You can save and budget for your hobbies easily without “living with your parents”, FYI.
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Possibly to go to one of the events…but to go to all of them… that’s not really possible for most people. LCD as an example…for him to travel to 5 events and not plan on winning… thats a lot of money Adam. If someone only makes 30,000 a year and has a house, car bills ect… they are not going to have 5,000 dollars left to budget for 5-6 major events.
Just saying not everyone makes the big bucks like you and I 
But besides that, I totally agree with you… if you are in range to go and can afford it…Go support! tell all your friends, post it 50x on Facebook and Twitter… hell make a flyer and post it a t the local Game stop! Do something to support the community and events even if you cant go!
Most people plan to travel to 1 or 2 major events per year with no intention of winning, as I stated earlier.
How hard is it really to support the fgc for companies as big as MS. Putting at least 100k per year into events for a company is like paying 2-3 employees working full time. I am sure it is something affordable for any “big companies” that wants exposure for their games through the fgc. I don’t know exactly how it works tho…I know big things are coming for E3 and hope to not be disapointted 
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Can you make a compelling, provable case that doing this provides return on investment? Big companies don’t spend unless they see ROI or someone in charge of cash flow wants to take a risk.
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I agree with this too…it would be like a company paying for advertisement. There should be a “budget” for marketing and advertisement. Sponsoring a tournament is part of said advertisement. Just like the other companies do and you see this on the Stream and bill boards. "sponsored by Neatherealm studios, and all those advertisements Sajam and Keits were saying in between matches.
And Keits I agree with you…1-2 should be attainable for an average persons salary on a budget…but not all of them. So for the ones that they cant afford… help promote by spreading the word on your stream, your Fb page, twitter, ect… do whatever it takes to keep it alive…otherwise there might not be a next year.
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As I said I don’t really know how it works but Capcom and Sony have been doing Capcom Cup for a couple of years and the prize pool is 500k. I don’t know if they really make any money out of it with tournaments/advertisement but it seems like they won’t stop doing capcom cup anytime soon. So maybe there are actual ways to make it profitable for a “big company”.
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You cannot make a blanket statement like “they are a big company, they should be able to”. Priorities for a company are different from what they are to you and me, not to mention being the big company that they are, the money earned needs to go to several places. At the end of the day, its upto us as consumers and fans of the game to come out and show enough numbers and support for offline events to make it a priority for MS. The scene isn’t nearly big enough to compare to Street Fighter, let alone SFV and the CPT.
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I agree with you but on the other side, It is always up to the companies to do the advertisement for their products. I think the KI community have been doing a lot for the game to grow the competitive scene but there is only so much you can do as a community. You are right, I can not really make blank statements like I did but it shows that there are ways it could work and that alone gives hopes for the game and what it can become. The game has the quality to be there and I hope it will but with no signs of support outside of the community it seems unlikely that the game will ever live up to it’s potential as a premiere fighting game.
And paying for 2 (3 is unrealistic - hiring is expensive…heck, 2 might be unrealistic) full-time employees is probably way more beneficial to the company than subsidizing LCD or Sleep’s travel to tournament X. You are talking about potential productivity gains from 2 full-time employees who can work on a host of disparate products versus, what, slightly better exposure for the population that watches streams of fighting game tournaments?
Marketing is important, yes it’s true. But that marketing needs to have a solid strategy that can promise sufficient ROI to justify that money going there instead of somewhere else. Tournament goers already presumably have the game, so all you’re getting from a tournament is perhaps exposure to some people (attendees or spectators) who don’t have the game. But how much exposure would it take to compete with a SFV or Melee, which seem to semi-regularly get 1000+ attendees. Against those numbers, whether KI gets 50 attendees or 300, it’s still going to be on the “small” side and have its finals on Saturday.
It isn’t just “MS is worth billions, they can drop $100k no problem”. MS didn’t get to be its size by throwing money at things it didn’t think were going to be profitable. And I maintain that last year’s community fund makes a pretty compelling argument against the idea that all the KI tournament scene needs to explode is a monetary shot in the arm.
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Gotta keep in mind that Capcom makes all their money on games, in huge part SF. So promoting a tournament scene is directly relevant to their sales goals and bottom line. KI is not remotely comparable in importance to the profit margin of MS, and thus falls very low in their list of reasonable financial risk-taking. @TheKeits has the right of it, I’m sure.
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Well I did not think of all that and all your points seems understanble but I can not think of another way to get more people into the KI scene or even get KI players to travel for the game itself. So if you have any ideas let me know.
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“Maybe” is not good enough for most big companies. They are looking for a provable sure-thing to show to the shareholders and CEOs so the people making these decisions get promoted instead of fired.
Also, large companies are looking to take large, calculated risks to get extreme returns. They aren’t interested in risking 100k to potentially make 200k. Take a look at Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man 2 film.
The production budget was reportedly between 200 and 293 million dollars. Wow. Huge risk.
