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

[Jyosua]

Honestly, why even name it something like AnimeEVO? If people from DL are going to band together to make something like this, shouldn't it be named after DL? I mean after all, this site is pretty much dedicated to Anime FGs, and it would sound less weabooish and possibly attract more people.

That said, who here actually has experience in organizing space and structure of large events?

[Chaoschao222]

Honestly, why even name it something like AnimeEVO? If people from DL are going to band together to make something like this, shouldn't it be named after DL? I mean after all, this site is pretty much dedicated to Anime FGs, and it would sound less weabooish and possibly attract more people.

Because there are plenty of other anime fighters that Dustloop is not dedicated to that also could use more exposure, I mean, I wouldn't go to Dustloop for KoF, MB, or AH info, I'd go to their respective "meccas"

And if you're into anime fighters, odds are (imo) that you would not be put off by something like the word "anime"

[Siefer]

@Zeth: I did not base anything I said on numbers that (to my knowledge) were never officially released by...anyone for either sales or participants, however, according to a random post on SRK, MK9 actually had more than twice the number of entrants compared to BB.

Mr. Wizard has also stated that if a game can't break 400 entrants at EVO, it probably doesn't deserve to be there (paraphrased), going by that and what actually happened with the 2012 line-up, you can reasonably conclude that at worst, MK9 had double the entries of BB.

There are no official numbers released concerning total units sold either (the only ones who know the real numbers are the developers/publishers), but for the sake of argument, let's say that BlazBlue generated 350,000 sales in its lifetime. Rounding down the (supposed) number of entrants at Evo, you get roughly .05% participation rate compared to the total amount of players who purchased the game. Assuming that SF IV sold approximately 2.5 million copies in its lifetime, going by the (roughly) 1,700 entrants they peaked at in 2010, they had a participation rate of about .068%. I assume MvC 3 numbers would be similar to that, but to me, the fact that they were able to draw a larger participation rate despite a vastly larger player base is actually more impressive than BlazBlue's numbers. It's much easier to sell a lot of copies and then have an insignificant amount of people show up, but that wasn't the case here.

That being said, going by these psuedo figures, I don't believe BlazBlue has peaked and could earn a participation rate of .06 or higher. As I've already mentioned however, that may no longer be possible due to the weakening of its brand name.

[Lord Pwnge18]

I've been reading the points, considering everything that I've read, and this all seems like an incredible goal we've set here. I can see what a good amount of you can do to support this, like those of you with experience in this sort of thing; organizing events and what not. But it begs the question, what can people such as myself do to help? I've already said before that I'm young, can't really travel too far, yatta yatta whatever. But, I do feel that doing this sort of thing is a fantastic idea, and an even more wonderful goal, not just for BB, but for the fighting game community in general. I don't want to just sit on the sidelines and watch for this, I want to contribute as much as I possibly can, no matter what kind of contribution it is. But that's just it; what should I do? What should the younger, or the less financially fortunate, or the lesser experienced do? And again, this doesn't just go for myself, but anyone else who is in the same boat as me. I also apologize if I had repeated something anyone else had already said.

[zeth07]

@Zeth: I did not base anything I said on numbers that (to my knowledge) were never officially released by...anyone for either sales or participants, however, according to a random post on SRK, MK9 actually had more than twice the number of entrants compared to BB.

Mr. Wizard has also stated that if a game can't break 400 entrants at EVO, it probably doesn't deserve to be there (paraphrased), going by that and what actually happened with the 2012 line-up, you can reasonably conclude that at worst, MK9 had double the entries of BB.

There are no official numbers released concerning total units sold either (the only ones who know the real numbers are the developers/publishers), but for the sake of argument, let's say that BlazBlue generated 350,000 sales in its lifetime. Rounding down the (supposed) number of entrants at Evo, you get roughly .05% participation rate compared to the total amount of players who purchased the game. Assuming that SF IV sold approximately 2.5 million copies in its lifetime, going by the (roughly) 1,700 entrants they peaked at in 2010, they had a participation rate of about .068%. I assume MvC 3 numbers would be similar to that, but to me, the fact that they were able to draw a larger participation rate despite a vastly larger player base is actually more impressive than BlazBlue's numbers. It's much easier to sell a lot of copies and then have an insignificant amount of people show up, but that wasn't the case here.

That being said, going by these psuedo figures, I don't believe BlazBlue has peaked and could earn a participation rate of .06 or higher. As I've already mentioned however, that may no longer be possible due to the weakening of its brand name.

