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StarCon NYC LAN Debrief

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Jaeyun
Profile Joined June 2017
United States202 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-15 03:37:40
August 14 2023 22:45 GMT
#1
I wanted to write a debrief post about the NYC LAN and to share some broader thoughts around grassroots events and the community. I am not the organizer; however, I was a close advisor and advocate to seeing the event reach the finish line.

CONTEXT

The organizer is Zen, and this is the second iteration of "StarCon". The first one was held in LA, and was contained to a small group of folks within my own JYcord community. The intent was to create a small get-together for folks who regularly interacted with each other and make a tournament while we were at it. The reason for the "closed off event" was because Zen has a lot going on in his personal life with minimal gaming organizational experience, not to mention he's new to the SC:R scene. Just straight passion.

All throughout this community, I've seen a consistent pattern of TO's wanting to do big things, only to die out due to burn-out, lack of support, and generally dealing with difficult people with no compensation in return. By insulating the first StarCon to JYcord, I had the power and influence to help Zen by controlling the crowd (unilaterally banning bad actors, limiting complaints, finding admin support, etc.) to ensure that he had an appropriate support system. We prioritized having a good time over having a perfectly fair and balanced tournament. As a result, LA StarCon was a huge success. There was unanimous demand for more. We built off of the overwhelmingly positive support, albeit from a small group of people.

For NYC StarCon, I recommended Zen create his own discord to support the event. My intent was so that he can manage it with full ownership and for him to begin building his own brand identity for future events. I can't tell if he actually wants this, but with growing interest, I at least knew it didn't make sense to run it within my own community. Here, he expanded his horizons a bit. With Artosis participating / streaming, it naturally legitimized the event. Without any public crowdfunding, and using entrance fees and participant donations, the prize pool jumped to ~$1700 (s/o to Artosis, Alej, 10dur) with multiple peaks at 2700+ concurrent viewers. He organized a casting / streaming room with Artosis's channel. Everybody had an amazing time. Again, NYC StarCon was a resounding success and there was unanimous demand for more.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What was the tournament format and where can we find general info?
Tournament Format: ~22 Players Double Elimination Bracket
Date & Location: Sat Aug 11th @ Waypoint Cafe NYC
Maps: Eclipse, Vermeer, Dark Origin, Sylphid, Retro
Stream VOD: Part 1, Part 2
Casters: Diggity + whoever wanted to cast

What was the criteria for player selection?
There was no hard criteria. There was a StarCon discord, and ~10-20 people shouted names within NA. The intent was not to be gated to NA, but there was likely added pressure to put on a great event if people are paying thousands of dollars and traveling across the world to come, for an organizer with limited capacity. The unspoken, soft criteria for players was skill, visibility, manners, and reliability. If you're a pain in the ass or live under a rock, your name was less likely to be discussed. If you want to be invited, get out of your rock and don't be a pain in the ass. Reputation matters for these kinds of things.

Why wasn't this publicized more?
Space, control, money, with a relatively new but willing organizer. To help people understand better..
  • Renting out an internet cafe is expensive. Attendants paid for the space out of their own pockets. We had to make things work financially for folks attending the tournament, taking into consideration flights and hotels. This is not the same as a sponsor with big pockets renting out a stadium with an open invite of guests.

  • The cafe is tiny. People walking around the aisles resulted in bumping into chairs of players playing tournament games. Spectators talk behind players, resulting in players being able to hear what is being said. It was fine, but having more people and potential bad actors increase the risk of ruin.

  • Every LAN has an issue of at least 1 person forgetting their Battle.net credentials, which results in locking out other players from logging in for 1 hour. More people failing to log increases the likelihood the entire tournament gets pushed back. For reference, LAN start was 11am. Delayed due to lock-out. Cafe closes at 10pm. We ended at 10:30pm. Time is a stresser.

  • The event is competitive, but the priority was to have a good time. "Outside competitors" are more likely to complain about tournament format, balance, and being strictly by the rules in the case of conflict or edge cases. Zen was a participant in the tournament himself. There was no 3rd party admin.

