Louisiana State Circuit

[smash-con]

Smashcon has been putting on regular events for the past six months to promote activity across the state of Louisiana. We've seen great improvement and because of that we've decided to make it of permanence. The six months of gaming leads to a major event called Smashcon held seasonally (Winter/Summer) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is the capital of Louisiana and is centrally located. If your interested in any of these events and live in or around the area you can check out our map of the state listing the events information on our website. We sponsor regular game nights as well to promote activity.

http://smash-con.com/?page_id=23


Monthly Run Down

First Saturday of Month- Baton Rouge Monthly (At Chinese Inn)
Second Saturday of Month-Nothing
Third Saturday of Month- Covington Monthly (Open World)
Fourth Saturday of Month- Special Events

Here is our schedule for the year of 2014 Winter Season. Aspects of this schedule are subject to change depending on many factors. We will continue to update/link events in this calendar to keep LA players informed.


Winter con Jan 25th, 2014- http://smashboards.com/threads/wint...uses-january-25th-2014-baton-rouge-la.342375/

Feb 1-Baton Rouge Monthly-Cancelled weekend after Winter con
Feb 8-
Feb 15-Open World Monthly #3
Feb 22-

March 1-Baton Rouge Monthly #10
March 8-
March 15- Open World Monthly #4
March 22-
March 29-

April 5-Baton Rouge Monthly #11
April 12-
April 19- Open World Monthly #5
April 26-

May 3-Baton Rouge Monthly #12
May 10-
May 17- Open World Monthly #6
May 24-
May 31-

June - Summer Con ( Date selected yet)

​

Total Events=8 (We'll be adding Special events soon)

TOs
Baton Rouge Monthly-Jwulf​

Open World- Bomber

Not Running Currently
NO Monthly-Atticus
Slidell Monthly-Fancy
LOST-Curlz
Get HYPE- Jarious, Stefon
Water Bash- PingDing​

 

[Brawlman1000]

Subscribed les go Smashcon!

 

[Bomber7]

So much hype. I can't wait to see how this year turns out.

 

[Curlz]

February 23rd and March 23rd will be filled with The LOST Series in Lafayette, LA.

 

[*Cam*]

It was getting lonely having the only circuit in the Atlantic South. We welcome the company.

 

[BSL]

Bloop

 

[Griffard]

Subbing, can't wait to attend any event I can this year!

 

[Bomber7]

Ok, now that Wintercon is over with. I'd like to hear some feedback from you guys. Depending on what tournament you entered, you may or may have not encountered any problems.

I know for one the internet connection gave us issues. We just found out where the modem was and we reset it and the stream was back to normal, however I'm still not sure how well that will work for Summercon, so Summercon will really tell us whether we need to get a 4G network or something or if we can continue to restart the modem when needed.

Next, I didn't expect the turnouts for all the various tournaments. Melee, traditional fighters, and Project M really did well. The only problem was, I got a couple of complaints we didn't have enough room for P:M, and even I noticed we distributed space improperly. Brawl didn't have that many entrants but took up a lot of space when we could have given it away to the other people. Even still on top of that, with all the people we had for all the various games we were having tournaments for, it did seem a bit cramped so I'll definitely look into creating an organized floor plan to where we have a close even distribution for each game tournament.

Overall, I think things ran rather smoothly. We didn't incur any major issues. Everyone seemed to have fun. It looked like we had a couple of upsets in each game tournament, which is always good to hear.

I am starting school in a couple of days, so once I get settled in, in about a week or two, I'll be ready to start making preparations for summercon. I want to make it a goal to bring in well known people (like Esam, MJG, Shadow PJ, Reflex, and whoever else I can get my hands on) to attend smashcon, letting them have a taste of what we are like. I think it would greatly benefit our cause and help Smashcon's conventions grow, especially in reputation.

Another thing that was mentioned was Smashcon wants to see more attendance, especially at the conventions. My co-host Jarious came up with the idea that when we have bonus pots for the conventions, the game tournament with the most attendees will get the largest share of the bonus money and we move on down the line from there. I mentioned it to a couple of people casually at the convention and they thought it was a great idea, so I'm really going to push for that come next convention.

