Ever since the Elysium Community Nationals ended, preparations have been underway for this year's DICE Nationals.
In order for us to present the best competition possible, we're asking for your feedback on the proposed plan.
The tournament will most likely span over three days with group stages beginning Friday and Saturday, followed by finals on Sunday. The reason why we've elected to stretch it over three days instead of cramming it into two is so we can provide better coverage, and let the viewers at home watch more of their favourite teams play instead of having to pick from one of four (or more) live matches running.
ESL's tournament schedule will be adopted, meaning the event will start with two groups. Finishing first in the group will earn you a pass straight into the finals. Second and third place finishers of the group will have to battle in an additional relegation stage before reaching the finals. More info here: http://www.esl-world.net/masters/season4/hannover/news/115052/
Venue wise, groupstage matches will be played at Midcity in Melbourne while the finals on Sunday will be filmed live again from the new BigLeague Studios. I had the pleasure of visiting BigLeague's new studio last weekend and I can tell you it's going to be fantastic for the players. There will be two dedicated match rooms housing one team each, and a seperate commentating booth so there is no ghosting. You can check out the new BigLeague studio walkthrough below.
The other big change is that there will be no autoberths. Instead, the money from qualifiers will go straight into the prize pool which will be flattened out, meaning cash prizes all the way down to 5th/6th place.
There will be some test competitions run in the studio beforehand to make sure everything runs smoothly. If your team is interested, please contact me :)
The date for DICE National Cup 2010 will be after WCG - most likely around November.
looks fairly keen, hard to tell how much space their actually is, but assuming those rooms are wide enough for 5 decently spaced people it should be ok
That looks really nice, keep up the great work geo, dice, woodz and anyone else involved. And about the test competitions, what times and dates are you looking at?
$50,000 is a bit steep. Arbalet USA is like $30,000 US, and Gamegune is like $25,000. With most of the teams traveling from EU, $30,000 should be enough to attract some attention.
It's not like we are a 3rd world country, if you pitched it right (to either Steelseries or Intel) you could probably get all the teams to attend and double up as a promo tour.
SK have been to Australia before. And Fnatic is an Australian Organisation.
Looks really interesting, obviously like gomez said its kinda hard to tell about the actual amount of space there, like if those studios would be able to (comfortably) seat 5 players each with enough desk-space etc.
Also by the looks of that there would be no room for IRL spectators during the semis/finals? I'm not sure how some people would feel about that (unless i missed something and theres like a big screen set up or something).
Also the PC's/monitors would need to be top-notch at the studio with no problems etc, but sounds like that will be covered by test-comps!
#16 im pretty sure the rooms we saw are just the 'behind the scenes' of the actual church. The main part of the church itself is massive.
Those rooms shown look like they could be a suitable size for a team, similar to the size of the clan rooms at midcity/elysium, but its a bit hard to tell from the videos.
And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy'
should set a swear jar, everytime u swear or say some internet related word "rof lol" etc you pay $1. By the end of group stage we would have enough to run our own International Event
yeh n1ck MSi are putting you up at Casa De Zpr, fully equipped with 46inch lcd tv, 5 computers and food! (p.s you must bring your own 46inch lcd tv, 5 computers and food)
this may be a bit steep... but if every team did like at ECN and chipped in an extra $20 a head ($100 per team) then a half decent prize pool could be created.
Also another thought is maybe have 16 invite spots and 16 open spots (sort of like arbalet cup) so more local melb teams who couldnt qual can atleast can compete in the comp and maybe charge them $30 a head... also another boost for the prize pool and also a boost for the melb cs scene :o If the comp is running over 3 days, there should be more than enough time to get 32 teams scrimming over 2 days... just a thought!
*edit*
Seeing as the new church studio is up and running, possibility in attracting small time investors as sponsorship means to help boost prizes? (as razer have done) Gives the company some strong advertising and u wouldn't have to ask for much (maybe $500-$1000?)