I wasn't trying to quote you as in taking what you said directly, but more just to go into that kinda discussion. Like I said, I don't have any real numbers for the entrants but I just kinda used it as a "visual" example that BB's tournament support wasn't all that bad compared to it's own popularity and relative to other games the same way. EVO obviously wants to have the most popular games and I don't blame them, but what I'm kinda getting at is if it was a case of "the bb scene not showing up" and then going by X number of entrants compared to the other games, that isn't exactly a fair judgement to make.

My point about MK is kinda for that reason as well. I hate just throwing random numbers around but for "arguments" sake, if BB got 200 and MK got 400, but BB sold 200k and MK sold 1mil, clearly the tournament support for BB was more than MK in terms of the scenes showing up, just not by the raw number of entrants. Same could be said for Tekken 6 as well, but now they are going with SCV which makes sense because it is new.

But it is kinda a moot point, and I do agree that BB can probably get better support in the long run.

[St1ckBuG]

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.

Thanks shtkn.

I'm glad people have taken their time to read what I had to say, but don't use this thread as a place to complain about how we're not in EVO. What's done is done. Time to move forward. Don't use this as a place to whine about anything for that matter: your local tournaments and scene, a major you went to once, how your friends call you a loser for playing BB. Forget about it. This thread was made for this community and the people in it who care.

What I want out of the discussion in this thread are ideas of how we can promote our events better and get better turnout at majors.

Trying to make our own major isn't anything I'd want to do in the coming year, but it was just an idea to throw out there. I will talk to certain people about it though when I think it's time we could actually do something of that magnitude.

So where to go from here:

DO:

1). Go to your local major. This is simply the easiest way to support the BB community. Don't know where your closest major is? Ask. Before we plan to do anything drastic and of huge scale, we should work in baby steps first. What will get you to save up your money for a year to travel to a major (special events/pot bonuses/prizes/foreign players)? What are the main things keeping you from coming to a major?

2). Talk about ways we can use netplay and streaming to our advantage. If we have a lot of netplayers lurking these boards and this thread, what would you like to see? Exhibition matches? Q/A sessions with people proficient with their characters? Regional netplay tournaments (with a possibility of small prizes)?

3). Decide to concentrate our efforts on at least ONE major next year, whether it be EVO (as a side event) or another well known major. All top players should try to go to this. We've complained about a split community for too long. The US is big, sure, but I'm damn confident that at least once a year we can really put on a show.

DON'T:

1). Please don't let this get out of hand. I don't want this thread closed again. Positive discussion and constructive criticism is welcome here. Please don't post like a dick, or I will blow you the

fuck

up and report you. Please people, don't complain and keep this on topic.

[reaVer]

So noone read my reply?:/

[Chris Chaos]

I'll say this:

Going with the "Fuck EVO" attitude is definitely not the way to go about this. People got caught up in the wave and grabbed their pitchforks (myself included) and started thinking irrationally. Now that things have settled a little, let's move forward with this thread with a little more sense.

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'.....

I completely agree with what PoserWolf says here, especially with the comment on BBR. The announcement for BBR is too soon for people who REALLY want to go but can't afford it on due to it's short notice announcement or have jobs they have to let know a month in advanced that they want these days off. This has been a problem throughout time from when I got into BlazBlue as my main fighter, some majors/regionals/tournaments are announced months ahead of time and the advertisement for them are everywhere, and some of them; come out of nowhere surprising people who really want to go but it's either last minute, or there isn't enough advertisement on the event to have it noticed by the public. I looked into the Event Announcement Thread and there IS a thread on BBR but there's no solid information there to inform those who want to go, so I feel that BBR might be a bust due to this, especially since it's happening in February.

What's sad is that this event is for BlazBlue and for there to be no solid information on Dustloop, the date is being thrown around by "Word of Mouth" and some people have no idea where this tournament is being held. This shows that those advertising the game did not put much time into it (or were told on short notice themselves about an overseas qualifier) therefore the effort and the turnout will be lacking overall. People like myself would love to go to BBR but due to the fact that most people didn't find out about it until maybe the beginning of this month, and the tournament is next month, kinda proves my point. Maybe with a two month heads up, a lot of people who want to go, could but this thread was made on January 2nd of 2012, and that is nowhere near enough time for anyone to get the money to wherever this tournament may be (I hear its going to be on the west coast) nor is there enough information to promote the tournament. 1 month may be convenient for West Coast players but what about players on the East Coast? It seems a bit unfair to them since these guys have to travel across the country to participate and we already got into the whole demographic of the groups that play this game.

