the irish scene is falling apart, how can we make it better?

chunkis

The irish scene is in bad shape, we have no regular events and the players we have are being wasted, the people we have that are at the top level who are good enough to complete and win internationally don`t have anywhere to practice and can`t afford to travel to international events, but if these players were sponsored that would change things completely, but before sponsorship happens our players need exposure.

Our scene is not making any kind of effort to facilitate our players to get them noticed, we don`t have enough tournaments for a start and our approach to getting our community out there is all wrong, we seem to be more focused on watching other scenes instead of working towards making our own better. The website has not been used or updated in about a year, there is no direction for it and it seems like nobody is in control, the people who are active in todays scene who are running tournaments are struggling to make things happen, events today are getting smaller and getting worse instead of getting bigger and better.


These issues need to be addressed before our scene falls apart completely. So what i suggest we do is make a list of people who are currently active and who are willing to contribute to the scene, then from those people an irish fgc organisation be formed that runs and controls everything our scene does. Once we have a group of dedicated people who are in control of our community and working together to run it we can then work on these issues to make our scene a better place to play games.

At the moment the forums are where we do all of our organising if you can even call it that and its a terrible way of doing things, its not professional and everything we do is always done in some half assed way its time for a change because our scene is a complete joke now.

We have no good players because we have no regular tournaments, no stream, no national tournament, no sponsorship, no exposure and no communication with even the north of ireland, its a crap state of affairs to be in

I play ST, 3S and SF4, so am going to try running events for those games in the XGC, so if anybody would like to help me out, come forward and let me know because i can`t do it by myself.

Also people who are interested in tekken, marvel, injustice, mortal kombat or any other game should all come forward too and start running events in the XGC, from there we can at least make a start and find out who is interested in running events and get things moving again.

chopperbyrne

There have been fairly regular RanBats for Tekken recently and late spring/early summer is always a dry period for us as many of our players are in college and are too busy to run/compete.

We are running two events this weekend, one in Tolka Bar and the other in the XGC.

Baa Fights wasn't too long ago either and there was a tournament in between then and now.

We also have another thread on the go right now for a collaboration with the XGC.

There is a community in Galway that has managed to remain completely separate to us who we'll be reaching out to soon.

I don't think our scene is falling apart, it's just we play a niche genre in a small country. We're never going to have a massive playerbase.

UberPrinny_Baal

Looks like it's about that time again

Doyler01

Id help out running with sf tournaments and raising awareness/hounding ppl to go.

I think a lot of what Chunkis is saying is right.


I'd love to help out any way I can with regular tournaments but I am not the guy to organise them.

Nutrient

chunkis wrote: »

The irish scene is in bad shape, we have no regular events and the players we have are being wasted, the people we have that are at the top level who are good enough to complete and win internationally don`t have anywhere to practice and can`t afford to travel to international events, but if these players were sponsored that would change things completely, but before sponsorship happens our players need exposure.

Our scene is not making any kind of effort to facilitate our players to get them noticed, we don`t have enough tournaments for a start and our approach to getting our community out there is all wrong, we seem to be more focused on watching other scenes instead of working towards making our own better. The website has not been used or updated in about a year, there is no direction for it and it seems like nobody is in control, the people who are active in todays scene who are running tournaments are struggling to make things happen, events today are getting smaller and getting worse instead of getting bigger and better.


These issues need to be addressed before our scene falls apart completely. So what i suggest we do is make a list of people who are currently active and who are willing to contribute to the scene, then from those people an irish fgc organisation be formed that runs and controls everything our scene does. Once we have a group of dedicated people who are in control of our community and working together to run it we can then work on these issues to make our scene a better place to play games.

At the moment the forums are where we do all of our organising if you can even call it that and its a terrible way of doing things, its not professional and everything we do is always done in some half assed way its time for a change because our scene is a complete joke now.

We have no good players because we have no regular tournaments, no stream, no national tournament, no sponsorship, no exposure and no communication with even the north of ireland, its a crap state of affairs to be in

I play ST, 3S and SF4, so am going to try running events for those games in the XGC, so if anybody would like to help me out, come forward and let me know because i can`t do it by myself.