I also realized we seem to have a slight issue with housing. I know Erick is reliable to house up to 10 people but as we get bigger, it will get a lot harder for him to handle more and all by himself. However, by next convention, while we are looking for sponsors, I want to talk to the local hotels to see if they can give us a sweet deal for bringing in a whole bunch of people from out of town (including out of state), if they'd stay at their hotel. I figure with the hotel business suffering from the poor economy, we could use that to our advantage. It's just an idea for now.


I'd like to hear some feedback from you guys, good, bad, indifferent, suggestions for next time, what we need to improve on. You name it.

 

[BSL]

More power strips!
More PM set ups!
More hype beforehand!
If apex is the weekend before, man up, dgaf, and advertise anyway.

 

[ChKn]

Try not to make it on Sunday, so Mar can go lol.

Also, hype up Summercon to the LA thread at SRK.

 

[-Ran]

Step 1) Get everyone's phone numbers.
Step 2) Call them two weeks before the tournament to remind them so they can get off work.
Step 3) Call them a week before the tournament to remind them.
Step 4) Call them the day before the tournament to remind them.

 

[ChKn]

Also, who did the streaming?

 

[Bomber7]

I know Sync and someone else did commentary for a while during Jnig and Lee's matches. As far as setting up the streaming, one of my co-TOs did it. Did we have any issues with it? The only problem I saw was, even though we had two separate streams, I think I could still hear the same commentary for both. Basically the commentary for the Brawl stream was also being heard on the fighter stream.

 

[ChKn]

The picture quality of the stream looked fine.

I think consistent commentary/on screen graphics should be worked on. I was on and off for the streaming, and I was somewhat put off by some of the lack of commentary. I normally use commentary or stream graphic to figure out how far the tournament is progressing. There was also a huge stretch of silence, followed by a black screen, in Brawl Pools. Since this wasn't a 64+ person tournament, it wasn't a huge deal. A producer would be needed down the road for Summercon imo.

 

[Bomber7]

Ok, we'll look into that. We just put this stream team together around the time of Voodoo Smash, so everything is still new. The good thing is, every time we stream, we are always finding things to improve on so in no time, we will look professional.

I'm going to get with my co-TOs one day and we're just going to stream us doing whatever, I guess for a game night or something. We'll take the night to work out our kinks but treat it as us actually streaming for the real thing.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[rice]

The only complaints i have were that the doubles bracket for melee started, then was immediately changed after round 1. And that i had to wait 1-2 hours for my grand finals match in Melee(which i find weird, because there was supposed to be a priority list, and as melee had the most entrants should of been at the top of priority). Also, it was quite weird that marvel vs capcom ran through the winners side of the bracket, then losers. I played my first match pretty early on, then i didnt get to another match for about 2 hours.

Overall, it was an enjoyable tournament. But having to wait for so long is frustrating. Good Job though guys.

 

[Bomber7]

T-shirt design contest

I'm calling out any and all artists. Smashcon is looking and pushing really hard to have t-shirts for Summercon this year. I suggested why not have a contest? We need some more community involvement anyway. So here's what I have to say so far:

As of right now: We are definitely going to give 1st place a free t-shirt (obviously with the design they made for us!). Erick said he'd like to sweeten the deal and might see if that prize also include free entry to the Smashcon convention. The contests will be all year around. Ideally, we want different designs for each convention, every year. You'll have the whole season to create a design, modify, etc, but to make it fair, only one design can be entered for voting. Though we don't want you do not turn in multiple entrees. When the time gets close to the convention itself we will have our voting. I'd like y'all opinion on this: Would you want the smashcon staff to vote on the designs or would you like to have the community vote?

What I'd like to see added on: Top three get's their T-shirts free and at least 1st place gets into smashcon free. So that means depending on what we can do, all three contestant winners will get in free.

An idea I just though of right now while typing: We'll have t-shirt design contests for our special events like PBS and Voodoo Smash. Top 3 winners get into the event free (since there's no venue fee for our special events, you'd get into a single tournament of your choice). I doubt we'll have the money to put this particular idea into motion yet but I know it's something I think would be cool to have in the future.


