Tournament Organizers Implement Anti-Collusion Rule

[RECESSIONTIME]

Have they announced what the punishment for this is going to be yet? Sorry, I might have missed it on eventhubs.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cibPmY79nPk#t=7m45s

It would be hilarious if all the top players were doing skype collusion meetings the week before to organize how they would throw matches and profit from the side bets.

[King9999]

The problem with the FGC is that it is based primarily off of console. You won’t get too many sponsors if all a company can sell is glowing headphones and controllers/sticks. With computer games there is virtually no end to the kinds of products you can sell and thus sponsorships can actually lead to real salaries. I’d advocate lateraling toward playing games on high end computers to attract sponsors but this obviously is costly and has risks associated with it that I won’t get into.

It’s entirely possible to get sponsorship from non-game companies. NOS sponsored some events, and so did Hi Chew. A company like Subway could sponsor events and provide food for everyone. ASUS could sponsor tournaments by providing their monitors. The FGC already uses them, but it would be better if their name was advertised so everyone knows what to buy when they want lagless gaming.

Point is, sponsors don’t have to be video-game related. Anyone looking for marketing opportunities can support the tourneys in some way. The problem is that the community needs to clean up their act first before that can happen.

[Jion_Wansu]

LOL I just read the SRK blog about this and it seems that there are so many scrubs commenting. Why bitch about the new rules? Rules are rules. If you don’t like them then don’t join the tournament, right?

[jedpossum]

The problem with the FGC is that it is based primarily off of console. You won’t get too many sponsors if all a company can sell is glowing headphones and controllers/sticks. With computer games there is virtually no end to the kinds of products you can sell and thus sponsorships can actually lead to real salaries. I’d advocate lateraling toward playing games on high end computers to attract sponsors but this obviously is costly and has risks associated with it that I won’t get into.

It’s entirely possible to get sponsorship from non-game companies. NOS sponsored some events, and so did Hi Chew. A company like Subway could sponsor events and provide food for everyone. ASUS could sponsor tournaments by providing their monitors. The FGC already uses them, but it would be better if their name was advertised so everyone knows what to buy when they want lagless gaming.

Point is, sponsors don’t have to be video-game related. Anyone looking for marketing opportunities can support the tourneys in some way. The problem is that the community needs to clean up their act first before that can happen.

You for got to list Toyota, they sponsored evo one year.

[WTF-AKUMA-HAX]

Right, where Tokido wore a bandana with those terrible sumo characters on it from that weird Toyota Yaris car tie-in, big blow up dolls, and that seizure on your eyeballs free XBLArcade racing game.

Toyota probably sponsored the SF25th Anniversary tournament series too. That one had no entry fees, cash payouts all over, and the Toyota car grand prize.

[Icy_Black_Deep]

This community has already chased off any real sponsors with their “waaahhh e-sports!” refrain.

Stop collusion by having Aris stand over the players and threaten to smell them if they lose.

[d3v]

The problem with the FGC is that it is based primarily off of console. You won’t get too many sponsors if all a company can sell is glowing headphones and controllers/sticks. With computer games there is virtually no end to the kinds of products you can sell and thus sponsorships can actually lead to real salaries. I’d advocate lateraling toward playing games on high end computers to attract sponsors but this obviously is costly and has risks associated with it that I won’t get into.

It’s entirely possible to get sponsorship from non-game companies. NOS sponsored some events, and so did Hi Chew. A company like Subway could sponsor events and provide food for everyone. ASUS could sponsor tournaments by providing their monitors. The FGC already uses them, but it would be better if their name was advertised so everyone knows what to buy when they want lagless gaming.

Point is, sponsors don’t have to be video-game related. Anyone looking for marketing opportunities can support the tourneys in some way. The problem is that the community needs to clean up their act first before that can happen.

You for got to list Toyota, they sponsored evo one year.

And the 25th anniv. tournament. Thanks to them, Infiltration has a new 86.