Also people who are interested in tekken, marvel, injustice, mortal kombat or any other game should all come forward too and start running events in the XGC, from there we can at least make a start and find out who is interested in running events and get things moving again.

idu this at all

I just post up that the owner of XGC is actively looking to run more fighting gaming events, and you post a lament thread right after?

I agree that we have to set up more events, but, it needs to be a group effort too

Theres a reason why people that have run tournaments in the past are reluctant to do so again, because their left to subsist with all the responsiblity, it's such bollocks

Too much talking and passion, not enough **** being done.

We're looking to have more events and more importantly, getting the word out that the IFGC exists

it's being looked atm.

Placebo

personally, i got bored of SF, hopefully an update or a new installment will re ignite my passion

ladnopoka

totally agree with chunkis

ayjayirl

Placebo wrote: »

personally, i got bored of SF, hopefully an update or a new installment will re ignite my passion

That, and you were crap at it

jimmypenguin

just come to galway and get drunk with us and eat chorizzo burgers and drink local brewed ale and stout and play some street fighter and meet some new people and soak up a bit of galway sea air and check out the chicks and chat to an old man on a bridge and maybe even win 40 euro to cover your adventure expenditure...

bottom line..
running events is difficult.. i know because ive been running a music festival for 7 years..

this stuff isnt magic.. and it doesnt just happen either.. it takes work..
and from what i can see.. there people around doing there thing.. and taking pride in it too..

how about a national tournament every year.. or 2 a year even. that happens in a differant city each time..
now thats just an example of a suggestion.. but what im trying to point out is the connection between cities and the willingness on everyones part to have to travel ocasionally..

its not that small a country.. but our public transport is ****.. our internet is ****.. our venues are usually ****.. so it takes work to make this stuff happen.. or else.. it doesnt happen.. and we all just watch home and away forever.. hmmmm..

btw,, can someone please come to galway and show us how to spinning tiger tatsu kicker.... thats an os right...??

jimmypenguin

never properly introduced myself here.. think thatll do..

The Hound

Now I know what TV dinners taste like

Doctor DooM

Ok, I'll bite.

Actually, the scene is about as big as it's always been, however instead of EVERYONE playing the latest Street Fighter we have:

The SF stalwarts, many of whom are waiting on 2013
The BB heads, who through insane mismanagement have skipped over P4AU but I can already see the interest rising for Chrono Phantasmathingigoria
The Marvel people, who have a massively maturing game in need of an update but a huge online interest
The MK/ IGAU people, forging ahead in their own direction
The Tekken people finally waking up

...and a few stragglers with interest in some other games that didn't take.

Now of course some people cross over from one FG to another but the point is that just because we don't see 35 people showing up for AE anymore doesn't mean there's less FG players. It means we need to organise better in order to get people aware and wanting to come.

I know some people look at the above post by Chunkis and say "more of the same" but to be fair to him the difference here is he's saying he wants to help. So I am not going to knock him for that. If Chunkis organises a tournament I'll help out the way I help every TO out.

I don't know if people are aware of the American FGC on twitter but they recently had a long winded conversation about how they should do not just more but different things to grow the scene and perhaps even make cash. I think, despite it annoying me in the past when people just randomly demand others do more without offering to help, THAT might be a useful thought exercise.

An important point mentioned by Nutrient here is burn out. I've seen 3 or 4 TOs burn out in my time. It'd be nice to have a few people work together and help each other out. Things have been heading that way but if you're newer in the scene and want to, don't be afraid to ask a TO if they need anything. Even if they say no immediately, it'll let them know you're open to helping and sooner or later your time will come.

The other, extremely positive, thing we need to think about right now is the fact that competitive gaming seems to be turning some form of corner in Ireland. I don't know if it's the length of time we've been about of businesses trying to find new ways of making money but we've never had this level of interest from the likes of the Tolka Bar or XGC etc before. These are things we need to leverage. I've also had interest from a couple of small competitive gaming sites behind the scenes. It might all be pie in the sky, but we'll see.

