I play for myself. I don’t play for stream monsters or other tournament players, what do I owe them? why do good players HAVE to put on a show? we don’t sign contracts that say must put on show at all times do we?
disrespect is a matter of interpretation. I think its incredibly disrespectful that stream monsters DEMAND to be entertained when they’ve added 0$ to the pot and are only there to make jokes about X players. We’re not entertainers, we don’t get paid as entertainers.
if I don’t feel like playing my best team for X reason, why should I have to? I paid money to enter the tournament, people didn’t pay me to enter it and put on a show. Technically tournament players are consumers and at that point, they can do w\e they want. Tournament players pay for an experience, the tournament itself. ANY player should be able to do anything with that experience they so desire. If a random troll wanted to enter X marvel tournament and troll with phoenix wright teams, they have the option to do that right since they spent THEIR OWN money?
When the FGC starts to pay top players regularly, like most esports, only then can the scene demand the entertainment value and I would have 0 issues with it at that point.
d3v
26
There’s a difference between “not playing my best team” and simply picking a random ass team and doing shit that not even casuals would be doing.
And the other problem here is that you don’t seem to realize that the only way for the FGC to be able to pay top players regularly is by increasing profits, part of which comes from advertisments and sponsorships - something that grows only by having a good number of regular viewers. The latter is something you cannot grow if you don’t have a good quality “product” in the first place and stopping these kinds of shenanigans are part of what makes a good quality “product.”
Off course, knowing you, you probably fail to realize that this isn’t just on the TOs. No, this is on everyone’s shoulders, from the TOs right down to the players. Everyone needs to come and help grow this thing if we want to bring it to a level where people (and not just a few of us lucky ones) can make a decent living off it.
Just because you pay doesn’t mean you get to do what you want. Playing your best is part of what you are paying for when you enter a tournament (and inversely playing against people playing their best too). If you want to go and see how good you are and everyone else is dicking around is that ok?
The point of FG tournaments is to see who is the best. Anything undermining that is a problem to some degree.
Preppy
28
Fuck growing and justifying requiring performance based upon that. Ain’t about that.
MtG Judges get bomb promo cards.
MtG Judges get basic courtesy and have nice forced schedules with which to DQ people by.
MtG stores that run tournaments take your money.
I am wholly unaware of any major MtG tournaments that do not have a profit motive.
FG tournaments are generally run by those without any profit motive.
FG Judges get ignored and hated and abused.
The organizational structure for FGs are generally entirely volunteer-based based upon the avowed mutual interest of playing to win. If you are notably fucking around playing casually (hey you know clearly it’s not possible to play casuals unless it’s on a lot of someone else’s time) that’s disrespectful to the entire process.
People who grouch about “well playing seriously is only justified if we make dollars” seem like selfish bastards who are perfectly happy exploiting the people running their tournaments but can’t be bothered to actually think through their thoughts. If the people running the tournaments start believing in that same sort of justification I feel like our entire FG tourney world falls apart.
as a TO myself who’s helped ran the regional tournament scene since mvc3, if someone came out to my area and did that, I wouldn’t feel exploited. I didn’t pay that guys traveling expenses to get here. I didn’t pay for his food while he was down here and I sure as hell didn’t pay his way into the tournament. Why should I have any moral authority to FORCE to play what I deem fit? Its ridiculous from my perspective to force that as a TO.
if you consider that exploiting the TOs, aren’t TOs exploiting players? most TOs are trying to grow a brand and the better the tournament looks, the better the brand looks. However growing that brand is coming 100% purely from exploiting tournament players. The TOs get all the gain while the players who helped grow it receive nothing in return.
We help tournaments like EVO\CEO be big because of tournament players showing up, thus generating regular players to show up. These guys sell shirts\merchandise and does any of it go back to the prize pools? they use our play to make their own venues bigger and then sell merchandise once they get big enough and return none of it to the players. Doesn’t that count as exploitation?
Preppy
30
So run your tourney by your rules. That’s the real key. If you want to go by some casual random rules (MtG style?) do your own thing. Just don’t expect other people to be living by your rules. If you’re in somebody else’s house, you go by their rules. Historically Justin (for example) would check with the TO first AFAIA. Respect.
I don’t know what TOs you are specifically referring to. There is often a reference to some mysterious phantom baller TO. Seems weird and dishonest to not name names as opposed to slandering the entire TO/judge/tourney volunteer community.
I thought the tournament itself was what the players were there for? Why were the players who wanted to be there there? The notion that players get “nothing” in return is crazed. I apologize to everyone who ever attended a tourney I ran: I did not realize how much of a vampire I was. I probably should go tell the TOs I know who have dedicated hundreds to thousands or hours to doing this for the community and run into tens of thousands in debt that they are getting all the “gain” and that they are exploiting players.
