This blog is for the veteran and up coming tournament organizers.
Players, myself included. We all like to complain about tournaments running behind schedule and running late. However there is a big thing we are not talking about and ruling out. Us as players need to take responsibility for our fellow competitors.
When you decide to not pre register for whatever reason. Maybe you are cool with the organizer. Guess what? We all are that is why we have attended their event. Do the T.O a favor and do us players who like for tournaments to run on time a favor. Pre register. This way the brackets are already set and ready to go. Tournament Organizers don’t have to rush at the last minute to pencil you into an already printed out bracket. Do you know why tournaments start late? Day of walk ins. Walk ins who decide to not pre reg hold the tournament up which is why a tournament that is supposed to start at noon begins at 2 pm. Thus throwing EVERYONE off. Its not the organizers fault at ALL. I guess other than allowing it but they want everyone to come and have a good time.
There have been many times I have shown up to a tournament whether it is eSports or grassroots and the set ups for the games are ready to go. The biggest difference outside of production (Even though I think our grassroots production is pretty good and we have the best streamers and commentators around) is that eSports doesn’t put up with people who like to show up and pay day of. You must pre register.
I wouldn’t mind it if our grassroots guys started charging $70 venues for walking in at the door. Evolution does it. I think we should adopt this standard. If we want to grow we need to become more structured and almost paying $100 dollars just to walk in the door will be enough motivation.
Lets start taking ourselves more serious and get our acts into gear. Even top players we shouldn’t feel at all entitled. We should be more thankful to the organizers for giving us a platform to play our favorite games at the highest level. Cause I know a lot of us would not even bother to every try to host an event of such magnitude.
It is really hard to host an event if you aren’t established and just as hard when you are established cause you begin to have a sort of responsibility and then you have to begin to constantly out do yourself so people want to come back to your event.
I want to give a big shout out to all the TO’s that have thrown a event and a special shout out to the hardest working TO’s: Seasons Beatings Staff, CEO Staff , Levelup Staff, Norcal Staff, EVO Staff, TFC Staff, UFGT Staff, Frosty Faustings Staff, Northwest Major staff, VxG Staff and anyone I didn’t mention. Sorry it is a lot of you guys.
Also being an organizer is a very thankless and selfless job. They don’t make a lot of money from it. Lets stop this stigma of TO’s make 10k per event or whatever the number is. I’ve been told this in private time after time but honestly if they do or don’t. Kudos to them. I feel like they should make that and then some more because hosting an event is tough work especially for fighting games or any event.
Anyway back to the point. Lets start showing our appreciation to our TO’s by pre registering for the event please. That is the least we can do to make things go smoother. It helps all of us!
No more holding a spot for your favorite top player or your buddy from around the corner. We all have to pre reg. Its equal across the board.
Once again PRE REGISTER!
Discussion
I respect this
Yea i would like to give a shout out to Big E his tourney are always run well and I always have a great time at them!!
Theres a number of other things players can do to help facilitate a smooth running tournament. Lots of small things that add up to big things over the course of an event. Being on both sides of this coin the few big time sinks I can see are:
Pre-Registration as you noted
People not reporting match results.
Excessive button checking (its supposed to be 15 seconds to make sure all your buttons work, not 3 minutes to practice your combos one last time)
People either playing too many friendlies/casuals and/or not immediately getting up off tournament stations when they are asked to vacate the station for a tournament match.