EPTThe trouble is, these Team Liquid tournaments are rare and massive. This makes sense for games like Starcraft, where a few tournaments done right is much better than a swarm of tournaments shoddily put together. That means getting sponsors and casters and Team Liquid cinematics to introduce every game. But what about other games that don't demand to be taken quite so seriously?
I want to know who the TL XCOM champion is. Or the TL Divekick champion. But if you tried to put together one of those massive tournaments, the inevitable answer is "But you can't possibly find sponsors! There won't be prize money! Who's going to cast it? Can you even find enough players to fill a 64-man bracket?"
Well, how about a group stage feeding into a 16 man bracket? With no prize money? Streamed when possible, with one of the other players who's not in this round commentating? Hell, it wouldn't even really have to be featured on TL, let alone sponsored by anyone. It might be that people wouldn't be interested in this kind of thing, but since I've never actually seen it attempted on TL, it's hard to know what community response would be.
So then, why hasn't it happened? The obvious question is who would organize it. There's a lot of logistical problems in organizing a tournament, and even if someone is willing to do the work, they still have to convince all the players to respect their authority. That's why tournaments are usually organized by some existing organization dedicated to the game, and then the tournament is advertised to players – no authority issues. For instance, what if two different people tried to organize TL XCOM tournaments? Which one is legitimate? Which should players play in? If both tournaments get off the ground and pronounce champions, who is the true TL champion?
So here's how I think it could happen: TL staff get involved to create official TL tournament threads for various games, and delegate to community members to organize the tournaments. Community members sign up for the tournaments, and TL staff are only involved in case of disputes. When a tournament completes, the champion is proclaimed in the official tournament thread, and either the thread is recycled for the next season, or a new thread (also proclaiming last season's champion) is created for the next season.
And what happens if there's not enough community interest? Well, when a game's tournament thread is created, people comment who are interested in playing. There's a deadline determined in the thread for when people have to sign up; and if not enough people sign up, the tournament doesn't happen. Then if people still want a tournament to happen, they have to find the thread for that game and comment they'd still like to play; if enough people sign up to fill a bracket after the deadline, the process is restarted. Otherwise, worst case scenario is nobody ever signs up and the TL champion seat for that game remains vacant – as it is currently.
Obviously I'm asking a lot of other people to put work in to reshape TL to my liking (although if my help were required to make a tournament happen, I'd happily help out); but I think a lot of people would like this website feature. The obvious comparison is TL Mafia – it uses TL resources and takes a lot of logistical work to do it, but it's a feature a lot of people appreciate, and it probably increases TL traffic which (I'm just guessing) probably helps out the website, too.
So, what do you say? Would you be interested in official TL tournaments for a wider range of games? Would you be willing to help out with organizing them? And if so, what games do you think should be played?