I like it ferg, particularly the "open" spots. Although this may lead to lower numbers at qualifying competitions as all you have to play for is an autoberth, meaning melbournites have nothing to play for really.
well if the quals run at a cheaper entry price for example $15 a head... then there shouldnt be an issue.. besides quals usually in melb only fill up to 10/12 teams, and i assume there will be 2 quals for melb
sure but the net cafes share comes before anything ive proposed, my proposals are for the oppurtunity to have a larger prize pool then our average $500-$1000 cash prizes... don't forget the real influence to competitive CS, money! more money, more interest = cs scene in aus re-established
I think beedee has a good idea about boosting the prize pool which he spoke to me briefly about, it just depends if players agree to it. IMO not alot of interstate teams will become but I hope they keen up and give it a shot.
Most people see it as a incentive, I personally don't care about prizes at all I just want to play. But theirs alot of people that see no overseas trip and little money to win and instantly think its a waste of time. It's mainly a problem for interstate players :/
Im pretty sure the majority of players, myself included, would much prefer to pay money themselves to attend a really solid event at a great venue thats well planned and run, but with no prizes, than get a free autoberth to a horrible event at a crappy venue, but with awesome prizes.
Prizes are a bonus - the icing on the cake, and nothing more. The real incentive should (and i think for most players, is) a well run event at a good venue.
(I could be completely wrong about how most people feel)
I see where ur coming from Dave but I think you've only adjusted to the fact that aus never gets prizes besides wcg quals.. But if we look at the big picture; Europe 1.6 scene is still very much alive due to the fact that they have little to no comps that have no prizes whatsoever.. It's not only an incentive for players but also an incentive for sponsors of events because including prize money automatically boosts the interest for people directly or indirectly involved with the competition.
If we want our community back on it's feet we need to start making improvments rather than just sitting on what we think 'works'.. Remember the days when we all wanted to be pro? What attracted you most were the prizes... Then learning about the competitiveness involved. I think if the community made a joint effort in making this the best nats ever held then it can be very doable.. It's just a matter of public opinion and who's ready to dish out some $$ for the love of the game..
"Prizes are a bonus - the icing on the cake, and nothing more. The real incentive should (and i think for most players, is) a well run event at a good venue."
Dice in my opinion have already proven they can run a great event without much of a prize pool (ECN), time for the next step!
asif u first got attracted by the prizes LOL. But yeh im all for growing the scene back, and all for bigger prizes etc if possible, but the primary focus needs to lie on making the event as good as it can be thats all im saying really.
And ECN was ran by the qld lan crew (unpro/gomez) dice just did the coverage same as like wcg etc
Sorry my bad, but I can't imagine a dice nats would run any differently.. Jim and gomez are great admins I hope they're involved with dice for the upcoming nats (not that ur no good geo haha) u get my drift anyway!! It's also good for current organisations who are using their sponsors budgets to send their team to nats.. It gives those sponsors more reason to be involved with us
id run a nationals every week if some1 could arrange prizes... or else it doesnt seem worth it.
It's good to have a "Community (play for little or nothing Nationals) every year or so, gives the teams something to prac for, but if we want to make the next step we need more teams overseas.
It'd be nice if somehow we could have a prize pool big enough to attract teams here and really use this as a marketing opportunity for sponsors as well as increasing exposure to the au 1.6 community. How many of these comps would it take to do this though.
You'd probably have to have a good spin to both sponsors (why they should put the money in) and overseas teams (why they should travel here assuming the prize pool wont be huge).
I'd love to see our teams being exposed to the overseas scene more often.
i don't think its how to get the money thats an issue, it's more how to distribute the money and use it to maximize the probability of replicating another comp.
I mean we're basically sitting at this stage right now: Teams paying money to qualify for nats are basically funding the nats to take place, some autoberths are fully funded some aren't (due to Aus being so immense, AND lack of teams in certain states). And this has been ongoing for the past few years now.. If we can manipulate the trend by providing more incentive firstly towards the quals so that more teams will show up. Maybe running a couple of online comps leading up to the qualifiers (an amateur comp and 'proffesional' comp) to get teams boosted or interested.
Obviously money won't just fall out of the sky and fulfill our dreams, but with the right approach, planning and interest from the community we can achieve alot. Having open discussions I think is a great first step to accomplishing this
What about the old thing we used in Melbourne with the 'kitty money', having 1 comp a month in every state all profits go to a kitty and it all goes to something the community needs (doesn't have to be a national prize pool). I miss those ZAM 1 days comps that use to run so much in Melbourne. Miss having people like ham who would constantly organise these comps (not saying people like dave/beedee didn't help). When he was around there were so many comps around and it kept alot of people active.
