Questions from a beginning TO

[Wassabi1320]

Hi,

I got into the competitive smash scene about 6 months ago. I was hoping to become a TO so that I can build a better smash community around my area/in my college. In addition to any general tips, I am facing a dilemma of who I should target for these local tournament events.

Option 1: Appeal to casual players in my college and hope that having tournaments will encourage some to pursue in competitive melee and go from there. The problem with this is that it doesn't allow our more experience smashers to gain more tournament experience (which we need so that we can have a solid team for the Melee College Games)

Option 2: Appeal to more the local community and try to construct good local tournaments with skilled melee players already. (I am afraid that by having this, it will discourage students at my college to join the competitive smash community)

Thank you for your time and I appreciate any advice

 

[flannel_K]

Just my $.02, but from a TO perspective: I get that you wanna bring in more players, but you should be running tournaments which reward skilled players. Casual players who would be discouraged by high-level players in a tournament are likely the same people who would be discouraged if they lost to a random player in a "casual tournament" as well. Some people just do not mesh well with tournament play, unfortunately. (If you really want to offer a specific "casual" option, try running a FFA side-event, provided you have the time/space to do that.)

That being said, just advertise to your local active community and then appeal to the rest of the world: flyers on a public bulletin board, local college facebook group, anything like that. The fortunate thing is that a lot more players have become interested in the competitive scene, so chances are pretty good that just running tournaments will bring in at least a couple new faces to your scene. Best of luck!

 

[lazymp]

Do both. These aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

Have tournaments where you try to recruit new players but also invite local talent. Basically, target everyone you can.

I say this because it's likely that only a small subset of casuals are going to want to pursue the game competitively. 90% of players (exaggerated % but still) come to 1 tournament, see the higher skill level of other players in their area, and then don't come back after getting bopped. Unfortunately, few players come to their first tournament and have the mindset of, "wow those guys did some awesome stuff when they wrecked me, I now wanna play a lot more so that I'm able to do cool stuff like that too", but those are the types you want to find to grow your scene.

Really, just advertise (your scene's FB group, flyers, etc) and make everything clear in your event listing (fees, schedule, rules...) and you should have success.

Heck, if you grow it big enough, you can even have separate Amateur and Pro brackets based on player skill level.

Just some thoughts.