We need to get on with that town hall meeting and have people make decisions, imo!

chunkis

Doom, ive always been apart of the scene and helped out, In fact i pioneered a lot of things in the scene and inspired many of the tournament organisers who are running events today.

My heart has always been in the community and ive always been dedicated to making things better for people who enjoy fighting games. I spent over 10 years in the UK as a player and as a tournament organiser building scenes for games and promoting fighting games in europe, back in 2001 i used to carry my 15 inch tv across the city to run tournaments with as little as 5 or 6 people on dreamcast, so i know all about creating scenes and building events from the ground up.

When the arcade closed i would always take everybody who wanted to play more games down to my house to play even if they were total strangers, I started doing 10 and 20 man tournaments in my house and then moved them into the arcade, i used to buy joysticks and buttons for the arcade out of my own pocket just so people had the right equipment to use. I promoted the arcade scene so much that those 20 and 30 man tournaments turned into 300 and 400 man tournaments, i used to travel to europe and help organise events in france and in holland and in 2004 i even helped to run EVO.

by 2005 i had organised about 100 tournaments and was one of the top tournament organisers in europe, it was because of that, that i was approached by seth killian to work together on a new tournament, so in 2008 i set out to run europes biggest tournament battle of destiny the road to evo, with funding from shoryuken.com and other companies like capcom, mircosoft, ubisoft and Namco i put together an event that saw over 600 players attend, it was so successful that its still stands as the biggest event thats ever taken place in europe, so i know what its like to build a community from scratch and how much hard work is involved to make it grow, so when it comes to helping out in the irish community, there is nobody more dedicated to the scene that i am.

Now i know my attitude on the forums hasn`t done me any favors, but despite that i am still one of the best assets ireland has and I know i can be successful in helping to make ireland achieve the same level of excellence and achievement that the uk has had, but i can`t do any of it alone. When i was living in the UK i had dedicated people around me who were just as passionate about games as i was, and none of what i achieved as a player or as a tournament organised would have been possible without there help.

For 20 years ive been in the scene playing games competitively, i entered my first arcade tournament in potters arcade when i was 11, by 13 i was winning tournaments and travelling to different places to play games, at 14 i went to london to visit sega world in the trocadero, but i didn`t find any street fighter players and wonderpark wasn`t open yet, i didn`t know that just 5 mins away there was an arcade called las vegas with all the best players in europe, i had to wait another 5 years before i found the scene in london.

it wasn`t until 1999/2000 that i ran into damien bon, damien came 2nd in the super turbo UK national tournament, he was the person who told me about the scene in london, it was after that when i decided to move to london and get involved.

by the time i was 25 i had established myself as the best v-akuma outside of japan and best 3rd strike ken player in the UK only 2nd in europe to fabien, i had won a lot of uk tournaments on various games like alpha 3, super turbo and 3rd strike and in 2004 i came 4th at absolution which was the biggest tournament in europe at the time, i beat 5 japanese players in a row and only to lost to daigo in the semi finals, i represented the UK against japan in both 3rd strike and alpha 3 and it all featured in arcadia magazine, in 2004 i went to out to evo and dominated the us and japanese players with win streaks of 30 and 40, i went toe to toe with alex valle on alpha 3 and on 3rd strike although i only made top 32 in the tournament, i was able to beat kokujin 3-1 in casuals at a time when japanese players really were seen as godlike.

These accomplishments are tools that i can use to help promote and market our scene here in ireland. but its not like i havent done anything for ireland already, when i first moved back to ireland i did my fair share of events, i promoted the irish scene and got most of you guys to travel abroad to your first ever international tournament, ive also worked hard to make organisations like capcom and shoryuken.com take notice of ireland and made them awear that ireland has a scene here and ive worked hard to get exposure for ireland by getting stuff like promo games and prizes and whatever else i could get my hands on to help promote the scene in ireland and make it grow by running events.

Now your probabaly wondering where i am going with all this waffle, well am getting to the point now, because i am already in talks with the XGC, ive already spoke to them about changes to the XGC that would allow us to run bigger and better tournaments in there and ive made a list of things that we could do for the XGC in terms of creating more business for them, am assuming thats why the manager has spoke to nutriant about working together with us.

