Hello, users π!
Today I wanted to share an experience that I don't usually explain: the moment I created a videogames tournament that lasted 7 months, why it failed and finally, what I learned from it.
So, a videogames tournament
I've been a huge fan of videogames since my dad bought a PlayStation 2. My first game was The Lord of the Rings, after that I got my first Nintendo and fell in love with Final Fantasy (Tactics A2 and Revenant Wings), and then I found myself playing competitive League of Legends, Overwatch and Hearthstone.
Videogames meant so much to me my whole life. It wasn't just having fun, but connecting with people and making friends online.
In december, 2017, I had the idea of creating a videogames tournament, and I created some kind of planning.
How I started the big project
The first thing I did was searching for interested participants.
My first target were on League of Legends fans, because it was a very large community. I searched in forums, Twitter, Facebook and everywhere, and I found some teams interested in the tournament.
I personally interviewed those teams one by one, willing to know them, and I found, sadly, lots of individuals making fun of me for being a girl. I had to reject most teams for the same reason, and when they were rejected, they insulted me in private and in the game.
However, once I had some good teams interested, I went for phase 2: hiring people.
In that moment I was doing everything by myself. Contacting the teams, managing the social media, posting advertisements everywhere and doing the interviews, I also worked as a game analyst, but I was already so busy making things in the background and I needed people who made things in the front-side.
I posted more advertisements, searched in forums, in every social media, and even opened a form in case someone was interested in commenting the games or just controlling the teams personally.
Again, I received lots of insults, toxic answers and some individuals directly attacked the tournament in their social media publicly. I was even called "that bitch from the tournament".
Funny part was that I was being threatened most of the time with "I will report you to the tournament's organization". My sweetheart, I was the whole tournament organization.
Here I learned the first lesson: there will always be people trying to make you fail no matter what, even willing to lie to make others hate you, especially if they can't be part of what you're building.
I received every day at least 12-15 of these troll answers to the staff form:
But, however, I finally found good workers to create a staff team. Of course, all of them were paid by me. We were a team of 5-7 people including temporary individuals that were only working when needed.
Okay, so I had participants, I had a staff team and I had social media presence, advertisements and a kind of large audience... Opened a Twitch channel, a YouTube channel, a Discord Server for the teams, organized my staff and... Ready to go.
Why it failed
My staff was awesome.
I've never worked with people that loved that much what they were doing. None of them failed to attend the meetings, the informative sessions or the job the day we had some teams playing.
Our participants, in the other hand... Started cheating. Even though we prepared lots of anti-cheating measures, we noticed some cheating and we had to expel some teams.
Moreover, most of the players started leaving their teams because of internal issues, and getting new players once being admitted inside the tournament was forbidden.
At the end, there were so few teams, and I finally decided that the best option would be to finish the tournament and close it.
I paid my staff, closed the social media, the webpage and put a " . " for the tournament, not really knowing if I ever would be willing to manage it ever again.
What I learned
This was one of the best experiences in my whole life, yet it failed. And I don't feel bad or sorry about it, it was something I built with all my motivation and effort, and it lasted long enough to teach me lots of things.
Even though it was too much work and I really had bad experiencies because of being a girl, overall I'm so proud for everything I achieved back then.
I learned how to interview people, how to manage hard situations when you're being insulted publicly, how it is to be in charge for a whole organization, creating something big from scratch and all alone.
Also, I started learning how to manage internal problems between staff members and attending our participant's doubts and problems. It made me understand that everything can't be perfect and that there'll always be issues to attend to, and most important: be prepared to improvise.
I also learned that there are bad people willing for me to fail, and they will be there always. You can't scape from those that will try destroy you if they can't join you.
I felt so hated but also I felt incredibly happy of what I was doing. After 2 years I still think that I'd love to do something similar in the future, and I have no doubt I'd know where and how to start again.
In conclusion
I finally explained this experience, can't believe it!
Do you have a similar experience? Also found people in your way willing to destroy what you're building?
I'm pretty sure we all had to face these kind of situations at least once in our lifetime.
