The BB Community, EVO, Netplay, and the FGC.

[Chaoschao222]

Aevo sounds pretty damn legit...

[Thino]

I'd donate for it, where should I send the money?

[Linear04]

On the side, we have a young player who went to NEC and EVO last year. (s)he was too young to travel but (s)he was able to get parents to travel along. I don't think (s)he is a rich kid who can make good money alone because (s)he is still in school. But poverty kids doesn't mean your parents are poor, who brought your ps3/xbox?! get them to pay for your trip!

shes not poverty at all though

[skd]

On the side, we have a young player who went to NEC and EVO last year. (s)he was too young to travel but (s)he was able to get parents to travel along. I don't think (s)he is a rich kid who can make good money alone because (s)he is still in school. But poverty kids doesn't mean your parents are poor, who brought your ps3/xbox?! get them to pay for your trip!

funnily enough, this is exactly how i went to NEC! My parents forced themselves on me I mean 16 seems old enough to travel a state or two over right?! @_@

[KayEff]

so uh

when is all of what you guys say gonna be put into motion

i'm sorry but i can't take any of you seriously unless you guys actually either commit to do something or actually do something.

because all i potentially see is another "our community sucks and we're not going to do anything" topic. (i'm not referring to stickbug's post though, that post's got some quality shit there)

oh, and do you know what all of your guys' posts remind me of?

all the other "BB not in EVO" topics i see lying about in BBG.

[A.X.I.S.]

Anime major only for anime sounds hpye but can we not call it it AnimeEVO?

Something that screams oout anything that brings people out gushing forth like a volcano of passion.

I am bad at names but its just a thought.

[Linear04]

hey now let them have their moment you already know how its gonna turn out :<

[Wild Wallice]

You're absolutely right. And I will do something right this very second.

I'll play King of Fighters 13 instead.

[KayEff]

...and there it goes. my tolerance for this topic.

i'm really sorry to close your thread so soon stickbug, but i don't think any more posts from this will get us anywhere closer to what you truly want out of the community. i say leave it to the people who truly want to make a difference, and hope that there are enough to achieve that sort of reality.

[shtkn]

okay, let's try this again, but be warned: if you're going to be a smartass, i'm going to ban you.

This isn't a thread to complain about EVO, it's a thread aimed at improving our tournament turnout to either make our community EVO worthy or not.

Don't come into this thread to post your story, or complain. it's a thread to generate ideas on how we can get more people to attend majors by either making our own 'EVO', talking to an existing major and make that our 'EVO', or just keep going to EVO and hype up a side event.

[Linear04]

Alright serious post time

If anything, to get the maximum amount of entrants possible to make this theoretical anime major happen, it's probably not going to happen for a while because of how well it has to be planned, so planning a major should be the last thing on our minds right now. I think alot of people are jumping on the bandwagon too quickly thinking that a random major would get 500+ entrants, make bb a main game at evo 2013, and revitalise the dustloop/bb community. the reality is that bb players are few in america compared to other fighting games (yes, including mk9) and some people just dont want to make it out to an offline tournament. because of that we aren't going to see bb as a mainstream game in a long while, or possibly forever.

just my 2 cents, brainstorming for a major is not a good idea for the moment, just trying to get people who will stay with the game and hardcore it would be a better idea

[Katsu78]

I agree, but I also agree with the prospect of making our own event. It all boils down to what the majority wants, I'll throw my support in regardless. I personally hate how anime games are treated, which is my leading drive to do this in the first place

[Linear04]

I'm all for making an event, but it just seems like people are making this unplanned event like its the holy grail. Personally I don't think its rather the "anime" game part, considering how big GG was back in the day. I don't think any high level players would drop a game based on their aesthetics, considering how "anime" SFa3 was, and how you get people like justin wong playing games like marvel to sf to even mk9 at its release. I think the main reason you dont get big names playing bb is because of its low playerbase, which kind of leads into the catch 22 of fans of said player not considering the game because they dont play it. I guess you can just say "lolcapcom" as an explanation to why they're playing these games, but even for the shit that sf x t gets, its probably going to have high level "capcom" game players play it. What the community needs to improve imo is to promote high level play and depth, sort of what Xie tried with his beginner mode series, and not empty "hype" like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbE3hZYbX2k&t=1m10s, because that just makes it seem like bb players enjoy dumb shit in their games, which frankly just leads to making people that do well from fighting games stay away from it. commentating is also important, like that other thread we had a while ago about it which i dont want to get into because then i'd just be repeating myself all over again

sorry for the bad grammar, paragraphing, spelling, w/e in advance.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Linear04

