Hi all,
As you may have heard, The Big House 5 was recently announced set to take place October 2-4, 2015 here in Michigan! I want to take a moment to address why Project M (PM) is not back in the game lineup this year. The game lineup is one of the first decisions a tournament organizer (TO) makes when planning an event, and I can assure you it’s not made lightly. For context, PM has been a featured game at the last three installments of The Big House series, but it won’t be at TBH5 this year for a few reasons: risk, equipment, and leadership. These all circle back to my overarching goal of providing the best possible experience for my attendees.
Risk. The Big House has grown beyond the point where it could be self-sustained by the TOs themselves; in order to continue running, it needs resources (volunteers, equipment, promotion, etc.) from sponsors who have a very real business stake in the event and who will understandably not associate with a game that presents a legal risk. This is why featuring PM at a potential 1000+ person nationally-streamed tourney isn’t the same as featuring it at a small house tourney in your basement. PM is an amazing development creation and I’ve very much appreciated the attendance from the community in the past few years, but the game‘s legal status puts TOs in an impossible position to host it at big events in the future. It may be difficult for spectators to grasp this concept; they’re not the ones who risk everything to ensure the success of an event, and they’re not the ones who lose everything if wrong decisions are made. But from the perspective of a national TO, I want to provide the best possible experience for my attendees, and at this magnitude of attendance that means working with real business partners who won’t touch a modded game. I’m confident PM will continue to thrive at the local level, but the unfortunate truth is, the game‘s presence will always limit the ceiling of resources that a national tourney can attain. The Big House reached that point a long time ago, and I don’t wish to suppress the tourney’s growth moving forward.
Equipment. This year, I’m taking care of most of the tourney’s setup needs by working with various equipment vendors who have Melee and Smash 4 equipment, but do not have PM equipment. In previous years, I’ve crowdsourced setups from attendees through venue fee discount incentives. Crowdsourcing equipment works well at the local and regional level, but it doesn’t cut it at the national level after a tourney exceeds a certain tipping point in attendance. With bigger and bigger turnouts, the entire planning process relies more and more heavily on having a minimum number of available setups, and I can’t afford to jeopardize the tourney experiences of potentially 1000+ attendees at TBH5 due to a lack of equipment. This was an issue at recent PM tourneys I hosted, including the PM event of TBH4 where we had to negatively change the phase two pools format on tourney weekend due to a lack of setups. It continued to be an issue even after I implemented a system in which attendees committed setups through online registration, then got penalized at the door if they reneged on those commitments. It’s really tough for me to comprehend that attendees would rather take a $20 fine at the door instead of following through on their setup commitment to help the tourney run. For a TO to be able to support a game, the game‘s community must be able to support the TO.
Leadership. Although many events these days reach out to national TOs on a help-for-hire basis, I feel more comfortable tapping into my organic network of Michigan TOs — people who can help me build a local volunteer pipeline for the event, can reach out to nearby Smashers for help with setups, can make site visits to the venue with me, and so on. Because of this, I need a strong partnership with a game’s local community to make it possible for me to host them at a big event. The Michigan Melee local leadership is as strong as ever, and there are so many people to thank for that, I couldn’t possibly list all the names. On the other hand, the Michigan PM local leadership is not where it needs to be in order for me to work with them on a large-scale tournament that meets my standard of quality. My search for a local TOing partner with the game has come up empty, and recent attempts to support PM at my events have resulted in few setups being brought while nobody gets held accountable. There is no Juggleguy of the Michigan PM scene, and I need there to be one before I entrust half the resources of a national tourney towards a game that I’m personally not as passionate about as Melee. This isn’t particularly anyone’s fault, but part of my TOing philosophy is that if I can’t do it well, I won’t do it at all. If the hunger, maturity, and motivation to partner with me for a big event doesn’t exist within the Michigan PM community, then I can’t feel confident in my ability to throw an amazing event for the scene.
