I can't think of a better place for this thread, but I am looking for serious advice (more serious than I can get in Melee disc, with all the respect sorry).
Let me tell you alittle about the Israeli Smash community... We aren't many, but this is alright considering the size of our country. Most of our so called players don't bother learning and improving. They seem not to really care how they play, and how to play better.
People played the game in Israel since the game came out, big most of them in a scrubby fashion. Not more than two years ago, at a scrubby tournament hosted by some gaming site (as a part of a big event), things changed when a new generation of serious players made their apperance for their first time (including me...).
Serious tournaments started being orginized inside the community, at some players private houses. People also started meeting more often. Some few new serious players joined the scene. But as the serious players grow better and more competitive, old timers ,which once were considered best, couldn't keep up. They gradually stopped attending and showing up. The feeling I get is that they aren't willing to put any effort and hit the top again, so they just give up. An interesting phenomenon I would like to mantion is not-serious people (new to competitive smash or just from the scrubby era) come to their first tournament, get annihilated, and never bother with the game again.
The more tournaments and events happening, the better the few serious players get better, and the bigger the skill gap gets between them and anyone else. If before there were much people that are better than the common player (though not really serious) that kept going to tournaments and such, it became that them too relized they are far from reach to level of the serious players making them too gradually stop attending tournaments or meetings or bother improving at all.
Eventualy, almost two years after the beggining, the feeling I get is that the people, that actually play (not to mantion come to tournaments or make actuall competition), are not more than 5, max.
I would also like to state that at every tournament we had, we played big pools (of everyone since the attendence was always relativly low [around 16] or 8 when there were alot of people), so everyone got to play alot of games. Also, I myself was trying to make as much people possibly pick up the game seriously by various ways, including; writing guides to a small Gamecube fan site, creating a virtual community including forum and news updates that were done by me at an Israel community site called dex, and just contacting potential players personally and trying to help them and convince them.
It is obvious to me that these cases of quitting players and such aren't uniqe to Israel.
The problematic situation of not more than 10 players, when less than a half of them are serious, is what bothers me. I am not sure what causes this problem, and how to fix it. Why there aren't enough serious people, or why people give up instead of try to improve etc etc.
Okay so, wow, I never thought I can write such a long post so I'll thank you for reading this far. I am looking for serious comments, advices, anything... maybe comparisons to other more succesfull communities. What do I do with problematic community?
Thanks again... ~Vall3y
Let me tell you alittle about the Israeli Smash community... We aren't many, but this is alright considering the size of our country. Most of our so called players don't bother learning and improving. They seem not to really care how they play, and how to play better.
People played the game in Israel since the game came out, big most of them in a scrubby fashion. Not more than two years ago, at a scrubby tournament hosted by some gaming site (as a part of a big event), things changed when a new generation of serious players made their apperance for their first time (including me...).
Serious tournaments started being orginized inside the community, at some players private houses. People also started meeting more often. Some few new serious players joined the scene. But as the serious players grow better and more competitive, old timers ,which once were considered best, couldn't keep up. They gradually stopped attending and showing up. The feeling I get is that they aren't willing to put any effort and hit the top again, so they just give up. An interesting phenomenon I would like to mantion is not-serious people (new to competitive smash or just from the scrubby era) come to their first tournament, get annihilated, and never bother with the game again.
The more tournaments and events happening, the better the few serious players get better, and the bigger the skill gap gets between them and anyone else. If before there were much people that are better than the common player (though not really serious) that kept going to tournaments and such, it became that them too relized they are far from reach to level of the serious players making them too gradually stop attending tournaments or meetings or bother improving at all.
Eventualy, almost two years after the beggining, the feeling I get is that the people, that actually play (not to mantion come to tournaments or make actuall competition), are not more than 5, max.
I would also like to state that at every tournament we had, we played big pools (of everyone since the attendence was always relativly low [around 16] or 8 when there were alot of people), so everyone got to play alot of games. Also, I myself was trying to make as much people possibly pick up the game seriously by various ways, including; writing guides to a small Gamecube fan site, creating a virtual community including forum and news updates that were done by me at an Israel community site called dex, and just contacting potential players personally and trying to help them and convince them.
It is obvious to me that these cases of quitting players and such aren't uniqe to Israel.
The problematic situation of not more than 10 players, when less than a half of them are serious, is what bothers me. I am not sure what causes this problem, and how to fix it. Why there aren't enough serious people, or why people give up instead of try to improve etc etc.
Okay so, wow, I never thought I can write such a long post so I'll thank you for reading this far. I am looking for serious comments, advices, anything... maybe comparisons to other more succesfull communities. What do I do with problematic community?
Thanks again... ~Vall3y
