In fact, you would be paying $20 to go to this venue without the tournament. When you look at it like that, the price is a little bit less ridiculous. Also, if anyone has any suggestions on how to cut the cost (thanks, met!), don't hesitate to contact Ethan or I.

I'll help chip in/organize anything if you tell me what to do, Kevin. I'm getting some money for once in a few months.

CHEAAAAAAA BOIIIIII

Alright, thanks!

I've actually been pretty floored by the support so far. I was kind of expecting people to be split half and half about this tournament, but it seems that you all want it to happen. Obviously some have more concerns than others, but I'm still glad to know that most want a large-scale tournament event.

Alright, so here's the beans. Here's why we want to charge $40 dollars.

First of all, fuck Magic Mountain. It doesn't even come close. You could play DDR at MM and you'd still probably be playing DDR on the ground... spend your $40 here and you'll be playing 200 feet in the air... and you won't have to travel all the way to Buttfuck Nowhere, CA either... because it's right here in Seattle...

THAT'S RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS-



THE MOTHERFUCKING SPACE NEEDLE

We don't have any final figures for renting out the Space Needle. The estimate given to Kevin by an employee was around $4,500. And on top of that, renting a machine adds even more to the price. So our figure could be as high as $7,000 for the entire event. That is a lot of money, as you can see, and we'd need 175 people to pre-register $40 in order to pay for that whole thing. HOWEVER, there are people willing to put some cash up for the event, myself included. (providing that I can afford to, which is likely)

So now you see where the price is coming from. It's not like we're charging $40 for some nothing event that you'll never forget, this could very well be the biggest event of your bemani career. You'll be able to tell everyone that you played Sky High... sky high. And don't worry, there'll be plenty of other stuff, too. Refreshments, music, the works.

We're looking to make this the Rocky Mountain of the Pacific Northwest. Rocky Mount Rainier if you will. SuperNOVA on the Space Needle. SNSN. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. This is going to be AMAZING.

So...there's not much I can say now. Ethan said it better than I could have done, probably because I don't have the courage or age to make anything sound legitimate.

I hope you guys are all ready for the best tournament you'll ever go to.

how the fuck would we get a cab up there O.o

not to put a damper on the enthusiasm, but for me personally it's more worthwhile to travel to a tourney for the people rather than the venue.  Balance the pros versus cons and i think you'll end up losing more people because of the cost than gain people because of the venue.

for me, i know that i'd prefer a cheaper buy-in at a less than ideal venue rather than a high buy-in at an expensive venue for several reasons:

a) if i know i'm not in the running for a cash prize, it's not going to be worth an investment greater than $10-15.
b) if i'm going as a "hangout", i'd want to be assured that enough people would be going that it would be worth it, and if the cost is that high, i don't have that confidence.
c) even if i *am* in the running, i need to have confidence in the structure and the rules of the tourneament itself to feel it's a worthwhile investment.  as a rough analogy, i'm pretty skilled at no limit hold em tournaments enough that it would be worthwhile for me to buy-in to a $40 tourney, but i'm not going to put any more than $5 intto a turbo tournament (which decreases the value of skill and increase the value of luck of the cards).
d) venue relations like this can be tricky and time logistics might be more difficult than you think.  Remember some past history:

1. ITG nationals had about 80ish people compete and the tournament ended up lasting about 12 hours with three machines.  The casino ended up making the runners rush through the end of the tourney (and forced the staff to nix the dinner break) because they were trying to close, and all throughout they hated the fact that the tournament was there in the first place, and ITG ended up hating being there.

2. D2SSR ended up having approx. 40-50ish people enter (i think).  On a single machine, that tournament ended up lasting about 12 hours and we were very efficient in our time (always having people on deck, not needing to waste time calculating DP, not having many disputes).

If you're going to be renting one machine and putting it in this venue and want to have even 40 people show up, you have to anticipate that either the tourney is going to run 12 hours at its most efficient *or* you're going to have to make some rounds single-elim.  And who in their right mind is going to pay $40 to play a qualifier, get seeded close to last, and then get knocked out of the tourney right away by playing against the top seeds?

i admire the vision and the idea, but i think the scope is too high.  People found D2SSR memorable regardless of the fact that it was in tyler's garage.  People found the LG tournaments memorable despite the fact that those are in bowling alleys.  for something of a natioinal pull, this might work out if planned properly with many months to prepare, but with a small regional tourney at a time past DDR's height of fame, i'm not convinced that it's practical.  I favor making it cheap and fun over making it big and expensive.