A word of advice to fans of PM, or fans of any game looking to make a splash. When a big tournament offers you an international platform to be showcased on — whether it’s EVO, Big House, your local FGC behemoth, whatever — take that opportunity as a community leader and work hard to maintain it, don’t be complacent while sitting on the sidelines. Look at what the Melee community did with EVO 2013 a couple years ago. Sure, EVO isn’t a “Smash-centric” tourney by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn’t mean you sit back and watch as a community leader. It means you rally to get the scene noticed on social media. It means you hustle every day until the deadline to produce as many registrations for your game as possible. It means you use your sphere of influence to get people to bring setups so the tourney can happen as scheduled. It means you go out of your way to make sure there are enough volunteers to help the tourney run smoothly. It means you do everything in your power to show the organizers that you should be back next time.
All things considered, I’m excited to welcome the Michigan Smash 4 scene to The Big House series for the first time. It has an existing foundation of local leadership in Michigan; I know which TOs to ask for help and I know they’ll be reliable. Its community has a hunger for the national spotlight; the local tourneys here have gotten bigger and bigger recently and those numbers have not been lost on me. And it makes a lot of sense logistically; the crossover entry with Melee is only about 20%, so more unique attendees come through per additional entrant which allows me to consolidate resources effectively. At the end of the day, I make these blog posts because I want to explain my thought process, not because I owe an explanation to anyone. I don’t plan on addressing the game lineup any further moving forward. The most important thing to understand is this decision gives me the necessary peace of mind such that resources can be better focused on providing the greatest possible tourney experience for attendees. You can trust The Big House to maintain its standard of excellence hosting Melee and Smash 4 under the same roof without diluting the quality of either event, and I look forward to the challenge of fulfilling this promise. Keep your eyes peeled for updates soon, and see you in October.
Best,
Robin Harn
Juggleguy, how long do you think it’ll take for PM to start appearing at nationals again? The only large nationals that have kept PM are Paragon and the BEAST series in Europe. Paragon will be the test for how PM performs at a national I guess. Time will tell and all that jazz.
If you’re talking about a more corporate (business) type tournaments, PM is never coming back sadly..
Those companies signed a contract with business partners about this and having PM would break it..
As far as PARAGON goes, PM will LIVE FOREVER….. 😀
Excuse me? The rally to put in a pot bonus for PM at BH and to include it wasn’t enough for PM to get noticed?
You Melee players need to quit telling us PM players to rally, because we are. Quit giving advice we already know, it just comes off as a pretentious ignorant BS statement.
He is the best TO in the business and he knows what he is talking about, stop and be thankful that this huge tourney is going to feature 2 smash games and both very successfully.
Excuse me? No fuck that.
We have every right to be upset about the exclusion of the third biggest Smash community, no matter what games they sponsored.
Could you imagine if they excluded Melee and allowed PM?
Would you still be okay with that since two successful games are there?
What a load of bullshit.
I’m as big a pm fan as any. But no we didn’t rally. I never heard of the pot bonus despite following many influential community leaders and the ly never rallied for any sort of thing.
Maybe some people tried, but the artlicle explicitly states that all of the community leaders need to work on it.
Don’t mistake wisdom for derision.
PM isn’t that old, and there’s a long road ahead at establishing ourselves at a grassroots level. In the end it won’t matter if the biggest tournaments host us if when you go back home you don’t have anyone to play with.
Focus on what we have the capacity to achieve, and right now we need to continue to strengthen as a physical community, and mainstream exposure like the Big House is ultimately a distraction from what Project M really needs to thrive.
Calm down. He can do what he wants with his tourney.
Sure, sure, but he shouldn’t say that we need to be more vocal when we have been plenty vocal already. It’s just really annoying.
I agree. We’ve been trying very hard to get PM noticed but it seems to keep getting slaughtered by legal issues. Its kind of a slap to face when someone says we’re not trying hard enough.
Rallying for a pot bonus is the not the same thing as not bringing setups to tourneys and having below amazing local TOs. You need to work on the real issues and not worry about the cash prize
Bravo. This is the smart path for the Smash scene going forward. PM severely limits growth potential. It also has immense overlap with Melee, hurting the flow of tournaments, and the Melee players end up preferring Melee anyway.
