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Toronto Joe Interviews Alex Jebailey on CEO 2014, Smash and More

Toronto Joe

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Coming from humble beginnings born in Halifax Nova Scotia, Alex Jebailey has emerged as one of the most prominent event organizers in the fighting game community.

Jebailey runs a tournament series called CEO, a.k.a. Community Effort Orlando, an event originally started as an attempt to unite the local gaming communities of Florida. Fast forward to 2014, and CEO is now one of the premiere destinations for fighting game fans across the globe, featuring world-class competition in a slew of different games. With Project M added to the games roster for the first time and Melee returning at CEO 2014 coming up on June 27-29th, I sat down with Jebailey to learn more about one of the leaders of the FGC and how he built his tournament brand.

Jebailey built CEO from the ground up, a one-of-a-kind fighting game event.
Getting Started in the FGC

Toronto Joe: How did you get involved in the FGC?

Jebailey: I've been playing video games practically ever since I was born because of my older siblings so growing up I always had a natural competitive spirit. In the mid 90's when SF2 and the Mortal Kombat series were popular I spent a lot of time in the arcades playing fighting games. It wasn't really until about 1999 though that I had gotten into the Traditional sense of the FGC when I stumbled upon some old friends I knew playing Super Turbo and Capcom Vs Snk 2. In the 90's I was a way better Mortal Kombat player than Street Fighter but CvS2 was truly the first Tournament game I ever really dedicated myself to getting good at. So at my college UCF we had a student union arcade called Wackadoo's that had a CvS2 machine, I would go nearly every day between classes and learn the game and spend a lot of time on it. I also played a ton of Tekken Tag and Tekken 4(my favorite in the series) so I was familiar with a lot of different games including Smash Melee when it first came out for a couple years.

So at first I was always a player, the whole organizing thing just became natural when I wanted to compete in more tournaments but nobody else was really hosting any and we had enough interested players to get them together. Back then there was no Facebook, twitter, etc so SRK forums were the main source of community interaction. So before CEO ever began I picked up experience hosting tournaments and just enjoyed bringing people together. There was a dark period between post college 2004 and 2008 where people stayed in touch but it was only a hardcore few playing. Once Street Fighter IV came out and got a fighting game boom going again the rest became history. I'm still super close with a lot of the same guys that got me into the FGC and they help CEO in one form or another so it's great for them to see how far things have come since the beginning.


Toronto Joe: What is something you noticed that differs between the Canadian and U.S fighting game scenes?

Jebailey: Main difference between Canada and USA's fighting game scenes? They have Real Free Healthcare in Canada in case someone hurts their hand in a tournament. I can’t really give an opinion if there’s even a difference since I’ve only been back to Canada for one event. I had the honor of hosting Frag For Cancer in my Halifax Nova Scotia(I was born in Canada) last year and got to meet their local Smash, fighting game and MOBA community. They’re pretty much the same as any USA community I’ve been a part of, just a different part of the world. I know from an organizer standpoint USA has it made when it comes to setups, fight sticks, electronics, purchasing stuff. Things are much much cheaper here so they may not have as many resources up there as us but the passion for fighting games is pretty universally high worldwide.


Toronto Joe: What was your vision for CEO when you first started the series?

Jebailey: Since the first CEO my vision and goals tend to change every year as it fortunately gets bigger. At first I simply wanted a fun event for the Florida Community during CEO 2010, after it was a success on a local level I wanted to attempt to get players from outside of Florida. I took it year by year, didn’t try to go big the first couple years but slowly build a foundation for an event the FGC could look forward to every year. Before CEO 2010 I had quite a few local level monthly events that just grew and grew after Street Fighter 4 was released so people could trust my name as an organizer and tell their friends about their experiences. Without the local community I wouldn’t be able to see my vision through with CEO 2014. I never imagined 5 years ago after the first CEO we’d go from an event with 300 plus people with only 4 states represented to CEO 2013 which had nearly 2,000 people from15 Countries and 32 states represented. I like to set goals each year, first year was just a fun event for the community, 2nd year I wanted International Street Fighter players to attend which happened with Gamerbee and Tokido, after that CEO became established as a solid Major for people to consider attending, now I just want to keep improving the formula for a well run and entertaining event.

So the vision has changed as the opportunities for a bigger and better event have grown. CEO has also become a pretty friendly spectator event, so while I still focus first and foremost on the tournaments themselves I work hard with the rest of the local community to implement more casual things to do at the event so that maybe one day Florida can have something really big focused on all things competitive gaming whether it’s a part of CEO or a whole new event when the timing is right. I think JeCon has a good ring to it.


CEO has a boxing ring and steel cage where players compete in front of a worldwide audience.

Toronto Joe: What advice would you give to event organizers aspiring to create a major tournament?

Jebailey: Focus first and foremost on three things: Environment, Local Community and Scheduling. Don’t try to host too many games or games you may not know too much about because it can be a pretty daunting task until you get the scheduling part down pretty comfortably. It really helps when you’re passionate about the games people are playing at your event so some knowledge even if you don’t have time to play it competitively will go a long way in your demeanor of running the event. With the huge resurgence of Smash ever since EVO 2013 and their Breast Cancer Drive their have been events popping up every weekend similar to the boom the FGC had after Street Fighter IV so you have to focus on your local community first and foremost before taking on a Major event.


