so i hear SC5 was... natsu vs natsu vs natsu vs natsu vs natsu vs...
You'd be wrong.
Can we get results?
Working on getting files from TO's, etc.
I have a lot to say about the tourney Saif and it's something we'll talk about in the future (or whenever you want to).
Overall, we had a blast. Tournies in Oklahoma are always fun for us and we always do our best to make the most of it. Were there hiccups? Yep. But y'all pushed through and every year this event continues to grow and thrive. I am proud of what you guys have done.
Great seeing everyone and getting games in with everyone and great seeing the organizers of OKGamers and HxC repping it for the community.
A few changes that everyone can agree on that I'll quickly address:
1) I know that information needs to be given in an effective manner, but having (what appears to be) a very angry person yelling at people and giving them attitudes is not the way to do it. I get what the one lady wanted and why she was trying to clear us out, but when she started making her sentences choppy I legitimately could not understand her. It's hard to "follow her orders" if we can't understand her. She also didn't make any sense. We were trying to leave and we were waiting on our last person to get his things and she tried to force us to leave. Then when I explained the situation to her, she told me to sit down? Definitely made for some unhappy gamers.
2) All tournies should be run on Challonge or Tio. Paper brackets for the SC2 tournament don't cut it when those who lost in winner's semi-finals get knocked down to first round of loser's.
3) See if there's a way to start earlier or stay later. Time was very tight and the most important matches are always at the end. Changing the rules of those matches (1 round only; ft5s -> ft3; telling people they can't finish their tourney) will always lead to very strong emotions.
Despite the problems that will always happen, you guys always manage to do a great job with what you have to work with and we'll definitely be back next year.
Maxx! Glad you guys had fun; and thank you for the notes. Most of them are quick answers:
1 - "the angry lady" - was trying to help, but not totally informed. She see's people standing around not leaving, I see 3+ state's worth of gamers unable to leave because they road together. Instead of trying to fight the help, we just went forwards trying to handle the fires at hand. It'll be attended to; and more importantly?
...next year will be a CONVENTION. With set times, clear guidelines, and a dry run for all TO's, CL's, and actual department heads to deligate issues to. We may have impressed those in attendance with the last few years at TCC Metro - next year's event will be night and day in difference; look forward to it.
2 - "Challonge or TIO" - I actually am in the process of looking for a browser based solution for all future events. TIO - crashes, and unless the NVGA will finally respond to my requests for an updated version, we are moving on. Challonge "could lead to too much cost" based on what our staff member who was tasked months ago to review it... We are going to revisit it as a solution as well as Zeek / z33k / the SC2 solution.
...that said? SC2 would have ran on z33k if we hadn't had a pre-reg already set up. That said - our CL for SC2 - this was our first event, and on top of that, he had emergency "work Saturday or your fired" pulled on him, so Daniel stepped up and helped run it. To say SC2 was on our preferred solid footing would be a vast lie lol; but Daniel did do a good job overall from what I know, Sammy helped him, and when the CL got there, they converted it to digital / online / yea.
3 - finishing...
...I cannot TELL you how many crazy things happened this year:
- We had gamers / people just showing up thinking they could add events / services / massages to this event?!@ Never happened before.
- We added 2 entire rooms worth of content; our signs went up late - next year we'll have a floor plan and hand out.
- SC2 - I've had 10+ meetings with the CL, TCC, and members involved to get LAN support, ports open, etc. After all that, the trusted WIFI goes flaky, lol.
- Streaming issues?! We tested it twice before this - how those port errors / anything clashed I don't know; we'll be testing it at the dry run next year, assuming we can ever get a solid group to work with...
- SC2 - after all the CL and I did to get things in place, we had to last minute 'replace him' - communication / plans didn't fully get passed on as well as we'd have liked. First SC2 event EVER for OKgamers though; we hope that is accounted in our judgement.