Also, lets not forget EG and Papa Johns.

[M.D]

I still think this rule is fickle. I mean, what can raise suspicion for colluding?

• Honda/Blanka mirror match and both players sit on charge and do nothing for half the round.

• T Hawk does YOLO condor dive all day and buffers command grab or dp cause it his best bet against most of the cast.

• One player has a severe life lead and 25 seconds on the clock, but doesn’t back off and ends up losing. Did he/she collude or did he/she just want to finish the match?

• One player keeps doing the same move and the other player keeps falling for it. Who’s at fault?

• Player loses and decides to counterpick with a character that isn’t a counterpick and no one ever seen them use the character. Did he/she collude if they lose?

• Playing Mokujin in a Tekken tournament.

• Playing Dan in a SF tournament or any character designed to be ass in a fighting game.

• When I play Ryu, I use a lot of tatsus to the point where I’m willing to take the punish just for positioning since I won’t get KDed against half the cast. I think it’s a fairly strong tool that most Ryu players don’t use to its potential or at all. I also feel the same way about U2, which is the only one I use with Ryu. Does this mean I’m not trying?

If what Spooky did was a legitimate call on colluding than I guess I’m not clear on this. Chris G was landing his bnbs, and Sanford had the life lead before Spooky stream RQ. I don’t know who Chris mains in AE but if you told me it was Yang, I would believe you. Isn’t that what anti-collusion is?

[pherai]

^
most of those examples seem pretty far fetched for happening in a finals situation which is really the only relevant situation here.

I think some of the naysayers here should remember that TO’s never want to DQ anyone anyway so it’s pretty unlikely that this kind of rule will be used flagrantly.

[ukyo_rulz]

ukyo_rulz is based in Japan. So for him, being locked to one character/team in a tournament is most likely normal since that’s part of the Japanese format.

Ha ha you got me. I also have a lot of experience playing CCGs competitively and you can’t really change your deck in the middle of those tournaments either (although players are also allowed to concede any time they want for any reason, and getting an “intentional draw” is but a tick mark on a checkbox away).

Chris was salty over the brackets in Injustice being switched back and forth and carried that into UMvC3 grand finals where he was trolling

I think he was intentionally trying to make the show bad to “get back” at the organizers of VxG. If I was a potential event sponsor that kind of behavior would turn me off.

[BlackShinobi]

I still think this rule is fickle. I mean, what can raise suspicion for colluding?

• Honda/Blanka mirror match and both players sit on charge and do nothing for half the round.

• T Hawk does YOLO condor dive all day and buffers command grab or dp cause it his best bet against most of the cast.

• One player has a severe life lead and 25 seconds on the clock, but doesn’t back off and ends up losing. Did he/she collude or did he/she just want to finish the match?

• One player keeps doing the same move and the other player keeps falling for it. Who’s at fault?

• Player loses and decides to counterpick with a character that isn’t a counterpick and no one ever seen them use the character. Did he/she collude if they lose?

• Playing Mokujin in a Tekken tournament.

• Playing Dan in a SF tournament or any character designed to be ass in a fighting game.

• When I play Ryu, I use a lot of tatsus to the point where I’m willing to take the punish just for positioning since I won’t get KDed against half the cast. I think it’s a fairly strong tool that most Ryu players don’t use to its potential or at all. I also feel the same way about U2, which is the only one I use with Ryu. Does this mean I’m not trying?

If what Spooky did was a legitimate call on colluding than I guess I’m not clear on this. Chris G was landing his bnbs, and Sanford had the life lead before Spooky stream RQ. I don’t know who Chris mains in AE but if you told me it was Yang, I would believe you. Isn’t that what anti-collusion is?

You are disregarding motive, patterns and history.
Most cases of collusion happen in a few very well known and predictable circumstances, here are just a few things to look out for.
1. Is there prize money involved in this match?
Theres not much incentive to throw a first or second round match since there is no money involved and it just serves to make the loser look worse.