The Box office take was 709 million. Huge success, right?
Sony deemed this movie a failure and cancelled the plans for the rest of the franchise, and went into scramble mode and closed a deal with Marvel to share a character they own the rights to.
Nothing is ever as simple as ‘big company has money, why dont they use it on me?’
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I will say this…MS has been promoting KI much more recently than ever. There is a S3 advertisement on the Xbox homepage everyday when we log in. There has been a few other places Ive seen it advertised as well. SO they are making attempts …and that’s good.
Now I was a little baffled to not see there logo on the Combo breaker board with the lists of sponsors for the entire event. I think showing the fans you care just as much by making sure your on that list is important…even if it costs very little. Neatherrealm and Capcom were on there…why not MS?
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I can understand that it is not that simple by taking your comments in considerations but then what are your suggestions on the things we could do to make the tournament scene grow further?
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There’s really a few different discussions going on here.
First, should LCD go to CEO? LCD didn’t start the thread, and he didn’t ask for our help. He can do whatever he wants. That’s his business.
Second, are tournament players spoiled by pot bonuses? Should tournaments be offering them? Etc. I have never been to even a local gamespot tournament. So, I expect an experienced player and TO like @TheKeits to know what he’s talking about. And I expect an experienced tournament player like @CrazyLCD to know what he’s talking about. Certainly both know better than I do. I can appreciate that this is a nuanced issue. However, as a fan of the game and occasional tournament viewer, this is kind of like a salary negotiation for a superstar athlete. Economically, they are justified in earning a share of the profits they generate and the details are complex and important. But you will NEVER be popular with the fans by saying “I need more money or I won’t play.” It is probably not helping the game a whole lot to have an open debate on the topic. Even if participation is a bad return on investment, it’s probably better to just say you can’t make it this year and leave it alone.
Third, can or should regular Joe’s spend money to go to tournaments? This is basically the same as the first one. If you want to do it, you can probably do it. But there are plenty of valid reasons (cost, work, family) that are reasonable barriers. No one should guilt you into trying to attend, but it’s also not fair to say that tournaments should offer free flights, daycare etc. to allow more people to attend.
Finally, when/if there will be another community fund to support tournaments. Again, I don’t have a big stake in high prize tournaments, but since most contributors to a community fund don’t either I will share my view. I think last years fund was cool and I was happy to generally support the game by throwing money at it. But I’m not highly motivated to contribute again, just to make sure tournament pros get paid to play. I won’t rule it out, but I do think they need to be careful about the way the fans perceive the fund and where the money goes etc. Although I enjoy watching tournament footage, as an investment it’s hard to argue I get my money’s worth. The point being, it will have to give the community something of perceived value, and the rationale for supporting tournaments needs to be kept positive. “We need to get bigger pot bonuses to boost high level participation” isn’t really compelling to me - and I suspect to lots of others.
EDIT: It took me a long time to write this because I got pulled into a meeting (stupid work). But I missed a lot of the interim conversation. The bottom line is it is VERY easy to spend other people’s money. People are usually a bit more conservative with their own. Even gigantic companies with huge profits aren’t just sitting on top of Scrooge McDuck’s money vault. They have money, but they need it to operate, manage their business risks, pay people, invest in future products etc. So I know it’s tempting to be an armchair quarterback, but I think people should resist the urge. I love KI to death, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it would be a good decision for MS to throw a ton more money into supporting the tournament scene for it. How would I know? I’m reluctant to chuck my hard earned money at professional video game players (no offense guys), so how can I tell “big companies” to spend their money that way?
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it became an issue when it was inferred “nobody” will sign up for a no-pot tournament, rather than sticking to LCD saying it’s not economically feasible for him to make the cross-country flight + hotel, etc.
The longer back and forth of ‘why even go to any tournament’ is way off track. LCD has been going to plenty of tournaments for the last couple of years, so he and everyone else already know how to go for the love of the game. He just had an innocent moment of thinking out loud of adding more tournaments to his schedule that he never planned on attending in the first place, and now ppl are having fits. As he said, the quote is WAY out of context of his larger situation.
It has, however, tapped into the frustrating reality for all of us that KI has very ‘low’ turnouts at events. That’s really the heart of the matter, though I do agree with the points that have been made that throwing more money around isn’t going to make a sea change in pro competition. With a 20 year absence, exclusivity to x1 and windows, with no presence on the fgc behemoth ps4, it’s going to be a long road to getting to Street fighter levels of popularity.
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Honestly, the best thing for the FGC as a whole would be for Sony and MS to play nice. It’s probably a pipedream, but it would help us all. Inter-corporate competition and the exclusivity nonsense can’t be better for profit, can it? It probably is.
Play. Love playing. Tell others you love playing. Encourage them to play.
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I feel that pot bonuses are an incentive to boost attendance numbers. However they do not always deem well for those who go to have fun and experience the tournament.