- Volunteering - we had a all time LOW in response; that said 1800volunteer became VolunteerTulsa - I had to learn an entirely new system, and then their system broke and didn't put up 2/25 until less than a month out -_-;;;
- We had gamers / people just showing up thinking they could add events / services / massages to this event?!@ Never happened before.
- We have had problems with Halo finishing; this year we stayed on top of FPS, and it finished... However, 2 fighters suffered due to our "15 event" problem, read below.
- And while this is part of the 15 event issue - still - we have NEVER seen fighter/shooter/PC players. We've also not seen anyone ever sign up for more than 2 or 3 tournaments; there were people signing up for 5+, one for sure that then just disappeared early; ugh lol.
I guess the last things to mention would be printing failures + wifi dying meant our registration process was delayed; despite multiple testing, etc. And let's not even talk about the important venue officials who showed up outta the blue haha...
IN THE END: I feel it boils down to 2 problems: Nice, and New.
Nice - we had 15+ events going on, and
we did not limit the gamers to what they could do.
That clearly backfired. Having NEVER seen 'multi-genre' gamers like this? Not even a HINT of it (ex. Mustang 3 years ago; 100 gamers, 50 FPS, 50 fighters - zero overlap...). We just could not be prepared. Shooters are shooters, Fighters are fighters, and PC are PC - but we had people sighing up to LITERALLY 5+ TOURNAMENTS - and they were Marvel or SF, CoD or Halo and then SC2... That meant every few matches we'd have to wait -
killing our time tables. I joke that adding SC2 seemingly broke everything lol - course it didn't, but it's fun to jab that at the CL
At one point - I stated Marvel and KoF didn't have a CL - and that caused us issues trying to support it; if we had a CL we would have had more setups, period. However... the other problem was multi-genre / 4+ tournament gamers...
Nice - won't happen next year or again, we'll be limiting how many games / genres / something; it's in discussion.
New - omg, so many new gamers. We had 2v2 people showing up that didn't know they needed a partner? We had fighters who just wouldn't read the rules. I had mothers calling me for the last 5 days with questions on how little Johnny can play or not, etc. The venue wholesale handed out my number instead of pointing them towards the website - and then again? The website was setup for GAMERS - not parents... Next year? It'll be a convention; I'll have a reason to dedicate a page, and centralize content...
(...OKgamers in an effort to not 'value our Promo Events over those events posted ' - has
never posted a graphic / banner / etc on the front page for our Promo events... We want to be fair and not show bias.)
Now that it'll be a "OKgamers convention" - we have all the right in the world to have a full front page path and clearer content so things are just - more clear to the average person.
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One other thing - date. It'll be later in the year - end of March is our goal...
...that way we can coordinate better with sponsors, as well as gamers themselves.
Did we prepare ahead of time? 2/25 has been planned since SEPTEMBER of last year; but that 'new year reset' affects events of this size, pure and simple.
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We do have a lot to be grateful for though; all those issues, and really we've had a lot of good feedback. We loath the fact a few games had issues, but all of it can be tweaked or totally replaced out and fixed for next yea. Staffing instantly fixed by becoming a Convention - because well, a 1 day convention has departments, and easier PR; which helps us all. CL's are now going to be our standard; no CL, no game. Will that lead to a serious issue when Marvel Vs Capcom comes up for TnT, etc? Possibly, but we'll have to handle it; we won't fail a gaming community by not finishing their event again, it goes against our core concerns.
I'm glad so many had good times, and regret those fighters that took the brunt of "15 tournament" issue; we can serve as example to all organizers attending and involved - not to let that happen at their events. It sure won't happen with OKgamers again.
Thank you and others for your kind words, and know we truly value our local gamers who came out, and all of our out of state friends; we hope to see you again at future events like Tokyo in Tulsa. And later? We'll see you March 2013 at TCC Metro for the first OKgamers Convention (Date to be announced ASAP so we don't have 'double booking' issues with anyone
).
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