ways, that is the purpose for these events, to become a thing that begs attendance. However, there is a marked difference between creating a thing that would be great to attend and creating a thing to which to belong. In the latter, attendance is replaced by experience. To borrow from the monsters : “great tournament, great experience”.

High prize pots, light shows, those things make interesting spectacle. They don’t, however, engage. There were quality matches at MLG Columbus, and Tokido electrified MLG Anaheim, but they didn’t receive a tenth of the attention of Mago and Romance playing in a venue with a much smaller spotlight. Or The Answer’s tattoo, for that matter.

A wrestling ring, player entrance themes, the right vendors, the right people deployed to the right roles. It’s the little things that go into creating an event for the community, to creating something that instead of being something you gotta’ see is somewhere you gotta’ be. It truly is a community effort. That community effort, those little details, are what make the difference between your event knocking it out of the park and discussing whether you have to drop a game after two tournaments.

See y’all at the next one.

Ixayek_usurper

Interesting article Sabbre.

We definitely need to make a community that you feel you belong to.

Personally speaking, the 2 casuals that i attended i felt very welcomed and when TTT2 is released, i'll be attending them again.



In terms of offering help, if you guys want a dedicated guy to cover the tekken stuff for the randomselect website, i'd gladly do it.

And, even though i dont play SF or Marvel, i'd like to learn and see how Tournaments are run. So if someone wants a lacky for a day when they're TO just give me a hallor!

Konata

Re: Committee Voting

How about using something like SurveyMonkey? It's easy to set up polls, it's anonymous and it doesn't require log ins etc. I made a sample one here just for an example: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GTX5FGH

Regarding "anyone" answering the survey - how about we just PM the link to all active members of the community? That way no randomers get access to the poll. Everyone who is involved in the community uses boards.ie so I think PMing would be a good way to distribute the poll. You could set it as 1 week to answer the survey or whatever before it's closed.

You could do the same kind of system for nominations but with comment boxes instead of multiple choice for the answers. Then the person fills in their nominees for each position, and the top maybe 3 or 4 or whatever go forward to the vote. Either that or just create a thread here with nominations. Whatever way it works out, I think the nominees should each be asked if their willing to do whatever jobs they're nominated for before going forward to the vote - no point voting in someone who doesn't want to do it.

In the event that someone gets voted into 2 positions, you could ask them which position they prefer and then the 2nd candidate for the position they turned down is chosen.

Something like that anyway :P

Doctor DooM

Konata wrote: »

Re: Committee Voting

How about using something like SurveyMonkey? It's easy to set up polls, it's anonymous and it doesn't require log ins etc. I made a sample one here just for an example: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GTX5FGH

Regarding "anyone" answering the survey - how about we just PM the link to all active members of the community? That way no randomers get access to the poll. Everyone who is involved in the community uses boards.ie so I think PMing would be a good way to distribute the poll. You could set it as 1 week to answer the survey or whatever before it's closed.

You could do the same kind of system for nominations but with comment boxes instead of multiple choice for the answers. Then the person fills in their nominees for each position, and the top maybe 3 or 4 or whatever go forward to the vote. Either that or just create a thread here with nominations. Whatever way it works out, I think the nominees should each be asked if their willing to do whatever jobs they're nominated for before going forward to the vote - no point voting in someone who doesn't want to do it.

In the event that someone gets voted into 2 positions, you could ask them which position they prefer and then the 2nd candidate for the position they turned down is chosen.

Something like that anyway :P

Sounds doable, we could use the positions from Aileen's post earlier (with some exceptions- the way boards works, no one is going to be able to tell azza or myself what to do here, like it or not, save for our "bosses" on boards, like it or not )

ayjayirl

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Sounds doable, we could use the positions from Aileen's post earlier (with some exceptions- the way boards works, no one is going to be able to tell azza or myself what to do here, like it or not, save for our "bosses" on boards, like it or not )

As always, you will do as instructed suggested :cool:

bush

Has anything been decided about inferno? Is it on the first sat of next month?

chopperbyrne

The venue is booked for the fourth of August which I told everyone about weeks ago.

I've also said I can't run tournaments anymore.

So someone will have to step up and run this or email Exchange to cancel the booking.

Goody2shoes15

chopperbyrne wrote: »

The venue is booked for the fourth of August which I told everyone about weeks ago.

