Advice for building a Smash 4 club.

[Objekshin]

Hi guys, I need some questions answered about creating a Smash 4 club (or any smash) at my high school.

My school is in Howard County, MD, where the standard for clubs usually involves some sort of academic/humanitarian value. Most of our clubs involve community service, fundraising, or outside-of-school activities/competitions, and if it does not include one of those or something related to those, the club usually dies out quickly. Most of our clubs are for beefing up our college applications anyway, so we don't have that many non-academic clubs.

I plan on holding bi-weekly or weekly tournaments, but I need to find a good day to do it on.

So as I'm sorting out the details on founding the club, I figure I need some general baselines on what needs to be accomplished.

Details:
-My school has a smash community of about 20-30 people easily.
-My school has monitors that are compatible with HDMI, so setups clash with the computers.
-About 10 people have a Wii U with smash bros.
-Most clubs go from 2:10 PM (release) ~ 4:30 (at the absolute latest).
-The tournament should be double elimination, but single could work too.
-Rooms with computers are usually booked Fridays, so thats a bummer.
-Most academic/humanitarian clubs such as red cross, Its Academic!, and Math club are held on Wednesdays thru Fridays.
-Venue cost (such as electricity) is not an issue.
-Club needs academic/humanitarian values.

1. How should I advertise my club?
2. What sort of academic value could I add in?
3. What should the entry fee be for a tournament?
4. What day should my tournament be held on?
5. How long does it take to complete tournaments of around 20 people with 5 setups?
6. Since this is a private tournament, can I still post results on smashboards?

 

[Raijinken]

While it can be hard to convince people of the academic value of gaming (detail observation and mental reaction speed aren't that evident to the old folks who typically run schools), you can definitely get a humanitarian split on it. One easy way to do that would be to direct part of the tournament entry fee to some sort of charitable cause.

You could, say, charge $5 to enter (kids at my highschool weren't particularly wealthy, though your area may be significantly different). Use 2-3 of it to contribute to the prize pool, and the remainder goes to something like small-scale renovations (or things like school supplies/textbook replacements for teachers), something like a Parent Teacher Association (PTA), or the like. Or, if it needs to be even MORE humanitarian, make it go to local charities.

Alternately, on the educational side, the prize payout could be done in bookstore gift cards. A bit cheap and lame for those weirdos who don't like reading, but what kind of school would say no to giving kids books? Issue there is it's harder to scale those to the number of entrants.

Another random idea for the "academic" value could be a tie-in with statistics. Recurring events are great sources of statistics. Character win rates, player win rates on certain stages, win rate influence from certain stage additions/removal, number of games that go to time at certain stock/time ratios, the list goes on, and if you have an enthusiastic statistics teacher, you'd be set.

I ran a 15-person tournament on five setups in about three hours, with one setup always dedicated to friendlies, and typically putting the Custom Moveset Project on the other. As long as you rule out major time-wasters (by simplifying stage selection, or whatever), you can probably get through your tournament within the time allotted. Worst-case scenario, you can use a different bracket style, or make it more like a league or long-term round robin. You could also just make it a structured smash-fest and give people points for wins.

The biggest concerns for you would probably be convincing the school about the liability, or taking it yourself. Especially if it's a public school (not knowing school laws in MD), I know a lot of people may be antsy about taking their $400 system+game+adapter+stuff to school, leaving it in a locker or something all day, and letting a bunch of people they may or may not know use it. Same goes for the school equipment.