It was really usually just me that would organise those rando 1 dayers, got more and more cbf'd with doing it constantly because of how bad shape zam became. It was also alot easier and cheaper to organise comps at zam than mc is atm because of the relatively low business zam got compared to mc and because of how much more involved russ was with the community. You'd just rock up at 10am and russ would have all the servers etc set up ready to go
hey ted, while we're talking about sponsors, tegs would be a worthy one in my humble of opinions. i'm sure he could spare just a fraction of the $40k a quarter he's so rightly receiving
sponsors need interest in the national final itself.. so if a team like archaic[px] were involved and archaic maybe hassled MSi enough to show some interest in evolving the competition in Australia so their team could potentially attend more international competitions.
Obviously theres also smaller companies that could be interested in advertising through the new 'church' studio, im not really familiar with the melbourne 'PC shop' industry but i'm sure there is a chain there which could be interested.. as i said they wouldnt have to contribute much ($500-$1000) to make a big difference for the nationals as a whole.
From memory, its $15 per pc with branding, $10 without (ie calling it Midcity Local Comp or whatever). Generally needing 40 pc's for normal comps. Its not expensive by any means, its just that zam was alot easier from an admins/organisers pov, Midcity obviously alot better to actually play at.
Please read this post as I put a lot of effort into making sure everything is correct.
After reading all of ferg's posts (and he is the one we should all be paying attention to imho) I have put together something which would be the best thing to happen to Australian CS if it gets pulled together correctly.
The first thing you need to consider is that we need a primary sponsor. I am thinking Razer (or whoever is richest) and I will use them as an example for this:
What this plan involves is actually holding a national tournament first, and then an international CS tournament. The first would be called the 'Razer CS 1.6 national tournament' and the second national will be called the 'Razer CS 1.6 Australasian International cup'
==RAZER CS 1.6 NATIONALS PROPOSAL==
* 12-team national final * Invite 6 teams to the finals (interstate) and make them pay $250 for registration. We will collect $1500 instantly. * Hold qualifiers in Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland. Assuming 10 teams rock-up, we will collect $1250 per state at $25 rego, deduct $500 for cafe rental, and we will have ($750x3) = $2,250 added to the pool. * This brings our total collections to $3,750.
* Next, we hold a national tournament at a proposed cafe in Melbourne. No auto-berths are given out to teams. I propose we hold it over Saturday and Sunday only.
* We will use some funds to fork out the prizes. 1st Prize. Razer forks out $750 and we use $750 from the prize pool to make [$1500 + Razer Headsets]. FIRST also receives an INVITE to the INTERNATIONAL-CUP. 2nd prize. Razer Headsets + INVITE to the INTERNATIONAL-CUP 3rd prize. Razer Keyboard + INVITE to the INTERNATIONAL-CUP 4th prize. Razer Deathadder
After this tournament is held I'm hopeful of $2,500 to be collected in the Kitty-Stash.
The next tournament will be the Razer CS 1.6 Australasian International Cup.
==RAZER CS 1.6 AUSTRALASIAN INTERNATIONAL CUP==
We will make it a 12-team competition. * 3 AUS-CS teams already have an invite * Invite NZ CS-team (Parallax) * Invite Indonesian CS-team * Invite Malaysian CS-team * Invite China CS-team * Invite Country X (TBA) * Invite Country Y (TBA)
This leaves 3-spots available.
In order to fill these three spots, we will hold qualifiers in Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland. Assuming the same as before, we'll collect $2,250 (assuming 10 teams attending).
