This is a thread for people who have a passion for fighting games and are independently wealthy or work part-time/full time and don’t have free time to play during the week. This thread is not meant to insult the CMU guys, it’s my attempt at finding people who want to get together and play fighting games on weekends on a bi-weekly basis. Also I would like to start organizing and running small tournaments on a bi-monthly basis. Nothing big just a 2 or 3 game double elimination tournament, probably UMVC3, AE, and a random 3rd game (KOF13,MK9,VF5FS,TTT2 once it comes out).
James,
I feel that this thread is ill-advised. I understand your desire to play with people, and I respect that you are a very busy individual.
However, I must voice my concerns with this thread:
- Pittsburgh’s community is on the rise. Why try to split it up, or confuse prospective players with additional threads? Having one central thread provides focus.
- You lack a venue. Bonkler had to put in loads of time and effort in order to establish our current venue, and he often performs additional haggling in order to set up Saturday sessions, specifically to attract the people who cannot come on Thursdays.
- We already have monthly ranbats. There are talks of a formal tournament in the future as well. Additional tournaments would be overkill for our growing yet still limited player base.
TL;DR version:… Just give it a rest, dude.
Regards,
ButtersBB
1)If the steel city fist tournament is any indication you guys are doing the splitting up without my help.
2)I’m done with school so I don’t have a free space to play games. You’ve got me there.
3)Talks of tournaments have been around for a long time. I remember saying the once forbidden T word in the Pittsburgh thread over a year ago and the idea was instantly shot down and frowned upon by everyone else. Herb showed some interest but that waned.
If you think that random tournament is us splitting up, we only know about it because one of Herb’s friends is going and invited all of us. Then the guy flipped shit for some dumb reason and now at least I’m still going and a few of the only marvel players left are too. I wouldn’t exactly call that splitting us.
Besides you can have a diff meetup day yeah thats probably fine with everyone but if you’re gonna try and have some tournament don’t try to split it, I’m sure we’d all help you out.
I miss you guys.
Why two Pittsburgh threads
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I fear that you may be confused as to the origins of that tournament. Either way, no matter what context I put this statement into, I cannot make sense of it.
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I don’t quite like what you are implying here. Simply going to a university doesn’t just afford students the option of using whatever free space in the school they want for whatever they want to do. Bonkler (a PhD student, mind you) had to put in loads of work to organize the arrangement we currently have. We got booted from our previous Duquesne location, and you can go ahead and ask the Columbus crew about their experiences trying to get a venue at a university. It takes some serious networking and proposal skills to pull off.
3)… OK. I am going to go ahead and carefully explain why the “T word,” as you so eloquently put it, is so often shot down. I pray that this puts things into perspective.
When Herb first joined the scene, he tried on several occasion to organize tournaments. They did not work out, because he could not successfully establish a good venue, and the core player base in Pittsburgh was not large enough.
Now, lets analyze this further. Herb’s intentions were good, but he was new and did not understand the true state of the scene. In addition, he did not really know everything that went into organizing a good tournament.
So, what is required to organize a good tournament? Allow me to shed some light on this phenomenon.
Organizer: The most essential building block for creating a tournament is, of course, the organizer. However, this is not a position that is easily filled. In order to be successful, an organizer needs something called “social capital.” People aren’t just going to throw their support behind some random dude that suddenly announces a tournament. People are much more willing to set aside time and attend a tournament if it is organized by someone that they trust to throw a good, legitimate event.
How does someone establish this “social capital?” By being a part of the community. By having charisma, and consistently stepping up as a leader.
As an example, allow me to give you a timeline of a currently emerging organizer: Bonkler.
- Bonkler enrolls in a PhD program at CMU. He posts in Pittsburgh’s thread on Shoryuken and introduces himself.
- Bonkler shows up to the weekly gatherings at AIP. He is often spotted in the corner playing Melty Blood with Butters.
- Bonkler continues to be spotted playing anime games with Butters and newcomer Superscience as the community transitions to Duquesne.
- Community gets kicked out of Duquesne, Bonkler hosts super secret get togethers more often to compensate.
- Bonkler becomes increasingly well known for transporting people to tournaments and setting up hotel rooms.
- While super secret get togethers resume, Bonkler advocates for the community by carefully working out the details for a “competitive gaming” club at CMU.
- Bonkler purchases streaming equipment to be used for the new venue at CMU.
- The get togethers at CMU become increasingly big. Bonkler continually works to improve the quality of the stream.
- Bonkler organizes an official ranbat, which turns out to be far larger than any ranbat that had previously been attempted.
- Bonkler opens the next official Pittsburgh thread on SRK, officially ushering in the new era for Pittsburgh’s fighting game community.
Now then, let me highlight the key points: Bonkler attended gatherings, so people got to know who he was, and he gained an understanding of the scene. He built trust and good will by being consistently responsible with transportation and room accommodations. He established a venue and invested his own time and money on a stream. He is feeling himself now, and can bark out orders during gatherings if he wants to, and people will listen.
Let me highlight other organizers: St1ckbug, who constantly has to hold the EC anime community’s hands when it comes to planning trips to tournaments, and hosts his own bi-weeklies entitled “Team St1ckbug.” Ghaleon, who did such a good job organizing the Ohio community, that he is currently working as a professional caterer. Sp00ky, who turned his streaming of events into a phenomenon.
What do all of these people have in common? Social capital. They have charisma, leadership, and they understand their community.
What else is needed?
Local Players: Pittsburgh was a small, niche scene for quite a while. Over time, the scene has been getting increasingly bigger. A tournament was out of the question due to the size of our scene, but if the ranbats keep getting bigger, then this may eventually change.
Venue: This is always a challenge. Finding a laid back, non-shady business owner to work with is far easier said than done.
Funding: Goes without saying.
Out of Towners: In order to attract people from out of town to a Pittsburgh tournament, there are two things we must do: Provide them with some assurance that the event will be worthwhile by having a strong enough turnout amongst our local scene, and beat the snot out of them in various fighting games in order to provoke them into trying to knock us off of our high horses.
NOW THEN. It is apparent that you only meet 1 out of the 5 basic requirements. Do you now understand why it is that no one can take your proposal of “bi-weekly tournaments” even remotely seriously?
why don’t we all agree to stomp this little retard out when we see him. yeah id show up for that
how old are you?
So at the present time you feel having a successful tournament would not be possible? A tournament would not have to be just the CMU guys, it is possible that there are people who play fighting games in Pittsburgh and don’t attend CMUken functions that might be interested in playing in a tournament. If it was just the CMU guys then yes I would agree that there wouldn’t be enough players to have a decent sized tournament.
by the way you act. I’m probably old enough to be your dad
i’m guessing early 20’s