***Nothing is official as of yet, but I'll keep you posted about this. I still want you guys to act like the contest has already started so make some designs for us and save them so that way when the contest is officially announced, you can send them in asap****

 

[Bomber7]

I was looking over the HOBO payouts and I saw something that interested me:

1vs1 payout for 49 players or less:
1st=48%
2nd=22%
3rd=14%
4th=8%
5th=4%
5th=4%

1vs1 payout for 50 players or more:
1st=44%
2nd=22%
3rd=16%
4th=10%
5th=6%
5th=6%
7th=3%
7th=3%

You guys think this would attract more people if the pay out was better based on attendance?

 

[ChKn]

Would be nice.

 

[Bomber7]

I'll give that payout system a try for Brawl at Summercon (assuming I remember).

 

[smash-con]

BRM will be cancelled for this weekend. (Feb 2) I'll post the next monthly now and start getting it hyped.

Here is the thread for the next BRM

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=333222

 

[testy]

Any chance of Mario Kart 64 battle added to an event?

 

[Bomber7]

Any chance of Mario Kart 64 battle added to an event?

Get us some dedicated people who will join the event if we offered it, and have enough set-ups to accommodate those people and I don't see why not.

 

[testy]

Thanks for the reply. All I could provide is 1 console, maybe 8 controllers, and myself. Wondering if others in this community would be interested.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Posting here so I can actually find out when waterbash is being held from now on lol

 

[JustinSane]

Ok, we'll look into that. We just put this stream team together around the time of Voodoo Smash, so everything is still new. The good thing is, every time we stream, we are always finding things to improve on so in no time, we will look professional.

I'm going to get with my co-TOs one day and we're just going to stream us doing whatever, I guess for a game night or something. We'll take the night to work out our kinks but treat it as us actually streaming for the real thing.

Thanks for the feedback.

Any idea when that might happen Bomber? Pingding is leaving soon so I'll most likely start hosting the Marksville/Alexandria tourneys. I don't mind coming out one night with you guys to figure some stuff out.

 

[Bomber7]

I'm going to ask my co-TOs to bring their stream equipment to the next Get Hype. Even if we don't stream Smash, I want us to have it up and throughout the tournament tweak it until we get things right.

 

[JustinSane]

I'm going to ask my co-TOs to bring their stream equipment to the next Get Hype. Even if we don't stream Smash, I want us to have it up and throughout the tournament tweak it until we get things right.

Ah ok I see. I'm gonna try to make it to Get Hype as well. So hopefully things go to plan.

 

[Bomber7]

Try and bring anyone you can from marksville if you can.

 

[JustinSane]

I'll see if Pingding and Wangstabaiter wants to come, and a few others as well.

 

[Bomber7]

Sounds great. I'm talking to a guy named Atticus from New Orleans. He's going to talk to his crew about coming. I'm not sure if he personally will be able to make it, but he does have a crew about 14 people, so we should get something from them.

 

[DrinkingFood]

If waterbash was going to move to alexandria anytime soon that would make it a bit easier for us here in natty tbh.

 

[Bomber7]

What's the community like up in Northern LA? Is there enough of you guys to have an average of 10-15 people per tourny or even for one event?

 

[JustinSane]

If waterbash was going to move to alexandria anytime soon that would make it a bit easier for us here in natty tbh.

Well, it's just finding a place in Alexandria really. The place that we were going to start at was closed down >.> So now I'm looking around there for a new place. There's a comic shop that might do it but I can't say for sure yet.

 

[DrinkingFood]

What's the community like up in Northern LA? Is there enough of you guys to have an average of 10-15 people per tourny or even for one event?

Might be, but I don't know them. I think there's a healthy number of people in shreveport but I haven't heard much from them. I'm not sure we've got enough that if we held an exclusively north la tourney that it would see very impressive turn out, but idk maybe it's just a matter of getting the word out since we seem to be pretty divided. But a tourney held somewhere in between north la and south la, like waterbash, would definitely see a least some of us contributing slightly to your numbers.

 

[Bomber7]

If you guys can help me out and reach out to all the guys in Northern LA. Connect with them and get them active in some way. This will definitely help us out in the long run.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I wish I could but the ones I've had brief contact with weren't that many in number, I'm sure the bulk of our players side side of the state aren't even people I would know how to get in contact with.

Trying to grow the scene here at NSU but there just aren't that many people interested in it. Got about 4 regulars and a few that have played a few times. Only one of the regulars besides myself appears to be interested in competing or even just traveling to play.

