Pinburgh had 280 of PAPA’s machines in the tournament. There are definitely more than 20 other machines that are in tourney shape but some are bad choices for competition. 300 for the next Pinburgh sounds like a good goal to have. Keith’s comment toward “more games” was more about the length of the experience than the breadth of machines available.
Having played in and enjoyed dozens of events with an entry fee and no cash prizes, and having run events where I voluntarily choose to organize and not to participate, I feel the quality of the event and experience has a much greater impact on my decisions than money. As someone else said, this may be a local issue for you, I don’t know. I’m not getting paid to make tutorial videos, I care about getting more pinball in the hands of more people.
I do agree that decisions about style and substance of events should cater more to first-time and casual players. Top-tier players will have a good time pretty much no matter what, and if they don’t, they’re grumps and they’re outnumbered.
I have heard these questions from a few players. I don’t like them, either – it suggests a lack of trust in the organizer, and yes, event choice based on money. If this is the typical interaction you get with competitive players, it makes a lot of sense that you wouldn’t want them around!
coffee actually came out my nose when i read that. LOL does not quite cover it!
to be fair though, i’ve actually never heard Andy say that. but i don’t talk to him much. Sorry Andy, didn’t mean to have you as the butt of a joke. well maybe a little… wink!
"Keith’s comment toward “more games” was more about the length of the experience than the breadth of machines available.’
Bowen are you suggesting longer events are a better thing?
i’ve heard a lot of complaints about multi-day events. having to stay overnight or miss work, etc. That can’t be a good thing, in the big picture right?
we do a 3 strikes you’re out (head to head, players picked randomly from a hat, and each round is best 2 of 3, game picked from a hat at random). Is that not a good format to go with?
On the 300 games in Pinburgh, yes that would be hard to beat. We have 300 games total, but all full restorations, all ready to go. PAPAs games don’t really fit that bill, from what i’ve seen and played. We are the 3rd largest dedicated pinball facility in North America, behind PAPA and Banning.
I would be careful about this assumption. That might be true for some players, but I’ve had the opposite experience. I can’t get new people to come to tournaments…they don’t think they are good enough. Oddly, league play seems more approachable, even though it requires a much larger time investment.
I think this is just a personal preference regarding the length of the event. Historically feedback from Pinburgh is that people like that it’s a multi-day affair, though that may change with the fact other things are going on at ReplayFX.
It’s definitely a selling point for out-of-town players, who are likely going to have to stay overnight anyway. If their main purpose of travel is to play competitively, more than one opportunity or more than one day is a big plus. I personally prefer this if I’m traveling to an event. For more local events, it’s a minus for the reason you give.
You can have it both ways though. For example, what John Reuter does in Maine is to have multiple little events, one per day. Then, people can decide how many of the little events they want to play. Some pick one, some play them all. This also gives an opportunity to offer different formats, such as golf or team play, by mixing it up each day. PAPA does a bit of this too by having the one-day Classics tournaments while the main qualifying is going on, so players who can’t stay through Sunday or players who only want to come in once can still play a little something.
On the number of games issue, we had 50 games in our tournament but there was only 40 people participating in said tourney. pinburgh had 280 games, but I suspect there was a lot more than 280 people playing in that tourney. So in the end, the game to people ratio was much better at our show. I suspect the number of people playing at pinburgh was probably proportional to the games available?
The wppr system has definitely encouraged tournament participation in my area. And I’m speaking from the standpoint of someone who has criticized and debated certain aspects of that system, i.e. not a fanboy. It’s simply a fact: it’s drawn in players and made existing players come out even more. People really like to see themselves go up in the rankings and qualify for IFPA or State. It was extremely common for players who were only attending their 2nd or 3rd event to ask me how soon the results would be posted to IFPA.
I’ll also add that with the changes of the last two years to how wppr points are awarded, there’s far less incentive for a “pro” to just show up for an easy points-grab. A one-day event with mostly casual players would not be worth it.
But anyway, increased participation due to a rankings system is just common sense. It’s why rankings exist in pro sports, video games etc. It’s fun to see how you stack up and try to improve based on where you currently stand. Even if you don’t use wpprs, start up your own ranking system for your events and crown an annual champion and watch what happens. People will want that top spot.
As for top-end players not “helping”, I don’t know where you get that from. Yes, there are a handful of tournaments run mainly as a gathering of the in-the-know tournament scene with the bottom rung filled out by skilled-amateurs, but that’s fine. Not every single tournament has to cater to newbies.
Regardless, players like Neil Shatz and Andrei Massenkoff are legendary in the bay area. Players don’t go running in the other direction when they play events, they WATCH and aspire to emulate them. They ask them questions. Occasionally, they can and do beat them. I hate to say it but you seem to take an attitude that when a top player shows up, it’s “Oh well, tourney’s over, hand him the prize and let’s all go home.” Instead the attitude should be, “how did that guy get so good? What can I learn?” Maybe you should ask that top player if he’d be willing to do a short “how to play” tutorial before or after the event.