I've also said I can't run tournaments anymore.

So someone will have to step up and run this or email Exchange to cancel the booking.

Bah! I would run this but i'm gonna be in London for the Olympics. Any other weekend i am more than happy to

Dreddybajs

Can't do it either.

ayjayirl

chopperbyrne wrote: »

The venue is booked for the fourth of August which I told everyone about weeks ago.

Goody2shoes15 wrote: »

Bah! I would run this but i'm gonna be in London for the Olympics. Any other weekend i am more than happy to

Dreddybajs wrote: »

Can't do it either.

neither can I. Bank holiday weekends are a mistake for tourney's imho.

UberPrinny_Baal

ayjayirl wrote: »

neither can I. Bank holiday weekends are a mistake for tourney's imho.

Yeah August Bank holiday weekend in particular is one of the worst.

I'm very likely to be away that weekend, so not only can I probably not attend, I would need to give the two monitors to someone else if the tourney was going to go ahead anyway.

Any storage volunteers?

Doctor DooM

Ok, Time to "take ownership of the issue" *Blergh*


Roogle is talking about an SF tournament in Belfast in the North on the 4th anyway.

Unless anyone either mans up to run the tournament or has another reason why we shouldn't I'll contact the Exchange tomorrow and tell them we need to postpone.

Could you forward me their email chopper, or is it just the one on their site?

chopperbyrne

It's just the one from the site.

ayjayirl

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Unless anyone either mans up to run the tournament

not really the issue here. Its hardly a man up scenario. its the august bank holiday w/e. Having a tournament is just not viable. Simplz.

Doctor DooM

ayjayirl wrote: »

not really the issue here. Its hardly a man up scenario. its the august bank holiday w/e. Having a tournament is just not viable. Simplz.

That in no way stops people who aren't doing anything running one if they want to...

No skin off mine anyways, I'll head up to Rooglefest

Doctor DooM

Match up knowledge is not the end all and be all of being a good commentator.

If you're not good on a mike you can sound terrible even if you know everything.

Maybe I should start another thread on it.

Nascimento

Is this the commentators from the AE final Doom posted?

From a nobody's perspective, I thought they were grand. Just a couple of lads having a laugh watching Street Fighter.

chopperbyrne

No, it's the Third Strike and Marvel commentary that was a bit ropey.

deathrider

chopperbyrne wrote: »

No, it's the Third Strike and Marvel commentary that was a bit ropey.

What exactly was ropey about it? I haven't seen the videos, and I don't plat either game, so even if I did see them, I may not notice.

Doctor DooM

I'm not sure what much more we can do to promote Tekken Chunkis. We've tried running multiple tournaments to which people have only started showing up recently, and every time a I put up a video I have to take it back down again because they copyright claim it like muppets.

So Namco kind of need to help us before we can help them.

UberPrinny_Baal

Cool info Chunkis, makes me want to get into Tekken (for the next week)

Just a couple of points I want to chime in on.

chunkis wrote: »

Also in future our scene needs to be exposed a bit more, because really this gamestop tournament should have been organised by us

I don't think this was ever going to happen. Ever. This tournament isn't a fan driven "We love our game and want to know who's the best" kind of thing like Inferno; this is a business to business marketing venture where Namco have cash on the line.

chunkis wrote: »

the fact that namco didn`t even know about us to ask us to run it is a bad thing

Do Namco know about us? Who is "us"? Is us the Tekken lads? Because I don't think we have any media online that proves a tekken scene actually exists here.

All we know that they know is that someone called Brianvondoom is violating their IP by posting match videos and they want him to stop. The next natural step from that in my mind is not "Hey lads, can you run a tournament for us?"

chunkis wrote: »

i actually got contacted the other day about organising and promoting this

I am super curious about this one point: Who contacted you, and what exactly did they actually ask you to do?

chunkis wrote: »

so i think a strategy plan for our community needs to be set in motion to give our scene more exposure so that when things happen in ireland we are in the middle of it

If you want to formulate an actionable strategy plan, and I promise I will review it with my business glasses on.

Even if we have the best one ever though, that still won't guarantee that we get put in the loop for private promotional Business ventures in the future.

Doctor DooM

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

If you want to formulate an actionable strategy plan, and I promise I will review it with my business glasses on.

