• Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!

    You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!

Kansas City Area Brawl Thread

DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
Cook said:
Lux, what are you doing to attract new folk? I want people to play with in Columbia. :(
Click to expand...
The Master Plan to (re)building the Regional Scene:

1. Recruit - Smashboards was the status quo for our recruitment. In the time that I've been playing (a year and 3 months), we've probably seen 2 new comers from smashboards and have lost just as many if not more while not retaining recruits, so our scene has shrunk in comparison to when I first played. After discussing with a few prospective newcomers, they mentioned how joining a foreign site was a concern and they'd rather just play brawl.
a. Recruit them while they're young - Collin and I did some volunteer work at the Lawrence Public Library where we did a seminar on how to play Brawl at a higher level. From that we drew about 20 kids as prospects. 2 of them (GIMB and Eggman) didn't really need additional recruitment efforts and are now regulars. Since that time, I've been running monthly Brawl tournaments at the library for high schoolers as well as giving lessons on how to play once a week for an hour as part of my library job. Those endeavors originally started as volunteer work though, so would be easy to replicate.​
b. Recruit them while they're in college - I ran a flier campaign around KU's campus literally 4 days before my last biweekly that drew in 5 people. Additionally, I plan to start a Super Smash Bros. Student organization with the help of Jace from KC Melee at some point in the next coming weeks so we can use the Student Union facilities for free in order to get more college level. Returns on this method have been promising with limited investment on our end, and I plan to maximize efforts in this area while I go forth with this endeavor.​
c. Recruit them from Google- I literally googled and facebooked every combonation of KU / Braw / Super Smash Bros / Lawrence / Kansas City / KC / Topeka that I could. I sent out messages to every person that I could find that popped up. This brought in a couple more that were interested. I actually found a hub of people connected together in Topeka, and will be making a recruitment visit their next weekend.​

2. Retention - This directly correlates with step 1 because an influx of new people means nothing if we can't keep them coming back.
a. Make a Facebook Page- As mentioned with the hesitance to join SWF, I decided to make a Facebook Page ( www.facebook.com/kcbrawl )in order to communicate and connect our local area. For the purposes of KC, it should be noted I intend to expand us to connect Topeka, Lawrence, and KC. Fortunately for where I reside, Lawrence is the center point. If I get enough interest between those 3 cities (ideally I want to hit 50 followers), I'll consider expanding the sphere of influence of that page to include Manhattan and other areas past KC.​
b. Host Cheap Biweeklies- I went on Craiglist and purchased a bunch of TVs for like $15 each so that people would no longer need to bring TV's for tournies at my Apt. I instituted an Amateur Bracket system with lower payouts and buyins that would allow new players to play against other new players so that the new guy wasn't immediately 0-2'd by the best players and would never want to come back.​
[collapse="Amateur Bracket Explanation"] Amateur Bracket: Newer players are allowed to participate in the amateur bracket. This bracket is set up to be a sort of play-in seeding for the pro bracket. If you win the amateur bracket, the prize is divided from a portion of the entrance fees based on entrants (1$ on $2 days, and 2$ on $5 days) as well as entry into the pro bracket. The portion not payed out to the winners of the amateur bracket gets put into the pot for pro bracket. If you place first once, second twice, third four times in the amateur bracket, you will automatically be ineligible to participate in the amateur bracket at future tournaments. However, if you come in last twice in a row in the pro bracket at previous tournaments, you will again be allowed to enter the amateur bracket.[/collapse]
c. Not Overwhelm the new people and help them improve - This became a collaborative effort on the part of the top players in our local scene to not destroy the new people and embarrass them. This meant heavy sandbagging in friendlies on the part of Fino and MJG, and it means me not playing ICs at tournament locally for a little while. At the same time, we use our indepth knowledge of aspects of the game to spoon feed the new people what we learned through losing repeatedly. They won't have to repeatedly lose in order to get better until we feel they are ready to start learning on their own.​

3. Revolution - This is where you come in
a. Build Regionally - I've already asked Brandon in Iowa to do the same system although I haven't heard back if his returns are quite as good as mine since I have advantages on him in terms of vision and facilities. But ideally I'd like for scenes in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri (especially Columbia since it's closer than St Louis) to pop up with similar efforts. Once we've undergone revamps locally, we can start getting player exchanges on the regional level.​
b. Return focus to SmashBoards - In order to build regionally/nationally, we can then refocus our efforts on becoming a strong SWF community. This step is probably 3-4 months down the line in my opinion on KCs end, but every scene will develop at different rates.​
c. Attract Nationally - If we get to the point where our regional tournament start pulling in 50-100 people, (which ideally would be 1/4th of the people from each scene assuming that 50 count for KC, IA, MO, NE respectively that I mentioned was my goal), we can start pulling national interest. Good players will want to come to us instead of us individually having to go to them.​
 