As Poser said, Aksys of America appears to appeal to those in California more than anywhere else (and it wouldn't surprise me if BBR was being held there) so how do you expect your companies game to grow when you focus on a single area? Is there a reason for that? Maybe. Probably because California has a bigger turnout for BB than any other state probably, but that's just me making an educated guess. In the end, we should just focus on the upcoming tournaments and find one that supports the BlazBlue community, go there and make an attempt to having one of the biggest BlazBlue tournaments there.

An Air Dasher Major is way too big to plan ATM for any of us, but we could look into that and see if we could make it possible, the idea itself is BRILLIANT but to make an event and try to focus on that as BlazBlue's biggest major ATM is too soon (After sleeping on it, I had to think twice about this, lol).

[qwerty]

If you'll allow me to be brutally honest for a moment; a large part of the problem is the game itself. Most people that actually play fighting games stopped playing during CT because the game simply wasn't up to snuff. While I do think EX is probably the best revision since CT, I don't think it's as good as KOFXIII or AE2012. I think the majority of competitive fighting game players will agree with that, whether they want to admit it or not.

This isn't an attempt to troll, in spite of what it might sound like. However, before we start trying to critique the community, we need to look at what it is we're dealing with here, and that's a game that's taken three years to get to a decent, playable state. We also have to acknowledge that yes, there's more fanboys than players. Many of these fanboys don't even casually play the game, mind you. And if you want proof of that, go to any anime con and look at what people are playing in the game room. I guarantee you that 90% of the TV's will be playing Brawl at any given time, with BB seeing one or two setups at most.

How do you change this? Honestly, I can't tell you that it's even possible at this point. With all of the tutorials and resources all over the internet, people still can't be assed to even try to learn the game. Not even talking about going to tournaments or anything here, just sitting down and trying to understand how the game works. I used to believe that this could be changed, but seeing the BB community spin its wheels for three years has proven to me that you simply cannot turn water into wine (at least, not often and not quickly).

And now we come full circle. Why does nobody take BB seriously? Because it wasn't worth taking seriously for a long time. Why are there so many fanboys that don't want to bother learning the game? Because that's who the game catered to from the start. Is it possible to change the game's image now that it's a decent game? Perhaps. It's up to you guys, though.

I did everything I could for this community back in mid CT to early CS1 days. It may not have amounted to much other than helping around on the Hakumen board and the scanlation of the CS1 mook, but I still tried to get people playing the game, and those who were already playing to improve. I can't help but feel that most of my efforts to that effect were in vain, seeing as a lot of the same problems that plagued the community back then are still around today. However, I do also see how the community has improved, and I do acknowledge the impact BB has had on a handful of scenes in particular (namely PNW and midwest). So there may be hope, after all.

My advice? Stick to what you know and keep running tournaments. You aren't going to magically turn limp wristed cosplayers into ninjas and you aren't going to win over people who are playing other games. What you can do is build upon whatever scene you already have and just keep doing your own thing. Stickbug has the right idea, but if something like an anime major is actually going to happen, there needs to be some structure and organization. You also can't expect EVO-like turnout for a game that was cut from EVO.

I'd like to see BB go somewhere. No, really, I would. It's just that this community has time and again proven that it just doesn't give a shit about anything and has squandered nearly every opportunity it's been handed. Which is a shame, because the playerbase is there, believe it or not. Maybe it's gonna take someone like Stickbug to step up and finally bring some much needed leadership to this community for it to shine. Or maybe people will stay at home and never play. Again, it's up to you guys.

[huey253]

http://www.aksysgames.com/2011/11/24/the-blazblue-revolution-is-coming/

this was posted on the site's creation on dustloop's front page and news section 11-24-11

the date of Feb. 25 2012 and location of Southern california has been there since then iirc

that is a 3 month heads up for this event....

Edited January 13, 2012 by huey253

[Linear04]

I wasn't trying to quote you as in taking what you said directly, but more just to go into that kinda discussion. Like I said, I don't have any real numbers for the entrants but I just kinda used it as a "visual" example that BB's tournament support wasn't all that bad compared to it's own popularity and relative to other games the same way. EVO obviously wants to have the most popular games and I don't blame them, but what I'm kinda getting at is if it was a case of "the bb scene not showing up" and then going by X number of entrants compared to the other games, that isn't exactly a fair judgement to make.