Even if we have the best one ever though, that still won't guarantee that we get put in the loop for private promotional Business ventures in the future.

On that point, if people want to come up with better and more ideas for promotion and the running of tournaments, I'm all ears. I am not the man for that job though. Last time I ran a tournament there were 3 losers finals.

chunkis

I don't think this was ever going to happen. Ever. This tournament isn't a fan driven "We love our game and want to know who's the best" kind of thing like Inferno; this is a business to business marketing venture where Namco have cash on the line.

Your a bit off the mark, because Namco got in touch with all the fighting game communities around the UK and asked them to run the qualifiers for them. If they knew about us, they would have contacted us to run the qualifier, because i just got off the phone with one of people who works for namco who runs tournaments in the uk and he told me that the only reason they contacted gamestop is because they didn`t know anybody else in ireland who could run it.

I sometimes feel that our scene is so alienated to the rest of europe because its like there is no communication between us or anybody else, mostly because irish players don`t travel that much and its because of this that the irish players don`t get recognised nearly as much as they should, in regards to myself, i am still considered a UK player by most people, and thats a bit sad because i am probably the most internationally well known player we have in ireland and i retired. The Irish players and our scene need to be integrated into the rest of europe, we need to be included in what goes on around europe, if there are european qualifiers for any event no matter what it is, we need to be involved.

I am sick to death of us getting the raw deal, like why do i see UK players all sponsored and not one irish player apart from me being sponsored? Thats ridiculous. Our top players in ireland are equal to or better than the top players in the UK, yet none of them are sponsored, what is going on???

I am super curious about this one point: Who contacted you, and what exactly did they actually ask you to do?

It was one of my friends who contacted me he is closely connected with namco and the tekken force guys.

If you want to formulate an actionable strategy plan, and I promise I will review it with my business glasses on.

we need to restructure the entire scene here in ireland there is too much divide between north and south and too much politics, we need to re do the website, change the name and focus on sending our top players to international tournaments so they can get the recognition they deserve and get sponsored, this will then give our scene the exposure it needs to make it grow.

Doctor DooM

chunkis wrote: »

we need to restructure the entire scene here in ireland there is too much divide between north and south and too much politics, we need to re do the website, change the name and focus on sending our top players to international tournaments so they can get the recognition they deserve and get sponsored, this will then give our scene the exposure it needs to make it grow.

This is about the fifth time you've said this in the last couple of years, but I've yet to hear any practical ideas on how to do it exactly (not directly aiming this at criticism at you, it's just easy to say, not to do).

Also, once again, doesn't change the fact namco are actually handicapping our ability to make ourselves moe known right now.

chunkis

For every major tournament that takes place in europe we should have irish players in attendence, we should organise a qualifying tournament so that we can send our best players to compete and give ireland a presence at every tournament in europe. The more players we send abroad the more exposure our scene will get.

We need to network between other scenes and see what they do better than us, copy it and make it better.

Our site is a joke, nobody uses it. Its a waste of time and needs to be redesigned and reworked into something people will actually use.

We should have a national tournament that will be recognised around the world as being a major tournament on the european scene, we want to create events that people will travel for, if we do things right we have the chance to create one of the best tournaments europe has ever seen.

UberPrinny_Baal

Bless you Chunkis, you mean well!

chunkis wrote: »

Your a bit off the mark, because Namco got in touch with all the fighting game communities around the UK and asked them to run the qualifiers for them. If they knew about us, they would have contacted us to run the qualifier, because i just got off the phone with one of people who works for namco who runs tournaments in the uk and he told me that the only reason they contacted gamestop is because they didn`t know anybody else in ireland who could run it.

Sorry if I'm off the mark. This is a good lead though. A person who directly works for Namco? As in a salaried Namco employee? Score!

chunkis wrote: »

I sometimes feel that our scene is so alienated to the rest of europe because its like there is no communication between us or anybody else, mostly because irish players don`t travel that much and its because of this that the irish players don`t get recognised nearly as much as they should, in regards to myself, i am still considered a UK player by most people, and thats a bit sad because i am probably the most internationally well known player we have in ireland and i retired. The Irish players and our scene need to be integrated into the rest of europe, we need to be included in what goes on around europe, if there are european qualifiers for any event no matter what it is, we need to be involved.

