What you mean is how they got annoyed at your repeated attempts to talk to them about hosting a tournament instead of going through the right channels.

Gerrak, we know you love ITG. We know you'd probably marry it if you could; but you've got to chill.
You say that since we've had a recent DDR tournament, we need to put in ITG time? Obviously we don't care enough to have more ITG tournaments, or they would happen. To come with a longwinded post about how ITG is being neglected now, when the official rules have already been setup and the tournament info has been posted is really lame. While this is ran by the community, this is still a con that brings in WAY more people. We can change things on the fly at our local tournaments and nobody cares. A con is a completely different story.
If you are so concerned about ITG being neglected, be more proactive instead of responsive. Any by proactive that does not mean bugging Acme to have them let you run a tournament.

Focusing on DDR over ITG for the con will always make sense. ALWAYS.

Wish I could be staff .__. ~sigh

Methinks I could get there early. If there are more than 16 ITG competitors, my chances of even getting to participate in the ITG tourny are slim. Heh. I'll be happy to observe the events and film a bit at least.

lol internet

cant we all just get along and play peggle

Whoah, buddy.

I'm Laura's final superior at con, and I back her on this.

You're being done a favor with having ITG there in the first place. It's a niche game. You're not even close to being the most important set of fans at the convention. If even 16 people enter ITG out of an anticipated 20000, that's 0.08% of the convention populace. Less than one tenth of one percent.

DDR is a Japanese game. Sakura-Con is a Japanese cultural and anime con. ITG is American. The only reason it's at con is 1) I used to have it in arcade when I ran gaming and 2) it gives us access to more songs and gives us a third 4-panel dancing game.

Also, when we run a tournament, it means the general public cannot use the machine. Meaning, you want us to fuck the other 19984 people off. That's just not happening. Not only does Laura have to juggle a few other events, she has a job to do in which she has to make sure 20000 people have a fair shot of using and enjoying our arcade. Her job isn't to cater to the niche Bemani crowd exclusively.

People like you are why I never liked the ITG community so much. You think the world revolves around you. It doesn't. If you don't like it, well, go to Narrows for the weekend. You'll get the machine to yourself.

Whoah. We've never had a problem in person, so I don't really appreciate you taking that kind of tone with me over the internet.

1. Your main argument is that we held an ITG tournament 6 months ago, but we had a DDR tournament a month ago. Last time that we had a challenge tournament was... 2006? People always have fun at these tournaments and I've had a lot of requests for one. There are a lot of "less serious" players who want a silly tournament, just as there are a lot of more serious players who want an ITG tournament. You may think that the challenge tournament is stupid, but you're not speaking for the community - you're speaking for yourself. I'm not going to shuffle around my entire con schedule for one person, no matter who they are.

2. ACME is letting Bill remove the machine for the weekend. Clearly there's SOME way to run another ITG tournament at ACME; maybe we could pay a rental fee that gets deducted from entry fees. Sure the prize would be worth less, but... oh wait, the prize at THIS tournament is some coupons to go buy anime DVDs. Can't be worth less than that!

3. I'm making the ITG machine "unplayable" for the weekend because my Bemani friends wanted to play it 24/7 on freeplay. Anyone who wanted to be staff and play it for free while on shift was welcome to do so; I opened up this offer months ago. I'm sorry if this doesn't work as well for you as others, but don't try to paint me as a villain who's taking your machine away.

I'd like to reiterate that I really don't like the way you're talking to me - and at the very least, I wish you'd have the courtesy to save it for the next time we're together in person, so that neither of us are veiled in the cloak of internet invincibility. If you're really upset with me, let's try to work it out for real rather than posturing with condescending language and air quotes.

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ALL THAT SAID, I do understand that single elim is not the best choice, and I have come up with one alternative. If I could get everybody who WILL be at the con prior to 6 to agree to start qualifying at 5, we could start the tournament rounds a lot earlier, and I could probably modify the format in a way that would extend the tournament for 45 minutes. This would probably either be best 3-5 instead of best 2-3, or adding the same round robin tennis style deal to this tournament as the DDR tournament has. ITG does have much longer songs than DDR, though, so we need to keep this in mind, also.

How many of you are willing to get there early and qualify early?

I noticed no complaints with regard to the day-of qualifier. Is that because there aren't any? That's the one part of the format that I DO have legitimate  power to change if people disagree with my assessment about fairness, but I need to do it soon if that's the case.

It's a silly anime convention.  I'm excited to have a challenge tournament just to have some fun and goof around with a cool community.  Laura has put a lot of work into this whole event, and I really appreciate the great job she has done so far.

Chill.

Thanks a lot for making the challenge tournament just as important as ITG... You have 7 hours supposedly, you can fit in double elimination. Put it after the first round if you need so it's 8man double elimination but single elimination is insulting. The last ITG tournament we had was 6 months ago, and I doubt we can just 'hold another one' considering how stingy Acme is. We had to plan months in advance for the last one we held there. And forget Narrows, the machine is not really where it should be for tournaments. We have DDR tournaments all the time, but ITG is rare. Point and fact I'm going to have to pay 60 bucks just for these 2 tournaments and the arcade play I'll get outside them. I think for that we should be able to get a decent ITG tournament if you're going to make the machine otherwise unplayable for the weekend.

