Pax East and Future Tournaments.

[slowpoke]

FTB, Pax and Future Conventions.

Sometime in October last year I was approached by a member of the team working at Pax East with the idea of putting on a FTB server and live tournament at their convention. After discussions with various people, we ended up putting on the tournament and at the same time managed to have our first ever get together. Around 12 people attended this with many others joining along the way. I think it is safe to say an awesome weekend was had by everyone that came along and the chance to meet so many people was brilliant. However, we were there to put on a tournament first and foremost and despite everything it ended up being a huge success. On the day we had to turn away over 70 people just because there was no room. We were also fortunate to have been given a few prizes from Razer in the form of a keyboard, mouse and mouse pad. For that I would just like to take a second to say thank you again. Based on the success of the event, the possibility was brought up of a second tournament at Pax Prime.

This brings us on to today, a few weeks ago I was approached by a new Esports team who were initially interested in sponsoring some the the FTB Streams. This conversation soon evolved and a preliminary agreement was reached. So what we are looking to do is create a partnership between FTB and Denial Esports. The first goal of this partnership is to explore the possibilities of hosting a 2nd tournament preferably at Pax Prime in August or if that proves to be impossible at some other future event. We are also going to be exploring the chance to maybe host some online tournaments as well. Second is the option of maybe creating a 5v5 team based map also for tournament use. This is not to say that we are definately going to be able to achieve all of this, but its certainly a goal we would like to aim for.

Although discussions are still at a very early stage, for anyone interested in this the latest news will be found either on the FTB Website or also the Denial Esports website found at

Denial Esports

As this is a totally new direction for FTB, this is the perfect time to let everyone express their opinions on this idea. Whether you are in favour of the idea or against it, or if anyone has ideas that we could use please feel free to post in the accompanying thread. The only thing I ask is that you try to make all comments constructive. This is a new idea that as far as I can tell has never really been tried before, so we have no idea how this will turn out. But unless we try, we will never know.

 

[TheCyberTronn]

I think this is going to be a MASSIVE step forward for FTB and Minecraft in general! Ever heard of Minecraft ESports? You have now!

 

[DraigoDragon]

I'm glad and all...

But this was not what I wanted to hear sorry

honesty right here people

 

[slowpoke]

Honesty is good. No one here is going to be having a go at anyone who makes negative comments about this idea. In fact if it turns out that the community is against this, it will probably be halted before it goes any further. There are many benefits this provides but there may also be some controversy as well. Hence why before anything final is decided I want to hear what everyone thinks.

 

[Ralnick]

Congrats on PAX.

This would be a big step for FTB and the Minecraft community. IF things go correctly for all involved. but let me ask this, what is being suggested from the Denial Esports team? Just sponsoring some streams from FTB or is there more in the works that has not been made public yet, and what sort of sponsoring is being offered or suggested from both sides.

Either way this works out, FTB is still going to in the spot light.

 

[Ashzification]

I like the idea. Don't quite understand yet what the point is. What do both of you get out of it?

 

[Draco8967]

two things one a great idea but lacking on some information like what type of game play is it going to be a park-core or a survival games. what does the winner get. some basic information. but other than that Sign me up for it im in.

 

[Belone]

I've never had any interest in eSports, but it is definitely an interesting avenue, but I kind of agree with Ashzification, what are you both getting out of it? I can see the benefit they would be getting, but just make sure you get plenty back from them

 

[Vauthil]

I like the idea. Don't quite understand yet what the point is. What do both of you get out of it?

Jumping in and temporarily putting on my former-life pointy-head business manager hat (with a touch of my accompanying community manager cape).

The simple answer is that the community gets increased exposure and the potential for sponsorship money (which it'll definitely need with more exposure; keeping a site up on your own dime is nice and all, but not having to worry about the bills, particularly if the site's technical needs explode, is a nice peace of mind to have). I'm not going to angst too much on the monetary side because that's never been a goal let alone the goal for FTB anyway, and if this achieves traction then many parties will have a vested interest in assuring FTB is provided for resource-wise.

