aoe_emp · @aoe_emp
21st Jan 2017 from TwitLonger
Gamestah HEYGRLSSQ Qualifiers
Here's my thoughts on what happened today. Feel free to throw me under the bus if you disagree.
Specifically for today's tournament, under normal circumstances when a team doesn't show up usually the negative impact is 99% on that team, as they don't qualify/ win any money/ play against other teams. In OCE, however, the negative impact is shared to a degree with the organisers, as they use player and viewer stats in order to bring in sponsors/ justify putting money into a tournament. A single team dropping out can make up 5% of the playerbase of that tournament, and slightly lessens any reason to stream the tournament. When several teams drop out, in this case enough that all the remaining teams instantly qualify, there becomes no need to play the qualifier and hence stream anything, which leads to questions about even continuing the tournament or putting money in.
There's no denying today's turnout was a problem, although I believe ultimately it wont amount to a cancellation of the tournament or anything too drastic. We need to stop focusing on who was at fault though; just pointing out the blame isn't going to get us anywhere. chastising the players is going to have absolutely no effect on them, and chastising orgs will just make them feel like there is no reason to support the scene. What we need to do is look at WHY this happened, and how we can avoid it in future. The clear answer to me is communication. Our scene is small, which means we need to stay connected. It simply isn't viable to have a disconnect between orgs and players, or we are going to run into this problem consistently.
Orgs, especially those new to the scene or coming back after a long absence, need to approach the players, talk with them, and get some insight into how they think and how they like to play before finalising anything. Similarly, players need to look at the details of the tournament once its posted and talk with the admins about anything they aren't comfortable with or sure about, and smart organisers will listen to their comments and adjust if reasonable. I remember a similar problem happening on the day of the OCE v SAM tournament, where just a few more posts either way could have solved a lot of headache. /rant
tl;dr TALK.