"so GAMME is not happening! Now what?" tourney discussion thread

Tournaments & Events
62

The whole purpose of this thread was to have some sort of backup plan in case GAMME were to not happen. This is just to prepare for a “worst case scenario”

I feel for Manny and my thoughts and prayers go to him and that he has a speedy recovery. My question is if Manny is not able to answer these questions, then there HAS to be someone else that is in charge. It’s not so much that we just heard one and when “OMG Manny is a liar” but the fact that people came in and said these things and for days NO ONE from GPX came to deny said allegations. Then this thread was created and the ones that supported GPX came in with the tone of “How dare you guys do this, we’re gonna run this tourney with or w/o you” instead of answering the questions people have been asking for days. Now we’re being told to wait some more as Manny is flying somewhere else just to get some questions answered. With all this happening in the past few days, you have to understand people are going to get frustrated and get restless (especially when money is in question)

Truth be told, I WANT GAMME to happen cause for alot of people this is their EVO. Times are rough and not everyone can afford to go to EVO or can’t take time off for EVO so this is their best bet.

63

I’m sorry to see that GAMME is not happening as I was looking forward to the event.

With that said, as a member of the DEVASTATION team, I can confirm that we are trying to work something out to get the people who already have plane tickets over to Phoenix for DEV.

I don’t know what all we can do at this point, but we’re currently focusing on getting something going to help out people who already have plane tickets and get those changed to Phoenix. This may be monetary assistance, or something else, I can’t say for sure right now, but we’re working on something.

Thoughts?

Here’s the DEV thread for those who are unaware of what it is: http://shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=221222

64

Alright, so I called the convention center to verify rates for the stay, and they informed me that the event is definitely happening and that there were a large number of people still booked for the entire week (since she said people are likely staying the week for vacation purposes).

The event is still a go and nothing has changed as far as reservations at the hotel itself.

Just letting everyone know. The event isn’t TECHNICALLY canceled, people just want to plan something just in case (which is understandable, but since when does smash dictate an entire weekend canceled). The title of this thread is misleading, and I get that SRK can’t support a tourney that seems shady, but all signs still point to it happening. I’m still waiting on manny/maodib just as much as you guys are.

So I’d reserve judgment before pulling out and losing your spot. I’m still not going to go most likely, because I haven’t invested anything yet into the stay and I don’t want to take the chance, but if you have already taken the time and money out, don’t lose heart yet because everything seems to be pretty much in order.

If you want to call the hotel directly, their number is located on their website: http://www.thefloridahotelorlando.com/

Rooms seem to be going for 140 a night after tax, both king size beds (singles) and double room beds.

65

I seriously doubt this thing is cancelled. But I understand the fact that when you don’t hear from any tournament reps in a week timeframe, you are going to get a lot skepticism.

I will still be attending, but I won’t be surprised if this whole situation has drastically lowered the potential turnout of this huge ordeal. I was really looking forward to a large-scale annual gaming convention in Florida. I think this may have ruined that.

66

Hey everyone!

I myself will be working at GAMME and I can tell you it is not canceled.

Manny has been very busy dealing with a funeral for a friend out in LA as well as being in the hospital for a bit due to his circumstances.

I’m not here as a PR rep for GPX or GAMME, I’m just one of the guys who will be working at GAMME.

The whole MLG issue is being sorted out, so expect a reply from Manny very soon.

67

I don’t know about everyone else, but if GAMME is still happening, I want some solid, irrefutable proof that everything originally solicited for GAMME will actually happen. Japanese players, concerts, pots, etc. I need proof. Manny may come in and try to patch things up with words, but we’re far too into this for it to be fixed by some words. I want proof.

68

LOL this shit just gets more and more shady. I feel bad for anyone who bought a plane ticket to this garbage.

69

How is this shady?

A lot of people are asking whats up/saying its canceled, I’m stepping forward as staff and saying to my knowledge as a staff member for this event, its not canceled.

Edit:

Honestly, if me speaking out is just going to cause more issues, I’ll step away from the forums and let you guys wait for Manny to step forward when he does.

I’m just trying to help out here.