My point about MK is kinda for that reason as well. I hate just throwing random numbers around but for "arguments" sake, if BB got 200 and MK got 400, but BB sold 200k and MK sold 1mil, clearly the tournament support for BB was more than MK in terms of the scenes showing up, just not by the raw number of entrants. Same could be said for Tekken 6 as well, but now they are going with SCV which makes sense because it is new.

But it is kinda a moot point, and I do agree that BB can probably get better support in the long run.

But the thing is, despite what kind of ratio comes and supports the game, what matters first and foremost is player count and turnout. It wouldnt matter if those 200 people were the only ones who bought the game, but rather how many people turn out for a National FG major like evo. For something as big as that, you have to understand that they want as much players as possible in their main games to attract as much attendants as possible

[St1ckBuG]

A Big event like EVO has to make tough decisions, They only have 2/3 days to run through as many games as possible and even 6 this year is a stretch, so they had to cut out games that they feel wouldn't have a bigger turnout like the other 6 games on the roster, but you can't shit on them for making a smart decision based on past numbers.

If none of you want to come down to Florida I won't force or ask you too, but if you want your scene to grow you have to make a stand and support any event in general. Don't blame Capcom games for having huge turnouts and say it's their fault your game isn't as big or events don't care about you. That won't change anything. Guys like BIG E, Larry and other TO's are 100% for the community and bringing people together, but they can't do it alone and support the other games if the players themselves don't show they can come together. Luckily guys like Stickbug want to and are trying to make a change and I wish them the best of luck.

Stop blaming the "bigger" games and continue to play what you enjoy, if other people enjoy the game to tell an organizer for smaller events you want to help out and bring setups and they will gladly make room, when more people start showing up it'll only get better from there.

Now excuse me while I get back to work getting everything ready for CEO 2012.

OK, so... why are you flaming people in this thread, when mods told you to stay on topic and I just made a post about not talking shit and trying to move forward? Please be the better man and don't come in here flaming at a single person on these boards. It's gotten people banned in the past, and a banned TO is a good way of not being able to advertise your tournaments on these boards. It just looks bad on your part.

I know you mean well but coming in and making a post like that is totally going against what I'm going for here.

We understand why EVO made it's decision, now it's time to figure out where we stand and what we need to do about it.

Good luck with CEO. I'll try to make it down if you plan to make it big. I heard it ran well (without a hitch) until BB was supposed to be streamed. Shit happens.

For everyone else posting in this thread: STAY ON TOPIC OR THE MODS WILL CLOSE THE THREAD AGAIN AND YOU WILL MOST LIKELY GET AN INFRACTION. DON'T BE AN IDIOT.

[SansProtocol]

Here's a list of some tournaments, dates, addresses, and links to for more information or registration:

http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?12844-GVN-Winter-Brawl-6-Frozen-Battlegrounds-Feb-18th-and-19th-(Philadelphia-Pa)&p=1212714&viewfull=1#post1212714

Winter Brawl 6

February 18-19, 2012

Sheraton Suites Hotel

4101A Island Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19153

http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?11286-FINAL-ROUND-XV-March-2-4-2012-quot-The-15th-Aniversary-quot&p=978277&viewfull=1#post978277

Final Round XV

March 2-4, 2012

Westin Atlanta Perimeter North

7 Concourse Parkway

Atlanta, Georgia 30328

http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?13066-PowerUp-2012-EVO-2012-Tournament-Season&p=1233589&viewfull=1#post1233589

PowerUp 2012

April 13-15, 2012

Arcade Legacy

600 Cincinnati Mills Drive

Cincinnati, Ohio 45240

http://northwestmajors.com/

Northwest Majors

May 26th, 2012

Seattle, WA

Venue: TBA (I believe)

http://ecthrowdown.com/

East Coast Throwdown

June 9-10, 2012

Hyatt Morristown

3 Speedwell Avenue

Morristown, NJ 07960

http://ceogaming.org/

CEO 2012

June 15-17, 2012

The Wyndham Orlando Resort

8001 International Drive

Orlando, Florida 32819

http://evo2k.com/

EVO 2012

July 6-8, 2012

Caesar's Palace

3570 Las Vegas Blvd South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

There are many others but information may not be able at the moment or Google is hiding tournament sites from me. Anyway, go get your research and possible registration on!

[Skye]

Don't want to step over eggshells or open a can of worms, but I honestly think that the national scene needs to grow from the inside out.

I agree with anyone and everyone who expresses that they go to a local major before anything.