The first challenge, of course, is determining whom the increased exposure helps. Mojang's an obvious beneficiary as it opens up Minecraft to a new market, and the eSports teams get their publicity and, ultimately, prizes... but does it help FTB in being what FTB wishes to be? I think at the end of the day that question comes down to the expectations of the folks organizing this community, and to some extent the community itself, which is why we're getting asked for feedback.

If FTB becomes an eSport, the first thing I will caution is that the attendant crowd will make the current forum causes célèbres even more vitriolic and divisive. If you think people discussing the topics-I-dare-not-utter-the-names-of-lest-they-be-summoned-into-this-unrelated-discussion are being warlike about it now, just you wait until the min-max eSports crowd gets here and amps it all up to 11, and adds in all kinds of additional min-max rage to the discussion. The moderators will be extremely busy and the report button will be worn out early and often.

The attendant amount of pressure could end up being enormous depending on how this takes off. Right now our attitude towards certain -- shall we say -- "shortcuts" in the mods is more tolerant. A general attitude is "if you don't like how Mod X affects your gameplay, don't use it". In an eSports atmosphere, that's not at all the attitude: this changes to "if it's a method head and shoulders above others vis-a-vis ease of use, use it or complain about it a lot to the developers until it is nerfed to the ground". In the case of FTB, this is wildly more different than basically any other eSport because (a) FTB does not develop the mods themselves, it only curates the mods (b) the mod developers have visions for their mods largely independent of each other and are thus resistant to being told to do things a certain way. This puts the pressure on the FTB Team to play point man for mod balance and building their maps around certain issues of balance that cannot be moved (on the bright side: LoL's constantly-in-flux metagame balance actually serves as an attractant; sterilizing the packs for ultimately perfect balance would probably actually be a pretty destructive endeavour).

To this point this has been a hobby for folks. Something they do in their "down" time. Do the folks organizing FTB really want this kind of pressure and scrutiny? There are ways to buffer and distribute this, granted, but at the end of the day the pressure of leadership in this scenario still weighs down on a small group of people. They will be arm-twisted into making things happen between sponsors, sporters, the community, and the modders. Right now it's already not exactly the most comfortable seat in the house; turning FTB into a true eSport would magnify this.

There are means to mitigate all of this, of course, and I think if the team is up to the task that they should engage on this. But I think at the end of the day that Slowpoke and the team will have to decide this for themselves. The part right now though is determining whether the community itself is going to be supportive or not of this process, which is the part we can answer ourselves (and much commendation to Slowpoke for asking us this first; that shows a lot of respect for the community and we should do our best to return that respect by giving candid responses on this).

My personal take? If you guys are up to it, I'd love to see where this could take the community and the challenge maps. But I don't want the FTB team to feel pressured to "take it to the next level" just because, especially because the next steps could be very back-breaking (the team's usual aplomb is a positive sign that they can bear some of this, though). So I give my usual advice that I always give other community managers and administrators: do what makes sense for you, not anybody else. =)

 

[ChrysAlice]

Disclaimer: I admit that bringing sponsorship into any free enterprise like this makes me nervous.

That said, I trust the FTB team. You do awesome work, and I'd love to see FTB get recognition and a little financial benefit from this. My only fear comes from the possibility of this sponsorship going beyond the E-sports arena and affecting the modpacks/maps/launcher themselves. I wouldn't mind a "we're sponsored by" message on the launcher or even in the FTB challenge maps, but I wouldn't want the entire enterprise to become "Denial Esports presents Feed The Beast". It's only the trust you folks have built with the community that assuages that fear.

 

[slowpoke]

OK I will try to clarify this somewhat. Initially the idea is that Denial Esports is going to help to get sponsors, the idea is these sponsors will help to amongst other things help with things like travel costs etc to events like Pax. They will be able to help with things like prizes etc for tournaments that we run either online or at these events. What this boils down to is none of the people that work on FTB are really interested in making money off of the pack, however if we are going to get invited to events like this, we certainly dont have the personal funds to keep travelling to these events either. So we can either not go to these events or we can get help with funding them. This is not exactly something new, Creeperhost already sponsors FTB in return for the link on the launcher and on the website as well as personal promo work some of us do. they cover the costs of our servers (6 dedicated servers dont exactly come cheap). The idea here is to expand this to allow us to do more in the future.