[Airk]

Well, I personally feel that we'd have a better chance of seeing turnout at a "dedicated" event, rather than, essentially, scattering our community across whatever 20-odd "majors" happen to tuck BB into a back room throughout the course of the year.

It would have to be reasonably well planned and announced in advance though - so whatever it is, I suggest it be something that's happening after EVO.

That said, we don't have to make up our own event ala "AEvo" (not that that would not be awesome, but it's a LOT more work) - I think it might be interesting to just pick one Major later in the year that has traditionally offered good support for BB and just "go to town on it" and see what we all can do to make it blow up. Make it the "If you only go to one tournament this year, make it <Insert Event Name Here>".

[prs`]

I think like LK mentioned maybe we should follow Japans lead.

We could easily set up online exhibitions or tournaments that could be streamed. I mean people mention the good netplay a million times in this thread and thats something we could easily use to our advantage.

We should start with things like that and hyping up our own local tournaments and having them streamed etc.

A major with only anime games would be great but thats reaching way too far ahead. We should start small and start to be more independent from the rest of the FGC if they're not willing to fully support us. Once we build a good base from the smaller things and start to attract new players then we can start thinking about making our own major.

[SansProtocol]

Alright serious post time

If anything, to get the maximum amount of entrants possible to make this theoretical anime major happen, it's probably not going to happen for a while because of how well it has to be planned, so planning a major should be the last thing on our minds right now. I think alot of people are jumping on the bandwagon too quickly thinking that a random major would get 500+ entrants, make bb a main game at evo 2013, and revitalise the dustloop/bb community. the reality is that bb players are few in america compared to other fighting games (yes, including mk9) and some people just dont want to make it out to an offline tournament. because of that we aren't going to see bb as a mainstream game in a long while, or possibly forever.

just my 2 cents, brainstorming for a major is not a good idea for the moment, just trying to get people who will stay with the game and hardcore it would be a better idea

We could always start by focusing on getting those on the fence about going to tournaments and boosting their confidence overall. Getting these bunch of people over the hill and into serious tournament play would help build on a lack of players in that area.

And instead of appealing to EVO by going there or engineering some sort of separate major for "anime" games, why not go to show up in force at the other majors that will host BB? I think supporting those other Tournament Organizers who volunteer set-ups and space for the game already should be rewarded for such charity. Why pander to the "grand tournament" that EVO claims to be when they've thought clearly about money? I can't blame them to a fault and I hope they do well for the games they hold. However, we should instead support one of the existing majors that need motherfuckers to show up. If EVO wants to add BB next year, fuck them. we'll be working on helping the TOs that will treat games like ours and future FG titles fairly. It won't probably happen with in the lifespan of BB, but I would rather encourage the crown of big tournaments be passed on and foster the development of one of our existing FG majors.

Yes, money is always a priority but I would see my money and effort go to some hype ass EC major that's cool with the games I play as long as there's a large amount of tournament goers that will attend.

[Linear04]

That's another thing i forgot to mention, I don't think the "Fuck evo" attitude is going to get anyone anywhere

The stigma that EVO treated BB unfairly is irrational, considering the data of BB clearly showing the least amount of entrants. If I was a TO for a national major, i would focus on trying to get as much turnout as possible, by making games guaranteed to be popular be put in the lineup. Despite whatever you want to call it with money or other business, the fact is that BB at EVO got dropped because it wouldnt guarantee a large turnout. The 6 games that are on the EVO lineup are justified, as well as varied. Some people are going to argue about sfxt, but considering how bad marvel 3 was shitted on, and how its one of the most popular games in the american FGC, you can tell how SFxT is going to do.