Thank you for reading this far, I'll see you in the comments!
Top comments (31)
Thanks for sharing your experience. It is a great achievement and you are right to be proud of it!
I have never played LOL but I have played DOTA2. In DOTA2 I think Steam has put anti cheating measures. The creator of LOL (Riot?) doesn't put anti cheating measures?
Do you think you would get less toxicity had it been an Overwatch tournament? Well I don't think Blizzard allows outside tournaments but if it does.
Hello Endy, thank you for your answer!
I think there are toxicity everywhere. Honestly there isn't a single game I played where everyone were nice and respectful, just because not all humans are like that, so you must expect find some... Individuals.
Yeah, it's definitely not so easy, or almost unreal, to provide such online games' tournaments made by Blizzard. And by the way, talking of esports and everything related to this sphere of business, do you know how important that is, to have a regular psychologist in the esport team? You can read this Esport related article, which I found few days ago, to understand all the pros about it. It's pretty informative site I gotta say, and it's all about esports disciplines.
whoah so impressive! You actually did that, I'm so in awe.
seriously.
The game environment is a terrible one, especially as women. There has been many thoughts on the subject, since the gamergate in 2014. I have seen a really good documentary on the subject (in French) a few weeks ago. I love games too, but I shy away from the competitive stage, and even some games and content creators on YouTube, because of the sexism.
That you were able to build such a huge project, based on your passion, while being subjected to the haters, it's impressive.
Thank you so much for your words, Axelle!
Indeed, as you say, it's not a good/safe space for women. I've been too many years fighting against the same monsters and I got tired. However that didn't stopped me and I kept on, it was extremely fun to see how some individuals treated my male staff as if they were the bosses and they answered quite a lot with "She's the one you must talk about this, not me".
This is a door we're barely passing, but we're in, more or less.
Hopefully we can keep on making noise and stop this nonsense against female gamers.
it was extremely fun to see how some individuals treated my male staff as if they were the bosses and they answered quite a lot with "She's the one you must talk about this, not me".
And that is what is the most impressive! I would have not been able to take it so calmly.
Like many of us women who code, my strategy is more being "one of the boys" and reacting strongly against any kind of girly stereotypes. But sometimes, it strucks and hurts (even when I was described at least twice at being "not really a girl"). And the comments on the web are the worst! I don't think that I would have been able to take it without, first internally rage, then externally react, be overwhelmed by the flow of haters and finally leave in depression. It would have tainted the whole experience.
You have been able to support and maintain the project for that long fighting, in the best way there is, still maintaining positivity and energy after that.
I tip my hat to you!
The gaming community is one of the most toxic communities out there.
Looking at the recent back-end migration EPIC/PsyNet did to improve Rocket League performance and networking (MySQL server migration in Google Cloud Platform), people started to condemn EPIC/PsyNet for improving gameplay experience, at cost of the game not being online for a few hours.
On another perspective, I've seen players getting harassed in gameplay chat, merely because their profile picture displayed a female, even though the player might have been a male.
I don't think there has been a better setting in online games than 'Disable chat'! :)
Oh, totally agreed, Thomas.
I remember the "mute chat" as my best ally in the gaming battlefield. Another big one is when they know there's a female player in the team and they blame her for everything that is going wrong, even if she actually is playing better than them.
I've also seen lots of stupid behaviours of gamers when the gaming company only tried to improve performance and etc., thanks god we're not all the same.
I am a white guy and even I have to turn off public chat because it is horribly toxic in most games. I can only hope that most gamers realize their mistakes eventually.
I actually once tried to talk common sense into a certain toxic guy who completely humiliated me during an online game for no reason, even when I remained nice and human.
As expected, all I got was more trash-talking, which was all I needed to permanently turn off public chat.
Never feel bad for being a girl. Some people are just horrible, and if they can't bully you for one thing, they'll find something else.
Sorry you've gone through that, and I hope you surround yourself with more positive people.
My friend bought a bunch of pinball machines and started running a league, but people became really competitive and toxic so he just stopped doing it. I think there is some way to create the culture you want but don't ask me how lol.