 

[Bomber7]

Every little bit counts man. I doubt these guys don't have friends, let alone ones interested in attending a tournament and meeting other players. We just need to encourage more word of mouth and encouraging players to connect with people in their local communities and working together to make magic. Then in the long run, we'll have more solid communities plus recruiting newer people in to the scene and in the bigger picture, you guys will have a good network and carpool to make it to larger events.

 

[ChKn]

I'm typing this out as I go, so this entire post will be pretty unorganized.

I originally planned this out to be just about the stream, but I might as well do some more general stuff as well. Most of these probably aren't feasible to do now with the amount of manpower that we have, but I hope that someone in the community knows someone else that can do a specific job. All of what I've posted below was inspired from different Smash and FGC streams.

-Basic logo's and Naming Conventions

This one isn't a big deal, but I feel like, for some recognition, we can have two official logos (one for each Con), and that can be incorporated with the stream in some manner. Off the top of my head, based off of the two banners I made for Summer and WinterCon, one logo can be the smash logo with flames, and the other one can be the smash logo with snow or ice. The logo will have to have the consistency of a company or team franchise logo moreso than a photoshop job. Thus, you'll need someone that can draw. Also, for the sake of the stream, you can abbreviate SummerCon and WinterCon to SCon and WCon. The name SCon or WCon can be featured at the top of the stream.

Which brings me to another point.

-Beefing up of the streams

I've probably mentioned it once before in the thread: we need to at least present our community better on the stream. Now, the question is, how do we go about presenting it in a better format? For starters, if we have a lack of commentary, we can at least have one person "producing" the stream by updating the players playing on the stream. I don't know exactly how to do this, but at the very least, I made a design where one could just plug and chug names and the score. I should probably make two more boxes under the players box, one for W/SCon and one for the current tournament round.

Design: http://i713.photobucket.com/albums/ww134/ShadowChKn/SecondaryDesign_zpsa234fce9.png

The next thing I would advise is to find a dedicated commentary crew that can be the voices of our community. To avoid having the players' burning out, I would just advise for the commentators to be on during bracket play as opposed to pool play.


-Potential Sponsorships

Do you guys have any sponsorships?

-Smashcon/LA tournament dropbox

Seriously, we should start one lol.


For the next Wintercon:

Only run 1-2 Smashcon seeding tournament per month, and have a cycle of cities. I think Curlz and Ran are going to be doing their own tournaments in the near future, so I think you guys should work out a schedule to where you won't interfere with each attendance.

 

[smash-con]

We've decided to update and reformat the schedule for the next season after Summercon.
The new system should give players more notice and give freedom to travel out of State more often reping our good state.

We'll have two Main events every Month then one event rotated in. Therefore new areas get some notice and old areas get to keep developing. We won't always have three events every month we'll rotate that in too.

Another thing we've decided to limit our special events too accommodate the schedule too. Melee & N64's special event will be combined.

We're changing venues at two of the events due to space and scheduling issues. These updates will come when we get confirmations from venue owners.

Here is the new improved Schedule with updates on everything.

Schedule
First Saturday of Month- Baton Rouge Monthly (At Chinese Inn)
Second Saturday of Month-Nothing
Third Saturday of Month- Get Hype (Albany/Hammond area currently)
Fourth Saturday of Month-WildCard every other Month.


July
July 6- BRM #6
July 13-
July 20- Get Hype
July 27-

August
August 3-BRM #7
August 10-
August 17-Get Hype
August 24-WildCard

September
September 7-BRM # 8
September 14-
September 21-Get Hype
September 28-

October
October 5- BRM #9
October 12-
October 19- Get Hype
October 26-Brawl Special Event

November
November 2-BRM #10
November 9-
November 16-Get Hype
November 23-

December
December 1-BRM #11
December 10-
December 17-Get Hype
December 24-N64&Melee Special Event

January

January 20-Smashcon WinterCon

Total Events=15

TOs
Water Bash- PingDing
Baton Rouge Monthly-Jwulf
Get HYPE- Bomber, Jarious, Stefon

Not Running Currently
NO Monthly-Atticus
Slidell Monthly-Fancy
LOST-Curlz