Too much public noise is bad without a professional organization. In this case, Zen had a few advisors to keep the circle and decision tree small to focus on putting a great event with less opinions and voices swaying him. Some folks on TL are flat out difficult, critical, and unhelpful. I've witnessed TO's with sponsors in the past being discouraged from future events solely due to constant complaints from a few but deadly, vocal forum folk. I am partially responsible for advising against publicizing this on TL or Reddit for this reason, although an announcement on the days leading up to it would have been reasonable.


MY PERSONAL THOUGHTS ON THE TOURNAMENT SCENE

Despite being new, Zen is one of the few TO's I've met who truly is in-touch with the (albeit small) player base and is void of any alternative agendas about changing the way things are in a game with 2+ decades of experience. I've been personally frustrated at how difficult it is to find someone who truly revels in putting on a good, player-centric event, without fitting too much of their own agenda and vision at the cost of what the players simply want.

My decades of experience in the scene tells me the long-retaining player population overwhelmingly want what we've experienced year after year. It's a failure-model to overfit to a few peoples' opinions about "change" because it's not representative of what the remainder of folks silently want. Few push back against this, but I'm going to call it out. The majority of people who want "change" already moved onto new games / look forward to Stormgate and the minority of those remaining are, well, the minority.

HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

Despite the difficulties and being new, Zen did an absolutely superb job running both tournaments (in addition to online events like NaS Starleague, Z-Series Showmatches, etc.), and as excellent of a job as I've seen in the entire Remastered era, and I've been to well-funded events like ZOTAC, Twitch Holiday Bash, etc. Sure, money drives production and professional labor, but I learned quickly these things really don't matter as much as just.. simply having a smooth and successful event, as janky as it might be. I don't know what his plans are, but over food and drinks, we were already brainstorming ideas to expand and make the next StarCon even greater, backed appropriately by finances and admin resources from people. Reach out to Zen if you want to contribute financially or organizationally to future efforts - he is amazing to work with, given you're a sane individual.

I continue to see this model of success in building momentum with grassroots events and while I have no capacity in being a TO myself, I will relentlessly push for this behind the scenes. Start small and iterate vs. swing for the fences only to fail. Focus on execution under the financial and labor constraints presented by reality. Limit the noise and criticism from those who have no intent to be constructive or collaborative. Understand pleasing everybody is pleasing nobody. Prioritize the players. Protect (and compensate!) the organizer. And last but not least, keep putting on great events.

Huge public thanks to Zen for allowing me to enjoy this game way longer than I thought I would. I seriously considered retiring not only from SC but the community altogether sometime last year, but these events give me something to look forward to. Big thanks to Artosis for his continued support and publicity with his broadcasting. And, a round of applause for all who collectively contributed with admin duties, organizing meals and hotel stays, and everything in between.

Cheers, and hope to be able to insult Hawk IRL next time.
www.twitch.tv/jaeyun
fearthequeen
Profile Joined November 2011
United States788 Posts
August 14 2023 23:03 GMT
#2
Yall already know, but great job to Zen and everyone involved. Caught most of the stream with Diggity and Co. casting and it was amazing. Plenty of high quality games cast.
NAKR`flying
TT1
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada10028 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-15 15:31:01
August 15 2023 00:15 GMT
#3
The problem is the success of the tour basically revolves around Artosis showing up, you can't always count on that. If he doesn't, would people really want to travel to a LAN just to play in front of 200-300 viewers? Would the orgs want to put that much time and energy into something like that, would either the players or orgs find that experience rewarding?

BW (especially in the foreign scene) has much deeper issues that need to be addressed first before being able to grow the tourney scene in a sustainable way, it has a big infrastructure problem. In order for that to happen, we need to find a way to engage the entire scene/community with the game (something more than just being a viewer). The foreign scene's foundation is very weak, that's what needs to get fixed first. Don't get me wrong, hosting tours is great but that's not real grassroot growth in my eyes, it supports and reinforces the scene.