Here in Michigan, back in CT and CS1 out area was quite hated by just about every scene, albiet quietly, they don't follow the game, the news or anything, they pick it up, then put it down and walk away, but then we keep it up, have our own scene do our thing, we commentate, video or not, we scream, we hype, and suddenly, by the end of CS1, we got SF folks talking about picking up CS2, we got Marvel boys looking at our game and actually showing interest. CS2 garnered our scene much more respect and we got other folks in their scene watching our matches, watching training mode shenanigans and being impressed at the non-practical stuff we mess around with. They start getting hype with us, then by the end of the season, we actually get our own stream time. We have people from all scenes shouting at the stuff happening on screen, they don't even fully understand it, but they recognize pressure string, spacing, turn abouts, all the good stuff. Our scene, even though they aren't sure to enter it or not, got recognition.

All that is purely an example, we should:

Stick to our own scene, socialize with other scenes to get exposure (I'm sure this is easier in local scenes than regional), talk with them, honestly speak with them, not just about BB, but about their games, the good things about it, the bad things about it, instill some knowledge in their heads, defend BB, which is much easier to do now that CS2 and CSE are effective fighting games more worthy of being taken seriously than it's predecessors. A lot of that hatred for BB is mostly unpolished, outdated or exaggerated knowledge, or lack of cohesive knowledge about how it functions. If they understand it better, they can respect it better and even try to get into it. Now as of late CS2, Michigan recruited a 3S fanatic, he was the primary communication that got us our own stream slot and he's an active player who is improving faster than most new people.

We should not:

Abandon everyone and make our own major. Let me be precise, I love the idea of having our own major, just for BB/anime games, but the approach to abandon other scenes and congregate on our own will not work at all, simply because we are too poverty. A lot of the reason BB is hated is because we don't communicate with them, we don't even try to plead our case in most instances, we separate ourselves from them and enjoy BB on our own. Some support will certainly help us, it will hype a lot of things up and attract new player serious about getting in the meta-game.

As for tourney turnouts, that probably can't be helped, we were poverty back then, still poverty now, the few of us (you) who can make it out there should come as representatives of your local scenes, netplay or offline, this will improve communication, I've never been to a regional major, so I'm sure there are a lot more than what I can imagine what goes into making a major happen, but it definitely needs a ton of money. Kinda a stretch for a poverty scene, so we definitely need support.

If we're going to do it on our own, we need sponsors, and Aksys/ASW could work, but it's not a sure thing, nothing to throw our backs on.

We can get out of the basement and go on our own, but it's in our best interest to keep a line of communication open to other scenes.

In my humble scrub opinion of course.

[St1ckBuG]

FYI, when I said "

fuck

EVO let's do our own thing", I meant that we shouldn't rely on them for our big tournament every year since there's always the possibility of us not making it in. That doesn't mean abandon the FGC all together, or start some boycott EVO movement... that would just be stupid. I also didn't mean it as: "

fuck

off EVO, we don't need you or your stupid tournament" either. If people want to still have a side event there, then by all means have it. If it looks like we'll get a huge turnout for an EVO side event this year I'm all for it, but I'd rather go to SCR/NCR/Super NCI if it's just going to be the same people. I went to EVO and it was fun, but it's way more hype if your game is on the main stage.

Thanks again for all of your input everyone. A new major is not the answer right now, but it could happen in the future if things go right and the scene starts to grow.

What do people think about netplay events? Maybe with prizes such as free hotel/venue/entry fee at your local major? And yes, you could fit as many people as you want into this free room. The more the merrier.

[FunkyP]

Aren't netplay events counter-productive to the point that people don't leave their houses? Going out and supporting your local scene should be paramount to building the community.

[zeth07]

But the thing is, despite what kind of ratio comes and supports the game, what matters first and foremost is player count and turnout. It wouldnt matter if those 200 people were the only ones who bought the game, but rather how many people turn out for a National FG major like evo. For something as big as that, you have to understand that they want as much players as possible in their main games to attract as much attendants as possible

I know and I said the same thing. My point has just been whether or not the comments for it not being at EVO or whatever is because the BB scene itself didn't show up just because it doesn't reach X amount of entrants. THAT part of it isn't a fair judgement when they say it is because of the scene itself when that support is there relative to the number of people playing. Now by all means if they say it's because it can't get 400+ entrants as a required number, that is perfectly fine and I don't blame them, but those expectations are way too high if a game doesn't sell a lot to begin with. As I've said, I don't think they are in the wrong for choosing the most popular games, but hopefully you can see the difference between the two when saying it is because "the scene didn't support it" and "it didn't get X amount of entrants". The scene supports it, maybe not enough for tournament organizers, but it just means since we have the much smaller player base it would take an extra amount of effort for us to get to the same level as other games for tournament organizers to support BB. Thus we have this topic.