Who is selling shirts and merch at Evo? As far as I’m aware that’s mostly the community. As far as I’m aware the people in charge at Evo are just trying to keep a cool random tournament from S*GL live in the modern era and keeping it as non-commercial for-the-players as is sensible.
You guys ascribe way too much profit motive to the worst possible way to profit. Stop projecting your own biases upon others and think through what other people are doing. smh
I wouldn’t have any beef with a profit motive from TOs. like if the split is pay out to top 8 and keep enough to turn a profit for the house, doesn’t really bother me.
just lay it out in advance. if you intend to make a profit, let players know what the split is in advance. if you expect them to play out every match they’re in, make sure they know in advance. then the players can choose to show up or not.
Preppy
32
This conversation really confused me, so I thought I’d pay more attention and report back.
The thing about Magic is that it’s not really a spectator sport (you can, but … IMHO a random MtG match is less interesting than most random … GG Isuka matches). I judged a 40+ player competitive level event Saturday, and the top 8 was just me, the other judge, the scorekeeper, and one girlfriend. The finals were “watched” by nobody but the players as I helped tear down the room. Sunday’s 40+ player competitive level event was a repeat of this same complete lack of outside interest in the top 8 and finals. (Sunday, they agreed to split the cash pot in advance, but played it out for the invite.) It’s a mental game, but anybody here can be just as good as the top MtG players right now today given the same cards and enough time to think through and consider play angles. That’s utterly impossible for fighting games. Fighting games are a spectator-friendly sport, and one of the reasons you can readily rope people into helping you run/TO fighting game tournaments is because it’s damned fun to watch. If you remove this “it’s damned fun to watch”, you neuter community interest, you neuter interest of people who want to be running/paying for these things, and you basically shoot yourself in the foot. It’s needless and counter-productive.
I’m not sure I agree. The Pro Tour videos on youtube have around 50k views. Coverage of opens is a big part of what keeps SCG popular. The commentators are always gushing about Ichikawa’s stream on Nico Nico.
Preppy
34
That’s kinda my point. It’s not generally a great live spectator sport, and as regards online videos it’s the exception rather than the rule that any given stream will be watchable. Sure, some people watch online videos, mostly those that go to extensive lengths to add a presentation layer, but in general it’s not nearly as watchable/visual of a game. SCG gets loved for the commentary and such, not just for showing the game.
Going back to the original topic, though, are you saying that the “watchability” of the game affects how collusion should be handled, or even defined?
d3v
36
I don’t think he’s saying that it “should” define how it is handled.
Preppy is more likely pointing out that the “watchability” has historically affected attitudes towards it.
people have standards, the only problem is players won’t respect them unless it involves a lot of consequences.
What are the consequences of colluding? A slap on the wrist or nothing.
The consequences for sandbagging GF’s?
There just isn’t enough consequences to take any of it seriously. Maybe if rules were the same everywhere and enforced draconianly you would see a difference. For that you need actual organisation.
I’ve heard about Star Craft players throwing matches and there were actual consequences. Money and sponsors lost. The same can’t be said about FGC players because they aren’t making any, with the exception of Daigo that allegedly makes under 200k/year.
I’ve played competitive card games for over a decade, and I have to say that collusion/concession is fucking stupid. I know that it’s accepted in MtG, but many other card games do not allow it. Think of it like this: You concede so your friend can get into the Cut. This means that one person, who might have played for their wins, will now not make it into the Cut. There is also the issue of Strength of Schedule (a measure of the difficulty of your tournament based on your opponents’ wins). When you drop from the tournament, you “reduce” the SoS of all the people you played that tournament. This can effectively fuck their chances of making the cut if they are in a tied position (SoS is used as a tiebreaker).
keo-bas
39
Personally my corner is figuring out out how to enforce it in manner that respectable and not abusive.
Pertho
40
Shotouts to all the X-2 dudes mad because I drew into top 8. Get better scrubs.
Just want to confirm that I am getting this right. People care about collusion more in spectator-friendly games? So in a card game like MtG people care less about whether the results of matches are “artificial”, because they aren’t being deprived of a spectacle. But if that was the case, why would offering incentives be disallowed? It just seems weird to me that someone would be OK with an intentional draw knocking him out of top 8, as long as no explicit incentives were offered. The end-result is the same right? People are in or out of top 8 without having to play a real game.
I’ve mentioned this already, but it seems to me that the MtG rules seem to have defined “collusion” as basically “bribery”. That is, you can conspire as much as you want as long as no one is given an explicit offer to set the result one way or another. This seems a bit wonky to me, because at this point you might as well just use the term “bribery” instead of “collusion”. On the other hand FGC’s rules seem to cover actual factual collusion, but it also includes “intentional under-performance”, which does not actually require a conspiracy between two players. Rather than the integrity of the tournament as a test of skill for participants, the main issue seems to be the integrity of the stream as an entertainment platform for viewers.
