Maybe not no more tournaments, but less. Fewer. I gotta do a little clickbait to get folks in here, but I don't wanna do away with tournaments completely. I wanna say that I first got the idea of thinking about this topic from seeing Erin Plasma muse on it a bit, so give her a follow or something if fgc stuff like this interests you.
Due to y'know, recent events, her posting has not been fully FGC focused, but also she's a human being and will post about whatever she damn well pleases.
Tournaments are good for a specific purpose. They have their place in the FGC, but lately i've realized that tournaments are a hammer, and we're using it for things that aren't nails. Tournaments are good for assessing who is the best. Absolute #1. You wanna find out the top two players in a group? Double elim brackets are the way to go. You have only a short amount of time to game and want to have your event run in a scheduled manner? Boom tournaments are your thing.
But let's say, what if you just wanted to hang out? What if you didn't want to find out who was "the best" perse, but just play around for the hell of it. Then tournaments aren't exactly the way to go. Especially if you're doing double elim. "Oh i lost two times, i guess i suck and can go fuck off now." I suppose you can still hang around the venue and chat, or play casuals, but what if no one wants to play casuals? What if everyone else is busy being good or they already left cuz they have nothing else to do, so you can't make friends with the 0-2ers.
I think we in the FGC, especially more niche spaces like poverty, or puzzle, should move away from doing tournaments so much and try other ways of engaging
I don't like that word cuz it has the taste of "content", but it does apply here.
our communities. I think that giving folks more ways to get involved with the community that don't involve being good at the video game is not only good for us, but necessary.
I don't think a heavy reliance on tournaments is a sustainable way to engage
YUCK!!!!!
with our communities. If we constantly are relying on tests of skill, then we'll only retain the folks that are good, or are masochistic enough to keep getting their shit kicked in, and those are generally fine people to have around. However, we need to think of other ways to keep folks in the fold. Other ways for people that are not as skilled to have a reason to stick around beyond spite.
I wanna turn your attention to a little theory called uses and gratifications. To give you the elevator pitch, it asserts that people seek out certain media for certain reasons. Like let's say you have a wildly popular show right, like LOST. some people will watch it to stay in the talk about it at work the next day, some will watch it because they think one of the actors is cute, and a bigger slice of that pie will watch it because they love it when revolutionary war philosophers are depicted in alternate universes. The point is folks take part in media and activities for different reasons, and if being good at the game is the only thing we're offering, then we're missing out on a lion's share of potential community members.
I'm not really sure what the answer is either. I think scheduled casual sessions are a step in the right direction, but maybe also other stuff like fanart showcases, or romhacking and palmod contests.
In thinking on this question, I reminded myself of my time in Rumble Fighter. It was a toxic space in alot of ways, but being good was not the only way to involve yourself in the community. There was fanart, music videos, suggestions for new fighitng styles and weapons to be added to the game, role play, etc, etc. Not saying that FGC spaces should adopt all of these things as possible vectors for interaction, but it gives me an idea of the direction I wanna go in with something like this. In the Twinkle Star Sprites discord, I'm gonna launch a fanart contest or something to give folks another way to interact with the community without having to get smacked up in the fightcade lobby. It's probably not the silver bullet, but it's something different, and I look forward to trying it.
I think this is somewhat related to the blog post I made yesterday.
Technically earlier today, but we're moving on.
That having nice and cozy social spaces can be good centers for building power and community. I think when we're in these spaces, we have to think about what lessons we're teaching by having a majority of our activities be tests of raw skill. How maybe that can impart the idea that you're not an important member of the community if you're not good. Well I'm here to tell you that you don't have to be good, you don't have to walk for a hundred miles on your knees in the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
This is a reference to Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, but congrats if that line awoke something within you.
Yes it's important to learn how to be a good loser and show up regardless of you W/L ratio, but also maybe we sorta avoid there being a W/L dichotomy in the first place. Maybe just some days if at all possible.
If you're someone that runs tournaments on a regular basis, consider what I've said and the possible implications. If you're someone that's on the fence about fighting games, or curious about stepping out of your comfort zone into other games, think about other things that could incentivize you to play that game you've been avoiding for a while. Honestly a big part of the problem is the 40 hour work week,
More if you have to do other stuff like a side hustle or school.
but for other folks that maybe have the time and not the heart, we should think of how a focus on winning and being good is keeping some of them away.