But again the EVO stuff doesn't matter now but I wanted to make my comment perfectly clear so you didn't seem to misunderstand me.

[Spud]

Aren't netplay events counter-productive to the point that people don't leave their houses? Going out and supporting your local scene should be paramount to building the community.

But there's plenty of people who don't have much of a local scene/don't have the resources to travel to majors. The idea is to give them at least a shot at getting that opportunity, if I interpreted that right. There used to be lots of online events like that with SF 4, idk if it still happens anymore.

I don't think good netcode is really hurting BB, sad truth is the people who only play online right now probably just wouldn't be touching the game at all if the netcode was bad. I doubt a bad netcode would raise turnouts.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Spud

[Sophisticat]

If you'll allow me to be brutally honest for a moment; a large part of the problem is the game itself. Most people that actually play fighting games stopped playing during CT because the game simply wasn't up to snuff. While I do think EX is probably the best revision since CT, I don't think it's as good as KOFXIII or AE2012. I think the majority of competitive fighting game players will agree with that, whether they want to admit it or not.

This, this, and this again. I think there's too much emphasis on NAHs not coming out. Like it or not, BB is exclusively a JP-arcade marketed game. The appeal to competitive Westerners is not really taken into account as far as I know.

-----

But that aside, YA'LL NEED TO COME OUT TO MONTREAL!!!

Seriously, I'm surprised at how vibrant our scene is despite all the doom and gloom going on. We're also setting up our own tourney which will hopefully happen sometime around March break.

Come out to Montreal, and we'll have a blast. We have strip bars on every block of the city, great food, and awesome people. Need I mention some fine and excellent BB players, too? Let's have a blast and show the world BB can have a great community, too.

[Urichinan]

Alright, let me start off by saying I don't have a lot of tournament experience, I've never been to a major, and I don't have a local scene. (The closest scene is a few hours away, aside from a monthly meet up about 30 minutes away) So, with that, I'm going to share a few of my ideas that might help improve smalls scenes, or areas without a lot of players/a meet up.

A lot of people assume that you need to have some big area, or a hotel to do a meet up and play, that you've got to have a big setup with lots of players or a stream. Wrong. You can contact a few local players you know of and invite them to your house, or go to one of their houses, change it up every once in a while. Set a specific night for a gathering, spread the word around your local area that fighting game fans can come and hang out, socialize and fight other players.

If that's not getting a good turn out, start advertising with flyers, posters, banners, cards, anything you can make and put up in popular areas. Start a webpage or make a thread here on DL, link them to it so they can get the information. See how many people actually show up, you'd be surprized how many people will come just out of curiosity.

See if you can save up some extra money, or get a few other players you know to pitch in a bit of cash and rent a small area for a tournament, some local video game stores will help out with this, some even do it for free. Then promote it on forums, hype it up, make a trailer, send out invitations to people you know. Invite some of your friends who don't even play fighters to come and see if they might be interested in learning one. That's another thing people always seem to forget, a new player doesn't NEED to be someone who is already interested in fighting games, you can talk with people who never played a fighting game before and show them the basics, or link them to some stuff on YouTube, send them to Dustloop, show them some matches, invite them to come play some casuals.

Secondly, if you are already in a area with a scene, hype the game, ask around to other players about what they think of it. See what their pros and cons list is, ask them why they feel that way about the game, just make conversation and try to relate to them. Try and show them some of the finer points of BB, if they say they don't like learning long combos, but they play Marvel, show them how different they really are. If they don't like heavily offensive games, but they play Tekken, show them the similarities. A lot of people don't enjoy BB because they only listen to what other people say, and never try it themselves, so see if you can't AT LEAST get them to WATCH or TRY the game.

Most of this can be hard though, because it can take a lot of convincing, a lot of planning, and a lot of work, but that's how it all begins, with work.

If you're having trouble getting people to come to your small area, look up some bigger scenes near you and see if the TO's might be interested in coming closer to your area for a combined tournament with some of the players you know, see if you can't pitch in a little bit and help them with costs for moving the event closer to a central point between scenes. The ultimate goal, is to get all of the scenes to work together, not just in one state, but nationwide. That's the big picture.