Real long term growth has to have consistent momentum behind it, these 1 off tours with big names are more of an adrenaline shot imo. The biggest problem BW has is that the majority of people just don't like to play the game, until that issue gets resolved we won't be able to move on to the next stage. BW has more to offer than just 1v1 play, that's what we need to tap into to grow the scene/game in a self sufficient way.

All in all tho it was a great event, it was really fun to watch. Thanks to all the orgs/casters and players for their time and energy.
ab = tl(i) + tl(pc), the grand answer to every tl.net debate
sva
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States748 Posts
August 15 2023 03:21 GMT
#4
On August 15 2023 09:15 TT1 wrote:
The problem is the success of the tour basically revolves around Artosis showing up, you can't always count on that. If he doesn't, would people really want to travel to a LAN just to play in front of 200-300 viewers? Would the orgs want to put that much time and energy into something like that, would either the players or orgs find that experience rewarding?

BW (especially in the foreign scene) has much deeper issues that need to be addressed first before being able to grow the tourney scene in a sustainable way, it has a big infrastructure problem. In order for that to happen, we need to find a way to engage the entire scene/community with the game (something more than just being a viewer). The foreign scene's foundation is very weak, that's what needs to get fixed first. Don't get me wrong, hosting tours is great but that's not real grassroots growth in my eyes, it supports and reinforces the scene.

Real long term growth has to have consistent momentum behind it, these 1 off tours with big names are more of an adrenaline shot imo. The biggest problem BW has is that the majority of people just don't like to play the game, until that issue gets resolved we won't be able to move on to the next stage. BW has more to offer than just 1v1 play, that's what we need to tap into to grow the scene/game in a self sufficient way.

All in all tho it was a great event, it was really fun to watch. Thanks to all the orgs/casters and players for their time and energy.



Woosh
sva
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States748 Posts
August 15 2023 03:30 GMT
#5
Great recap, and tremendous event.

If Zen's goal was to make a fun event with a competitive winners bracket then he really out did himself. My only complaint is that it was over too quickly and I wanted more. I really hope he can continue to make fun events, and know that he has a lot of great people around him to make difficult decisions.

Even with multiple people having to drop out in the last few days before the event due to circumstances outside of there control everything still ran incredibly smoothly.

Jaeyun
Profile Joined June 2017
United States202 Posts
August 15 2023 03:53 GMT
#6
On August 15 2023 09:15 TT1 wrote:
The problem is the success of the tour basically revolves around Artosis showing up, you can't always count on that. If he doesn't, would people really want to travel to a LAN just to play in front of 200-300 viewers? Would the orgs want to put that much time and energy into something like that, would either the players or orgs find that experience rewarding?


Overall, I find the assessment fair and I'm wholly in agreement regarding the point about infra problems, especially when it comes to lag. That was also a demotivator as I spoke to folks at the LAN, thinking about practicing beyond it.

My post wasn't to imply that LANs are going to save the scene. That said, I would contend with the quoted portion. Most, if not all people in attendance, would definitely go to another LAN for ~200 viewers, with or without Artosis. While it was a stacked lineup, the majority of folks in this + StarCon LA were nowhere close to a winning run, yet they still came out. The social component really matters, not to mention the collective experience / buildup leading up to the tournament itself.

Without more money / viewership, it'll fail to be a purely competitive event, but that wouldn't really stop them from being successful either way. However, with more buildup and support, I can envision a future with a large enough crowd-funded pool to attract more talent. It's a long shot, but possible.
www.twitch.tv/jaeyun
Jealous
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
10310 Posts
August 15 2023 04:43 GMT
#7
Props to TO and everyone involved for organizing this event. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, because as you said, bad actors will make even the most driven individuals burn out and stop supporting localized initiatives like this one.
"The right to vote is only the oar of the slaveship, I wanna be free." -- бум бум сучка!
M3t4PhYzX
Profile Joined March 2019
Poland4244 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-15 04:47:34
August 15 2023 04:47 GMT
#8
On August 15 2023 12:21 sva wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 15 2023 09:15 TT1 wrote:
The problem is the success of the tour basically revolves around Artosis showing up, you can't always count on that. If he doesn't, would people really want to travel to a LAN just to play in front of 200-300 viewers? Would the orgs want to put that much time and energy into something like that, would either the players or orgs find that experience rewarding?