70

You guys are so naive, lol.

71

I’d also like for this event to happen and to a certain extent (naive as it may be) hope that my promised plane ticket comes through seeing as I (as I’m sure everyone else did) did some major scheduling for this. I won’t re-state what has been said about confusion, disinformation etc, I’ll just say I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

With that being said, I posted on the previous thread how all of this just seems to be completely out of order. However in light of new information (at least unbeknownst to me) presented to us on this page regarding the organizer’s health I can’t help but to first and foremost wish this person a successful and speedy recovery.

72

people should wait at least a week to see whats gonna happen instead of throwing the word “shady” around and accusing Manny for the downfall of an event that hasn’t even happened yet…have some patience

73

<— Still crossing fingers, hell if manny is worrying because its so big, dont make it so big, cut it down to like 6 games not the dozen(s) he planned for

oh well

74

I Frankly don’t give a damn about Japanese or w.e… as longest Empire shows u p with their players and we get a tournament going… i don’t care , just relax guys lets give him time

75

Here we go,

I wanted to chime in and make sure I post information clearly…

I made a mistake. I allowed 3 small issues to carry on without worrying about them as much as I should have and they became much much larger problems.

  1. GAMME’s website
  2. touring and my personal time devoted directly to communicating all the time.
  3. the decision to change the date based on what I thought was an agreement from MLG

I know now that was bogus - Already reported to Danny Duong and Sundance Digiovanni the name of the person we were speaking to. I have not however issued the emails or all the correspondence as of yet. I do not want any more scandal caused to harm them or us. they have been gracious with us on solving this issue and patient.

The intent to switch, was in its purest form, an attempt to build a relationship with MLG and provide a no pressure situation for a large scale company like theirs to provide their competition to the public and instead of competing working together.

This we know now was a flawed idea, had it been a better scenario months ago would have been the appropriate time to had gone forward with such a deviation. I had spoken to Triforce on this and a few other folks in our group like ABK (After Texas V Cali) and John Gallagher and got their opinions on this. mostly to the tune of its probably better not to change dates.

I realize now that my touring all over the US and working as much as we have to help with everyone elses event probably didnt help me make sure my ops department got our website up. That is an issue that I am learning from, instead of having a basic site up, I wanted it to be perfect and built to order, it cost me so far $18,000 after 3 designers and no site made up, Kayel Justice our current designer is a great guy from Philly and built a great looking site, but between my touring and his schedule we have not been able to sit down and finalize it to get it online. this is my fault.

and of course this adds to the tension and concerns.

some of you guys are concerned about the prize pots. Conventions of this nature are built from sponsorships, company money and incoming money from vendors renting space and such. we had all three.

this is all before attendee dollars are put into play.

I won’t hold back from you guys, I am deeply hurt that the community would turn on us so quickly…perhaps its more personal to me, because I make this personal, I work my ass off, like many of you - like Big Eric, Like John Gallagher, Like Brad Levine and Keits and the Cannons to make sure your events are solid. I am in the trenches with these guys almost everywhere to make sure that happens for a lot of events. I am not competitive in the sense that I want a better convention. its not about that for me.

Many of you have met me - who knows where, a major, a convention, having a drink in one of our after parties or simply just the hallway of an event. most of you have seen me working and have seen me doing what I can. This is why its hard for me to see so many of you so quickly turn and jump on the rumor mill band wagon. I am away from my children for months on end doing this type of work. Yes we have contract work but we have a lot of sponsorships for events like NEC, MWC, etc.

We made a mistake. now its time to fix and deal with it. but if the community wants to shy away from us so quickly, I will close the doors of GAMME and rebuild it another time, and work to gain your trust again.

I have in random rants and frustrated vents posted to inkblot and to Ponder about some of the things I am considering to do to either walk away and in good faith made amends. I am waiting until after this weekend to make my final decision.

I have not been on since last week. I posted why. my mentor passed away - Carl Macek, he was a dear friend and I was at the memorial in LA. I flew to Miami to see my children and check in with my doctors because I have cancer and it was time for another checkup before drastic treatment was needed. I was told on monday that I had very little time just short of a year.

