What do you want to see from a gaming sponsor working with Brawl?

[CT Chia]

I'm sure as you all know, I'm a part of vVv, though I'm not just a member, I'm the manager of the Brawl division. It's my job to run the Brawl division as efficiently as possible getting what you guys deserve and keeping in line with the companies vision moving into 2012.

We're going through a bit of changes now, in sort of reforming the Brawl division. I want to bring in as many people as possible (already got a bunch of people interested), and get you guys the compensation you deserve for the hard work you all do. So that brings me to the question:

What do you guys, the community, want to see a sponsor do for you?

What do you think is appropriate (from the eyes of a business mind you) we can do for you in exchange for members being with us and part of our community? It's no secret that some of our members on board now have received compensation for many events, and plan to do so in the future. Moving into 2012 however, I want to develop a very solid plan that we can use to make our players more happy and bring in new ones.


I have started to develop a plan for the Brawl Division and have already discussed it with the owner of vVv and was met with positive intentions, but it doesn't end there. I want to hear what the community has to say about it, and any real and serious suggestions will be considered, and can mold our organization into something better for you guys.

What really separates Brawl in my opinion is the amount of in person representation compared to online. Your standard competitor for a game like SC or Gears mainly focuses on your 4-5 big MLG events per year, and some locals on occasion. Smash on the other hand, in 2011 alone our active members have attended on average 20 in person events this year alone so far. 20 weeks of wearing shirts, doing write ups, taking pictures, etc - that gets tiring and I aim to change that.

The ideas behind my plan focus around getting compensation for certain bigger events, premium compensation for the biggest ones, and only doing "work" for the ones we are represented in. Not worrying about wearing a shirt or sharing your experiences with every small event we go to, because for Smash it's just not feasible. Here is a summary of the plans I have made so far, comment on them and say if you like them, any part of it we could do better, etc.

• The Brawl Division is comprised of three parts: Sponsored, Academy, and Community (this is very similar to how all other divisions of vVv will be working in 2012)
• The Sponsored and Academy groups will have a soft cap of 4 members, meaning we will be doing what we can to stick to only 4 members per group, but may break it in certain circumstances if the division grows big enough). All other members are part of the community.
• The Brawl Manager will determine who is in what group at any given time based on skill, results, and activity. A team may have fewer than 4 members if there is a significant skill gap between say a 3rd and 4th person in our division.
• No new applicant may start of as sponsored except for extreme circumstances like picking up some of the best players in the game, otherwise they may start off as high as academy.
• An academy player may move up to sponsored after 30 days if they have proven that they deserve to be up there.
• Sponsored and Academy players may receive products from our sponsors (such as SteelSeries) and if so, must use them at any event they also use their vVv shirt at (something all members receive).
• Each sponsored member member receives 5 tournaments per year they get free entry for per year. This number is flexible and may be changed based on the skill of the player (if you're one of the best we might offer you more than 5, etc). Tournaments a sponsored member chooses can not be within 6 weeks of each other.
• At any tournament a sponsored player attends where they have received free entry, they must wear their shirt at the event (they don't have to wear it when they don't receive compensation), take some pictures, and make a news or blog post summarizing the event for everyone. If multiple sponsored vVv members attend the same event, they can split the work between them.
• Each year one major tournament will be chosen (if available) where vVv will provide free hotel accommodations. This hotel is open to all members of vVv, and anyone there must wear their shirt and collaborate with each other for pictures and a write up of the event. Entry is not provided unless a sponsored member chooses it as one of their tournaments, as mentioned in the last 2 points.
• All vVv members enter brackets/events with vVv in front of their name for all events.
• All vVv members must attend at least one tournament every 2 months or they will be dropped for inactivity (this amount is flexible).
• All vVv members must wear their shirt and use any sponsor products they may have received at least once every 2 months with a few pictures of the event displaying them.

It sounds like a bit much, but I'm just thorough in how I write. Basically you're only required to do "vVv stuff" once every other month, and in exchange can receive compensation, and hotel stay at big events (like Apex). As for community and academy members, I am also working on a way for them to receive compensation for events as well, but I can't speak about that at the moment.