But enough about evo, having this complex about other communities treating us unfairly and then proceeding to isolate ourselves away from them isn't going to do any good. Sure you have stuff like the finals not happening that stick talked about, but what are you going to do but take it? if we were offered an evo main spot next year, i would do nothing but gladly take it. the more events that show Bb the better we have a chance for getting new players.

[Nakkiel]

There are some great ideas in this thread that could easily be put to use, people just need to spearhead it for their respective scenes/areas

EVO is bordering pretty close on "e-sports", money is a big deal and people need to realize that and accept it. BB doesn't have the turnout (#anime) that other games do, this isn't EVO's fault. It's all of ours.

also nice league of legends reference in your post alan

[goldenxservbot]

You know what Im kind of glad Blazblue isnt at Evo this year, at first i was annoyed but really im kind of relieved.

When i went to last years evo, i honestly felt it was an embarrassment what had occurred towards the community. It was almost pitiful, I had fun playing casually but it was still kind of weird having to been scolded by the capcom drones. It was awkward being there IN A CORNER with people shouting shit trying to hype the game and hearing from others claiming BB is a bad game.

Evo isnt that big of a deal, I guess this game should remain where it is MORE appreciated than where it isnt. By that I mean this game should remain in the homes of the tens of twenties of players that enjoy this casually or in Japan where Capcom games are scolded and an actually "good" game is appreciated and not ignored.

We have Blue Revolution coming up so theres nothing to fret about but from the point of view of someone who went to tournys last year i can tell you the real reason why many didnt show up is because of the registration costs. You have to be stupid to pay $50 to enter a tournament youre not going to win almost as dumb as the people that payed $70 for example to enter the sf4 and MAHVELL tournaments at SCR. You would have seen a greater input if the prices were half of that

Im just saying

[Siefer]

The primary problem here is the stagnation of BB's community and the lack of growth. If you go by the last couple of years, you can argue that SF IV has already plateaued and that it'll either sustain comparable numbers, or enter a period of steady decline, but the big difference between SF and BB is the sheer volume of players within that community, where even a period of steady decline may not have a material impact for some time.

We can't compete with Capcom in terms of raw numbers, that's the wrong way of looking at things.

Relative to its sales, I believe that BlazBlue has not reached a point where it has peaked in terms of tournament participation, however, due to the weakening power of its brand name, it's possible that it may never be able to reach that theoretical peak. There is very little you can do about this unfortunately.

How to address this: The first thing that needs to be done is to identify what makes BlazBlue unique and different from its peers. Mortal Kombat did this back in the day with its different take on presentation and its (mostly superficial) emphasis on brutality and gore. This worked for Mortal Kombat and remains one of the defining factors that contributes to its continuing success from a financial perspective. Once you identify the elements that differentiate BlazBlue, you have to emphasize and run with it. Treating and applying the same tactics utilized by Capcom games to BlazBlue will not, and has not worked.

Establishing our own major allows us more freedom in applying tactics to encourage player growth without the restrictions set in place by established standards. No longer do we have to compete for time, space, and prestige, and we can not employ strategies that only "anime" games can employ to help encourage player growth and participation.

As an example of this, whether as a troll or not, I don't know, but some of you guys seem to like this Gundam game that came out recently for PS3. Having our own event allows us to either use that as a marquee title to focus on, or as a special exhibition. This is something that no other major is doing and we can utilize to market ourselves. This is just an example of what I mean.

Another major advantage that we have over the larger communities is the general accessibility to "top" players. One of the things I dislike about where the Capcom community is going is this "idolization" process that is happening with top players, where the normal, standard player feels like they'll never be able to compete on the same stage as them, or that they have attained such a celebrity status that it's difficult to even meet and communicate with them at a major. Playing with a top player can completely change your perspective on the game, but more importantly, it indirectly implies that even a top player will take the time to get in a few games with you, and it's even better if they are willing to help you out if you so desire it. Time is a valuable commodity, and those that realize this appreciate and recognize this generous gesture. Some "top" players are already doing this, and that's a great thing, but perhaps we can expand this idea even further.