First of all, I want to make an example of Darknote's post. This is exactly the kind of stuff we need. It's not good to just say "this thing sucks", but at the same time it's also not good to just blindly support the tournament because it sounds cool.



We're kind of hoping for the whole "national pull" thing here. Ethan talked to some people from across the US who have shown interest in this event. It would be a kind of mini-Rocky Mount type thing. Of course, the PNW support is the most important.

retracted statement
-zeppy

uhhhhh. Well, you guys are pretty ambitious, I'll give you that.

But I honestly do not think it's a matter of venue that you need to draw in people and make it a big event. Yeah, the novelty of playing Gorgeous 2012 at the Space Needle would be nifty, I guess. But if you're spending up to $7000 just on the venue, that's $7000 that could be spent going into prizes. Big prizes are a much bigger draw to out-of-state people, not the location. If you have some super funding that'll pay for both the venue and the prizes, then hey go for it. But if the location is that pricey, maybe your aspirations are just a tad too high.



I hate to be one of those douchebags that quotes a post and then says "quoted for truth", so I'm not gonna do that!

I'm not that top-tier at DDR... or any sort of rhythm game for that matter. More like a "somewhat competent" level at a few games. I know full well that my chances of winning big at a tournament like this is nil. If my chances are nil, I don't really want to spend THAT much since it's like throwing my money out a window. Yeah sure, support the community, chill with people, all that stuff. But you don't have to spend a lot of money just to chill with cool people... the point is, if you're aiming big, you have to keep in mind there are a lot of people that do NOT want to spend a lot of money to enter something they know they have no chance at.

Yeah...that's really the main thing holding us back from being sure of the location. If we get sponsors and/or enough donations to achieve super-funding status, everything would be sweet. If not, there's still a pretty cool backup location.

What if I got off my lazy ass, built my SM machine, and brought that, and we could nix the DDR machine?

lets c it 1st

...And I thought the idea of the tournament being at the space needle was totally ridiculous.


First of all, Magic Mountain rocks. :)

Second, I'm so sure this will never, ever happen at the space needle, that if it does I will personally deliver, free-of-charge, my POPN Fever machine for use in the tournament.

Good luck, guys.

P.S. Tada, you haven't responded to my post earlier. That's passive aggressive. Please at least give me a yes or no and clearly state your reasons for or not for hanging out with me.

Can't charge for SM dude.

And please, the more feedback the better. Just keep in mind that Kevin and I are like... crazy ambitious. Maybe we're way overshooting the realm of possibility, but I figure that the higher we aim, the higher we'll actually hit. I will personally ensure that this does not crash and burn.

Again, most of you are more experienced than I am in this respect, so please tell me everything you can.

I'm pretty sure you can if you're licensed to use all the songs on it.

AKA if we compiled the songwriting skills of everyone in the community and put steps to them, we could have our own mix with songs that we not only like, but which a handful of us wrote.

OK.

It's a fun idea, but even I am a bit skeptical.  Here is my idea:
Sell a $40 tournament pass and a cheaper ($20?) get-in pass.  Some people, like myself, want to attend but don't want to participate in a tournament and/or just aren't as keen on DDR but enjoy hanging with and supporting a bemani community.

Was this already expressed yet?

Thanks,
Chris

@Zeppy:  I don't think Tada is being passive aggressive in this case.  He might be just ignoring you.  

There's national pull and then there's national pull.  For D2SSR we had a couple of isolated people on the east coast that were originally interested in going. the timing and the cost of travel/etc. ended up not being worth it, but even if we had gotten those people, that's still not exactly 'national pull' to me.  To me, national pull means, "a good majority of the US and/or Canada of which DDR has some prominence is represented."

(Of course for marketing purposes you don't want to make that sort of distinction.  If you get someone who went to new york for school but is back here for winter break or something, to the people you're trying to get sponsorship from, you definitely use "national pull").

i may have more to say/think on when it comes to this, but it might just be variants of what i've already said.  length of tourney is probably going to be your biggest challenge, so if you *do* decide to do this there, i would suggest actually thinking opposite of what you are.  it can't be "big equals big equals big"  it has to be "big equals small or small equals big."  If the big equals "lots of people", make the venue idea small and thus the entries small.  If the big equals "expensive to rent venue", make the player base small and the entries high.

time for bed.

No offense, Charlie, but I don't think many people outside of us would want to play that. Either way it's kind of a limiting songlist.

Chris: Yeah, we've been considering that.

Mendel: Can you elaborate slightly on your last paragraph? I think there's something I'm missing here.