The last part is sponsor products. A lot of what sponsorships do is they use their partnerships with other companies (as vVv is partnered with Gamer Grub, Steel Series, Kontrol Freek, and others) to provide those products to their players for free. Unfortunately, not that many companies work with the Wii and competitive games. Things we are trying to get now with the current companies on board are things like nice headphones/headsets, Gunnars, and console/controller skins. If you guys know of any companies that have products that are beneficial to us Brawlers, say so in the thread and I will be doing my best with the rest of the staff in vVv to bring them on board as a partner to get their products to you for free!

 

[Jack Kieser]

You know what I want to see? It's something I'm trying to get going at the University of Washington next year...

Collegiate Leagues. Like, serious school v school collegiate Smash. Take crew battles and make it a college e-sport.

What you could do is have Smash chapters run by TOs on as many college campuses around the country. Each chapter would nominate (probably through PRs) a team of, let's say, 5 Smashers. The schools could then host (maybe during the summer?) state / regional tournaments that would invite other schools to have large-scale ranked, sponsored events.

The cornerstone of what you could place business emphasis on would be Smash Colleges; essentially, each school would have top players from as many characters as possible, and those players would run seasonal workshops and teaching sessions designed from the ground up to bring new players (probably freshmen) into the community by teaching them both game / character basics and, after they prove themselves, high-level play through targeted coaching.

I'm serious. I want to see the community expand like a mother****er, and colleges are the way to go.

 

[CT Chia]

That is actually something I used to try and work on. When I went to Drexel (I'm graduated now), I was the president of the Drexel Smash Organization. Unfortunately each year it got smaller because the majority of Smash players either graduated or switched schools, and it was tough to bring in new ones. Scar was the president of the Penn Smash League just next door to Drexel at UPenn, and I know some colleges around North NJ had some similar groups as well. Unfortunately the highlight of all this came right around the end of Melee and beginning of Brawl, so it was a little harder to organize than it would be in today's competitive scene.

Expanding to colleges is a great idea, but unfortunately is something sort of out of our (vVv) reach right now. Perhaps as we grow we can look to advertising content creation with schools which can lead to the creation of new smash organizations and competition. What would apply to vVv more would be if we were to get popular enough that other organizations like EG would create Smash divisions as well and teams can compete in that sense - which is similar to how a lot of other games work. So basically you say make the college competitive scene an e-sport, which is great, but vVv (and other sponsors) role in that would be sort of like the professional league after that. Think college to sponsor as NCAA to NFL sort of idea.

 

[KT Kasrani]

I actually like the ideas that are brought up in this thread. It makes being sponsored by this organization more like being apart of a family and a community. Especially this part


"Each year one major tournament will be chosen (if available) where vVv will provide free hotel accommodations. This hotel is open to all members of vVv, and anyone there must wear their shirt and collaborate with each other for pictures and a write up of the event."

It tells me that you are apart of something big and you are actually helping to better and make the community more knowledgeable to what you do.

 

[pwiito]

Well this was rather very informational, I think most ppl discredit vvv for how awesome of a sponsor and a community it is, I'm liking this.

 

[Strong Badam]

equal treatment of brawl & melee

 

[Roneblaster]

Melee.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

I actually agree with Strong Bad for once.

They should support Melee.

 

[t3h Icy]

Melee of course. :D

More representation of lower tier mains.

 

[CT Chia]

equal treatment of brawl & melee

This is actually something I've had in mind for a while, but it's not really possible atm. From a business standpoint it always makes sense to use the newest and most exciting (publicly) games. In every game community, even if the newest game might not necessarily be the best, it usually is in the eyes of the public and product sponsors. This is why we don't typically see teams of Halo 3, SC1, GoW1, or atm Melee. However Melee and Brawl are very close in terms of communities, using the same sites (Smashboards mainly). To convince everyone that Melee players are worth picking up, we first need to show what Brawl is worth. Of course if we pick up a player because of Brawl that is also skilled in Melee, we can support that, but not through an official Melee division... yet.

Melee of course. :D

More representation of lower tier mains.

This is really just dependent on if low tier mains apply or not. Of course we can try to scout out specific people, but I haven't looked for specific mains of players yet. Anyone you had in mind?

