Running Long Term Online Events — Lessons Learned From Groove of War #5 & #6

Writer’s note: This was originally meant to be published 6 months ago but was left in my drafts by mistake. I still think this is a useful read of where we were at before Groove of War 7 which will have its own article coming soon.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since the last one of these. I guess time flies when you’re working on events. The past 12 months have been a bit of a rollercoaster in terms of both events and personal life.

I took a break from Groove of War that was originally meant to be permanent but came back after about 6 weeks. Since then, I’ve been handing off work to other staff members where possible to spread the workload around.

We ran Groove of War 5, which was a long event that ended up lasting around 3 months. It was a lot of fun, but we ran into a number of issues that caused delays in the middle of the event. We then ran Groove of War 6 afterward, which solved some issues while bringing in a few of its own.

Don’t run really long, single events

There were a number of issues with this in the case of GoW5. One of the maps in the map pool had to be pulled in the middle of the event, resulting in a delay while we made changes to the ruleset. We also made a mistake while doing these changes, which caused further issues.

The remaining maps also had balance issues and the length of the event gave players plenty of time to push those as far as possible. We still had a great top 8 despite this, but it was extremely stressful to run.

Staff burnout is real too. After 3 months of constantly running an event and dealing with the issues that come with that, there was some much-needed downtime afterwards. Ideally, after an event ends there should be minimal downtime before details for the next event are announced. In the case of Groove of War 5, we were a bit exhausted and needed time to post details up.

We moved away from the single event model in Groove of War 6 and it worked much better. The main pain point was the Swiss event that ran for 2 months and to no surprise, had some similar issues because of the length of the event.

Automation is a wonderful thing

One thing that has been eye-opening as we have improved the technology behind the scenes is just how much manual work was being done for every event. Whether it was uploading videos, handling player bans, setting up player lobbies, recording replays on top of live broadcasts. The number of hours per week doing busywork is pretty incredible to look back at in retrospect.

2021 saw a revamp to the ranked ladder system that has been quite the success. The matchmaking bot was updated to handle player bans as well, something that has been a pain point for both players and admins. There is still work to be done on this front, but maintaining a ranked system that is tied into the Groove of War series has been a much more positive experience than I had originally thought.

Another thing this has highlighted is that having an automated ranked system does a better job than what the Swiss event was intended to cover. Swiss was meant to offer a low barrier of entry event that was open to everyone and rewarded people simply for taking part. While it did this to an extent, people would drop out mid-event or just be unable to play every week. The ladder on the other hand allows people to participate at their own pace while still being serious competition.

It’s OK to make cuts if it makes running events more manageable

One of the more positive personal changes that happened going from GoW5 to GoW6 was cutting a large amount of live game broadcasting. While live broadcasts are well-loved and offer a unique viewing experience, they also require a large time investment. Not only a time investment in the broadcast, but sometimes I would be making unhealthy changes to my sleep schedule and post-broadcast work for live sets would increase. We would also get requests for replay versions on top of the full broadcast.

Going from live broadcasts to replays was one of the best decisions we have made. My sleep schedule has stayed relatively better, I’ve had more free time to work on other things. That said I’ve also used a lot of this free time to slack off, so that will need to change for the better too. Live broadcasts can be saved for finals and the game lobbies are open to those who wish to set up their own live-viewing experience.

It should be said though, we also did less promotion for Groove of War 5 and I think that hurt us too. The shift in the structure made it difficult to know when releasing the trailer would make sense. I think we have a better idea of how to promote going forward, but it was still a misstep to not cover that base well. There was also some staff absence in this area too, but that should hopefully improve going forwards.

Exam seasons are a thing

This one is pretty simple. We ran the Groove of War 5 main event during exam season and it caused problems. Dropouts and players being unable to practice for the event were both issues. In future, we’re looking to shift the finals of each year by 2–3 months so they would be in March/September instead of May/November.

Keep formats simple

With Groove of War 6 (and 5 to some extent), the format was overall very complex. A multitude of qualifiers mixed with a not quite standard double-elimination format. The reasoning for this made sense at the time and we’d likely make the same choice again in the same circumstances. That said, circumstances have changed. Our qualifiers will be simpler going forward which frees up time to run standard double elimination for the main event.

The end of the pandemic will cause more issues to running events than the pandemic itself did

I should qualify that I am by no means saying the Covid-19 pandemic is a positive thing and that the world returning to normal is overwhelmingly a good thing. I also realise that this only applies to parts of the world with widespread vaccine distribution and am thankful to be living in a country that is doing relatively well in that regard.

That said, it is important to recognise the impact that it’s having on us as event organisers. As the world is opening up, suddenly the option to see family and friends is important to a lot of staff. I haven’t seen most of the people in my life in over 18 months now, so now that the opportunity is here, I’ll be taking time to do so.

It also isn’t really a choice at times either, since you can’t exactly turn around to family you haven’t seen in months or even years and say no. This won’t last forever, but there’s definitely going to be a level of social catchup that will happen over the next 3–6 months.

So what comes next

So for those that made it this far and are looking for specific information on what is coming next since we’re clearly making some changes.

1. The ladder season that leads into the second qualifier for Groove of War 7 has started, including a new map pool. Ladder seasons will include monthly participation prizes going forward too as TYM no longer requires as much prize support.
2. Groove of War 7 ladder qualifier 1 should be later this July.
3. A new Test Your Mettle event will be coming up soon, with a number of maps to be tested.
4. Groove of Nations will be announced later in July and start in August. The event page is one of the things I’ll be working on after finishing this article.
5. Groove of War 7’s main event will last 2 months, likely starting in late October and ending in December.
6. Running more events such as map-making events and meme contests.
7. There will be an event in January-March that will serve to shift the Groove of War schedule back by 3 months to solve the issue of finals taking place during exam season and December. Possibly with the inclusion of the Advance Wars sequel as a second event, but details on this aren’t close to being final. Planning on this event will take place once Groove of Nations is finalised.
8. Continuing the make changes to the event structure of Groove of War going forward. The 6-month structure with qualifiers and the main event seems sound, so it hopefully should stay fairly stable from this point onwards.
9. Maybe a live-event meetup at some point. Most likely at an existing esports event with space for people to run some kind of side event.
10. At some point, we will have to prepare for whatever “Moregroove” is, but that is far down the priority list.

So that’s all folks. There’s a lot of work to be done, but we know what it is. We should have announcements for these as they come up too which will be on the Groove of War social media and on the Wargroove discord.