Toronto Joe: Getting sponsorship for events is challenging. How can event organizers make their event stand out to build interest for investors?

Jebailey: A common misconception a lot of people may have about sponsors is that they may always be willing to cough up cash if it’s your first or second event. The first 2 CEOs I never really thought about the potential of hunting out sponsors. The community was and still is the biggest sponsor of CEO, but after creating a line of fun events the sponsorship opportunities started to present themselves. Before you can stand out to a sponsor, you need to work hard and create something on your own that shows your event has potential. As funny as it sounds, when you make companies money you’ll end up much more successful in the long run. So you have to start small with sponsorship or partnerships with local businesses. Give them an easy way into your event and be upfront about your intentions or aspirations for growth without promising results you aren't confident you can deliver. After you are comfortable with the way your event runs and you’ve established a pretty solid local community base for the events that enjoy, you'll start to gain confidence that your event is something businesses would be interested in supporting and it'll hopefully snowball from there.

After you get a solid event up and running and have a few years of experience to show for it, you need to start networking with any and everyone, because you never know when they may introduce you to a company and you have a lead into who to speak to about supporting your event. You'll need to take a few risks financially yourself to get your event to where you may want it to be, but trust me when I say all of your hard work will pay off if you're in it for the long haul and not just a one and done kinda event to make a profit. Also don't be afraid to be transparent with your local community, people enjoy learning the process of what goes into your event and when they see the hard work and time you're dedicating it will lead to bigger things.


The Impact of Community Effort Orlando

Toronto Joe: This year CEO will play host to both SSBM and Project M. What is your take on the smash community and how do you feel about future FGC + Smash events?

Jebailey: My history with the community has been all over the place. Not many of today’s players know since I don’t get to travel to Smash only events but I’ve been playing the game since it first came out on N64. When Melee was out and I was huge into Capcom Vs SNK 2 and 3rd strike tournaments, I would enter Melee as well and didn’t do too shabby. I won a few local events before the game was really developed into a edge hogging and wave dashing kinda level and really enjoyed Team play. I kinda lost my passion for the game when Brawl came out and I only ever lost to a Meta-Knight or two, actually First Brawl tourney I was in was round robin pools and 6 out of my 8 opponents all played Meta-Knight so it pretty much turned me off to the game competitively.

Honestly, if it wasn’t for the Smash community, CEO 2010 wouldn’t have been a success and lead into where CEO is today. With the help of Jonathan aka Plank coming down to run Smash while I ran all the other games, it probably would have never happened. Fast forward to the following year and Smash at CEO wasn’t exactly a success in 2011 so I kinda lost my passion for hosting the game and CEO and their local community went their separate way cause I didn’t really find anyone willing to step up to the plate and host Smash for me at other CEO events. After EVO 2013 I really started getting pumped about the way things were going and I entered Melee last year at EVO. I had a blast playing the game with high level players again and it kinda rekindled my interest in hosting it.

That’s when Alex aka Cherry came to one of my local Bar Fights events at Player One Video Game bar. We briefly chatted and he told me about his group the Gaming Knights of UCF(Where I graduated College). He told me he would love to talk about hosting Smash at CEO events and I was open to the idea. I saw the same passion in him about running events that I had at his age when I went to UCF and was a part of their videogame club where we hosted tournaments here and there around 2003/2004.

So we talked and planned to host Smash alongside 9 other games at CEO Winterfest earlier this year in February. Suffice to say, it ended up having the biggest turnout there with 97 entrants. It was the first Smash event at CEO since 2011 and it was HUGE. That really sparked my passion in hosting it seeing their community have a blast all while the Gaming Knights exceeded my expectations in their quality of running the event and thus the partnership was born. Ever since I give them any advice I can to help them with their upcoming events. They invited me to speak on behalf of them to their UCF Student Council to receive funding for their #SmashTheRecord event later this year and It felt really special for me to be a part of it.

So for the past year it’s been nothing but positive working with the Florida Smash Community again and at CEO 2013 we have a chance to really show the rest of the world that Smash is alive and kicking in Florida. At Winterfest we only hosted Melee because I didn’t think Brawl or PM had a big following so during the event I asked the players if they wanted me to add it so when I posted a tweet asking for 500 RTs to host PM at CEO 2014 it hit 1,000 in only 2 days. So as a feeler we hosted PM alongside Melee at CEO Prologue in April and it was also a huge success.

On the flip side, I do see a lot of FGC events realizing the power of Smash again and adding them to their events, but I don’t see them really reaching out to the community other than just posting, Hey we have Smash again, come to our event. I genuinely enjoy keeping up with the Smash community and am so proud of all the sponsorships happening like with HungryBox and Curse, EG and their players and so forth. So if you want Smash to become a part of your event, put the extra effort in to working with their community and they will support you more than you know. I can’t tell you how incredibly inspiring their community has been over the last year, and seeing them support a 12 year old game that’s being featured at EVO, MLG and CEO is great for them to learn more about FGC events. If things don’t work out in the end they always have APEX which is an ALL Smash event the community enjoys.

