So we held an awards ceremony for Mohamed Amine. Rocketman's dog escaped and photobombed the trophy moment with his own brown trophy. Good times. Congratulations once again to our winner, Mohamed Amine.
Some Thoughts
We learned some things in the process of organising this tournament. It was purposely conceived as a learning experiment. Here's what we learned:- One game sucks. The way games work in Score! Match means that single matches often feel short, lucky and unsatisfying. Rarely does one game leave both players feeling like they truly won or lost. You need to play 3 or 5 (or more) to get a good feel for who the true winner is. This is not unusual in sports. A tennis match, for instance, is made up of games and sets. So for future tournaments, a minimum of best-of-three is recommended. For the latter stages, best-of -five. Maybe even best-of-nine or more for the final, depending on the time players can commit to. They key is to create a sense of occassion, built a bit of tension, and make it clear who the best player is on the day.
- Challonge is great. What a great, useful tool. It can manage knockouts, leagues, and more. Definitely worth using in future.
- Organisers should assist the players. This is something we learned as the tournament progressed. It helps both pre- and post-match to create a Messenger group with a couple of admins and the players, and then name the group Player 1 x Player 2. This helps get the players together to play their game, helps the admins convey information to them, and helps gather post-match stuff, like videos and screenshots. Plus it's a good opportunity for a bit of friendly chatter and banter. Also, if there is a touch of controversy, the admins can deal with it in private to the satisfaction of all involved. I can't stress enough how important it is to deal with drama in private.
- Full-match videos are important. Football is a spectator sport. It is nothing without the fans watching and cheering along. The same for most sports, eSports included. We want to watch our heroes play, not just see the results. The gold standard for Score! Tournament matches would be live streaming, but we accept this is rarely possible (but never say never). However, recording matches is definitely possible. DU Recorder runs on even old Android devices, and can be tweaked to use fewer system resources. If a player claims they cannot use it, help them setup DU and run a few trials. There really should be no excuses. Some players might not want to share a video because they don't want to share their play tactics. This is a poor excuse. The best players should have no fear of others seeing how they play. On the contrary, anyone with with the confidence and self-belief of a true winner should be delighted to show off their skills. Football is not place for playing in secret. We want to see those matches! Make full match videos a requirement. Massive thanks to all those who shared their full-match videos for this tournament - you're all winners for doing this.
- Have at least two admins. It really helps if there is at least two people carrying out the various tasks involved in running a tournament, such as organising the matches and match groups, updating the scores, updating the blog, informing people of next steps, and so on.
- Have a blog. Or a similar news site where you can write up a quick match report with videos and screenshots, and post information and other things that might be needed. We did that here on this blog. People don't like to click about between various sites, and definitely don't like to trawl back through Messenger posts. Keep everything anchored in one place.
- Have some awesome players. We were lucky with this one. All of the people who played in our fun tournament were awesome. Everyone was respectful and a good sport. You may not be so lucky. If you get haters piling in, take a hard line. Zero tolerance.