In addition to legal status, PM just doesn’t fit a niche as either “the hardcore older game” or “the latest title.” Meanwhile, Smash 4’s scene is growing, as recently as yesterday getting written up by Kotaku and rivaling Melee attendance numbers.
Melee will always be around because the scene is dedicated. Smash 4 is fresh and new, and good for Juggleguy for not making it an either/or proposition. PM’s community will continue to live, but the game just doesn’t have a place on the largest stages as a fanmade alternate to Melee. Should be a great and very hype tourney.
“It also has immense overlap with Melee, hurting the flow of tournaments”
That is actually a non-issue in national tournaments since they assign pools to prevent any overlap.
From a legal standpoint, PM has to have 100% overlap with some other game otherwise its a legal issue so having overlap actually makes them safe.
There is a multi-millionare businessman who actually collects donations and runs a fan-made NATIONAL tournament (PARAGON) without the need of sponsorships so they can include PM in the roster. He can afford to lose money, other TOs cannot.
That is why PM will be at PARAGON but not other tournaments.
^This
too bad too much people who want to see the end of PM
>people donate money to get internationals to come to tourneys
>don’t have the money to host a PM tourney of that scale
Oh well, maybe its for the best. I’m not a huge fan of the direction melee is going. Maybe PM will be the next era of basement-politically-incorrect-people-bros. Enjoy your dewritos fam
Thanks for the followup, Juggleguy.
Before this post devolves into a game-holy-war, I’d like to express my thoughts as one of Michigan’s primary Project M TOs. I’ve watched the scene grow over the past two years and it’s community is as passionate as it is unreliable. TBH4 and Big Beach House as examples, it’s understandable that Project M poses far more risk to host than any other Smash game. Hopefully the rest of the PM community realizes this too.
This doesn’t mean PM is dying or that nobody will support PM. Look at Shuffle VII coming up this weekend in Ohio with over 200 attendees. PM IS lacking leadership, there’s no two ways about it. And I say this as a leader in the Michigan Project M community. For PM to continue to thrive, we need more volunteers, more dedication, more commitment, and more resources. One little donation drive that raises a mere $1000 isn’t enough to bring us to the level that Melee is at. They worked hard for that and so should we.
Michigan is starting a new initiative around Project M, but we’re not ready to release details quite yet. In the mean time, keep being passionate about Project M, keep playing, and keep supporting the scene. Promote tournaments and media as much as you can. Keep the love strong and it will come back to us.
And to Juggleguy and the Melee/Sm4sh communities, I hope you guys have an absolutely kick ass tournament; one that pushes the Big House name to levels previously unimagined.
Arcalyth / GLS | root
@MLGF: Amen.
Juggleguy, you’ve got one hell of a nerve to try and claim it’s our fault you stabbed us in the back.
Or you can realize that PM failed to bring setups to the previous iteration of Big House 4, giving no guarantee that PM could be run properly at a tournament. How is that Juggleguy’s fault again?
the same company that doesn’t give shit about you guys.
keep acting like they do all they see is dollar signs when it comes to you kids. the very same mod that replaced brawl isn’t good enough to be apart of a tourney? bullshit nintendo is on this shit. one unit my ass.
It’s insane watching the community not stick up for each other.
“the game‘s presence will always limit the ceiling of resources that a national tourney can attain”
People have been raising and donating thousands of dollars to have PM at other events, I don’t think anybody buys this.
This is profoundly disappointing, but not terribly surprising. Melee players turning their backs on the other communities as soon as it’s convenient is hardly a new phenomenon.
I completely understand, it seemed elitist from GimR but from juggleguy (or his proxy) it seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw from the given risks.
It’s weird to think that, at this point and time in Melee (and I’m sure previously, don’t get me wrong) we’re able to have such, what seems to be intrinsically, motivated TOs who go above and beyond the standard for just “running a tournament”. Sadly I won’t be making to TBH5, but as always it will be of my favorite viewing experiences. Kudos.
I’m sad to hear that P:M will not be featured. I respect the frankness and transparency though. It’s a lot easier to sympathize when we see the thought process behind it.
Okay, but are you going to have a USF4 bracket?