Now nothing has been confirmed at all from the xgc and at the moment ive just made suggestions of what i would like to do with them, but am looking to negotiate a complete refurbishment of upstairs that gives us more space and accommodates our tournaments for running finals, using projectors and having an area for recording media, i am even looking to get an arcade machine. The boss has all my contact details so i am just waiting to hear back from him.

If we have a venue we can use that is willing to work with us and accommodate us for all our needs, we can then focus on growing our scene to make it bigger and better for everyone, from there we can then look at creating regular events for all the games people want to play and work to create a national tournament that will attract international players which will allow us to grow and develop our scene so our own players can secure sponsorship and develop themselves.

Xinkai

A true patriot and hero.

Kirby

chunkis wrote: »

Fighting game jesus snip

Yeah but.....what have you done lately?

stev0knev022

I think the question that has to be asked is how many of the people currently active in this "community" have any interest in what your talking about chunkis, does ladnopoka want to get sponsored and go travel to international events, if he does cool but you cant force that on him.

Not everyone wants to take this as seriously as you, for me it was just a hobby that i happened to get good at and thought it would be cool to go play people in real life, when you start revolving too much of your life around something that should be a hobby it kinda takes the joy out of it.

People have commitments in their lives that take precedence, be it college, work, friends, girlfriends etc. I'm not sure the fighting game community here is ever going to be what you want it to be.

chunkis

stev0knev022 wrote: »

I think the question that has to be asked is how may of the people currently active in this "community" have any interest in what your talking about chunkis, does ladnopoka want to get sponsored and go travel to international events, if he does cool but you cant force that on him.

Not everyone wants to take this as seriously as you, for me it was just a hobby that i happened to get good at and thought it would be cool to go play people in real life, when you start revolving too much of your life around something that should be a hobby it kinda takes the joy out of it.

People have commitments in their lives that take precedence, be it college, work, friends, girlfriends etc. I'm not sure the fighting game community here is ever going to be what you want it to be.

Stevo it has always been a hobby for me too, and believe it or not when i was in my prime i didn`t play that much at all, in fact i probably played a lot less than what you and others on the forums play now, but the difference between now and then is that when i was playing i was fortunate enough to have arcades with lots of players so the level was obviously a lot stronger and took less time to get good, now people might see playing games as a waste of time, but i don`t, because playing games gave me so many opportunities in life, it allowed me to travel the world and see places that i never thought i would ever visit, it got me jobs in games industry and i made friends all over the world, but i did take the scene pretty seriously in terms of keeping it together, because for me scene represents so much more than just playing video games, its about friendships and real life, ive met some of my best friends through games and i know a lot of my friends who have met girlfriends through gaming and who have even got married through games, but your right when you said that people have commitments, because ive always had very big commitments in my life and those commitments have always been a factor outside of games and its because of those commitments that i had to stop playing games on many occasions because real life kicked in, but if i can contribute to making our scene a better place to play games where those things become easier and give players in ireland the same opportunities that i had, then i am going to try and make things better.

animaX

Just to weight in here........

During my time in Sydney I saw a community-run arcade (with 6 AE cabs and 2 tekken cabs) dwindle and be shut down, so I don't think the Irish scene is alone when it comes to dwindling numbers. The sydney scene even had the benefit of having a top player around in Humanbomb (not that we don't have players near that caliber - they just had many more). And I know that disappearing arcades is an issue everywhere (chinatown fair in NYC, london arcades too) - but the fact that the one in sydney was community-run and community-supported shows that the community couldn't sustain it.

Also, in my opinion there is a direct correlation between the decline of the scene and the over-saturation of the fighting game genre. Our attention and loyalties are divided up into smaller and smaller bits.

I don't have any real ideas for making things better but I'd certainly like to help out when I return to ireland full time

ladnopoka

I probably do take ae more serious than anyone else in the community, i do want to travel around the world to play ae, to meet new people, explore the world and give others a good competition. And that is what i am planning to do when there is a good tournament to go too, now since i have a job i will be good on money to travel around, but limited on time. Will be very happy if there are people with the same interests as me in Ireland and that would like to travel around with me. I know im pretty ass compared to the rest of the ae players in europe or the world but i will keep playing and get better because I really do like the game and have a passion for it.

