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22nd July 2005:
Tournaments in Gaming
The way forwards for gaming is often taken to be online, but why not play alongside your opponent for added fun, like in the 'old' days?
Posted by Chris Barnett - PlayStation 2,GameCube,Xbox,PC - UK and Europe

With the rise in popularity of games and the affordability of the main console formats, the average gamer has access to most games, even if it is through playing at a friend's house. This allows gamers to become experts at games in much quicker periods of time than in the past, where they would have been required to play excessively in an arcade.

Not only were arcades expensive for compulsive gamers, they were also difficult to access for most people (many UK cities have fewer than five arcades) and so many were deterred from becoming elitist at games. Despite this, many games tournaments took place in arcades and on a multi-national level. These were filled with talented gamers, no doubt, but these gamers were privileged enough to have played a game sufficiently. One Street Fighter 2 player once claimed that he had played the game for over 1,000 hours and missed several meals in the process (his mother once interrupted his gaming and was herself thrown out of the arcade for 'disturbing the business interests' of the arcade). When winners emerged from these tournaments they were the best, but only in a small field of people. Many potential champions may have simply been unable to get access to the games that they wanted a doctorate in.

In the modern gaming situation, every gamer can be that champion. No matter where you live in the UK there is likely to be some form of organised gaming tournament being organised. The only problem lies in establishing this as normality for gamers interested in such tournaments. The ideal situation would be as follows:

You walk into a game shop and ask the store when the next tournament is. The owner then gives you a date and game, along with an invite to take part in the tournament. You then tell all your friends and they sign up with you, creating a mini-community as you train together for the tournament. After the entire tournament is over and a winner found (it may or may not be you or your friends), the organisers then tell you about the next tournament, which you immediately sign up for.

This would create a similar situation to that of a domino or dart club in a pub, where a weekly schedule is common ("Sam time next week then?"). But as you well know, this is not the case, and what we have at the moment is far from this situation. Why this is the reason and how we can help in making game tournaments more popular will be the subject of this series of features. We will be spanning them out over a period of days to allow you to consider each aspect individually. With your help, we can make one-to-one gaming cool again. Any ideas that you have, or any success that you have in following our suggestions could be reported back to us, to help us determine what you think.

The first problem concerning tournament gaming is the sudden popularity of online gaming. Whilst many online games offer some tournaments, these are not true tournaments. What we consider a true tournament is one in which you can look the person you are playing and see the fear or embarrassment in their eyes. With an online connection, even with voice facilities, you are not physically in the presence of your rival. You never know if they are cheating or if they are running scared; you don not even know if they are real!

This is not the way forwards for our idea of gaming tournaments, we would rather play against a person rather than an avatar (which is essentially what anyone you cannot see is). The very fact that you are playing in front of a live audience is part of the true experience, you must travel to the venue with nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Yet when you leave you could be a minor celebrity or a loser (even more so than normal).

In a given town, if one shop houses tournaments, then you could be considered to be the best at a given game should you win one. For the whole period of time between victory and the next tournament, you would be the best, you would be respected. Prizes may be offered, but we will discuss these in a later instalment. The respect is what many gamers want (from the great days of inputting initials into a leader board, where no-one would really know it was ever you) and that is what can be offered by one tournament.

Different games will appeal to different gamers and the tournaments will take different structures accordingly. We will begin in our next instalment by discussing the tournaments offered in the fighting or beat-em-up genre, and how they could be implemented in your local games shop.

Chris Barnett

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