I don't really have much else to say, I know my posts were pretty bland, and very uneducated, but that's just how I see it. I think people just need to TRY and talk others into playing the game, and instead of waiting for the tournament to come to them, to make the tournament themselves, and bring it to the other players.

But enough of my rambling now.

[PozerWolf]

I completely agree with what PoserWolf says here, especially with the comment on BBR. The announcement for BBR is too soon for people who REALLY want to go but can't afford it on due to it's short notice announcement or have jobs they have to let know a month in advanced that they want these days off. This has been a problem throughout time from when I got into BlazBlue as my main fighter, some majors/regionals/tournaments are announced months ahead of time and the advertisement for them are everywhere, and some of them; come out of nowhere surprising people who really want to go but it's either last minute, or there isn't enough advertisement on the event to have it noticed by the public. I looked into the Event Announcement Thread and there IS a thread on BBR but there's no solid information there to inform those who want to go, so I feel that BBR might be a bust due to this, especially since it's happening in February.

What's sad is that this event is for BlazBlue and for there to be no solid information on Dustloop, the date is being thrown around by "Word of Mouth" and some people have no idea where this tournament is being held. This shows that those advertising the game did not put much time into it (or were told on short notice themselves about an overseas qualifier) therefore the effort and the turnout will be lacking overall. People like myself would love to go to BBR but due to the fact that most people didn't find out about it until maybe the beginning of this month, and the tournament is next month, kinda proves my point. Maybe with a two month heads up, a lot of people who want to go, could but this thread was made on January 2nd of 2012, and that is nowhere near enough time for anyone to get the money to wherever this tournament may be (I hear its going to be on the west coast) nor is there enough information to promote the tournament. 1 month may be convenient for West Coast players but what about players on the East Coast? It seems a bit unfair to them since these guys have to travel across the country to participate and we already got into the whole demographic of the groups that play this game.

As Poser said, Aksys of America appears to appeal to those in California more than anywhere else (and it wouldn't surprise me if BBR was being held there) so how do you expect your companies game to grow when you focus on a single area? Is there a reason for that? Maybe. Probably because California has a bigger turnout for BB than any other state probably, but that's just me making an educated guess. In the end, we should just focus on the upcoming tournaments and find one that supports the BlazBlue community, go there and make an attempt to having one of the biggest BlazBlue tournaments there.

An Air Dasher Major is way too big to plan ATM for any of us, but we could look into that and see if we could make it possible, the idea itself is BRILLIANT but to make an event and try to focus on that as BlazBlue's biggest major ATM is too soon (After sleeping on it, I had to think twice about this, lol).

People have to understand the connections Evo has with the Capcom company, and how much the company actually speaks with the people around them. Never have I seen Aksys of America attempt this with any other tournament in trying to help spread the word of there game having a fighting game scene, hence the lack of support. Only time I've seen this type of support was Cali-only events, and only advertising in one state isn't a good idea.

I was actually able to talk to the people of the main 'heads' of Namco and Capcom personally, and they took my feed back really well. Even through email, they remember me and others that they got in contact with them at Evo.

Never had I had this kind of experience in anyway from the Aksys of America, and it's bad enough for me to even try to get info from them on anything through emails or on there own message boards.

Examples: more info on the BBR info, or lack of, anyways.

And there is a topic on it, and it's only one topic, which is mine, asking about the event with no real answers other than that no one knows what's going on.

Not only that, but there poor advertisement has almost no excuse.

Mentions of CS2 of changes or the update patch itself came out of no where, and never in detail did we get info on what was going on with that.

As well as in the past when first release Blaz CT english version to America, a lot of screw ups there in terms of advertisement, as the company failed to advertise outside of dustloop.com, which was a huge mistake. Just too many things that the company is doing is leaning to the wrong direction, yet no one is helping them go into the right direction. And thus, the end result is this...

http://www.aksysgames.com/2011/11/24/the-blazblue-revolution-is-coming/

this was posted on the site's creation on dustloop's front page and news section 11-24-11

the date of Feb. 25 2012 and location of Southern california has been there since then iirc

that is a 3 month heads up for this event....

This post is completely irrelevant as it only brings questions that have already been asked but never answered about this event.

Even now the date isn't 'official', and still no solid info on a venue, setups, or anything that might happen during the tournament in terms of other game related events.

At this point and time it will only be last minute to bring up 'official' info, and all in honestly it's hard to call it a 'major' due to how poorly things are being ran/advertised.