I’ve been on both sides of the fence. Don’t really care one way or the other. I just wish there wasn’t this whole sub-game playing out in the last round where all the people in contention try to bribe each other in full view of the judging staff, who also know what’s up, and are basically there to police competitors’ ability to come up with magic words that get their intentions across while still technically staying within the rules.
I honestly can’t think of a more blatant slap in the face to the spirit of honest competition, given that the entire community seems to be complicit in it and more interested in preserving their self-image as “true competitors” while doing everything they can to avoid doing so. I’m not ashamed to say that I colluded* with my last round opponent in a sanctioned tournament a couple of weeks ago, who conspired with me to set our match result as a “draw” despite no games actually being played. This put both of us in top 8, cutting out some other dude who actually played and won in the last round. We did it because the rules said we could, and it was the highest EV move.
- Only in the spirit of the term. The letter of the rules say that no collusion took place.
Pertho
42
The thing about M:TG is that when Intentional Draws became a thing, it was a huge deal. After so many years though, they’ve become a part of tournament magic. Wizards of the Coast (company which owns the game) has done things to give players more incentive to play such as placement deciding who gets to go first during the finals.
At weekly tournaments, chopping the finals isn’t that big of a deal. At majors though, the tournaments want to have a nice clear winner. So at the very least play it out properly then do whatever with the prize money. This is more of a cultural thing with the FGC than anything else.
I’m not actually disputing the cultural differences. The main point of the thread was to confirm that those differences exist (success) and maybe see if either community could benefit from taking some information from the other.
For example, maybe FGC tournaments could just allow players to drop whenever they please without consequence. We won’t always get a “real” finals but we avoid getting a “joke” finals. Maybe MtG could benefit from adopting a “no draws” policy. A win is a win. Failure to win (including a draw) is a loss. This would significantly cut back on intentional draws, if not eliminating them completely.
Not saying the above ideas are good. They’re just examples.
For me, personally, I’ve decided that I don’t have a problem with either system per se. I just don’t like that they use misleading terms. Collusion implies conspiracy to subvert the game in order to get a predetermined outcome. If you’re going to allow all forms of conspiracy except that which involved incentives, just call it bribery. Likewise, if you’re going to lump all forms “intentional under-performance”, including that which does not involve conspiracy between multiple players, just call it intentional under-performance or failure to perform.
Preppy
44
Yeah, collusion is banned in the FGC, so that seems like an inappropriate word to use.
The people running the FGC and MtG have different motivations. MtG peoples have Top 8s in place because people want a Best Deck! of the day. The FGC has a Top 8 because figuring out who is best that day is the entire point of the tournament. Given that figuring out who is the best is the entire point of the tournament for most of the people there that day, increasing the acceptability of concessions seems utterly counterproductive to everything most FGC members would care about.
I was judging feature matches for the final round of GP Vancouver, and watched I think 5-6 of those matches ID (from four chosen by the coverage team). Then we go into Top 8 where people may or may not ID. The people running the tournament geeeeenerally get to be OK with this because they are being paid money to run your tournament for you and that’s the reward they get and the results and gameplay are important but not critical to why they are there running the tournament. The people running most FGC tournaments generally are losing money to run your tournament for you and the reward they get is watching awesome game play and results and the gameplay are pretty critical to why they are there running the tournament.
If you want to run the “hey everybody let’s all ID once we’re mathematically guaranteed entry fee + $5” FGC tournament, go ahead and do that. Just don’t pretend that anything in the world is stopping you from being dumb like that, because there is nothing stopping you from doing this. Until you go off and do this on a regular basis, I find your argument to be pretty ridiculous. After you run a couple tournaments, you’ll note that it’s generally pretty stupid and disappointing to the community at your tournament when XXX won’t play YYY because they’re totes buds. That’s generally not a competitive tournament for them then. If you can’t play your friend in a competitive game, you may not be the right type of person to be playing a competitive game.
Eliminating draws in MtG makes for some super shitty conversations at end of round where judges would have to be present.
As you’re probably aware, bribery is generally banned in MtG. Plus or minus betting on matches is a bannable offense in MtG, whereas it’s allowed in the FGC. So you also get to get into people fixing matches to take money from sucker spectators. The people running the FGC do not have the structure in place to handle all the nonsense that WoTC/etc get to sort out and deal with.
edit: And I should also be clear that most of the people at Grand Prix Vancouver had no idea who won. The tournament experience of MtG and fighting games are continents apart.