2. Are the two players involved in this match friends?
This is one of the only reasons for fake or thrown matches where money is not involves and usually involves significant complaining to someone about a float, even in situations where it is completely unreasonable. If they can’t get a float then certain players players have a history of deciding who will win that match before it begins.

3. Do these two players have a previous history having fake matches?
Pretty self explanatory, if you are a repeat offender, are usually watched more carefully for this type of thing.

**4. Has this players been picking this character for the entire event? **
I have seen both legit and completely fake mokujin finals, if you make it all the way to finals by playing mokujin then no one is going to say anything if you play mokujin in finals; however if you played your main for the entire tournament and got to the finals against your friend and deciding to pick mokujin for that match you are clearly screwing around. Dan picks or any low tier characters fall into this same classification. Also your ryu tatsus, If you always use more than the average number of Tatsus then that is part of your known game, but if you never use tatsus and you suddenly do 10 in grand finals something is fishy. Have the blanka and the honda players played each other before? if so did their previous matches look like that? For a top player to be using a character that no one is familiar with them playing late in a tournament in the era of streaming should at least set off a warning light that something may be up.

5. Is there a person ahead in the bracket that is clearly a better matchup for one player?
This one is a little more advanced and applies for matches before the grand finals, sometimes the better player will intentionally lose to if there is a player in the loser’s bracket the other player can’t beat, the better player goes to losers and player beats the player that would have been a bad matchup for their friend to increase both players’ chances of making it to GF and probably splitting.

Collusion is not even nearly as mysterious as people who don’t know what is looks like try to make is out to be. I’m looking for this stuff rounds before it happens. So are a number of other long time TOs and bracket runners.

[Koop]

RE-POSTING FOR EMPHASIS

learns your in finals****
(NOTE… WE DONT CARE ABOUT YOUR POOL PLAY… THIS ONLY PERTAINS TO THE MONEY PAYOUT ROUNDS/FINALS!!!)
[list]

[*]approaches homie/friend cause you most likely wont do so to a unknown/rival (does that word exist in the fgc still?)

[*]talk about the pot split PRIVATELY…not around every sodom, ken, and harry. calculate 1st and second 2 winning an prizes divide by 2 an maybe fight over the gifts. this should be able to be done in a matter of moments.

[*]bring up point of PLAY IT OUT… why cause it pleases the fans (remember you have them now), media (cause the world is watching), Sponsors (this include other players/onlookers whom PAID into the pot), and also where you two STAND since you both got this far** no matter who you guys pick** and chances are in this day in age seeing each other again is slim. the faster you do so the faster the loot is made. AND REMEMBER…theyre side bets going on so more money could be made NOT ONLY for you but the crew an friends as well.

[*]fight it out to help solidify 1st and 2nd place. Put smiles on everyone faces an for the books.

[*]wait till funds are given, friends are not around, and no one is watching aka back at your meeting ground… divide up the loot.

[*]Lose half of money MMin a guy named boogerpicker part 2 who tied for 132nd place in a crowded room

[/list]

I thought folks knew how to hustle correctly. Especially in phase where more money is floating around an stardom/who are you is a priority.

[Koop]

reposting!!

I think everyone is taking things a bit far and I said soon as we dropped the rule people would take it a bit far by doing stupid ish

So I will say this:

You can still potsplit

You can still pick a alternative team/character

JUST PLAY TO WIN… you have to understand you’re no longer just in the comfort of your arcade venue where its just you and the other players. You have involved sponsors and media outlets that HAVE sponsors. Show that you’re serious!!! Thats all.

During my time (sorry to sound old and outdated) but potsplitting was all the time. YET we played it just cause. Just to see what wouldve happened… if we didnt WE let it be known there will be no finals. But now that you have a third party included you cant say we won’t play. you have to play. If you pick an alternate… PLAY IT OUT!! If you can take the time out to talk with said person youre breaking bread with… you damn sure can say lets play serious. Though Justin got played by Wolfkrone cause Wolfkrone obviously had other motives, they stilled PLAYED IT OUT and played serious.