I am sick to death of us getting the raw deal, like why do i see UK players all sponsored and not one irish player apart from me being sponsored? Thats ridiculous. Our top players in ireland are equal to or better than the top players in the UK, yet none of them are sponsored, what is going on

I agree with you, and I think it sucks. Only thing I can think of is that we were screwed by Geography. We have a low population density spread out over a relatively large piece of land that has substandard public transportation. We have a few very small scenes with a minimum 2 hour travel time between them, and that sucks.

UK has more people living in it, so has more players, so has more players sponsored.

There are more people living in London than in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland combined. That's a really raw deal for us.

chunkis wrote: »

It was one of my friends who contacted me he is closely connected with namco and the tekken force guys.

Is this a second contact? Does closely connected mean employed?

Gonna break down these next points individually because they're all different talking points

chunkis wrote: »

we need to restructure the entire scene here in ireland

You can restructure companies or organisations. I don't see any way you can restructure a scene? We only half about 6 people willing to do the work of organising tournaments, I don't see how you can restructure that.

chunkis wrote: »

there is too much divide between north and south

I've gone with decently sized groups to Northern tournaments, and I see Northern guys at a lot of Southern tournaments. I think the only thing separating North and South is the aforementioned geography.

chunkis wrote: »

too much politics

I dunno is there actually any politics? I've never heard about any. I think our scene would need to be more active before we have politics to hold us back.

chunkis wrote: »

we need to re do the website

Our site is a joke, nobody uses it. Its a waste of time and needs to be redesigned and reworked into something people will actually use.

We don't have anyone to redo it, or anyone to staff it after it's redone. PCC kindly hosts the website, good on him. But the site doesn't have staff and doesn't have volunteers for posting constant updates. The two most constant updaters: Owmykneecap and Sairus have gone on to other things.

Realistically there's only three kinds of website updates we can do:

(1) Our tournament news, which is few and far between
(2) Original content (e.g. Doom Remy tutorial), of which some might be in the works, but takes a lot of effort, is more of a one time thing
(3) Copy all the news from Eventhubs, which is a full time job nobody is willing to do

chunkis wrote: »

change the name

Achieves nothing.

chunkis wrote: »

focus on sending our top players to international tournaments so they can get the recognition they deserve and get sponsored, this will then give our scene the exposure it needs to make it grow.

We do do this. AJ has organised at least two (three?) tournaments with this very specific goal in mind.

chunkis wrote: »

We need to network between other scenes and see what they do better than us, copy it and make it better.

That's perfectly reasonable. We'll all have to do this individually when we travel, or just be very accommodating to foreign players who visit (which I think we are).

chunkis wrote: »

We should have a national tournament that will be recognised around the world as being a major tournament on the european scene

This is way too ambitious for the current state of our scene. There are barely the numbers to support the monthly tournaments we'd like to have. I know you want Ireland to be like the UK, but unless you can somehow create greater population density, we won't be able to achieve that any time soon.

You've heard me say a lot that you need a strategy, or valid action points to make stuff like this happen, so I'm gonna give you a freebie and get this ball rolling

---

Action point 1: Get Irish players sponsored

Requires: Players willing to be sponsored, companies willing to sponsor them

Who finds willing players: I've started the ball rolling here on the player names.

Who finds willing companies to sponsor them: This has to be you Chunkis. You're the only person in this scene who's been sponsored, and you already have a good social network with other scenes and game companies. Once some lads say they want to be sponsored, you have to put your feelers out and promote them to companies. Call Capcom, Call Namco. Call whoever you think is a good in. Promote the scene!

---

Action point 2: Get Namco to back off from Doom (to keep this thing on topic)

Requires: Some form of written guarantee to not make any more claims or pull any content from the Brianvondoom youtube channel; or the express written permission for the Brianvondoom channel to post videos with Namco game footage

Best way to get such a guarantee (or an official rejection of the request) is from Namco themselves.

Who contacts Namco: Chunkis again, you luckily said in this very topic that you know a guy who trusts you enough to ask to run a qualifying tournament. Get his name, e-mail address and phone number and give them to Doom. Let Doom explain the story.

It's important we try this, because at least if we fail we know that we tried, and that Namco games will always be second fiddle at tournaments and never recorded or commentated.

---

Action point 3: Send players abroad for tournaments

Requires: AJ

Good man AJ! All hail Zeus!