 

[Joaco]

I liked the ideas, I think that everything depends on where the vVv member resides, as there are countries that don't have many tournaments or are irregular (like in Argentina there was a month there were no tournaments, and we had three tournaments this month).
Keep it up, I hope the community expands a lot.

 

[Strong Badam]

This is actually something I've had in mind for a while, but it's not really possible atm. From a business standpoint it always makes sense to use the newest and most exciting (publicly) games. In every game community, even if the newest game might not necessarily be the best, it usually is in the eyes of the public and product sponsors. This is why we don't typically see teams of Halo 3, SC1, GoW1, or atm Melee. However Melee and Brawl are very close in terms of communities, using the same sites (Smashboards mainly). To convince everyone that Melee players are worth picking up, we first need to show what Brawl is worth. Of course if we pick up a player because of Brawl that is also skilled in Melee, we can support that, but not through an official Melee division... yet.

I'm interested in this. What needs to be done?

 

[CT Chia]

Interested in... what part of it lol

 

[Strong Badam]

the part where melee has any potential whatsoever in being picked up by a sponsor

 

[CT Chia]

Yea, before I can convince them for Melee to be picked up, I would say one or two things needs to happen first. Either Brawl becomes popular enough with vVv to warrant another Smash game to be picked up (starting with Brawl because it's the newer game which the general public and sponsor partners are more interested in), or some of the best Melee players come on board and prove that Melee is a sponsorable game (I certainly believe it is, just sayin').

 

[Ministry]

http://www.coleman.com/

they should sponsor brawl
they are already in

USA, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, south America

 

[CT Chia]

hahaha oh man that was a good laugh.

 

[Life]

What would help Melee the fastest would be for Melee pros to become pro at Brawl and use that to advertise melee ("MeleeVv [name]"?) but idk how willing they are to do that...

 

[Strong Badam]

or some of the best Melee players come on board and prove that Melee is a sponsorable game (I certainly believe it is, just sayin').

How would we do this, realistically?

 

[CT Chia]

Find out who is interested, have them apply.

 

[Dart!]

Without trying to sound too offensive. No Pro melee player, other than m2k will want to get good at brawl.

 

[CT Chia]

I wouldn't expect anyone to do that.

 

[DJ Arcatek]

What I want to see is me being sponsored

 

[CT Chia]

I just got word that applications for vVv will be ending on sometime around November 1st, because we will be launching a new website around that time. Applications will of course kick back up, but it may be a couple months. Note that if you want to be in for Apex, you would need to apply by this date as I don't know if applications will open up with enough time to be accepted before Apex in January.

I already have a bunch of people lined up to help apply, and I can help anyone who wants to join make their app. Feel free to talk to me if you're interested.

 

[MikeHaggarTHAKJB]

we dont want to see a gaming sponsor working with brawl. that game ****ing sucks.

 

[Roneblaster]

More mikehaggar commentary and hype talk.

Although it is fairly obvious at this point mike is melee only.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Less trolling in the SWF threads about said sponsor.

 

[CT Chia]

Please keep on topic to the questions posed in the OP

 

[MikeHaggarTHAKJB]

More mikehaggar commentary and hype talk.

Although it is fairly obvious at this point mike is melee only.

not even the mighty mike haggars rapid thrash talk style would be able to spice up the innevitable boringness of brawl.
in fact, not even the mighty mike haggar would have anything funny to say about such a terrible and above all ****ing atrociously boring piece of **** game.

 

[Lovage]

not even the mighty mike haggars rapid thrash talk style would be able to spice up the innevitable boringness of brawl.
in fact, not even the mighty mike haggar would have anything funny to say about such a terrible and above all ****ing atrociously boring piece of **** game.

LMFAOOOOO



and that's that kids

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Question, does vVv include Canada?

Also, is there more information on applying and such?

 

[CT Chia]

While vVv is based out of the US and most members are from there, international players are welcome. We have a player from Chile in our division. You can find the application section on vVv's forums vvv-gaming.com.
Though of course Canada is a lot closer that basically any other country to the US. We're probably going to be making a international division of sorts, but I would likely keep Canada with the regular division.