I want to make something clear to everyone reading this and say the same thing to the community that I have already said internally. Is this something I want to do. Answer yes its a kind of cool idea and after the Pax East experience it has some potential. However there is no way I am going to do this at the expense of the reputation that we have built up over the last year. If the community is fundementally against the idea, it will be dropped. If the community is for the idea, we will explore it. That is the purpose of this thread, so we can get feedback on these plans.

Finally the question, what does Denial get out of this, initially they get exposure for their team. Just the proposition of a partnership between FTB and something like an ESports team will inevitably raise their profile. What happens after this is something we can look at then. right now, I am not really looking beyond this initial idea.

added in:-

After reading the responses that came while i was writing. I have already made it VERY clear that we will always be limited by the mods that are out there and whatever Mojang decide to do. My intention remains to always work with the tools we are given either by the modders or Mojang. (other than tiny changes that I have asked for in the past that help us out and that has always been voluntary)

 

[Belone]

Well my main concern was that you were getting screwed over Slowpoke. I don't think sponsorship is a bad thing, especially if it helps you and your team continue doing such good work. Undoubtedly you will have some people who will proclaim that you are evil for not doing this all out of pocket (), but do you really care if you lose a little respect from those sort of people?

 

[RedBoss]

My only concern about this is what happens when investors begin manipulating those they sponsor. There's a long list of games, products, ideas, etc that have been ruined because of money and guys in suits who care only about profit. I trust you Slowpoke and the FTB team are in this for noble reasons. I fear that any outside manipulation could lead to disaster for the mod community we've grown to love and enjoy. So if there is adequate protection against outside control I feel it's worthwhile to give it a shot and test the waters at least. But personally I'd view it as an experiment, avoid long term commitments and be leary of guys in suits.

 

[Ashzification]

OK I will try to clarify this somewhat. Initially the idea is that Denial Esports is going to help to get sponsors, the idea is these sponsors will help to amongst other things help with things like travel costs etc to events like Pax. They will be able to help with things like prizes etc for tournaments that we run either online or at these events. What this boils down to is none of the people that work on FTB are really interested in making money off of the pack, however if we are going to get invited to events like this, we certainly dont have the personal funds to keep travelling to these events either. So we can either not go to these events or we can get help with funding them. This is not exactly something new, Creeperhost already sponsors FTB in return for the link on the launcher and on the website as well as personal promo work some of us do. they cover the costs of our servers (6 dedicated servers dont exactly come cheap). The idea here is to expand this to allow us to do more in the future.

I want to make something clear to everyone reading this and say the same thing to the community that I have already said internally. Is this something I want to do. Answer yes its a kind of cool idea and after the Pax East experience it has some potential. However there is no way I am going to do this at the expense of the reputation that we have built up over the last year. If the community is fundementally against the idea, it will be dropped. If the community is for the idea, we will explore it. That is the purpose of this thread, so we can get feedback on these plans.

Finally the question, what does Denial get out of this, initially they get exposure for their team. Just the proposition of a partnership between FTB and something like an ESports team will inevitably raise their profile. What happens after this is something we can look at then. right now, I am not really looking beyond this initial idea.

added in:-

After reading the responses that came while i was writing. I have already made it VERY clear that we will always be limited by the mods that are out there and whatever Mojang decide to do. My intention remains to always work with the tools we are given either by the modders or Mojang. (other than tiny changes that I have asked for in the past that help us out and that has always been voluntary)

Thanks for the clarification!
I really like this idea then

 

[Cieronph]

I mean this is awesome, no-one has ever really done an esport for minecraft and this would be AMAZING, Slow in my opinion YES lets go for it, and for people worrying im sure the FTB guys will do there research and check what their signing before they go ahead

 

[egor66]

To be honest in Slow's post there is not enough information to come to any real conclusions, with out info its just hear say & guess work.

