there’s a common last name in some Sioux heritage… Killsenemy and a bunch of years ago a lot of American Indians with the last name were getting their accounts banned but the pale people with the same last name we not.
probably due to the n8v way of pointing out it’s KillsEnemy
In the 80s I went to a public event featuring the California Joy Stick; “Joy” referring to the brand of dish soap. There’s probably a more common name for it. It’s a device made of a large fabric loop on a stick with a nut for holding the loop open. You dip it in a solution of water, dish soap, and glycerine, and then open the loop to the breeze or walk with it. You can create bubbles tens of metres long, and wide and tall enough for a person to stand inside. I’m surprised it isn’t still a thing people do, you could easily make one.
There was a bubble making competition. Most of the competitors seemed to be quite casual, but most of them found it fairly easy to be competitive.
I travel to Combo Breaker every year and enter a whole bunch of games. This year I was able to up my travel budget for both CB and Frosty Faustings. Some of them are games I consider myself decent at, some of them are games I just hop in casually for fun. And then there's the Mystery Bracket, where every round is something you've probably never heard of and the goal is to figure out what's happening before your opponent does - it's the highlight every year. Back in 2022, I even TO'd and commentated the side tournament for Puyo Puyo Champions, and I got roped into filling in on commentary for Panel de Pon.
In a double elimination bracket, 25% of players will go 0-2. If this is your first time entering, you should expect to be one of them. And you shouldn't let that stop you from going to have a good time! Majors are basically conventions that happen to have brackets at them, and that bracket will only be a small fraction of your time all weekend. Get as many casual sets in as you can before/after bracket, check out the arcade room, buy some trinkets with your favorite characters on them from the artist alley, watch finals, go out to dinner with rivals you'd only ever spoken to online before and finally get to meet in person. Oh, and come to the mahjong tables where you'll find me promoting this strangely unexpected venn diagram intersection.
And that's just what majors are like. If you have any kind of local FGC, go to your locals! Don't just sit at home playing ranked, get out of the house and meet people!
I’ve traveled the world playing tournaments for a little bit. Won a few. Crashed out in some others…
The big conventions feel insanely cool. It’s like you’re in the game but irl. You are walking down the elevator of your hotel and it feels like just being in the game when you are surrounded by people that you with. It’s super cool having people come up and hug you and you go “oh who’s this?” And it often turns out it’s people that you have shared hundreds of hours with.
The actual competition I’ve always felt it’s all about who can play the least bad. As far as I could tell. Everyone plays worse on stage. For a multitude of reasons. At the end I was playing extremely chill and care free and it showed in the results.
Also something less obvious. Tournaments always developed their own meta. Which I always heard comments from people from home “why didn’t you follow this meta thing. Why did you play such weird strategies?”. It’s because truly if there’s a big competition going on. Everyone good is there. And it’s not even worth getting practice on the normal servers. You have to scrim over and over the people there and that develops its own meta.
Is it worth it? Uhhh. I’ll always cherish those memories. They were truly great years. But I would say for me nah. Not worth it. I’ve always wanted my career and life to be about some other things. And as much fun and surprisingly how well it all paid. I don’t think it was worth the many years I spent doing that and nothing else.
I used to play WoW 5v5 arena competitively in 2007. This was way before they went hard on e-sports so it’s not really comparable to today. Just to give you some perspective, the winning team at blizzcon got $25k which meant $5k each which (again, only in case of winning the world championship) would’ve just so covered my travel costs.
Honestly it was terrible. At first I used to play for fun and only accidentally ended up in a top team. Then my team got way too ambitious and it became more of a chore. I told them early on that I had no interest in playing like that but they couldn’t find a replacement so I kept playing with them until I was fully burned out. It was nice being good at something but it ruined the fun of it.
A friend and I entered a local Magic the Gathering tournament. I had just taught him how to play, and he had picked up a few cards of his own and talked me into giving it a shot.
I sat down across from my opponent and watched him peel the plastic off of a deck that he just bought, and pummeled me with a pre built elf synergy deck.
My friend got stuck in a neverending healing token deck. He couldn’t do enough damage to break all the healers, and the healer didn’t have anything strong enough to get past his defenses, they just sat there dealing and healing infinite damage for what felt like forever.
I was pretty much over the game by the end of the day.
It looks really sick! I wish I could speak to the new expansion, I’ve never gotten far enough in the base game to attempt something like that. I always peter out after solving energy generation and finishing my first hydroponics farm.
You don't have to do massive or big tournaments - go small instead! More fun and way less pressure. I've done a few ttrpg tournaments at GenCon and another few at my LFGS. My sister sometimes did small local puzzle tournaments like for KenKen and Sudoku.
Went to a local smash tournament with my friends a while ago now and it became apparent to me that I was really good among my friends, but the worst at a tournament lmao.
That’s definitely how it goes. So many of the people that show up start that way - “I can beat all my friends, I bet I’ll do pretty good in tournaments.” then “Oh no”.
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