I’ve thrown out this question to our local card game (covers most LCGs and a couple of others) and got a surprising number of responses. Lots of people who wanted to be part of our netrunner community, but didn’t feel like they wanted to join in competitions for a variety of reasons.
The last event we organised was really popular, people from all over the country came along, and we made a conscious decision to keep it as friendly to new players as we could. At the end of the day, though, it was still a tournament.
I’ve decided I’m going to run a non tournament event, go through all the motions for a tournament (promotion, venue, all day on a weekend, etc) but remove cost of entry, prizes, rounds and ranks. Effectively a casual meet up evening, but stretched over a full day, with maybe some deck clinic or similar sessions thrown in, possibly an exhibition match.
We are also arranging the next intercity friendly here and there’s a Scottish cup to sort, but hopefully we can fit it in early in the new year. Hope to report back on it when we’re done.
For Conquest, I’ve managed a tournament that had great success.
It was a full day tourney. On the morning it was friendly casual play, where i brought one deck for each faction and ask good players to bring at least 2 decks.
And the afternoon was 4 or 5 swiss, where some people could borrow the decks i made available on the morning.
Everyone was happy with it. Some came only for the afternoon but it was minority, and every player who came on the morning stayed for the tournament.
Some people didn’t even tried the game before the day and bought 3 core sets after the tournament.
On Netrunner the card pool is more intimidating. But I bet an event like this one would have some sense.
Back on netrunner subject, I don’t understand why so many people here consider homebrew = jank deck.
MTG has never been more successful. However, I remember the rough times. If anything, their creation of a Pro Tour may have prevented the game from become a fad whose bubble burst, like Beanie Babies and the like.
FNM and their major support of a casual scene is just good business. Any way to attract more customers, expand one’s base, and get product in hands it normally wouldn’t is just sound business and marketing. It’s one of the reasons my daughter got lots of popcorn and pretzels trick or treating this year, something I never would’ve received as a kid.
What kind of inhuman monsters live in your neighborhood, and why must they prey upon the shattered dreams of innocent children? They deserve all the vandalism their houses recieve. That’s almost as bad as the one horrible old person in every neighborhood who always gives out raisins and apples.
Dental hygenist, had to be. A real dentist would be giving out full size candy bars since he’d profit when your teeth fell out. The hygenist has to do all the dirty work and gets paid by the hour.
Where I lived we had a couple that would hand out religious tracts about how D&D would steal your soul, and going to school dances would give you chlamydia.
I won’t deny that this has also been part of it, as it has been for LoL. Consider, though, that both the protour and the championship series in league do two things concurrently- they stabilize the upper tiers of the competitive scene and create a reliable point to aim at for those who are looking for it (which benefits competitive players in a great way IMO), but also open up a whole new kind of ‘player’, spectators. I definitely think the pro-tour has been a great initiative and done a lot of work but that’s because it actually caters to quite a diverse audience effectively.
That said, I don’t think that kind of competition is going to be a reality any time soon for Netrunner and in all likelihood will never be. Netrunner’s underlying sales model simply won’t allow it unless it suddenly acquires a playerbase a couple of orders of magnitude larger.
You don’t think initiatives like the SSCI and PSI games are able to do the same for Netrunner? Admittetly on a smaller scale, but gotta start somewhere.
To some extent yes, but creating a spectator culture tends to work best with a single, focused competition that can forge an ongoing narrative- It’s worth noting that a majority of spectators in most cultures are watching more for the story of the game than the actual play-by-play. That’s another tricky perspective for people who are deep in the competitive mindset to come to terms with. Scattered and individual competitions work fine if the spectators are all just watching to see good competitive games played out, but to create a robust culture some degree of centralization and stability helps. This was another problem with Starcraft 2 I observed- the competition became very fragmented and it was hard for spectators to create a compelling narrative for themselves at anything beyond the level of an individual tournament or league, none of which really stood out above any of the others successfully enough.
@spags and @thereisnosaurus, I think you’re both missing a key point about WHY the Pro Tour saved magic: it influenced the designers to invent a new format, standard, so that competitive play wouldn’t just be perpetual Black Lotus slugfest. I would argue that designing for competitive play played at least as much of a role in saving magic as the actual Pro Tour did. That’s what made the game so interesting to play for so long. Frequent rotation not only keeps actual gameplay interesting, but keeps the buy-in to competitive magic low enough that new players’ barrier to entry is somewhat reasonable.
I didn’t miss that. I also didn’t miss that all of the competitive and casual formats were developed (or fostered by, in Commander’s case) the company itself. FFG introduced rotation, but it’s not quick enough. However, that’s for another thread.
Don’t forget, I’m old. I started MTG in 3rd edition, and remembered enviously playing against Lotus/Mox dex. I considered it like playing against an unfair video game boss, and took it as a point of pride if I could beat them. I didn’t beat my feet to a BBS or IRC to complain about it. #hardtimes
I did once, in college, stay too late playing MTG one night. Found my car covered in 1/4" of ice from freezing rain. Of course, I got in a car accident on the way home on a deserted county highway. Luckily, the old farmer’s house I walked to was occupied, and he gave me some of his corned beef hash and rye whiskey while I waited for the tow truck. #hardtimes