I've said this on AIM, and I'll say it again:

$7,000 could go a LONG way to getting newer Bemani.

I was rebutted with "this will get more people into Bemani".  I'm sure that someone who has never played the game or just started is willing to put down $40 for a tourney or four that they'll almost certainly lose.  Let alone around 50-100 people.

Also, given that an efficient DDR/ITG tourney on one machine would take 12 hours at the very minimum (with 40 people; we're most likely going to have a lot more) from what I have read in this thread, and that you have said you wanted other tournaments going on at once, which will lead to people being pulled every which way and making all the tournaments more inefficient, waiting for people to finish up.

I think the logistics of this are just impossible.

So you either don't read or are just trying to be a jerk now.

$40 is the tournament entrance fee.
$20 is for free play, hanging out, potluck, etc.

This has been discussed in at least four different posts in this thread.

As for the time limit, most tournaments nowadays take at least two days to run. How about on the first day we have the DDR on freeplay while the IIDX and GH tournaments go on, then on the second the DDR tournament. Doesn't seem that difficult. I know it will only be more convoluted during the actual date of the event, but as you can see we're kind of up for anything.

Stop trolling. I'm not really into this idea, but if we had a preseeding system with dated pictures it'd speed shit up (dated pix to show they were for seeds).

Good idea, we'd probably do that. I was thinking of having some kind of lead-up ranking system in which players were ranked on some songs that are representative of overall skill level. This would expedite the seeding process greatly, and also probably give a fairer assessment of players instead of playing one song once on the day of the event.

Also, having a single elimination tournament would probably not be an issue if, as Ethan said, you could pay $20 to just get into the event for freeplay, hanging out, and FREE DINNER.

As usual, don't hesitate to post concerns or better options.

what i meant by my last paragraph was that the tourney right now feels like you want to have your cake and eat it too.

there are three elements of size that need to be considered and prioritized:

number of entrants (and thus length of tournament)
entry fee
expenses for running the tournament.


Plug in some prediction values and you'll get a few different most-likely scenarios.  Let's say, for example, that you really want to have it in the space needle.  that will most likely mean:

expenses for running = high dictates that
entry fee = high which probably means that
number of entrants = medium to low.

on the other hand, if your priority is to get as many people to participate as possible, then:

number of entrants = high then length of tournament = two days which probably dictates that
expenses for running tournament *must* be low (because you can't rent the space needle for two days) and therefore
entry fee can be more reasonable.


and so on.  if you draw the right conclusions about what you expect will happen (e.g. high entry fee will decrease participants), then you can build the tourney on what you feel is most important.

You can also determine what it is that works both for you and against you.  The easiest exampe of this has to do with number of entrants and length of tournament.  By having more people enter you may generate more revenue, but you also increase the length of the tourney *exponentially*.  Let's say that the cost of the tourney is $100 per entrant. $60 goes to the prize pool and $40 goes to help cover cost of the tournament.   If the tourney is going to be a double-elim, then every four people you add to the tourney bracket is going to add a whole new *round* to the bracket structure (at the very least).  So the value of entry fee decreases in value versus the length added to the tournament the more people you add because the entry fee is constant while the time added to the tournament grows.

4 people equals $160 to cover cost, maybe a half hour tourney.
8 people equals $320, add maybe forty-five minutes to length of tourney equals 1.25 hours.
12 people equals $580, add maybe another 1.25 hours equals 2.5 hours.
16 people equals $640, add maybe another 2 hours equals 4.5 hours.
20 people equals $800, add another 2.5 hours equals 7 hours.

(those figures aren't exactly right, but you get the idea.)

now let's say given those figures, we're able to rent a venue by $150/hr, rounded up to the nearest hour.

4 people length of 1 hour equals $160 gain - $150 expense equals $10 profit.
8 people length of 2 hours equals $320 gain - $300 expense equals $20 profit.
12 people equals 3 hours equals $580 gain - $450 expense equals $130 profit.
16 people equals 5 hours equals $640 gain - $750 expense equals $110 loss.
20 people equals 7 hours equals $800 gain - $1050 expense equals $250 loss.

This is micromanaged compared to the idea of "rent the space needle for a day" idea, but the idea still holds that the more people you add to the tourney you're only adding a piddling of entry fees that could cover cost whilst you're in danger of hitting a threshold of having to rent out for another day and suddenly making the whole thing impossible.

So the idea of having the number of participants high *and* the venue being high cost doesn't make sense even if you make the entry fee $100 or even $200.  Eventually the cost will overrun the incoming revenue.