-- With the Nationals collection of $2,500 and the collection of $2,250... we will need Razer to fork out $1,250 to bring the Total Prize Pool to $6,000.
very interesting sam, that's the kind of break down I was looking for.. I think that's a campaign that could easily be achieved.. using the equation for the first nats, we could develop that for this dice nats.. maybe partnering with razer seeing they have already showed some interest in the 1.6 competitive scene could be the next step. Dice.Razer? ^^
There are alot of teams in asia who are heavily sponsored and could budget a trip down if there was an interesting prize purse at hand.. It also means razer(or any other sponsor/partner) get the first exposure of an 'international' comp in Aus which would definitly be followed globally, making it a great marketing move :o
However the international comp wouldn't be able to be played in a net cafe, but there is the melbourne computer expo that runs once a year which could be an option
Thats an awesome post sommi, curiously would it be better two hold two nationals or two legs so we can have a larger prize pool or is following that process good enough since there could always be more sponsors that could provide money.
Also maybe timing it around xmas or something would be good as a lot of people could buy things like this for presents and this presents it as a good marketing campaign to a suitable niche market.
Important thing is to plan it then take steps to put it into action rather than write out some awesome ideas and not much happens after.
now that I think about it I have a feeling some dodgy cunt was given $100g's to run the event and maybe spent $70k only and kept the 30 g's for themselves...
1. Organiser proposes a budget of $xxx,xxx 2. Sponsor hands them the cash 3. Organiser only uses $xx,xxx - and as long as he's kept his word about media attention, etc, he can keep the remaining amount
The hard part is actually getting the sponsors, because it's always about who you know - I've been on both ends of this.
i.e. I contacted Razer many moons ago when ESAU failed to run the Razer #2 comp, but never got a reply.
wouldn't surprise me.. I think if it was at a computer expo tho it wouldn't cost $20,000 a day.. they work by how much room u occupy in the center.. i think small boothes at exhibitions alone cost something around $200-300 a day. so a tourney zone of approx 100m2 would maybe go for $1000? agreements can be made between the organisers of the expo because essentially holding a tourney in one would create more spectators/visitors (the whole point of expo's)
I remember inside the WCG center we had a few different exhibition things going on. there was the ferrari machine, the xbox games going around, etc. etc.
they must have all paid a fee to the WCG organiser in order to promote their stuff and have booth space inside the event. this would have helped ease the cash on them
i played at a lan event in brisbane last year i think it was called gencon. It was during the games convention (think about 100,000 people dressed in cosplay running around with swords and shit. There were warhammer model displays and pretty much everything geek. But the room we had was massive, and it kinda felt like a proper comp
yeah that expo thing in taiwan would work ferg, dont need to hold it at some hektic branded place like luna park etc cos theyll fuck you in the ass with venue hire
Ok lets see if I can get a more logical decision then the brainwashed germs over on esau after I pitched my idea for a nationals. By now im sure everyone is well aware of Impulse’s ‘Off Tap’ night hosted by yours truly in September, and I wish to extend my invitation to this community, as soon as I opened this webpage I could smell the reminisce of djooce coming from my computer which means that there must be plenty of maintainers on here for my Gdar to be going off.
September is a month of warmer weather and whats warmer then being skulled down at hunter bar at 5am. Maintenance will commence at the palace at 5am and skull will not be lost until 6am several days later(depending on how good the djooce is). Expect to see me sliding down hunter st on my forhead once ive got the 9th one down cause its gonna get sweaty. BYO spliffs as this is purely a night for djooce and you will receive a 3ml charge in a cap upon entry and bero will be walking around with complimentary charges through out the festival. Entry fee must be giving to roger davis on the door or you wont be making it to Bligh looking any better then a train wreck so don’t be a muppet or this night of skullery could turn into total mayhem.
So come down to the festivities at the palace of skullery that is hunter bar. Its gonna be NuTzZ.
And about the test competitions, what times and dates are you looking at?
keen to go to first nationals LOL
It's not like we are a 3rd world country, if you pitched it right (to either Steelseries or Intel) you could probably get all the teams to attend and double up as a promo tour.
SK have been to Australia before. And Fnatic is an Australian Organisation.
Also by the looks of that there would be no room for IRL spectators during the semis/finals? I'm not sure how some people would feel about that (unless i missed something and theres like a big screen set up or something).
Also the PC's/monitors would need to be top-notch at the studio with no problems etc, but sounds like that will be covered by test-comps!