Like I said, make it 8man double elim if you need to save time. Or else move the stupid challenge tournament to saturday. Or else AT THE VERY LEAST make the ITG best out of 5 songs. The challenge should be LAST priority, not equal with ITG. There is more you can do with this tournament, so please just figure out a way to make it better. With how close our entrants in the ITG tournament are, a single elimination is sure to have some seriously disappointed people when the time actually comes.

Allan, no hard feelings or anything... I don't take it as bitching - you have some legitimate concerns. In fact, all of them were concerns that I have already thought long and hard about. I hope that you understand my reasoning and everything is cool! I really can't budge on #1, but if a lot of people disagree with #2, I'd be willing to re-consider.


Sakuracon is an anime convention, and ITG is not very popular with the general anime convention population. I got it because I know that you guys love it, but let's be honest - anime people, who are a large number of the tournament entrants, are only going to enter DDR. DDR is getting more love because it's my job to make sure that it does, and also because the number of DDR players at a high enough skill level to enter a tournament is MUCH larger than that same number of ITG players.

So put a little bit differently: ITG is only a 16 man bracket because there aren't more than 16 of you guys, and this is something just for you; no general con attendees are going to want to enter it. It is single elim because of time constraints: I can't start anything before 6 PM on Friday, because half of the community can't get off of work in time to make it anywhere before then. I also can't go past 1, because they kick all of the minors out at 1 and I don't want anyone to be prevented from entering any of my tournaments because of their age. I also needed to schedule the challenge tournament after the ITG tournament. So I have from 6 PM to 1 AM to run two tournaments with enough time to grab a snack in between the two of them. I just flat out can't make time for double elim.

I'd be happy to run a longer ITG tournament in the traditional "you all go to an arcade and pay a 5-10 dollar entry fee" sense at some point in the near future if you guys all want one, but I just can't make it happen at this anime convention.

As for the qualifier, there's a specific reason I'm doing it the way I'm doing it. DDR is supposed to be the "easier" tournament, which means giving people a chance to practice - this is for the benefit for the anime people who the hardcore dance game people would obliterate otherwise, NOT the hardcore dance game people. With ITG, I found a chart that I think would make a great qualifier, but I know that it'd be well within the reasonable skill level of anybody entering an ITG tournament. If I announce it in advance, it would go from a song that nobody would do embarrassingly poorly at and would do a good job of ranking people to a song that the people with the most money and practice time would win on, regardless of general skill level at the game. Basically, I think not announcing the qualifier until the day of is MORE fair at the skill level that we're talking about with ITG expert players.

I don't think many (if any) 13s would be played, I'm willing to bet all 16 players will be able to at least handle themselves on what will end up being played. In any case, for a 32man DDR that turns tennis style round robin in the semis we could at least get a normal double elim ITG. Especially considering the last ITG tournament was 6 months ago. The last DDR was like 3 weeks ago Give ITG some love!

I agree with Allan. If you can make ITG Double elim that'd be super freakin awesome, but I also understand time constraints at sakura-con, so if it's finalized, it's finalized.

Allan, also understand that there is what? 4 of us here in washington that can pass 13's? That's mainly the reason why the ITG tourny is probably less important.....because honestly less people play it from a general stand point.

   Laura I don't mean to bitch much, but it seems like you're giving a lot more love to the DDR tournament than the ITG tourney. Since the ITG tournament is supposed to be for the "expert players" anyway, and it's sure to be some of the closest and most intense matches of both days, plus the fact that we have DDR tourneys all the time but pretty few ITG ones, I would strongly suggest for a 16man bracket you make it double elimination. If not for the first round, then from the 2nd round on make it 8man double-elim or something. I know for a lot of songs people like me keby nsxx tom and james could feasibly be within a few excellents, and I'd hate to see one of us seed weird and get knocked out completely without really getting to compete.

edit: And you should release a list of possible qualifiers in advance like the DDR tourney

Ironically, I will be cosplaying the viper-guy from Prince of Tennis to match. Sorry..
Link~

Tennis style makes things intense even if its capped off at 9 songs =P

Suko: It's only the final four in DDR, and we took everyone's input from last time into account - you will never play more than 9 songs.

Oh god...Tennis style!? I have bad memories from the last time I did that.

There's going to be an experimental tournament - Pop'n Battle Mode! The DDR and ITG tournaments required a lot of advance rules clarification, which is why I'm posting about them nearly a month before the event. The Pop'n Battle Mode and Challenge tournaments require a little bit less explanation, and the rules are a little bit less debatable, so I'm delaying those posts until after I'm done with finals.

Is there a Pop'n tournament too?