Its simple but I don’t see why people are tripping over this. It is just to start taking things seriously since now youre no longer the private little underground thing.

Ultimately…if you are NOT in the payout rounds… the finals. you don’t have nothing to worry about

If you pick a alternate character and are in the payout rounds…PLAY TO WIN

if you pick a alternate team and are in the finals…PLAY TO WIN

if you decide to potsplit your funds after said tourny…PLAY TO WIN REGARDLESS

PLAY TO WIN

PLAY TO WIN

JUST PLAY TO WIN!

[SirMixahLot]

Via Viscan’ts Facebook…

There’s a lot of stupidity on my twitter feed right now, too much to talk about even on 20-30 tweets so we’re just going to kill another lunch break and do this here. Shooting down some of the arguments I’m seeing floated around.

1. Tournaments aren’t improving.
   This is incredibly myopic and focused only on “the top player experience”. Here’s a fact for you. Way more people go out in 2 than make it late in an event. The majority of people go out in 2; for a lot of people who only play 1 game or 2 games, they’re going to be out of the tournament in an hour or less. This doesn’t apply to the top player club who is routinely competing deep into Sunday so maybe it’s easy for them to miss.

The tournament experience has improved dramatically for these people and it should since they make up the majority and all. There’s more stuff to do at tournaments now. Panels, booths to buy things at, booths to try out new games, special events to watch, better venues. These things matter to people and they’ve made the tournament experience better. If you’re playing 6 games, make it out of pools in all of them you don’t care about this stuff and probably don’t even notice. But this stuff is as important as the tournament. Evo is turning into a convention and as much as I want to send all the cosplayers to the gas chambers, that’s the right move. 10,000 people showed up to Evo. Less than 1% of them were still competing by Saturday night. Giving the 99% something fun to do makes it better for them and more likely to come back. These people pay your salary through paying your sponsors, so it’s in your best interests to look after them even if you’re so high and mighty that you don’t care about them personally.

And we haven’t even got into streams/online production which is the #1 factor behind FGC growth. But we’ve said enough here.

2. TOs are profiting! Look at all the sponsors giving tens of thousands and still no pot bonuses! WTF!
   Profit = Revenue - expenses. People are either grossly overestimating revenue or grossly underestimating expenses in order to get profit to have any size to it. Given what certain people said on twitter, it’s the revenue side they don’t understand. Most tournaments sponsors aren’t shelling out 5 figures. Some booths aren’t even shelling out 4 figures. Venue fees and other tournament expenses eat up a lot of the sponsor money right off the bat. Tournaments depend on venue fees in advance (which is why we do online registration now) to actually get anything done given that most expenses have to be paid well in advance of the event. Most tournaments literally don’t know if they’re going to break even until the day of the event. Heaven forbid a major sponsor backs out.

3. Top players are why the scene is doing as well as it is! We obviously deserve money that the 99% don’t!
   See this is actually interesting and an argument I’ve seen thrown out from people who should know better. Last week I said only a handful of people actually move the needle. That’s true. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Andrea Dworkin came back from beyond the grave and dragged me to hell to pay for my crimes against women for all eternity. This wouldn’t change ANY major tournaments whatsoever. OK I haven’t won anything in awhile so maybe I’m a bad example.

Who moves the needle exactly? Who out there is someone famous/cared about enough for people to say “oh ______ isn’t here? Well I’m not watching.” The list is smaller than you think. The EVENT ITSELF is a bigger star than any actual players and even bigger than small groups/teams of players.

That’s what I was talking about last week.

4. I don’t care about any of this, the winners should make more for winning.
   No you shouldn’t. As I said above just winning isn’t enough to move the needle. If top player 1 doesn’t win, top player 2 will win. And people don’t have enough invested in either of them to care either way. The event and the game is a bigger star than either top player 1 or top player 2. Hold that thought for a second.