I never hold back from people whats on my mind, so I will say it plainly, these issues to me are meaningless at this moment. my only concern is to finish my closest obligations and promises - i promised keits we would bring him equipment, he covered a little bit of gas and our hotel, I am not charging him for anything else. he is my friend and I will be there for his first Major and we are proud of him. I was expecting to go to ECT as well, but John has decided to not trust or speak to us first over this. I understand. I do not blame him, but I am human and these things will affect me. but at the moment my biggest concern once these events are done, is to step back let my staff do their jobs and go home and focus on my family.

I will not waste time away from my family if you the community are so quick to judge us.

Yes I made a mistake and I was working on fixing it. Sundance I deeply apologize we were naive and did not authenticate the validity of the communication we received. that is of course our error, and shows we need to increase our operations to protect ourselves better.

if in the end we end up cancelling the show or pushing it back since the damage done is quite severe and we have already been issuing refunds. I will extend an offer I to EVO if you wish for the Japanese players to come to EVO and play against the empire team, I will make it happen.

We have 2 tickets in the air that have to be cared for and a third that would have been ECT2. the winner @ Texas v Cali I contacted directly and told him I would get him his flight to the show when we got close to the event, if we end up deciding to close the event due to the issues of late that have harmed the attendance severely we will turn these flights to EVO tickets. this also includes the ticket for Ariel who won WinterBrawl Tekken. We honor our commitments.

I apologize for not being available all the time, touring events each and every weekend is very hard especially being on the road from point a to point b. That is my fault for not balancing my time - i see how it created concerns.

I saw as well people brought up Kunicon from years ago. Kunicon was a very successful event which I helped build, it was not my show, I was the chairman of the event, but the company was owned by a family of 8 which had a board of directorate. whoever decided to post information or do research on this would have found that I left that company becuase they after making so much money of the 7 events I built with my staff (GPX/AFS) and my employees that they decided to not pay any of the staff after they had worked. They offered me more money and did not want to pay anyone else, I walked.

I was making 6 figures and I walked, my reputation was more important to me. Any of you that know me or worked with me, know this.

I make no excuses for myself and I always walk in the shadow of my own judgment to improve as a person and improve the events I build and the events I work with. make your own judgements, I have a clear conscious.

if any of you wish to know any more I am more than happy to answer questions. oh and I noticed I have an old company phone line listed - 786-623-1489 is an old number the correct one is 202-569-5392 I answer it or Mandy my assistant answers it. it used to be answered by our accounting and registration office, but I felt it prudent for me to answer and talk to people directly - we just missed that on our website.

if there is anything else anyone wants to know, I am here. but I am not online as often because of the combined stresses of touring and being sick.

Thank you

Manny Camacho
President, CEO
GPX Corporation

forgive any typos, I wrote from my heart not to impress you with my eloquence or grammar.

76

Who the hell cares about the ppl who dont want to come… to bad for them… go on with the tournament please

77

Manny, what I don’t like about you:

[LIST]
[]The stories you always come up with.
[]The lies you straight, come out, and state. You should have talked to more people in MLG before just dropping their name as a quick, so quoted “Scape Goat.”
[]The lack of responsibility you have to place some one, in command, when you have to leave your post. “Oh no, I have stuff to do/emergencies, and won’t be near a computer. I have events worth over (what seems) $40k featuring international contacts, and yet you don’t have some one for a family member or even hospital staff to call and take over your post.”
[]How it feels like you are trying to put yourself in a position of power in video game events. You slipped into two anime conventions and now run the game rooms, with various strong connections being implanted in the rest of the conventions, and poof out pops a tournament that you attempt to make bigger then a tournament that has been in effect for over 10 years. Really dude. You have less then 8 months clocked in this community, tone it down.
[]You were HEAD of a convention years ago. That takes some bit of planning, right? You decide to run a tournament that should be “on par” with the biggest in the world. Yet you make SO many oversights and simple mistakes.
[]You bring your children in to this. Then be with THEM! Be with your WIFE! Why do you sacrifice SO much and try to shotgun your ideas into progression when you haven’t even spent a little bit of time trying to run your whole own thing. HELL, you said one year may be all you have with them!
[]Anime cons are nothing like what takes place at this scene’s tournaments. Sure you helped at a few tournaments. In 8 months. That doesn’t warrant you to run something that some people have put over 10 years of time into and come to a net worth that is a fraction of what you’re are running. Let me tell you though, they are so many times better then what I have seen you do.
[]You love the attention, you love feeling important. I get it, I really do. That is really the track record I see here. And you can be! At home. At your local scene. Maybe even 10 years from now. But not now. Worry about your health, your family, passing friends. You showed how professional/organized you can be over a 5 year period.
[/list]