BW (especially in the foreign scene) has much deeper issues that need to be addressed first before being able to grow the tourney scene in a sustainable way, it has a big infrastructure problem. In order for that to happen, we need to find a way to engage the entire scene/community with the game (something more than just being a viewer). The foreign scene's foundation is very weak, that's what needs to get fixed first. Don't get me wrong, hosting tours is great but that's not real grassroots growth in my eyes, it supports and reinforces the scene.

Real long term growth has to have consistent momentum behind it, these 1 off tours with big names are more of an adrenaline shot imo. The biggest problem BW has is that the majority of people just don't like to play the game, until that issue gets resolved we won't be able to move on to the next stage. BW has more to offer than just 1v1 play, that's what we need to tap into to grow the scene/game in a self sufficient way.

All in all tho it was a great event, it was really fun to watch. Thanks to all the orgs/casters and players for their time and energy.



Woosh

He is (TT1) 100% right though.
NotJumperer
Profile Blog Joined July 2005
United States1371 Posts
August 15 2023 05:08 GMT
#9
--- Nuked ---
Jealous
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
10310 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-15 07:07:08
August 15 2023 07:01 GMT
#10
On August 15 2023 14:08 Jumperer wrote:
i've been to over 100 lan tournaments for smash melee and helped T.O some of them. From my experience, most people attending the tournament knows that they won't win. They generally attend the lan for the community aspect and to shoot shits with others that they know from online or from before. Seeing and meeting what known players are like irl is another draw. However, we had side events for non-competitive players to participate. In SC, you can do a fun micro tournament, other used map settings, or FFA.

SC can do a grassroot grow similar to melee, which was abandoned by nintendo and had nothing. To start, have a centralized discord for organizing LAN and news about possible LAN dates coming up. Still, The problem I see with SC compared to melee is that melee only need CRTs and a gamecube/wii and it's good to go for 1 setup. You can host a tournament at someone's house for free. With the current SC lan model that's not possible. In Starcraft you need an actual PC, keyboard, and mouse, so you need to rent out a Lan cafe which can be quite expensive. Perhaps T.O. can stock up on shitty PCs/monitors just for the purpose of running starcraft tournaments. You don't need a good PC to run remastered. Donation is a possibility. That's what we did with melee, if we see a CRT on the street we pick it up. Another option is have participant bring their PCs for the tournament. This way you can just do a lan party at someone's house.

In my experience with NYC LANs, BW is already installed on most machines and the LAN Cafe owners will absolutely work out a mutually beneficial deal with you that might not cost any money up front and may even include a discount if everyone pays for their own play time. Having experience with both BW and Melee events, I'd say that running a BW tour in NYC is far easier than a Melee tour because of exactly what you mentioned concerning CRTs. However, I agree that any BW event in NYC will need a dozen+ PCs at minimum, so LAN cafes are the best bet for sure - even if we've all gotten older and richer, I don't think anyone just has that kind of set up laying around (though colleges and their computer labs have historically been kind to us too ^^).
"The right to vote is only the oar of the slaveship, I wanna be free." -- бум бум сучка!
[sc1f]eonzerg
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Belgium6830 Posts
August 15 2023 08:20 GMT
#11
Jaeyun i love you. But.. I Ain't Reading All That

Congratulations on your win or im sorry you loss.
LML
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
Germany1783 Posts
August 15 2023 11:29 GMT
#12
Great write up. The part about negative voices from the community is too real. Also about reasonable people.
LANs are great to watch. The Warsaw LAN was fun, this was fun as well. I'm looking forward to the next LANs (Chat StarLan and BSL Thailand), and hopefully many new ones.
LML
littlechava
Profile Blog Joined March 2004
United States7221 Posts
August 15 2023 11:29 GMT
#13
zen is a god
Entusman #12
masoka82
Profile Joined June 2020
Spain594 Posts
August 15 2023 12:18 GMT
#14

LANs are great to watch. The Warsaw LAN was fun, this was fun as well. I'm looking forward to the next LANs (Chat StarLan and BSL Thailand), and hopefully many new ones.