With Smash 4 on the horizon things could really explode sans any wireless controller issues that may be bound to happen if no wired solution is created by Nintendo, so fingers crossed. But I don’t see Melee or PM dying anytime soon. I can’t really comment much about Brawl since I haven’t seen it requested as much as I’d like to see if I were to consider adding it on. You can only do so much in the course of a weekend and with CEO 2014 hosting 13 games it’s a huge undertaking. Either way I can’t wait for Smash 4 to get more use out of my Wii U with friends.



CEO will feature a custom made boxing ring stage in Project M created for it's special Free For All Smash Bros. Exhibition.

Toronto Joe: There has been some talk about a Project M mod specifically for CEO. Mind giving us the rundown?

Jebailey: When I played PM for the first time at my house with the Gaming Knights kids, I sat down and was like, wow this feels really damn good, tell me more. I got shown all of the PM team’s hard work and was like hmmm, I wanna ask them if they’d like to do something special for CEO 2014. Reached out to Adam(StrongBad) and David(SOJ) from the PM team and told them I’d like a special Stage for CEO (as shown in the CEO 2014 Trailer) and if they had the resources and time to do it. They simply loved the idea and took my suggestions to heart and made it happen. The end result is as awesome as it will be entertaining during the 16 man Battle Royal in Project M at FighterMania II where it will be unveiled in full. They’ve been awesome in making it happen and I can’t wait for everyone to check it out. Currently there are no plans for it to be tournament legal but I can see people choosing it a lot for friendlies if they release the build to the public.


Toronto Joe: What is the most valuable lesson being involved in the FGC has taught you?

Jebailey: People are truly willing to help, through all the drama and social media stories about the FGC, it’s not until you truly attend an event you realize you’re among some really great people that are willing to help see you succeed. I’ve helped create relationships, get people jobs, see communities grow thanks to CEO and everyone in Florida because of our passion to simply play games we enjoy and have fun.


Toronto Joe: Biggest challenge you've faced hosting CEO?

Jebailey: Definitely CEO 2011 was the most challenging mostly because I knew, regardless if the turnout was big, I wanted a really big venue in a great location. CEO 2010 was in a Fairgrounds building so I didn’t have to worry about renting out hotel rooms or filling a venue since I found it only 3 weeks before the event’s set date. So when I approached the hotel for CEO 2011 and saw a contract for the first time it was a really big risk praying I’d fill up the hotel otherwise I’d lose a lot of money getting the venue itself. It wasn’t until the week of CEO itself that the quota for our room block was hit and that’s when I knew CEO had potential to become a stable major. 2014 is in the same hotel because I got more space than I needed but now we’ve grown into it quite well. When it’s your first or second major event you have to promote the hell out of it to get the word out and sacrifice a lot of free time to keep up with all the different communities, but if you find the time, and you enjoy putting together the event, you’ll figure out solutions for any challenges that may happen through the course of planning.

Jebailey vs Mew2King at Youmacon​

Toronto Joe: Last question: Still think you could take a stock from M2K?

Jebailey: I’d gladly MM him in Smash again, As long as he MMs me back in Street Fighter or any other fighting game for that matter lol. Regardless of the game you play, when you have a chance to play a master of their craft/game you should always take it. You’ll learn so much faster than you can imagine.


Closing Thoughts

Once again, thanks to Alex for taking the time to do this interview. We wish him the best of luck with CEO 2014 and are looking forward to seeing Smash in the ring for the first time.

You can register for CEO here and connect with Jebailey on Twitter at @CEOJebailey.

Don't forget to check out the trailer for CEO2014!

Image Credits: CEO, Event Hubs

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Toronto Joe is an eSports lover and FGC competitor/content creator + more. He likes traveling, gaming, and also you. You can find him on Twitter at @TorontoJoeSSB.
 
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Zatchiel

a little slice of heaven 🍰
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Toronto Joe: What is something you noticed that differs between the Canadian and U.S fighting game scenes?

Jebailey: Main difference between Canada and USA's fighting game scenes? They have Real Free Healthcare in Canada in case someone hurts their hand in a tournament.
 

Aninymouse

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Please don't use the white-colored text. Just use the default. People like me who use the light forums skin can't see anything.

That said, this was a really great read. Thanks for the article!
 

Misto-Roboto

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Coming from humble beginnings...
I've known the dude well before CEO. Dude was anything but humble, but I still commend him for the hard work he's put into making CEO viable in Florida.

I kinda lost my passion for the game when Brawl came out and I only ever lost to a Meta-Knight or two, actually First Brawl tourney I was in was round robin pools and 6 out of my 8 opponents all played Meta-Knight so it pretty much turned me off to the game competitively.
Can't blame the guy either for this. The tournament overall was handled very poorly and I'm surprised it didn't sour more people from Brawl tournaments.
 
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