Those rooms shown look like they could be a suitable size for a team, similar to the size of the clan rooms at midcity/elysium, but its a bit hard to tell from the videos.
a.) boardroom upstairs houses a tv/projector, but must be kept in perfect condition
b.) there's a bar/pub across the road with a projector, coaches and everything who are happy to show the broadcast
edit: provided were invited
Also another thought is maybe have 16 invite spots and 16 open spots (sort of like arbalet cup) so more local melb teams who couldnt qual can atleast can compete in the comp and maybe charge them $30 a head... also another boost for the prize pool and also a boost for the melb cs scene :o
If the comp is running over 3 days, there should be more than enough time to get 32 teams scrimming over 2 days... just a thought!
*edit*
Seeing as the new church studio is up and running, possibility in attracting small time investors as sponsorship means to help boost prizes? (as razer have done) Gives the company some strong advertising and u wouldn't have to ask for much (maybe $500-$1000?)
Prizes are a bonus - the icing on the cake, and nothing more. The real incentive should (and i think for most players, is) a well run event at a good venue.
(I could be completely wrong about how most people feel)
If we want our community back on it's feet we need to start making improvments rather than just sitting on what we think 'works'.. Remember the days when we all wanted to be pro? What attracted you most were the prizes... Then learning about the competitiveness involved. I think if the community made a joint effort in making this the best nats ever held then it can be very doable.. It's just a matter of public opinion and who's ready to dish out some $$ for the love of the game..
Dice in my opinion have already proven they can run a great event without much of a prize pool (ECN), time for the next step!
ECN was 100% the QLD admins Jim and Chris btw
And ECN was ran by the qld lan crew (unpro/gomez) dice just did the coverage same as like wcg etc
It's good to have a "Community (play for little or nothing Nationals) every year or so, gives the teams something to prac for, but if we want to make the next step we need more teams overseas.
You'd probably have to have a good spin to both sponsors (why they should put the money in) and overseas teams (why they should travel here assuming the prize pool wont be huge).
I'd love to see our teams being exposed to the overseas scene more often.
I mean we're basically sitting at this stage right now: Teams paying money to qualify for nats are basically funding the nats to take place, some autoberths are fully funded some aren't (due to Aus being so immense, AND lack of teams in certain states). And this has been ongoing for the past few years now.. If we can manipulate the trend by providing more incentive firstly towards the quals so that more teams will show up. Maybe running a couple of online comps leading up to the qualifiers (an amateur comp and 'proffesional' comp) to get teams boosted or interested.
Obviously money won't just fall out of the sky and fulfill our dreams, but with the right approach, planning and interest from the community we can achieve alot. Having open discussions I think is a great first step to accomplishing this
Obviously theres also smaller companies that could be interested in advertising through the new 'church' studio, im not really familiar with the melbourne 'PC shop' industry but i'm sure there is a chain there which could be interested.. as i said they wouldnt have to contribute much ($500-$1000) to make a big difference for the nationals as a whole.
similar thing works for elysium (ECN)
After reading all of ferg's posts (and he is the one we should all be paying attention to imho) I have put together something which would be the best thing to happen to Australian CS if it gets pulled together correctly.
The first thing you need to consider is that we need a primary sponsor. I am thinking Razer (or whoever is richest) and I will use them as an example for this:
What this plan involves is actually holding a national tournament first, and then an international CS tournament. The first would be called the 'Razer CS 1.6 national tournament' and the second national will be called the 'Razer CS 1.6 Australasian International cup'
==RAZER CS 1.6 NATIONALS PROPOSAL==
* 12-team national final
* Invite 6 teams to the finals (interstate) and make them pay $250 for registration. We will collect $1500 instantly.
* Hold qualifiers in Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland. Assuming 10 teams rock-up, we will collect $1250 per state at $25 rego, deduct $500 for cafe rental, and we will have ($750x3) = $2,250 added to the pool.
* This brings our total collections to $3,750.
* Next, we hold a national tournament at a proposed cafe in Melbourne. No auto-berths are given out to teams. I propose we hold it over Saturday and Sunday only.
* We will use some funds to fork out the prizes.
1st Prize. Razer forks out $750 and we use $750 from the prize pool to make [$1500 + Razer Headsets]. FIRST also receives an INVITE to the INTERNATIONAL-CUP.