Cook

Cook

Smash Master
Joined
Mar 27, 2008
Messages
3,364
Location
Hannibal, MO
Damn Lux, you've got this **** hella planned out. Now I just gotta figure out HOW exactly I can go about finding recruits... maybe I'll do fliers, as well. Thing is Idk where I'd be able to hold any kind of little tournament. This is so much work!
 
DeathxTouch

DeathxTouch

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Oct 13, 2008
Messages
87
Location
Kansas
Hey I'm a student at KU, I was curious what smash stuff is going on in Lawrence. Stuff includes smash fests and tournaments (I heard Lux hosts bi-weeklies? not sure if that still holds true). If you could fill me in, that'd be great, thanks!
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
DeathxTouch said:
Hey I'm a student at KU, I was curious what smash stuff is going on in Lawrence. Stuff includes smash fests and tournaments (I heard Lux hosts bi-weeklies? not sure if that still holds true). If you could fill me in, that'd be great, thanks!
Click to expand...
www.facebook.com/kcbrawl

We also meet Mondays at Perfect Duck's in like Overland Park

My Tourney series is here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=303273


I have been trying to recruit at KU, but I'm trying to recruit using facebook so definitely look at that page :)
 
DeathxTouch

DeathxTouch

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Oct 13, 2008
Messages
87
Location
Kansas
Dang immediate responses at 3 AM for the win haha, only on smashboards. Thanks for the information. Definitely Stealthy! But being a poor college student, I am gonna stick around Lawrence for a while. Also if you have fliers you want to put on campus, feel free to run them by me Lux since I live on campus.
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
DeathxTouch said:
Dang immediate responses at 3 AM for the win haha, only on smashboards. Thanks for the information. Definitely Stealthy! But being a poor college student, I am gonna stick around Lawrence for a while. Also if you have fliers you want to put on campus, feel free to run them by me Lux since I live on campus.
Click to expand...
Dude, you live on campus.

You are like my new best friend :) :) :) :) :)


My master plan is going to get a kick start in the *** woooo
 
Rockstar

Rockstar

Smash Ace
Joined
Dec 6, 2010
Messages
538
Location
In The Psi-Storm
This is crazy. I see the smash scene building and expanding in our area like never before. Great job Lux. Ill come to one of the smashfests soon, and tourneys. Just gotta get some stuff straightened out
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
We had a 6 person smash fest with all non-SWFers :)

The plan is working
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
I'm looking at the page right now. And I see it along with someone that said they wanted to go but didn't have a ride and he's an hour a way having a convo with me
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
Yeah, I thought I mentioned awhile ago that the group thing doesn't really work for what we want it to do, so I was focusing more on the facebook page
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
Yeah, I encourage you to expand and try to make a leavenworth branch of this.

Right now it seems like we have a:

Lawrence Branch: Building off of KU through me
Lenexa Branch: Blake's smashfest
Topeka Branch: They have their own facebook thing and do their own monthly tournament. They already have like a dozen regulars apparently.

I could totally see us getting huge turnouts if we build on these seperate branches
 
quote

quote

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 6, 2009
Messages
1,071
Location
Leavenworth/Kansas City, Kansas
DeLux said:
Yeah, I encourage you to expand and try to make a leavenworth branch of this.

Right now it seems like we have a:

Lawrence Branch: Building off of KU through me
Lenexa Branch: Blake's smashfest
Topeka Branch: They have their own facebook thing and do their own monthly tournament. They already have like a dozen regulars apparently.

I could totally see us getting huge turnouts if we build on these seperate branches
Click to expand...
What kind of places do you think that I should check out for hosting?
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
Your local library might let you use a them as a venue if your event is free and open to the public

I know that's the Lawrence Library's policy for reserving their auditorium for use for free
 
DeLux

DeLux

Player that used to be Lux
Joined
Jun 3, 2010
Messages
9,302
I'm going to a KCMO smashfest at Maplewood college on Thursday for some more non-SWFers that I found

The plan is working
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom