BombsOnBombs
Smash Cadet
I don't know if I got this in the right section, and if not, I apologize.
So now that I've run a few tournaments, I have to say that it's been a mixed bag of emotions. I think I got a little ahead of myself and didn't do enough research ahead of time for my FIRST tournament, but each subsequent one has been better and better and I'm confident in my ability to run just about any tournament for any game now. I've been having a lot of mixed feelings about running more though, and a lot of it has to do with the community. On one hand, the community is very helpful, and a lot more friendly than most other fighting game communities, but on the other hand they're horribly self entitled and borderline rude about said entitlements.
A little history on me. My name is Alex and I run a Smash group in Charlotte, North Carolina called Melee Misadventures. Although I probably shouldn't disclose this information, after my experience running tournaments in this community I have to say that I feel no real urge to continue doing it, so I'm not particularly worried about losing any following or whatever. It seems a lot easier to just be a player since the community makes being a TO a horrible experience.
I started out running tournaments at my local game store, and I actually picked up Melee completely by accident while working there. I was working one afternoon and a guy came in trying to sell all of his Gamecube stuff. We aren't a video game store, we only sell trading cards and board games, but the guy seemed like he really needed the money so I just bought it and decided to hook it up in the store since we had some guys who would bring their kids to the store with them when they played Friday Night Magic. (It went over well, the kids now spend Friday evenings racing each other in Double Dash instead of bothering patrons.)
It came with a smattering of games, including some actual treasures including Mario Kart Double Dash, the collector's edition discs for The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, but most importantly, Super Smash Brothers Melee. I didn't realize how badly I had ripped him off at the time, since I was pretty unfamiliar with the prices of that stuff. I got the whole box for $50. I decided to put in Melee because it was on top of the stack, and then weeks later I somehow randomly found myself at my first tournament. I honestly can't say how the game managed to pull me on so hard and so quickly, but alas it had.
Here in Charlotte there is a game store called Save Point that specializes in vintage games and gaming accessories, and they run weekly Smash tournaments. HOWEVER, they do it very poorly, only allowing flatscreen TVs and making everyone stand the entire time. On top of those two things, the retail space is VERY small and there's always 50+ people, so it gets VERY hot inside and smells horrendous. It was an overall negative experience and I considered giving up the game after seeing such a poor display, but instead a friend said "Why don't you just do your own tournaments but do them right?"
So next thing I knew, I was scouting out CRTs at Salvation Army and Gamecubes on Craigslist. I eventually was happy once I had 5 entire setups, all of which ended up costing me something like $300~ after all was said and done. Not bad considering what I got to start out with. I planned to recoup the costs eventually anyway, so it was alright.
Flash forward to my first tournament. I fumbled a lot. After coming from a background of playing Magic: The Gathering I tried to run the tournament in the same manner, including the prize pool, because I simply wasn't aware there was some kind of uniform way to do it. I ended up taking 20% of the pool for venue (basically to recoup my costs) and that didn't go over well. The guys were very understanding since they knew it was my first tournament, and I learned that lesson quickly. The next tournament was not going to be the same.
Second tournament was a REALLY big difference in turnout, the first one having about 15 players, the second having almost 30. I advertised the venue fee and pool pots on the page pretty heavily. ($5/$5) Despite this, many people turned up with literally only $5 in their pockets and claimed to have not seen this, or claimed that they weren't paying a venue fee. I felt like this was unacceptable and turned them away. After this initial issue, I spent the rest of the tournament listening to multiple people complain about the venue fee and the fact that they didn't get "free food" or anything out of it. Instead of pocketing the venue fee (which I strongly considered doing after the blatant negativity I experienced since it really turned me off of running future tournaments) I instead put it in a savings account, which I later used to buy more setups for the group. I figured this was just the fairest way to do things, because honestly I was terrified of pissing off the people coming to my tournaments, but honestly after the last experience I don't feel it's worth it to even run tourneys anymore because people are, to be blunt, horribly ungrateful.
This trend has continued for the last couple of tournaments, and to be honest, it shouldn't be this way. Smash is the only community I've ever experienced this attitude in, and that's saying a lot since I've played a lot of different trading card games, video games, and smaller communities like Chess.
These points are just how I feel about the subject. They're in no particular order of importance.
Venues are not free.
That **** costs money. You can't just walk into a business and demand to use their space for free, they're going to charge you for it. It's been a real struggle for me to find one that doesn't charge, and if I hadn't been running the tournaments at my place of employment, I probably wouldn't have been able to offer them so cheap. (I was doing $5 venue, $5 per pot.) If I had to pay for a venue I would have to charge more because there are other costs associated with running a tournament that people don't consider. Just outside of the setups I purchased, I've also had to buy a number of other things to run tournaments such as tables, chairs, a lockbox for the money, power bars, extension cables, etc. Not every venue has this stuff readily available, sometimes you need to purchase them, and someone needs to pay for it because it shouldn't be the burden of the solely the TO.
As a tournament organizer, you SHOULD make a few bucks.
Running a tournament is a LOT of work. If it wasn't, you could all run your own at your leisure, and if you have a problem with venue fees I encourage you to do so. My tournaments usually eat up my entire Sunday (my only day off) as well as the Saturday evening before that for setup. Not to mention having to find a venue, schedule it, moving all the stuff TO the venue, putting in time promotion the tournament...it's a lot to do. And that's just stuff you have to do BEFORE the actual tournament, I'm not even going to get into how much of a headache it can be to herd Smash players. (AKA run the tournament itself.) If you aren't willing to put in all of that work, you have absolutely no right to complain that someone wants to make a few bucks off of you. I do less work at my actual job than I do running a Smash tournament.
The TO gets to watch everyone around him have a good time while he works.
Running a multi-game event takes a lot of book keeping, and SOMEONE has to do it. We pay book keepers in the real world, why wouldn't you have to pay for this? A few bucks for literally hours of stress-free Smash is not a very steep tax. When I run my tournaments, I'm so busy keeping up with the brackets that there would be no conceivable way that I could play in the tournament myself. So basically I'm just sitting in a chair behind a counter pointing people towards their opponents for 6+ hours. I'm clearly not doing this for my own sake, I'm doing it for yours. Show some appreciation.
Smash is the only community that does this.
None of the other game communities I've ever been a part of have had this problem. Showing up to a Magic tournament can cost you anywhere between $5 to $40 depending on the size and levity, and people fork that over without question. I've run Invitational Qualifiers for Magic that have made the store $2k+ just off of entry fees alone, while only paying out their maximum prize pool of $1k. Nobody complained about it. Why? Because Magic players understand that the game is a game of privilege, not entitlement. Smash tournaments are a privilege to you. You are not entitled to them.
The TO doesn't owe you anything.
Sure, you showed up to their tournament and they really appreciate that, but they aren't in your debt. You showed up to Arbys but they don't owe you a roast beef sandwich. You have to pay for it. People who complain about having to buy concessions immediately make me think of this scenario. Just because you paid a venue fee does not entitle you to food or drink. I ran into this at my last tournament and it pissed me off a lot because I advertised on the event page "If you bring food or drinks for everyone, if you bring me the receipt, I'll waive that much off of your venue fee." Nobody brought ANYTHING, and then ******* at me for not giving them free sodas or ordering pizza. This was actually my way of partially conceding to the venue fee whiners, and they still contributed nothing. How is that even in the least bit fair?
And above all else, you want your TO to run more tournaments.
Nobody is going to go through all of that hassle for no incentive. While I find it fulfilling to give a bunch of people something to do with their Sunday, it would be infinitely easier for me to stay at my house and play League of Legends in my underwear. And after what I've seen, I'm considering doing just that. When I started writing this I wanted to try and remain objective, but there isn't really anything objective about the subject matter.
tl;dr: Having the mentality that tournament organizers should not make money is going to do nothing but harm the community going forward. People don't want to do a bunch of work for no reward, you have to make it worth it even for the guy running locals.
So now that I've run a few tournaments, I have to say that it's been a mixed bag of emotions. I think I got a little ahead of myself and didn't do enough research ahead of time for my FIRST tournament, but each subsequent one has been better and better and I'm confident in my ability to run just about any tournament for any game now. I've been having a lot of mixed feelings about running more though, and a lot of it has to do with the community. On one hand, the community is very helpful, and a lot more friendly than most other fighting game communities, but on the other hand they're horribly self entitled and borderline rude about said entitlements.
A little history on me. My name is Alex and I run a Smash group in Charlotte, North Carolina called Melee Misadventures. Although I probably shouldn't disclose this information, after my experience running tournaments in this community I have to say that I feel no real urge to continue doing it, so I'm not particularly worried about losing any following or whatever. It seems a lot easier to just be a player since the community makes being a TO a horrible experience.
I started out running tournaments at my local game store, and I actually picked up Melee completely by accident while working there. I was working one afternoon and a guy came in trying to sell all of his Gamecube stuff. We aren't a video game store, we only sell trading cards and board games, but the guy seemed like he really needed the money so I just bought it and decided to hook it up in the store since we had some guys who would bring their kids to the store with them when they played Friday Night Magic. (It went over well, the kids now spend Friday evenings racing each other in Double Dash instead of bothering patrons.)
It came with a smattering of games, including some actual treasures including Mario Kart Double Dash, the collector's edition discs for The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, but most importantly, Super Smash Brothers Melee. I didn't realize how badly I had ripped him off at the time, since I was pretty unfamiliar with the prices of that stuff. I got the whole box for $50. I decided to put in Melee because it was on top of the stack, and then weeks later I somehow randomly found myself at my first tournament. I honestly can't say how the game managed to pull me on so hard and so quickly, but alas it had.
Here in Charlotte there is a game store called Save Point that specializes in vintage games and gaming accessories, and they run weekly Smash tournaments. HOWEVER, they do it very poorly, only allowing flatscreen TVs and making everyone stand the entire time. On top of those two things, the retail space is VERY small and there's always 50+ people, so it gets VERY hot inside and smells horrendous. It was an overall negative experience and I considered giving up the game after seeing such a poor display, but instead a friend said "Why don't you just do your own tournaments but do them right?"
So next thing I knew, I was scouting out CRTs at Salvation Army and Gamecubes on Craigslist. I eventually was happy once I had 5 entire setups, all of which ended up costing me something like $300~ after all was said and done. Not bad considering what I got to start out with. I planned to recoup the costs eventually anyway, so it was alright.
Flash forward to my first tournament. I fumbled a lot. After coming from a background of playing Magic: The Gathering I tried to run the tournament in the same manner, including the prize pool, because I simply wasn't aware there was some kind of uniform way to do it. I ended up taking 20% of the pool for venue (basically to recoup my costs) and that didn't go over well. The guys were very understanding since they knew it was my first tournament, and I learned that lesson quickly. The next tournament was not going to be the same.
Second tournament was a REALLY big difference in turnout, the first one having about 15 players, the second having almost 30. I advertised the venue fee and pool pots on the page pretty heavily. ($5/$5) Despite this, many people turned up with literally only $5 in their pockets and claimed to have not seen this, or claimed that they weren't paying a venue fee. I felt like this was unacceptable and turned them away. After this initial issue, I spent the rest of the tournament listening to multiple people complain about the venue fee and the fact that they didn't get "free food" or anything out of it. Instead of pocketing the venue fee (which I strongly considered doing after the blatant negativity I experienced since it really turned me off of running future tournaments) I instead put it in a savings account, which I later used to buy more setups for the group. I figured this was just the fairest way to do things, because honestly I was terrified of pissing off the people coming to my tournaments, but honestly after the last experience I don't feel it's worth it to even run tourneys anymore because people are, to be blunt, horribly ungrateful.
This trend has continued for the last couple of tournaments, and to be honest, it shouldn't be this way. Smash is the only community I've ever experienced this attitude in, and that's saying a lot since I've played a lot of different trading card games, video games, and smaller communities like Chess.
These points are just how I feel about the subject. They're in no particular order of importance.
Venues are not free.
That **** costs money. You can't just walk into a business and demand to use their space for free, they're going to charge you for it. It's been a real struggle for me to find one that doesn't charge, and if I hadn't been running the tournaments at my place of employment, I probably wouldn't have been able to offer them so cheap. (I was doing $5 venue, $5 per pot.) If I had to pay for a venue I would have to charge more because there are other costs associated with running a tournament that people don't consider. Just outside of the setups I purchased, I've also had to buy a number of other things to run tournaments such as tables, chairs, a lockbox for the money, power bars, extension cables, etc. Not every venue has this stuff readily available, sometimes you need to purchase them, and someone needs to pay for it because it shouldn't be the burden of the solely the TO.
As a tournament organizer, you SHOULD make a few bucks.
Running a tournament is a LOT of work. If it wasn't, you could all run your own at your leisure, and if you have a problem with venue fees I encourage you to do so. My tournaments usually eat up my entire Sunday (my only day off) as well as the Saturday evening before that for setup. Not to mention having to find a venue, schedule it, moving all the stuff TO the venue, putting in time promotion the tournament...it's a lot to do. And that's just stuff you have to do BEFORE the actual tournament, I'm not even going to get into how much of a headache it can be to herd Smash players. (AKA run the tournament itself.) If you aren't willing to put in all of that work, you have absolutely no right to complain that someone wants to make a few bucks off of you. I do less work at my actual job than I do running a Smash tournament.
The TO gets to watch everyone around him have a good time while he works.
Running a multi-game event takes a lot of book keeping, and SOMEONE has to do it. We pay book keepers in the real world, why wouldn't you have to pay for this? A few bucks for literally hours of stress-free Smash is not a very steep tax. When I run my tournaments, I'm so busy keeping up with the brackets that there would be no conceivable way that I could play in the tournament myself. So basically I'm just sitting in a chair behind a counter pointing people towards their opponents for 6+ hours. I'm clearly not doing this for my own sake, I'm doing it for yours. Show some appreciation.
Smash is the only community that does this.
None of the other game communities I've ever been a part of have had this problem. Showing up to a Magic tournament can cost you anywhere between $5 to $40 depending on the size and levity, and people fork that over without question. I've run Invitational Qualifiers for Magic that have made the store $2k+ just off of entry fees alone, while only paying out their maximum prize pool of $1k. Nobody complained about it. Why? Because Magic players understand that the game is a game of privilege, not entitlement. Smash tournaments are a privilege to you. You are not entitled to them.
The TO doesn't owe you anything.
Sure, you showed up to their tournament and they really appreciate that, but they aren't in your debt. You showed up to Arbys but they don't owe you a roast beef sandwich. You have to pay for it. People who complain about having to buy concessions immediately make me think of this scenario. Just because you paid a venue fee does not entitle you to food or drink. I ran into this at my last tournament and it pissed me off a lot because I advertised on the event page "If you bring food or drinks for everyone, if you bring me the receipt, I'll waive that much off of your venue fee." Nobody brought ANYTHING, and then ******* at me for not giving them free sodas or ordering pizza. This was actually my way of partially conceding to the venue fee whiners, and they still contributed nothing. How is that even in the least bit fair?
And above all else, you want your TO to run more tournaments.
Nobody is going to go through all of that hassle for no incentive. While I find it fulfilling to give a bunch of people something to do with their Sunday, it would be infinitely easier for me to stay at my house and play League of Legends in my underwear. And after what I've seen, I'm considering doing just that. When I started writing this I wanted to try and remain objective, but there isn't really anything objective about the subject matter.
tl;dr: Having the mentality that tournament organizers should not make money is going to do nothing but harm the community going forward. People don't want to do a bunch of work for no reward, you have to make it worth it even for the guy running locals.
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