I reserve the right to abstain until there is information to base an informed reply.

 

[slowpoke]

I am really not sure what else there is I can tell you to be honest. Right now we have sponsorship that effectively covers our costs for the servers that we use to distribute the FTB launcher and packs, the server we host the forums off and a couple of build servers for maps. This proposed deal is a partnership between FTB and Denial Esports. We give the esports team exposure, they look for sponsorships for FTB which we will use initially to organise a follow-up tournament to the one we ran at Paxx East and assuming that goes well, we will follow this up with online tournaments that everyone can get involved in and maybe other tournaments at future conventions. These would initially take the shape of a single player time trial map like the Pax East one and also we have a planned 5v5 map that has elements taken from Hunger Games and dota style maps.

 

[Henix_Aurorus]

My only concern about this is what happens when investors begin manipulating those they sponsor. There's a long list of games, products, ideas, etc that have been ruined because of money and guys in suits who care only about profit. I trust you Slowpoke and the FTB team are in this for noble reasons. I fear that any outside manipulation could lead to disaster for the mod community we've grown to love and enjoy. So if there is adequate protection against outside control I feel it's worthwhile to give it a shot and test the waters at least. But personally I'd view it as an experiment, avoid long term commitments and be leary of guys in suits.

Yeah, let's not turn this into another game where there are ignorant sponsors and greedy admins. Not going to name the game I'm talking about here, but some people may be able to guess what it is.

In terms of the idea itself, it's not a horrible idea, however there can be some very bad things that come out of this. I'd recommend trying it out, but if things start to turn towards the bad side it'd be best to drop the idea entirely. I'd hate for FTB to become another duplicate of a certain game. Y'know, the one I was referencing a couple lines ago. It's name starts with an R.

 

[_King_In_Yellow_]

You want idea's that you can use how bout 'Beast Shock: Infinitium' (noteably a take on the bioshock series) a 5 player map based squarely under water where you have to split up into different section to complete components required by 'the beast' to create vital systems for example to stop rooms flooding [either for drowning damage or slowing retreat], or hazards like lava being present in vital corridors of travel as well as providing access to a progressively accessible mag-ladder (using thaumcraft arcane levitators) with the goal of not just leaving but ascending the massive surface ziggurat that is built by 'the beast' (from programmed turtles powered by the players own efforts in sating 'the beast') as a final last ditch race of parkour finished by a there can be only one snow layer spleef arena at the top.

Rules:
-no flying by any other means than what is specifically provided
-no breaching the biosphere
-no compromise of triggered systems
-no harming of fellow players

If you use this idea (intellectual property of mine) I would like simple compensation of my logo featured prominently (20% of the screen size) in at least 3 locations in the map, allowance to use the map as part of my server after the 'Pax' it is being designed for and to be acknowledged in any credits for the work (oh and I wouldn't mind a signed autograph, but that's probably asking a bit much ).
I can be contacted at [email protected] for the specifics.[DOUBLEPOST=1366156121][/DOUBLEPOST]

Yeah, let's not turn this into another game where there are ignorant sponsors and greedy admins. Not going to name the game I'm talking about here, but some people may be able to guess what it is.

In terms of the idea itself, it's not a horrible idea, however there can be some very bad things that come out of this. I'd recommend trying it out, but if things start to turn towards the bad side it'd be best to drop the idea entirely. I'd hate for FTB to become another duplicate of a certain game. Y'know, the one I was referencing a couple lines ago. It's name starts with an R.

Actually I was thinking ace of spades when you said all that... was a free game that was good, went to the dark side of steam to charge users apparently had a bit of a graphical upgrade and a speed of action increase that had it lose all it's original charm and become just a poor call of duty type clone.

 

[DeGei]

Does this mean FTB is going to form a eSports subdivision for announcers and streaming? Or would that be handled by the Denial side of the sponsorship?
Either way, creating a high energy competition based pack designed for speedier building in pvp maps would be cool to see and fun to watch.

Best of luck to you guys!