I agreed 100%
WGT-Baal
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
France3466 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-15 13:02:11
August 15 2023 12:54 GMT
#15
Very good post, and great reply by TT1.

First of all, congrats to you and more importantly to Zen for what looked like an amazing event. I m sad I couldnt be a part of it but I got pictures from the great AoT LANs are great to meet friends and players you usually see online, as has been said, you do not go to win, but for the social part.
DH Montreal right before Covid was great in that regard, and I m sure Airn s LAN in Chicago will also be amazing, another one I m sad to miss for IRL reasons.

For your point about TO:

I absolutely agree that too much change is bad, wacky maps are also not that great outside one off online events, I am aware of the irony saying that as the (retired) BWCL head admin but we are trying to improve on that point.
The fact that Zen, being relatively new, managed to avoid all those risks and had a flawless organization is all the more impressive.

That being said, this specific event cannot quite be called grassroot, and had Artosis not showed up for any reason, it might have been very different. And to be honest I think it is fine, we need those kind of events as much as the more old school style LANs, the scene is somewhat old and small, but mixing high profile events, with popular streamers, as well as "regular" event is healthy as it caters to the most diverse of needs.

On a personal note, while IRL makes it so that I ll have very limited time going forward, I would be happy to help with admining in any way I can

TLDR: Keep up the good work, Zen is amazing, looking forward to more events!


Edit (sorry) : as for the "why wasnt this publicized more", as a previous LAN organiser myself several times in Paris, with AureS, those are all very great points that I am happy to see in public. A lot of people assume you can just easily walk into such tournaments, but it s not that simple and there are a lot of risks to the organiser and the venue. You did absolutely what was best, as I argued in the other thread. So again, great job and thanks for using your name to bring out in the open a lot of very good behind the scene admining/TO knowledge!
Horang2 fan
Jaeyun
Profile Joined June 2017
United States202 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-15 17:54:09
August 15 2023 17:53 GMT
#16
On August 15 2023 14:08 Jumperer wrote:
i've been to over 100 lan tournaments for smash melee and helped T.O some of them. From my experience, most people attending the tournament knows that they won't win. They generally attend the lan for the community aspect and to shoot shits with others that they know from online or from before. Seeing and meeting what known players are like irl is another draw. However, we had side events for non-competitive players to participate. In SC, you can do a fun micro tournament, other used map settings, or FFA.


Thanks all for the thoughts and comments. +1 to Jumper's point here. One of the things that was discussed was to extend the event to be a 2-day event rather than 1, since most people are spending lots of money for travel and also always come the day before to play, meet, and hang out.

On the day before, we can easily have a variety of casual and serious events. For example, my strong recommendation is a live Korean style proleague with captain's pick with a separate prize pool. Imagine doing this live with teams cheering for and against each other, with an open, crowdfunded prize pool.

There can also be two tiers for lower and higher levels that can go on simultaneously. In some ways, we can motivate some of the players who might not have a chance for a winning run in the main event to at least make the lower tier roster and participate. Then, if there's time, we can top it off with meme-y events like the random map FFA Artosis hosted back then, race wars, etc. Really, anything, for good vibes and fun times. We can get really creative about it.
www.twitch.tv/jaeyun
Zeskyy
Profile Joined May 2022
Australia2 Posts
August 16 2023 16:05 GMT
#17
Zen put together an amazing event with very high quality games.

Thank you Zen
Diggity
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
United States806 Posts
Last Edited: 2023-08-16 21:44:14
August 16 2023 20:13 GMT
#18
As a commentator rather than top player I am never entirely sure where I stand in regards to the community at large but I am definitely willing to put in the effort for things I am passionate about. I was debating whether or not to chime in on this as I wanted to avoid provoking or promoting any drama. I seem to have a knack for doing that regardless of intention. But avoiding issues doesn't solve problems.