FutureGuy

The fact that a completely separate and thriving community in Galway has gone completely unnoticed despite the fact that many play on PSN/XBL/GGPO with the rest of us tells me that we need to focus more on alerting other Irish players to our scene rather than showing the world that we have a scene.

I think that is this is far more of a priority than showing the world we can play the game or sending 1-2 others abroad.

EDIT: And I am speaking as a SFIV player.

Owwmykneecap

Jesus lads. It's really simple.
Advertise yourselves.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056384273

With the amount of time some of you spend in IRC talking about frames or whatever, 5 minutes in an extra tab trying some of that out wouldn't be a big deal.


And For the love of God, A calender with upcoming events in it.

Dates.

Solid Dates. Where people can commit.

Make tournaments cheaper!

If tournaments are cheap we can play for fun, even in games we don't main.

Focus on getting new people, not prize money!


And lets do Tournaments in the XGC Again: to put a focus onto Casual sessions, to give people a time to arrive and a knowledge of which game will have a good attendance. Preferably no more than 2 games on any given day (while casual of all types would also go on.)

While maintaining the hardcore tournaments, in the exchange or clarence etc.

liamnojo92

RopeDrink wrote: »

GALWAY has a scene?
I live here and haven't heard a thing about it

I didn't hear anything until this week too lol


https://www.facebook.com/groups/347789212009819/?hc_location=stream
https://www.facebook.com/events/207555626066883/

deathrider

Just got in there before me. I just popped up a thread about it too. Hope to see you there, lads.

Ry

Hai ;D

FutureGuy

Ry wrote: »

Hai ;D

And?

Owwmykneecap

I had a chat with the guy running the comic book shop in dundrum.The Big Bang I think its called.

He'd be more than happy to take a bunch of flyers from us and give them out.
The cross over potential is huge, two of the main games are comic book influenced, sf has its comic spin offs, and the shop stocks a range of tekken figures.

He suggests getting them in before wednesday in any given week as that is new comic book day.

Now all we need (other than an actual event!) id someone to design a half decent flyer, and someone to go to reads or wherever and print some out.

I'm positive we can manage that!

Placebo

Its amazing to see old heads poking their head back here. Just saw Paul [A-trak's] 'thanks' above. And ole infamous Ry's post. You'd have noticed me posting again too. Just an indication that some people might just be on a hiatus and will return. [FutureGuy/Doom]

Owwmykneecap

Let's break 4000% next week!

deathrider

Owwmykneecap wrote: »

Let's break 4000% next week!

Is that from the RandomSelect facebook page? If so, hit me up with a link to it. I'll like it through HSN's page so our crowd can see it, and then I'll spread it on to the Galway Street Fighter lads.

OdgeXD

Not that it really matters but now I'm out of the job I'll hopefully be able to add an extra participant to any tournaments for the foreseeable future

Could also help out with any gfx work if need be

VagaBlonde

Use duct tape [ho ho ho!]. Crap jokes aside, it seems it's going as well as it can right now since there is clearly a close knit group of people here, and you need tight groups like that in any community. What you guys have is actually pretty cool.

Saying that [and as stated elsewhere earlier by another user or two], people have other commitments etc. I can't speak for anyone else but I know it costs a bomb for me to travel fom one end of the island to the other. Frustrating, considering how many cool things are scattered about the place here from one city/county to the next. In my experience anyway.

I know if it was a choice between going somewhere with the girlfriend and going somewhere to play games, the girlfriend trumps everything else. A lot of that is simply down to how much of a pain it is to take long bus or train journies - especially with lanky legs to consider. Being cramped in a tiny space isn't good for your knees.

For now, I'd have to settle for playing against people here [any takers?] purely through online means - better than nothing, I suppose. Connection speeds notwithstanding. I was going to ask if it would be out of the question to play one or two people online during one of your meets? Literally a match or two since I wouldn't want it to disrupt the social element of the meet. I just think it is kind of a cool idea in theory.