I think your organization/staff may be as good and positive as you can do it, but if people doesn't respect that... Well, nothing much to do. I think both your friend and I learned that lesson...
Good for sharing! Great lesson learned.
It reminds me when I organized a Hackathon. I didn't receive hate but it was a total fail... well not total but just fail. Anyways this year we are coming back πͺ
Oh well!
I'm wishing you all the best for this time, I'm pretty sure you'll rock π
Great job making it through the experience!
I'm an old gamer -- first game was probably Pong or Combat on Atari 2600. I still game regularly, played through Jedi: Fallen Order recently, currently playing Borderlands 2.
An observation on toxicity and some other comments on this post. The conclusion that I eventually came to was that zero-sum games inherently breed some level of toxicity. Not just in others, but in me too. (Not a cheater, but I admit I've destroyed a controller or two in my day.) Even games that are indirectly competitive like WoW... it can get toxic quickly over raid loot. And the general malcontent with losing (somebody always loses when somebody else wins) permeates into the surrounding community.
I ultimately decided that, for me, playing zero-sum games with strangers is a recipe for frustration and anger, and I don't do it anymore. I either play with friends (baseline for acceptable behavior, long-term accountability for actions) or else I play co-op or single player titles.
I admire your tenacity!
I've never been on the organizing side, but I've felt the burn trying to play in competitive gaming. Oddly, 1v1 games seem to have a lot less strife in my experience. You'd think that people who are forced to play on teams would be better at teamwork!
Let me start to say how interesting I've found your post. Honestly, I had no expectations about the tag watercooler - ok, I got it now -, as well I wasn't expecting a so "intense" description about a first person perspective.
Straight to the point, I focused a lot on being "prepared to improvise". I think you had an amazing enrichment experience, which you went after something that motivates you, made you improve your competences in a transversal way - adaptability is maybe the major competence - and became a learning input to your life. That is for sure, in my opinion, the main outcomes you may consider to promote some change on this world (and this industry within it). Only with tenacity we can "bring something to the table".
The truth is the world is spread with hate... Due to fear, ignorance, or whatever you want to name it. It's not only on worldwide communities like gaming, humans are naturally scared of what they cannot trully understand. I wouldn't focus on the fact you are woman, you are always an "easy target" when you are out of the majority (just an illusion of being better!). But I can garante you, what you've done is part of the effort to make this world a much better place.
Phylosofies aside, I want to thank you for your share and hope to read new experiences like that in the future.
Thank you for your honest words, Bernardo.
I feel you're so right. It's all about a bunch of reasons, even though it's totally true they insulted and humiliated me, calling me a "bitch" and so because they felt superior to a woman in every way.
I can't fight that (alone, at least), but I fought the toxicity between teams and tried to create a fair play/rules system so everyone could find a solution to their problems if needed.
I think bigger organizations shoud start thinking about that kind of policies instead of just money, I think they are afraid of loosing participants and having a bad presence in social media. Like if that's the important thing and not the quality of your tournament...
Again thank you for your words, I really hope more people try to do this kind of iniatives in the future with more resources than I did and that it lasts longer!
Be proud of your achievement, it had to be hard. You even learned that start with lol community was a mistake xD but you even saw that even with all the toxic people making that noise, there are other face on the internet, those who work hard and love what they do, making instead of destroying.
That's totally true, Dieg.
So many people try to destroy things, but those willing to build things are a higher %, that's a really good thing. π
Be proud of your achievement!!!
Some DOPE stuff.
So, if you were to do it all over, what would you change in your approach?
The target game community/participants π ... And even more strict rules, no exceptions.
If they laugh of you once, they'll laugh forever, sadly.
"I was the whole tournament organization"
That sounded like Walter White saying "I am the danger" π
More power to you!
My first game for PS2 was also The Lord of the Rings!
Great work DesirΓ©! Don't stop - go on. Great idea to build a Good gaming community? Have fun!
greetings from Cologne - Axel ak g0mez ;)