So let me lay out the problems I can identify as harshly and honestly as I can while still providing encouragement to keep the momentum going. This is going to be a wall of text.

The TLDR: Yea we have problems but we aren't going anywhere and we can overcome them so lets take things one step at a time by coordinating and innovating to ensure a long life for the game we all love.


Preface:

Trolling/drama may be fun and even a core part of the communities personality, but for grass root organizers who are the life blood of any community it is draining and toxic. I am primarily directing this post at people who still want to see the broodwar community grow and thrive.

If you think that is impossible or foolhardy that is OK, there are valid reasons for skepticism. But given the above point (drama is toxic for contributors) do the community a solid and simply don't engage in the conversation so you aren't weighing everyone else down.

The Problems

To TT1s point and addressing the elephant in the room outright, we are an older game/esport and we are in active competition with other communities/games. If we provide a negative or inferior experience, given the array of options people will go elsewhere. The community engages in a lot of hazing for whatever reason which works against engaging new players on the outset. It is also a mechanically difficult game which creates yet another barrier to entry. Additionally there isn't a glut of players to provide a gentle slope towards the higher ranks. For some that is a feature (I love how difficult this game is) but that is the minority.

Broodwar is a game of privilege. What I mean by that is it rewards time and effort in a mostly linear manner. The more hard work you put into the game the better the results. But that hard work is typically in the form of 2+ hour sessions of dedicated practice. The availability of that sort of time is becoming rarer and rarer and it is a privilege to have that sort of time in the first place. That is ignoring the compounded time investment of viewership and community interaction/involvement.

As the core player base ages, responsibilities start to pile up which cuts two directions. 1) there is less time to put into the game itself and 2) there isn't a ton of spare time past that to invest into the community. On top of that it is difficult to get people to invest in viewing or dedicating time to anything but "the best". As long as the Professional Korean community outpaces the foreigner community, getting viewer buy-in is going to be a challenge.

People band wagon. They follow the Michael Jordans, Kobe Bryants, Peyton Mannings etc etc, but a healthy sustainable community has buy in/viewership even with the worst team in the league. At the moment we don't even have concrete teams to make this possible. In the meantime everything is going to be top heavy which means people will tune in for Flash and nearly no one else.

Objectively we are probably looked at as a boomer game with a boomer fanbase. I am also not sure how much of the community wants broodwar to grow as there are psychological advantages to having a niche personal hobby. Artosis' stream provided a huge boost in viewership, but I am not sure how much of his core audience is convertible to the broader broodwar community.

The philosopher John Locke discussed how value is added to something when you put labor into it. I would take it a step further and say that much like currency, labor has to be publicly recognized before it has the magical metamorphosis into value. In a vacuum any sport is pretty silly on the surface. But the collective buy-in makes it transcend being a simple game.

Point being, hard work means significantly less without an audience there to appreciate it. The power isn't with the person on stage as much as it is with the audience. And right now we don't have the raw numbers to convince people that broodwar is as special as we think it is.

Stormgate is around the corner. It will be new and shiny like SC2 was in comparison to BW. It has the capacity to overshadow any investment we put in and further fracture off portions of the community.

Blizzard abandoned us a long time ago. I don't know if Microsoft has plans to bolster us but I don't think it can be relied on. We don't have the raw viewership to land anything but altruistic sponsors at the moment. We may be able to land small local sponsors, but due to the international/national nature of the scene, we don't have a method to provide them value.

The positive

If you are reading this post, odds are you agree that there is something special about broodwar and the broodwar community at its core.

Games don't live this long. We are a very visible anomaly.

People have been talking about broodwar being a dead game since before SC2. But we are still here. In December the game will have been alive for 25 years. We aren't going anywhere. As much as people talk about our demise it is pretty clear we are impossible to kill.

If you attended the LAN, one of the most refreshing parts of the experience was that everyone was on the same page. Everyone there was passionate and dedicated to broodwar and that created something bigger than any one individual could contribute.