2nd prize. Razer Headsets + INVITE to the INTERNATIONAL-CUP
3rd prize. Razer Keyboard + INVITE to the INTERNATIONAL-CUP
4th prize. Razer Deathadder
After this tournament is held I'm hopeful of $2,500 to be collected in the Kitty-Stash.
The next tournament will be the Razer CS 1.6 Australasian International Cup.
==RAZER CS 1.6 AUSTRALASIAN INTERNATIONAL CUP==
We will make it a 12-team competition.
* 3 AUS-CS teams already have an invite
* Invite NZ CS-team (Parallax)
* Invite Indonesian CS-team
* Invite Malaysian CS-team
* Invite China CS-team
* Invite Country X (TBA)
* Invite Country Y (TBA)
This leaves 3-spots available.
In order to fill these three spots, we will hold qualifiers in Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland. Assuming the same as before, we'll collect $2,250 (assuming 10 teams attending).
-- With the Nationals collection of $2,500 and the collection of $2,250... we will need Razer to fork out $1,250 to bring the Total Prize Pool to $6,000.
1st Prize -- $5,000 AUD
2nd Prize -- $1,000 AUD + Razer Gear
3rd Prize -- Razer Gear
The figures: Razer would have provided $2,000 ($750 for the first cup, $1,250) in cash, and their equipment for prizes. And this is just one sponsor.
When I have time tonight I'll make a proper PDF sheet so its easier to read.
There are alot of teams in asia who are heavily sponsored and could budget a trip down if there was an interesting prize purse at hand.. It also means razer(or any other sponsor/partner) get the first exposure of an 'international' comp in Aus which would definitly be followed globally, making it a great marketing move :o
However the international comp wouldn't be able to be played in a net cafe, but there is the melbourne computer expo that runs once a year which could be an option
Also maybe timing it around xmas or something would be good as a lot of people could buy things like this for presents and this presents it as a good marketing campaign to a suitable niche market.
Important thing is to plan it then take steps to put it into action rather than write out some awesome ideas and not much happens after.
MIGHT AS WELL GET A FUCKEN HALL AND SPEND $10K ON IT AND PUT $30K TO SOMETHING USEFUL
1. Organiser proposes a budget of $xxx,xxx
2. Sponsor hands them the cash
3. Organiser only uses $xx,xxx - and as long as he's kept his word about media attention, etc, he can keep the remaining amount
The hard part is actually getting the sponsors, because it's always about who you know - I've been on both ends of this.
i.e. I contacted Razer many moons ago when ESAU failed to run the Razer #2 comp, but never got a reply.
remember in taiwan miles? sort of like that..
I remember inside the WCG center we had a few different exhibition things going on. there was the ferrari machine, the xbox games going around, etc. etc.
they must have all paid a fee to the WCG organiser in order to promote their stuff and have booth space inside the event. this would have helped ease the cash on them
http://2008.lansmash.com/v/album/2009/gencon2009/IMG_2123.JPG.html
http://2008.lansmash.com/v/album/2009/gencon2009/IMG_2111.jpg.html
you can just see my stripped shirt behind the banner :D :D :D
By now im sure everyone is well aware of Impulse’s ‘Off Tap’ night hosted by yours truly in September, and I wish to extend my invitation to this community, as soon as I opened this webpage I could smell the reminisce of djooce coming from my computer which means that there must be plenty of maintainers on here for my Gdar to be going off.
September is a month of warmer weather and whats warmer then being skulled down at hunter bar at 5am. Maintenance will commence at the palace at 5am and skull will not be lost until 6am several days later(depending on how good the djooce is). Expect to see me sliding down hunter st on my forhead once ive got the 9th one down cause its gonna get sweaty. BYO spliffs as this is purely a night for djooce and you will receive a 3ml charge in a cap upon entry and bero will be walking around with complimentary charges through out the festival. Entry fee must be giving to roger davis on the door or you wont be making it to Bligh looking any better then a train wreck so don’t be a muppet or this night of skullery could turn into total mayhem.
So come down to the festivities at the palace of skullery that is hunter bar. Its gonna be NuTzZ.
- Why go to bed, when you get get offhead
Adam’Spliffin’Sanders