I don’t dig it man. I just don’t. I am here and there in the anime scene. I enjoy it. You popped up a little bit ago and did your thing, I don’t care. But you went a little too deep in some waters, and now you put your self so far out there, you are getting in way above your head. I don’t care what you do, I really don’t, you are a free man. But you can’t do THIS, you are too unorganized, unprofessional:
[media=youtube]Gd3qvL-iVLY&feature=related[/media]
(I expect this video to disappear.)

Thats it. I’ve been holding out. I really am one of “those guys.” But you should have heard how many people talked highly of this guy, just after one event of talking with him. Any comment earlier would have been a tiny bump in this road. Heck, I really thought he was going to be able to get it off with out a hitch. I had faith, but it is time to bring this into the light for ya’ll.

All I really want to say is that I hope that GAMME happens for those who are committed already, and that you go away and really get your priorities straight.

Just FYI. My name is Jeremy. I am bottom tier 09’er in the Philly scene and have attended and staffed anime conventions for the past 7 years. I love my local scene, and wish none of it to harm. I hope GAMME picks up solely for the FL scene for this reason. I did not plan on attending GAMME due to the previous things I knew of Manny. If anything starts happening to me due to this post (harassment) , I’ll let you all know, because I heard of it happening before.

78

ok yo real talk, i might have a venue locked up… if it goes through me and dinyc3 gonna be runnin a new tourney… wil know for sure in the next 2 days.

79

i dont blame u guys for being pissed off at what has happened. Now i wasnt attending this but I kinda felt this wasnt going to happen. I mean no sponsors/fliers/or confirmation about anything. When I read that it was usa vs japan for 5000 i was like this aint happening cuz who the hell would drop 5000 as a pot outta there pockets? Now i know there are TO’s that spend there own money on tournaments and get nothing back but come on, $30,000+ committed to a tournament with nothing verified is really strange. Look at majority of the tournaments that get sponsored have list of whos sponsoring and what they are donating/giving as a sponsor. With a month left and nothing announced everyone has the right to be pissed. What people keep forgetting to mention is that anyone from japan confirm that they are showing up to this? No. I think as a community everyone wants the scene to grow bigger and bigger. The thing you have to realize is many people planned for this and now are screwed. What about the people flying in from South America? No refunds for them but they wasted 1000s of dollars only to show up to a washed up event. When someone is shady in the past, most likely they’ll still be like that in the future. I mean look at all the people who backed you up and now look stupid because of all of this. I think the community should just go ahead with their plans of running their own tournament because i see some more side stepping from manny comng.

80

Jeremy, your allowed your opinion, but I have been working with events and conventions, building my own and working the largest events in the country for over 20 years. Please don’t fall short to believing simply because I do not post often on SRK that this is the extent of my business, you would be sorely mistaken.

I do not have a need or wish to try and establish myself over and over. I said my peace, your pretty bold to just start slandering me on this board and it is very inappropriate, but I guess that is your right. To speak with ignorance.

Just like it is my right to state that you have no clue.

81

I am glad you posted this video up. it is me the CEO of my company and the CEO of another company having fun at an event in DC. This is what we are about. having fun. living life. not looking back. not answering to people like you that would have people like us silenced because we scare you into your little box.

You don’t like it, you don’t have to drink our juice.

P.S. The comments you make toward my family about my time, not very cool young man, not very cool. All your doing here is making your argument worse by making insults and brash comments aimed at attempting to just be a jackass.