- Moderator
- #1
Dr. Hates
Jerk.
Just got back from my last-minute Nats trip. Frustrations aside (and even though I appear to have contracted the plague that was going around), it was both a fun and exhausting weekend. Nevertheless, I feel that there's a lot of room for improvement in how the event was handled, etcetera, and I think, given that Nats was organized from the ground-up by the community, it might be useful to have an open discussion on the subject in order that things may continually improve.
First, what went right:
1. Lots of incredibly talented players showed up and played their hearts out. It was an absolute blast to watch. As much as I loathe and despise every last one of you bastards, you guys make it worthwhile.
2. The venue itself was spacious, well-staffed, and wasn't 9000 degrees. Moreover, we had plenty of CRT televisions for lag-free gaming, which is outstanding.
On the surface, then, this should have been great, but I actually left with something of a bad taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons.
First, with the two events being only one week apart, it's incredibly difficult not to judge Nats in opposition to the well-oiled gaming juggernaut that is Evo. While of course Evo is much larger in scale, not to mention better-funded and far more venerable, we nevertheless should endeavor to emulate their model as much as possible because, frankly, it's the gold standard in tournaments, bar none.
To that end, I think we should look long and hard at two separate though related concepts: professionalism and focus.
1. Professionalism: Evo started on time and plowed through brackets. There were slight delays on the finals day, but when it mattered most (that is to say, churning through large brackets of players), they delivered. Nationals started 3 or 4 hours late, and some of the seeding decisions seemed quite strange. While the latter may be forgivable because of how many strong, unseeded foreign players were allowed to enter, the former is just fucking brutal.
2. Focus: Let's be honest--SC4 Nationals was not the featured event at the NVGA SuperCon. Actually, as far as I could tell, the featured event was the Otaku Pervert Tea Room, since people were yelling about it on the PA system approximately every 15 seconds. Honestly, though, the crazy lights, the incredibly loud techno music, the constant screaming over the PA system for both tournament-related and non-tournament-related purposes WHILE people played matches is a distraction. For those of you who know me well, you know I have a horse in this race. I can't play anywhere near my best if I can't hear the game. If I had known that the TVs might as well have been on mute, I wouldn't have even entered a regional, let alone gone to Nats, because it wouldn't be fun. I'm probably not the only person in that boat, either.
But let's assume for a moment that I am uniquely screwed by this. It's still just plain disrespectful to the players themselves, and to everyone who organized regional tournaments, contributed, hyped this up, and so on. We came to compete. The tournament should have been the focus, not the myriad other things taking place. This got better toward the finals, when staff actually killed the music and lowered the volume on other TVs so that the focus could be on the matches being played on stage, but that sends the wrong message. It basically says that only the top 4 placers count, and the person who is just happy to have qualified and been given the chance to test himself against the best in the world does NOT matter, and he should just fuck off.
So what do other people think? Am I crazy, or were these legitimate issues that should be examined? Or were there other things from which we can learn, so as not to repeat the same mistakes moving forward? Discuss, bitches.
First, what went right:
1. Lots of incredibly talented players showed up and played their hearts out. It was an absolute blast to watch. As much as I loathe and despise every last one of you bastards, you guys make it worthwhile.
2. The venue itself was spacious, well-staffed, and wasn't 9000 degrees. Moreover, we had plenty of CRT televisions for lag-free gaming, which is outstanding.
On the surface, then, this should have been great, but I actually left with something of a bad taste in my mouth for a couple of reasons.
First, with the two events being only one week apart, it's incredibly difficult not to judge Nats in opposition to the well-oiled gaming juggernaut that is Evo. While of course Evo is much larger in scale, not to mention better-funded and far more venerable, we nevertheless should endeavor to emulate their model as much as possible because, frankly, it's the gold standard in tournaments, bar none.
To that end, I think we should look long and hard at two separate though related concepts: professionalism and focus.
1. Professionalism: Evo started on time and plowed through brackets. There were slight delays on the finals day, but when it mattered most (that is to say, churning through large brackets of players), they delivered. Nationals started 3 or 4 hours late, and some of the seeding decisions seemed quite strange. While the latter may be forgivable because of how many strong, unseeded foreign players were allowed to enter, the former is just fucking brutal.
2. Focus: Let's be honest--SC4 Nationals was not the featured event at the NVGA SuperCon. Actually, as far as I could tell, the featured event was the Otaku Pervert Tea Room, since people were yelling about it on the PA system approximately every 15 seconds. Honestly, though, the crazy lights, the incredibly loud techno music, the constant screaming over the PA system for both tournament-related and non-tournament-related purposes WHILE people played matches is a distraction. For those of you who know me well, you know I have a horse in this race. I can't play anywhere near my best if I can't hear the game. If I had known that the TVs might as well have been on mute, I wouldn't have even entered a regional, let alone gone to Nats, because it wouldn't be fun. I'm probably not the only person in that boat, either.
But let's assume for a moment that I am uniquely screwed by this. It's still just plain disrespectful to the players themselves, and to everyone who organized regional tournaments, contributed, hyped this up, and so on. We came to compete. The tournament should have been the focus, not the myriad other things taking place. This got better toward the finals, when staff actually killed the music and lowered the volume on other TVs so that the focus could be on the matches being played on stage, but that sends the wrong message. It basically says that only the top 4 placers count, and the person who is just happy to have qualified and been given the chance to test himself against the best in the world does NOT matter, and he should just fuck off.
So what do other people think? Am I crazy, or were these legitimate issues that should be examined? Or were there other things from which we can learn, so as not to repeat the same mistakes moving forward? Discuss, bitches.