Our scene simply doesn’t have enough cash inflow to pay tournament winners on the same level as Starcraft, League, etc. They have more cash inflow so they can distribute it better. For our scene to give more money out we have to either scrap all the side stuff and presentation stuff just to give it to 5 people (which kills our growth and stops us from investing in our future) or we need to get more money. Assuming people are not idiots (big assumption given today’s Twitter) let’s look at how to get more money.

If YOU (personally) want more money an easy way to get it is to increase your star power so you can demand larger sponsor payments and/or use your celebrity to increase event fees going to you specifically. If you can prove that YOU not being there decreases viewership and interest in the event then you have bargaining power. Nobody has that yet so this is a growth opportunity.

The irony involving the whole twitter drama is that the people who are crying loudest for more money are LITERALLY killing their drawing power by making people dislike them for being whiny children. You need to make “the people” that you’re talking down to actually care about you. Do something nice for them. Why should people give Chris more money when all he does is win? It’s not like winning is a bad thing, he’s clearly the most skilled but what does Chris winning do for me or you or anyone? Like I said before, if he doesn’t win, someone else would. Just winning isn’t enough. I say something and some people listen because they like me but I don’t have that “best in the world” cachet that someone like Chris G has. I don’t have his value. That’s not “poor me” whining, that’s just a fact If Chris G was saying this word for word and writing articles and making videos and interacting nicely with “the little people” then he would be well on his way to creating the money he claims to want.

The key to more money for someone like Chris G is embracing his role as face of the FGC and using that as leverage to increase his salary. Not only does he not realize that, he is going out of his way to kill his golden goose not only before it’s laid any eggs but before he even fully understands what the goose can do for him. And that’s what depresses me most of all.

[King9999]

Giant Bomb has a story on the new rule: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-collusion-of-money-drama-and-pride/1100-4709/

They included a vid of the Evo 2004 Soul Calibur 2 grand finals:

[King9999]

Giant Bomb’s podcast with Tom Cannon: http://v.giantbomb.com/podcast/dumptruck_081413-08-14-2013-1869420752.mp3

[Darklightjg1]

It’s nice when collusion brings cheers instead of salty tears…

[Thatdude8]

No one can say someone is not taking the competition seriously if they work their butt off trying to make it through pools and somehow get to grand finals. I agree that the match should be played seriously, but no one should be forced to. The people in grand finals are the best in the competition that weekend. If those two players happen to be family/friends who constantly play & train against each other who are we to say they can’t have a casual match if they wanted? Those two players beat everyone else in their brackets to get to grand finals. If the other competitors have a problem with it then maybe they should’ve played better and got to GF themselves.

Don’t get me wrong tho as I said earlier people should play the match out seriously. If one works hard to get all the way to grand finals why stop playing serious when its just one match left? Even if one doesn’t care about winning and only plays for the dollars, it makes no sense to not play it out when considering the negatives. Sponsors won’t invest their money into something the players themselves aren’t taking seriously which means less pot bonuses and less money going into your pocket for winning. Plus the TO works hard to put together the event and having sponsors can make that easier. Personally I don’t care about the money since I’ll most likely never be able to place in the money. Yet all this still harms me since I like having a place to go to test my skill against others and would like to see that grow so i can have more places to do that. Not playing seriously stops that growth and may actually kill some events since TO’s won’t be able to afford to run it.

I know those two paragraphs contradict each other, but I thought I’d provide two different mindsets people could have on this subject.

[Thatdude8]

Had an opinion on this, but then 180’ed on it. Its about the games go 100.
(sorry about above account problems)

[_Insert_Name_Here]

No one can say someone is not taking the competition seriously if they work their butt off trying to make it through pools and somehow get to grand finals. I agree that the match should be played seriously, but no one should be forced to.

Yes they should, for multiple reasons. Saying “If you don’t want them to screw around in GFs, just win yourself!” oversimplifies the issue so much.