Okay long post, so I apologize in advance:
I know most of you here don’t know me, or barely know me and my name doesn’t mean much. (Deservedly so). I’ve not been around because I’ve been working hard on my own personal stuff. (The biggest problem being that I am paying for myself and my younger brother to go to college, even with scholarships, it’s very tight). The work is finally paying off and soon if all goes well I should be moving into my first house. I’ll have a yard and everything! Keeping my fingers crossed.
Anyway, I’ve fallen into an opportunity for the GA fighting game community. I may never be the best player and I certainly don’t have the notches in my belt in experience many of you have, but I have kept up with the scene and have done the best I could to highlight the area when I can through the column I write.
Introductions (reintroductions?) aside I was contacted yesterday by an old friend of mine, who wants to get into the business of video game tournaments. As I have a love for fighting games it’s a no brainer what kind of things I want to throw.
The friend is the manager of Red Carpet Lanes. The place is an interesting mix of things, a bowling alley, pool hall, arcade, vip lounge, bistro type of thing. Think “Jillians” and you have the right idea. You can check out information here: Red Carpet Lanes
Here are the pros and cons of this whole venture as I see it:
PROS:
[LIST]
[]A massive venue that can house 1800 people.
[]These tournaments would be run by the operators of the venue, so no cost to rent space.
[]Guaranteed Pots (still negotiating but he is the one who offered it)
[]They are serious about it, they are going to spend their own money to get consoles for setups
[*]Entry fee gets you food and drinks, discounts on bowling, etc
[/LIST]
CONS:
[LIST]
[]No experience in this arena.
[]HDTVs (I know players will not accept televisions that lag, so I will make sure he knows this is the case)
[/LIST]
What he wants is weekly tournaments, and is even interested in a major at some point. (He already has contacts with local hotels). However, I want to stress this venture in NO WAY intends to replace or drive out existing tournaments. Final Round, Impact Clash, Waba Weeklies, etc, are all things I appreciate for this community. I don’t want to drive out anything, I want GA to roll deep!
Also another perk is I’ve talked with him about filming and posting videos. Cool-Breeze talked about getting our scene attention and respect, and if we could get more videos out there it would help immensely. I mean just think we know UK 3S players nearly solely from their videos.
So I’m coming to you asking what you guys think. I do believe the tournaments will happen with or without my input, because in addition to wanting to add gaming flavor to the venue he’s trying to drive some traffic there during the day since they already got the nights going well, but as he’s come to me, I want to do it right.
The events would be weekly, actually multiple times a week. Obviously over the summer he’s aiming at getting some of the younger crowd to come out since they are out of school, but there would be different game different days. That’s another thing I’d like input on, if you guys think this is worth embracing what games would you want? What times? These would happen during the week unfortunately (but it would be nice since it would not conflict with Waba) and I could push to get the games we really are interested in run on Friday to make it a bit easier on the community to come out.
Street Fighter IV is a no brainer, but what in addition to that? Soul Calibur 4?
I also need to get with him on the issue of people bringing their own equipment. Controllers and the like are fine, but on the business side he is wary of liability of stuff the tournament uses that is borrowed from players. (Hence him wanting to buy six PS3s). I’m pretty sure he’ll listen to me, and I’m going to tell him that a lot of tournaments work with players bringing in things (especially if they want to play games not officially having a tournament) but there may need to be some sort of liability waiver if that happens.
As not to hit you with too much information lastly I was thinking, if people were interested, in running Ranking Battles. I think it would both give incentive for people to keep showing up, as well as create videos that could get the ATL some of it’s own hype.
So I’m just wondering your input, thoughts, comments, etc.
There would be other games on other nights, Madden, and stuff still to be determined. These would start in the next month or so.