Hey guys! Saka here! Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving week! I know mine was! Full of food, shopping, and full dose of playing and hosting a Super Street Fighter IV tournament in my area.

As gaming is becoming more popular, competitive gaming is also on the rise. From your local Game Stop or garage tournaments, to national tournaments such as Major League Gaming (MLG) and Evolution Championship Series (EVO), and even to World-Wide events like World Cyber Gaming (WCG). Gaming has made a major leap in society.

As we make this leap into society, we should ask "how can I get my local community involved in competitive gaming?" This is where you should step in and say "Hey! If my local community doesn't have one, I should make one!" These following few steps will help guide you in creating a gaming scene in your area.

Part 1 : Establishing Your Scene -

One of the most important aspect of making a scene in your area is to establish what type of audience you are trying to reach. Do you want to host a lot of team FPS tournaments or is it one-on-one fighting game tournaments? Once you have established what type of audience you would like to have, check online, via forums and see if other people in your area are also interested in the genre you are interested in making a scene for. Forums like http://www.shoryuken.com/, http://www.halo3forum.com/, and even gameinformer.com's forums can help find and establish a group of people that are interested in the game and that live in your area. You could also go around to different gaming stores and ask around in what people are most interested in and see if people are generally interested in having a tournament for that game.

Communication is a very crucial key in creating the scene. You must be well-informed about what people like and dislike, what are people's general interested in your area, and to inform people what's is happening in your gaming scene.

Make sure that your community talks about gaming sessions and upcoming tournaments that you guys would like to plan out within your local area. Gaming sessions are a good part of getting to know your gaming community and to make the gaming experience more sociable. Gaming should be a more sociable past-time than just sitting down and playing online with random people.

After having a few gaming sessions to get to know your community, the next step is to fully plan out a tournament to help get a more competitive gaming scene.

Part 2 : Creating Your Tournament -

The first thing in planning out a tournament is a venue to where to host it at. Ease of access to the venue, stores surrounding the venue, and size of venue are all very important when looking for the right one.

For example, the Super Street Fighter IV tournament I held on November 27th, 2010, was held at a local A-1 Comics store, which was located pretty close to the free-way. This helped many people to have the ease-of-access to the venue. The surrounding stores are mostly fast-food restaurants so that people have places to eat before, during, or after the event, and the store is also pretty large, so it can hold a sizable amount of tournament-goers.

Other good examples of good venues are places like cafes, Billiard places, gaming stores, your own high school or in College gaming facilities.

Once you found a venue you would like to use, make sure you talk to the manager about your plans and see if they are okay with it. Most of the time you have to pay a small venue fee, but the venue fee can always be accounted for when players pay the entrance fee.

Example : I charge the players that want to enter in the tournament $7. $2 goes to the venue fee, and the $5 goes to the pot.

If the manager is okay having a tournament at their place, make sure you communicate to both the manager and the community about times and dates for the tournament. After establishing a time and date for the tournament, establish the rules for the tournament. Most of the time, the most standard tournament rules are posted within the gaming forums, like if it's single or double elimination, restrictions of weapons/characters, etc. Also plan for having set-ups for the tournament.

Make sure you have people that can help bring set-ups to the tournament and make sure you always have a back-ups if someone could not bring one. CRT TVs or ASUS Monitors are some of the preferred tournament monitors. CRTs and ASUS monitors are used a lot because of the input lag. A lot of HDTVs or LED TVs have a slight, but noticeable lag when playing and they are the most prominent when playing fighting games or rhythm/music games.

Make sure that you communicate with your gaming community and see what console is most preferable. This will help establish a core console if the game that you are trying to set for is a multi-console game.

Make sure you also establish someone within the community that you trust to be the co-organizer of the tournament. This way, if one of you gets sick or something unfortunate happens, you know that you will be able to continue with the tournament.

The day before the tournament, make sure that you have all the equipment you will need for the following day. Label everything that is yours to make sure that you don't mix it up with other people's property.

To see what's it's like to run a big-scale tournament, here's an MLG look of how people come together to prep for the big day :

Part 3 : Day of Tournament -

After days of preparations, the day has finally come to start the tournament.

Make sure you, as the tournament organizer, and other people that have set-ups get there a few hours before the actual start of the tournament, this way, you can set up the consoles and TVs and make time for  players to have some casuals or practice before the start of the tournament.

Once you start up signing people into the tournament, make sure you secure the money, especially if you have a large amount of players. You don't want anyone running away with the pot money and be unable to pay the prize money to the players.

When setting up the brackets, I find it easier to organize it via computer programs like :

TIO Tournament Organizer - A program that helps create a tournament. It can be used for all types of game genres.

http://allisfighter.com/tio/

This will reduce significantly the amount of time preparing brackets. If you don't have the luxury of having a laptop or PC and a program to help organize a tournament, just make sure that you are able to keep the brackets organized.

Once finished with all the prep for the tournament, announce the rules and procedures, and let the tournament begin!

Make sure that all the players that are playing are fully comfortable. Make them feel welcome and help them fully enjoy the experience of a tournament. Communicate with the players about wins and losses. Make sure that both players announce who won and who lost in their game. Make sure that all of your equipment is being used to its potential.

Part 4 : Post-Tournament -

Once the tournament is over and you guys have a winner(s), talk to the players. Ask them if they enjoyed the tournament, if they would like to see another one, and ask if there were any complications during any part of the tournament. Constructive criticism from the players themselves will help out if you are planning to run another one.

Also talk to the manager or the venue and ask them if they had any questions, concerns, or comments about the tournament, and see if they are willing enough to do more in the future.

Make sure that the winning player(s) and the venue are paid their full amount. When cleaning up, make sure that all equipment is secure and nothing was lost or stolen. Also, try to make the place as clean as possible. You don't want to leave the venue trashed, especially if you want to run another tournament there in the future.

One thing to keep in mind is that on your first tournament, not everything will go according to plan. Do not stress about it. It's your first time experiencing what it is like to run a tournament, and if something happens, it happens.

If you are planning to do more tournaments in the future, just make sure you plan ahead of time for them. If you want to do a tournament that is more grand like that of Nor-Cal Regionals (NCR) or So-Cal Regionals (SCR) and plan to have it in a big hotel and stream it live via internet, etc. make sure you plan and communicate with your community and with the venue. Planning and communicating are very important when you are willing to do something grand for a tournament.

Conclusion :

You need to get involved as a part of the gaming community. Creating a local gaming scene in your area will vastly improve a more sociable and competitive gaming community, as well as bringing in revenue to either the venue or to yourself. Gaming should be a fun, social activity that you can enjoy it with other people that share your passion of video games. Who knows, you might create the new Justin Wong or FB Walshy within your community.

'Till next time!

~Saka