That being said, the logistical (and financial) nightmare of building your own major when you know that you won't win out in the numbers game is daunting, and for a smaller player base like the anime community, it can only succeed with the combined efforts of other communities. This isn't something that is Dustloop and BlazBlue's problem alone, this is something that everyone in the anime community needs to get involved with. Although it remains as an ideal, perhaps the better idea for the time being is to piggyback onto a cooperative major and to implement experimental approaches there to see what works, and what doesn't. Regardless, we need new ideas and new approaches, because the old ones aren't working and just telling people to "show up" isn't going to do anything.

[mAc Chaos]

Before I read the other posts, I just want to add that we might have to give some leeway to the number of entrants the first time. It's not like as soon as this event happens every single netplayer in America is going to show up. For most tournaments, the number of players that say they're coming or that plan to is ten times the amount that actually show, and I bet a lot of people would be unsure if they should spend their money on basically a shot in the dark. For all they know they could spend all that money and end up coming to some major that has ten people showing up. This is something that would build on itself and cause other people who would normally want to come to hesitate, so we'll have to keep this in mind and not just give up if the first showing isn't as strong. You have to build confidence that it's not just a waste of time.

[Guymam]

To raise BB up, we'd have to produce more content and ways to get people into the game because the truth is that most people who see it don't really understand it at all, and if something isn't understood it'll get shit on pretty easily. With all the great suggestions about better minor/major turnout, using netplay to our advantage, and things like that, we should also focus on producing content aimed at getting more players interested in our game. Some American tutorials on the game system, characters, situations, things like that.

The Japanese players step it up and had character tutorials out before their game even came out on console, now that we are getting our hands on it we should work towards helping introduce new players to it by following their example. This is were community members can come together and pool their knowledge into tutorials that can get more people to play.

I believe this is one of the bigger reasons Marvel and Super are much bigger than BB. It can be daunting to try and learn a game and have the best tutorials be in a different language, and only really understandable if you already have a fairly good grasp on the character. Marvel usually has multiple tutorials for characters, as well as team synergy, combos, assist usage, things like that. Super has option select videos, comprehensive matchup breakdown videos, and things like that. The best we can say we have on a regular basis are matches from Japan. While that's useful, it's not going to get anyone new into BB.

[zeth07]

The stigma that EVO treated BB unfairly is irrational, considering the data of BB clearly showing the least amount of entrants. If I was a TO for a national major, i would focus on trying to get as much turnout as possible, by making games guaranteed to be popular be put in the lineup. Despite whatever you want to call it with money or other business, the fact is that BB at EVO got dropped because it wouldnt guarantee a large turnout. The 6 games that are on the EVO lineup are justified, as well as varied. Some people are going to argue about sfxt, but considering how bad marvel 3 was shitted on, and how its one of the most popular games in the american FGC, you can tell how SFxT is going to do..

The primary problem here is the stagnation of BB's community and the lack of growth. If you go by the last couple of years, you can argue that SF IV has already plateaued and that it'll either sustain comparable numbers, or enter a period of steady decline, but the big difference between SF and BB is the sheer volume of players within that community, where even a period of steady decline may not have a material impact for some time.

We can't compete with Capcom in terms of raw numbers, that's the wrong way of looking at things.

Relative to its sales, I believe that BlazBlue has not reached a point where it has peaked in terms of tournament participation, however, due to the weakening power of its brand name, it's possible that it may never be able to reach that theoretical peak. There is very little you can do about this unfortunately.

If you do look at the turnouts / relative to sales I would think quite the opposite, if anything BB actually shows pretty good support considering how many people actually bought the game. That's why I think it isn't "fair" to judge a game solely on # of entrants in a general sense when that entrants to sales ratio could possibly be BETTER or on par with the more popular games. While I don't know the exact numbers, wasn't MK's EVO 2K11 entrants relatively close to BB's? And yet MK sold probably a million while BB only sold a few hundred thousand at best. And yet BB showed stronger support, but of course gets shafted (possibly due to money).

Obviously if we are looking at "raw" numbers as a tournament organizer then yes BB gets lower numbers compared to the more popular games, but in terms of the actual BB scene supporting the game I don't think we are necessarily lacking in that department compared to other games. That's not to say it couldn't be better, but people have to really consider the numbers we are actually working with here.