Another thing the LAN reproved is that even if people don't enjoy playing broodwar, they love watching broodwar. Youtube, twitch and Korea have proven this point as well. As fun as many other esports are, the vast majority of them are simply not as entertaining to watch. We know we have a winning "product" and we can point to the longevity and success of Korean broodwar as proof.

This is the game that put esports on the map. TL is no longer known as a broodwar clan but an esports organization. If we can get over some invisible hump there isn't any reason we can't snowball as a broader community.

We don't have incredible amounts of free time, but we do have a VERY intelligent community. I believe in our capacity to innovate. For example check out Titan reactor, CPL, BSL and the UMS community if you haven't already.

If we can work out advanced build orders, we can come up with a plan of attack to deal with the hurdles that are endemic to the collective community.

CPL already exists, if we can regularly promote CPL it will definitely help with the player entry and community capture problem.

The volume of games that have been stolen from broodwar UMS and turned into full production games is staggering. If we support the UMS community I am sure they will continue to produce fun games that will draw causal players in. There is a glut of fun UMS already out there. It's a solid on ramp to glean new viewers and players.

Yes we are an older community. But in theory that should mean we can be a little more fucking mature. In discussion with various people around the LAN in regards to their entry point to Broodwar, I couldn't help but notice a pattern of brother/family engagement. We all know the Plott brother's story. I think a big reason the wider community feels like family is that it has encapsulated the brotherly competitive vibe. So how about instead of being the asshole abusive older brother, or annoying ass younger brother we focus on being the encouraging inclusive brother invested in each others success.

We don't have the raw resources of the Korea community. But we have active translation groups working to create guides. Since we don't have people who can engage with the game full time it means we are going to need to work smarter. I am hoping that the UMS/programming community can find ways to engage with the high level players to create maps/tools which can provide a faster method to engage with good practice/reps. Those tools can then be handed off to new players to lower the mechanical barrier of entry and reduce the volume of time required to improve.

Even without special tools, the community is improving at the game collectively. It seemed like all the NYC LAN participants brought their A game. The more the top level players can improve as a group, the better the quality of games. The better the quality of games, the better the viewership experience. The better the viewership experience the more buy-in we get to the community at large.

As far as Stormgate, broodwar players tend to dominate new RTS. We can use it as an opportunity to gain exposure and redirect people back to broodwar.

Also the Microsoft take over is right around the corner and we are making waves. If nothing else we can put ourselves in a position to be noticed.

We can look at all these barriers as a reason to quit, or we can use them as a method to motivate us into being more efficient and directed as a whole.

Right this second we just had a big flash point with the NYC Lan that sparked a lot of energy in the community. It is something to build from. We don't need to solve all the problems at once. It is sufficient to simply keep the momentum going.

A LAN that is more fun focused is happening in Chicago put on by Airneanach. We can provide support there to make sure it's as successful as possible as a small next step.

In the meantime it's important we celebrate what a huge success the NYC LAN was. Zen did an amazing job organizing the event. Jy and Artosis provided vital support. The entire player base brought incredible games and provided an infectious vibe.

Conclusion
This week the community is better off than it was last week. Lets keep it going.
LuckyFool
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States9015 Posts
August 25 2023 19:58 GMT
#19
Came across this LAN through Diggity's youtube channel recently and I just wanted to say I was amazed at how many names I recognized in the tournament bracket. So awesome to see BW events like this, thanks to everyone who organized and helped make it a reality, I enjoyed watching and hope to see future events.
Jealous
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
10310 Posts
August 26 2023 01:30 GMT
#20
On August 26 2023 04:58 LuckyFool wrote:
Came across this LAN through Diggity's youtube channel recently and I just wanted to say I was amazed at how many names I recognized in the tournament bracket. So awesome to see BW events like this, thanks to everyone who organized and helped make it a reality, I enjoyed watching and hope to see future events.

Future event:

Location: where Lucky Fool lives

Amenities: BYOC+peripherals

Time: If he doesn't give one I'll just show up I guess, more people that come with me = hard to say no

♡

"The right to vote is only the oar of the slaveship, I wanna be free." -- бум бум сучка!
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