Stop yelling at Evo guys, and look at the true mistakes the community is doing here.

We need to get these issues fix to even be noticed in the gaming community for BlazBlue. Because let's be honest here, this a completely joke right now.

Edited January 13, 2012 by PozerWolf

[Fish]

I read the article and agree. so here some thoughts of my own.

- if you care about the tournament importance of BB you need to do 1 thing: invest in the tournament scene

- by invest I mean: use your free time and money to attend or organise

- got no money? promote the game itself, show it to your friends, talk about it, use boards: Keeping the Game in the active Disscusion means keeping the game alive

Beeing a College student in germany where the FG-Community is very small and the BB community therefore tiny, I myself am confronted too with Money/Timeshortage, it pains me greatly to see BB drifting in unimportance.

[Wild Wallice]

To make up for not being productive earlier, I want to say that I support the idea of netplay events that would provide the winners with hotel rooms or travel expenses to go to majors and think that it could definitely increase interest and turnout.

But a concern I have is that it would be possible for people who would have the resources to go to tournaments on their own would end up dominating an online event just so that they could get a free ride. In that case the outcome wouldn't be any different than normal, and of course if we try to constrain who can enter it might not be seen as fair.

[St1ckBuG]

Ok, it's late and I don't have an attention span long enough to read that first post but... maybe you guys are approaching this the wrong way. I've always said, for as far as the euro scene goes, that the BB community is an online community. It means: they will not show up for tournaments. This is fact and this will remain fact for probably the remainder of its lifetime.

Is this bad? No. And this is probably where a lot of dustloopees would disagree on, but they will have to understand that these BB players are not GG players, are not old-school and most likely don't really give a damn about how it used to go. They are simply a new generation of players that like to enjoy the game their way. The lack of tournaments doesn't mean no knowledge is exchanged, that nothing new is learned or that these are just casual gamers.

As you probably know by now, the current dutch GG community consists of a grand total of 4 members(HeatExtend, COCONUTBOOB, Chise and me). And before we ended up being with 4, we basically were 2 seperate communities of 2 players. When we only had offline play, Chise and I would play once every 3 months or so. Ever since online came out, it can be as frequent as every day, but generally all 4 members of the dutch community had the ability to play whenever they desired. In net however, we've had just 1 meeting where all members were present; we've had no tournaments, but did it stall our development? I think anyone that has seen me play at frosty faustings will tell you what I'll tell you here: No, quite frankly, we've been improving at an incomprehensible rate.

So if anything, I think that the BB community isn't doing a bad job per se. It isn't what old school players are used to, sure, but their community probably has more life and more development in it than people would give them credit for.

So noone read my reply?:/

I got you.

BB is split between netplay and serious tournament play, but I think it's possible to get netplayers to come out. Some of them are really good, but I think tournaments are just inaccessible to them or just seem scary. Time have changed since GG, so we need to adjust, you're right.

Oh, and I saw you play at FF. You're a strong player. I was going to go, but I waited to damn long to get my plane ticket... like an idiot.

[St1ckBuG]

Aren't netplay events counter-productive to the point that people don't leave their houses? Going out and supporting your local scene should be paramount to building the community.

But there's plenty of people who don't have much of a local scene/don't have the resources to travel to majors. The idea is to give them at least a shot at getting that opportunity, if I interpreted that right. There used to be lots of online events like that with SF 4, idk if it still happens anymore.

I don't think good netcode is really hurting BB, sad truth is the people who only play online right now probably just wouldn't be touching the game at all if the netcode was bad. I doubt a bad netcode would raise turnouts.

A lot of the time, at least here on EC, I hear a lot of people say: "I can't make it because I can't pay entry, and no one to split a hotel room with". things like this would solve that, and maybe get some new blood to make it out to events.

This, this, and this again. I think there's too much emphasis on NAHs not coming out. Like it or not, BB is exclusively a JP-arcade marketed game. The appeal to competitive Westerners is not really taken into account as far as I know.

-----

But that aside, YA'LL NEED TO COME OUT TO MONTREAL!!!

Seriously, I'm surprised at how vibrant our scene is despite all the doom and gloom going on. We're also setting up our own tourney which will hopefully happen sometime around March break.

Come out to Montreal, and we'll have a blast. We have strip bars on every block of the city, great food, and awesome people. Need I mention some fine and excellent BB players, too? Let's have a blast and show the world BB can have a great community, too.

As soon as you guys post the event you're thinking about having up there in May I'm going to say I'm 100% coming.