Looking for advice on running game tournaments

B

baldguyvideogames

CAG Veteran
Hello everybody, my name is Trevor and I run Bald Guy Video Games in Portland Oregon. I have moved up from a 100 square foot office doing only internet sales into an 800 square foot office. I now have the room to do what I truly want to do and that is to create a video game lounge of sorts and host retro game tournaments. I am still remodeling and getting everything in place so I don't have pics or anything to show quite yet, but it will be neat when it's done and I can fit easily 20 people at once with couches, comfy chairs, and barstools next to 2 dedcated neogeo cabinets that I bought so people can play on that for either tournaments or freeplay between rounds.

The reason for the posting is not to boast though, I am looking for help in how to set up the game tournaments. I am just curious if anyone else does this a lot and has experience setting the tournaments up so that they are fun, but don't run overlong or anything like that. I am looking for advice on game choices such as which games are the best to do. I have a large inventory of various systems and games so I can make most anything happen within reason. One thing I want to do is an 8 player saturn bomberman tournament for instance and I can do that. I want to include NES and other earlier systems as well.

Also how to do sign ups online efficiently since I don't have a typical retail space where I have walk in traffic. My customers are going to be my regulars or people that find me online so I need my tournament sign ups to be online based and allow me to take payment for the tournaments. I could just add a page to my website with tournament info and paypal links for sign up, but I don't know if that is really the best way to go about it. Maybe a separate wordpress site or something? I have googled tournament sites, but they are all sports based and don't seem to offer what I need.

Tournament structure is probably the least important thing I need help with because unless the game doesn't call for it I want to always do double elimination so that people really get their money's worth and have 2 chances to win if they have a bad round. Some games this might make the tournament too long and I know people hate when tournaments lag on forever. Please do give me any pearls of wisdom you have on tournament structure especially for retro games.

My main business is my web store and internet sales and I hope this will not only bring in extra revenue, but also give people a place to come and play games that isn't a store with wall to wall video games and retail shelves. More like a cool place to hang out and play competitive games with other people and enjoy drinks and snacks and have the opportunity to buy games, accessories, and systems if they want without it being in their face all the time.

Ok I have said enough, I am thankful for any responses you can give me.
 
I run fighting game tournaments on my campus, so the types of television and console are important to people (most HD TVs lag) -- and you need quite a lot of stations to keep things flowing even for a small turnout of 20-25 people. We have a table of organizers who take the registration fees and manage the tournament and brackets, a microphone helps here. Don't do much online aside from advertise.

I'm really not familiar with the retro scene, though, or if there's even much of one out there. So maybe regular meet ups where people come and play casually would be a good idea to spread word, you could charge for this too if you wanted.

But lots of setups/cabinets is again super important.
 
Thanks so much for the response I really appreciate it. My space is technically office space and it's about 800 square feet, but about 200 of it is my private office/storage where I run my internet business. I can't have more than about 20-30 people total for fire marshal reasons. Also since I want to focus more on retro getting 20-25 people would be awesome. I basically run the tournaments for fun since my internet sales are where the money is at. If this tournament running covers the rent space i'd be ecstatic.

I guess my point is that I hope I can handle the crowd if it's smaller like that, but if what you are saying is true then I need to likely get some help on tournament days. I can handle the regular store crowds, but maybe I should think about the tournament days more.

I have 2 large lcd tvs and 2 couches and tons of chairs. I also have 2 neo geo arcade cabs that people can use between rounds if they are waiting. So I should keep that in mind. I could maybe use my testing tv to make a 3rd station, but it's not impressive at all and i'd be embarrassed to use it for a tournament.

Realistically and especially since I stick to retro my tournaments will be more casual. I don't think i'm going to have the brutally competitive cutthroat tournaments I have seen before. It's probably going to be more laid back people like me that love retro gaming. I will try to do a mix of high score single player fun and 2 or more players stuff.

[quote name='panzerfaust']I run fighting game tournaments on my campus, so the types of television and console are important to people (most HD TVs lag) -- and you need quite a lot of stations to keep things flowing even for a small turnout of 20-25 people. We have a table of organizers who take the registration fees and manage the tournament and brackets, a microphone helps here. Don't do much online aside from advertise.

I'm really not familiar with the retro scene, though, or if there's even much of one out there. So maybe regular meet ups where people come and play casually would be a good idea to spread word, you could charge for this too if you wanted.

But lots of setups/cabinets is again super important.[/QUOTE]
 
I don't know how I didn't find that site in my searches. It's perfect and not just sports based like others I found. Thanks a ton for the link. I can work with that.

[quote name='Zamora']You might want to use brackets from Challonge if you don't make your own brackets some other way.

http://challonge.com/[/QUOTE]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top