Just as an example (not real numbers),

~2mil sales / 2000 EVO entrants = .01% "tournament player support"

~200k sales / 200 EVO entrants = .01% "tournament player support"

Now like I said, if we did that compared to MK, I would think BB's would actually be better, but maybe it is on par with SF/Marvel or maybe a little behind. But realistically there's nothing we can do about that, the game more than likely isn't going to become hugely popular. So it's just a matter of showing even more tournament support from the hardcore players.

As for the GG thing, I think the reason it comes up is because the GG players are "closer to home". Some are still even BB players as well. So part of that is having your own "community" hating on the game doesn't reflect well from the outside looking in. It's one thing to have SF/Marvel people hate on the game on SRK, but when people are hating on the game on Dustloop and in the BB forums themselves at times it's not quite the same. If it was any other game people would probably say to take it somewhere else or "then why are you here", but that's the whole point the GG and BB community are mixed in together to a certain degree. So when talking about trying to help the community GROW, it sure isn't helping our cause. I'm not saying everyone has to like it and they can't show their distaste for it, but when it's within our "community" as a whole it's not exactly a good look to get other people interested in the game.

It's kinda like a big brother beating on the little brother for no good reason just because he can, even if the little brother didn't do anything "wrong".

The other thing I would add is that BB doesn't have any "notable figures" that casual players can relate to or watch. SF/Marvel has a bunch of different players that put themselves out there and have "personalities", or produce shows for people to watch. BB doesn't really have that. Xie is sort of doing things with Beginner Mode, but I'm more or less talking about it from an "entertainment" stand point, as in getting people interested in playing the game. A lot of our "content" seems to only appeal to our own community and maybe not so much the casual players, to try and pull them in and get them interested. Obviously there's some money involved with the SF/Marvel people but even some of the other guys aren't really doing "shows" but are still kinda personalities that people can talk about, Marn being an example I guess.

Edited January 13, 2012 by zeth07

[PozerWolf]

With BB at GODSGARDEN, the Japanese players have been going in hard with special events and exhibition matches...

There's a ton of stuff we can actually do, especially as the BBR Qualifier is coming up.

If we lived in Japan, the motive would make more sense.

But to use a non-existing event as an example to help motivate American players isn't really going to make a differences. No, I'm not being a smart ass about it, because there's still no solid info on the BBR event as of yet, then it's going to be very, very difficult to build hype behind it because of such a late announcement. Travel plans will be rather almost possible at this point because from here on out it's going to be 'late minute' issue (unless the event is delayed in 2 months, which I doubt). And at this point, the people who are in charge of actual Qualifiers will possibly have to make it up in terms of payment plans on how the players will make it to BBR because it's so last minute, when it wasn't their fault.

Why I bring this up in this topic?

I look at like this...

From my point of view, it really doesn't seem that Aksys of America cares for the BlazBlue scene outside of Cali.

Of course they get a lot of support over there because that's were the main station is, but they can still contribute some help outside of Cali in supporting/sponsoring events.

Aside from Mr. Wizard's basis opinion on the situation, it's really hard to defend BlazBlue in the position it put itself in thanks to lack of support from not the players themselves, but the company that 'feels' like they put effort into supporting a scene, yet no results show for it.

I can go on of the errors of the ways that the community feels as though they had a point only to be mislead and give out an explanation on what we could do next, but there's no point in posting it here (I'll post it in a different forum).

As much as I hate this game, it has a chance to grow and the community and possibly reviving itself from the current life support it's on.

Since the release of EX on console, it seems like the hype for this game is starting to grow in Texas, so there may be some light at the end of this tunnel.

But because you guys start going off saying "FUCK EVO" or "I'M WASN'T GONNA GO ANYWAYS, SO BLEHHHH!!", you guys might want to research on the people you Should be hating on, and not point fingers towards the Evo staff.

Just sayin'.....

[Star-Demon]

I think that, when you consider the legit reasons people don't go to tournaments, We'll have to find some way to structure how our tourneys are structured and run in order to make sure they are financed and people want to come out, DO come out, and want to come back again.

There's lots you can do with a large event (even bring in vendors and have them hock wares in a salesroom), but for small events, it really requires attitude and passion. Without those no one is moving an inch.