Running Long Term Online Events — Lessons Learned From Groove of War #3
As the end of the online esports event “Groove of War #3” nears, I feel it’s important to look back at the strengths and weaknesses of the event to see what lessons can be learned. This doesn’t just apply to Wargroove either since this is some general knowledge that can be transferred to other things. I should also note that this is based on personal opinion and isn’t a reflection of the Groove of War staff.
An event is not for everyone
Some things that were brought up before GoW #3 started and during some event discussions was the need to not split the community. Event entry numbers are important and we must put in extra work to keep them higher. If the tournament is purely live matches only, then async players will be left out. The event should cater to all time zones, so we can end with regions squaring off against each other in the top 8.
The reality is though, all of these aren’t as important as they seem at first, especially compared to issues that arise. Higher numbers are great in some ways, but if there are better ways to cater to different groups then a smaller pool of players shouldn’t be seen as a problem. Mixing players who want to play matches live with timers causes conflicts when someone would rather take days or even weeks to play out a match. Regional brackets are great until you put players in completely different timezones against each other, thus giving an advantage to the player who is closer to their usual gaming hours.
It brings home the reality that not everyone will fit under the same roof and this is honestly fine. If the community as a whole is served better with multiple avenues to fit their type of play, this will work better than forcing people who really shouldn’t be playing against each other to do so.
Rules need to be clearer and punishments need to be too
So I’ve been a fan of clear rulesets for a long time. Having clear lines and boundaries is important, but something I hadn’t expected was the need for clear punishments to be clearly set out as well. Generally speaking, I’d always had some indication about what breaking rules would result in as far as previous events I’d been involved with were concerned. People refusing to report others based on a lack of knowing what would happen if they did was new. I’ll make sure that those are listed in future.
There was also a case that some rules weren’t enforced too strictly, which caused confusion for people entering the event. There were cases where match extensions were given out, but it wasn’t communicated to the wider community about when and why this happened. Generally speaking, this was to let matches in progress have additional time to be completed. In some cases, the winners’ side of the bracket didn’t require urgent deadlines as the losers’ side would take longer to catch up. The execution of these extensions was sloppy and changes will be made to tighten this up in the future.
Going forward, clearer rules and strict match deadlines are the way forward. Given the regular need for extensions, longer amounts of time between each round will be needed too.
Developer interaction helps both parties
Probably not a surprise to anyone, but interaction with developers is really important in a few ways. Outside the more obvious things like promotion and prize support, just talking to the developers about how their game is played in a competitive setting helps a lot.
During one of the live broadcasts that Chucklefish had chosen to tune into, players were being given “yellow cards” for taking too long on turns. Timekeeping is currently a manual process that requires an admin to be on hand with a stopwatch, handing out punishments to players as needed. This created a discussion between the developers about how important having this feature in the game would be. Without that direct interaction of the developers watching the live stream, they may never have seen timers as something that important.
There is also talk about the current quickplay system using maps from the competitive scene instead of the original map pool. This takes the pressure off event organisers to be the primary source of ways to play the game, while also increasing the quality of the maps that people play when going into multiplayer.
While it is certainly possible for us as event organisers to run events without talking to game developers, it has been mutually beneficial in this instance.
Burnout
It’s been a long 2 months. The lead up to Groove of War 3 involved 3 weeks of testing maps, graphic design, writing ruleset and promotional material. We built a YouTube channel, live-streamed matches, oversaw 90 sets (with 2 remaining at the time of writing) and worked with Chucklefish to add additional prizes for the competitors.
There were definite mistakes and improvements that need to be made. It’s obvious from the team that we need to take some time to work on other things before going into another event like this. When going into Groove of War #4 (or any future event), it should run better for both the players and the team to avoid us feeling exhausted at the end of it.
So yeah, lots of things learned and more work to do. I’m looking forward to it after a week off after Groove of War #3 ends!