And then there are the ancillary things many top players do which have grown things by leaps and bounds. Pinball 101, tourney cam, all the PAPA tutorials, seminars, live streams, etc.
I agree. I would say at least 75% of the league players in the bay area rarely play in tournaments. They play in leagues because it’s more of a social thing. Even if they’re not very good, it’s an opportunity to make new friends, talk tech and just hang out.
Yes exactly! With league we have tons more casual players in our league here in SF and a waiting list of like 40-ish people i think (league is capped at 80 players). With league you can kinda show up to as many as you feel like so in a way it’s less a commitment but totally get what you are saying Clay.
Also related to what @JonnyO said about top players I think one thing people do like about pinball is that you can actually play against a World Champions or “legends” and even beat them maybe (i secretly smiled when I scored higher than NES the first time I met him, although he was really just feeling out the game than trying to score big - this was the day Metallica came out on location).
WPPR didn’t mean anything to me when I did my first league. I got a few points after that league and I was ranked who knows what, 15-20k maybe? I really wasn’t interested in more points until I went to another event and got enough WPPRS to bump me into the thousands. After that, I was going to every event I could drive to in order to get more WPPRS. This went on for a few years and now I really don’t care.
Long story short, I think WPPRS are what got me into participating in more tournaments. I think they also got me into running my own tournaments and other local collectors running their own tournaments. Now I just go to enjoy the competition and hopefully play well against great players. Money is fine because it helps pay for some of the expenses of traveling but, in the end its not really important to me. The quality of the games and the players are what I find to be the most important.
Prize money from tournaments cleared out my credit card debt and paid for 6 months of rent, so I guess it’s got that going for it…which is nice.
I like tournaments that pay out reasonably well because without those payouts I could probably not afford to fly to as many events as I have in the last year or two. With that said, my primary concern is competing with the best players possible and having a good time with fun people. It just so happens that that seems to happen primarily at the big tournaments that also have significant prizes.
I definitely don’t think money drives anyone to play tourneys; even Keith and Jorian couldn’t win enough to live off of pinball winnings in a hypothetical world where they could travel to every event so I don’t think anyone has to worry about that becoming a driving force for players any time soon. On the other hand…is there really anything bad about it happening if it does? Dumb jerkfaces at tournaments will be dumb jerkfaces like they always have been, but my experiences with actually good players (i.e. the ones who qualify at every circuit event they attend) have pretty much always been really positive. I guess I just don’t see it being an issue but maybe I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses.
WPPR points are great IMO. They provide a persistent challenge between events and actually in a way make me feel better when I lose a tourney because I know that another one worth good points will probably be just around the corner. I’ve always been a big “leaderboard” addict (pretty much all of the games I play are leaderboard-centric) so maybe that’s why I feel that WPPRs are so awesome. I’ve also seen a lot of newer local players get really excited about them, so there’s that too. Some of those newer players that got into tourneys partially through WPPRs are now thinking about going to the “big ones” like PAPA/Pinburgh, INDISC, CAX, etc which is pretty cool to me.
Honestly I think about this sometiems when choosing events. And unfortunately, a number of organizers have tainted the pot such that people should be asking these questions.
There a bunch of people who run tournaments, who are terrible at it. These days there are a lot to choose from, and myself, and I think a lot of people go to the events where the competition is the most fun, challenging and engaging. And don’t attend the rest.
BUT, these questions about cash are also important to me and can be a deciding factor - I want to know these things NOT for how much might I get paid, but to know where the money is going.
A lot of people give to pinball, to the community and the hobby with their time/money etc… And some people extract that money in ways I don’t agree with.
If you are charging X$ for your event or for entries, and pay out Y, or even 0, I want to know where the difference is going. Sometimes, that is going right into someone’s personal pocket.
With enough quality tournaments out there, I steer clear of the ones where I’m paying an organizer’s rent.
I’m ok with it, generally, but I think it should also be open information if that’s happening. If you’re trying to keep it secret, it’s likely because you know people wouldn’t be happy with the amount.
If you play in a poker tourney at a casino, they are very clear about how much is payed out, how much is going to the dealers, etc.
PPE used to take way too much of the entry fees. In the first couple of years of the show, players came from all over the world. Once word got out (low payouts), players stopped traveling to the show. Some of us locals even stopped attending. You can see this by looking at the results of those tournaments on the IFPA website. Lots of outsiders in the early years, practically none later.
Playing the game is the root of the hobby (which many seem to forget these days). It’s okay to cover your expenses and even make a small profit, but gouging the players is BS.
I can vouch for this as a traveler who attended this show once and then didn’t the next year because of how much the organizers were pocketing. I was also coming from Portland, where at the time every one of the tournaments paid out 100%. It was part of the culture to not profit from organizing events (or pinball mapping websites!).