Post by Fantomas on Sept 27, 2008 11:20:37 GMT
It is pretty transparent that CWT as a tournament is losing its steam. Just look in the past, 2-3 years ago there were a lot of players interested in the tournament, there were so many players that the hosts had to create qualification tournament for newcomers and still there were people in the waiting list. Now we hardly find wormers to play, we are even forced to seek for totally unknown wormers and enrol them at our own risk.
Many of us are aware that success of a tournament is not determined by just the number of players. The activity is more important. And even now, when the host tries to enrol just the most active and introduce strict rules about timekeeping, it's not a guarantee that the tournament will be successful. Any player who fails to play his games in time, any game which lacks one player thus giving another a way to go, makes a big hole in the integrity of the tournament. Sometimes we can give additional time for players to make the games actually played, but we all have experience of what this indulgence may lead to. Anyway, often a trade-off should be made, to kick out a player thus destroying a game experience for his opponent or provide more time for lazy players thus prolonging the overall time of the tournament.
Okay, enough introduction What can we do to minimize these side effects and stimulate more motivation for players to play their games in time and get more newcomers who will be interested to play in CWT and most importantly, make it to the end?
All of the players we got are actually enthusiasts. We play because we like to play and have fun. But is it really enough? Many players don't take the tournament seriously enough. We need to make something to change this situation.
So the first idea coming to mind is to introduce a prize for the winners (first 3 places at least and maybe some consolation prizes for quarter- and semi-finalists). In some of the early CWTs we had a T-shirt as a prize for champions. Now we have nothing. Being embedded in the history of worms as a champion of CWT is nice, but not enough to be motivated enough for many players.
So if we introduce a prize, what will it be?
1. Money prize for winners. Best motivator in my point of view. The bigger the money prize, the more motivated the players will be. Like in any other sport, if it's for fun, it's played for fun, i.e. not serious enough. You are gonna ask, where the money will come from? There may be several ways to build the prize pool:
a. We can make all participants to pay a small entry fee.
b. We can ask members to donate as much as they wish. I suspect donators will be the biggest contributors to the prize pool. I can be one of them too.
All collected money will be distributed among the winners. For example, in such proportions: 45% to the 1st place, 25% to 2nd, 20% to 3rd. And we can use the last 10% to buy some consolation prizes for other quarter and semi-finalists, like a T-shirt or something. It might be a good idea to reward the host for his work too
We shall elect a responsible person who will collect all the prize money. It must be the person we all know and trust.
2. Any other non-money tangible prizes, like a T-shirt or anything else. Not much of a motivator, but still nice.
The possibility to receive a prize will also attract more people to the CWT. The more people wanting to play -> the more competition will be -> competition will "screen" bad and inactive players thus allowing only the most skilled and active to participate in the main tournament.
Your comments welcome
Many of us are aware that success of a tournament is not determined by just the number of players. The activity is more important. And even now, when the host tries to enrol just the most active and introduce strict rules about timekeeping, it's not a guarantee that the tournament will be successful. Any player who fails to play his games in time, any game which lacks one player thus giving another a way to go, makes a big hole in the integrity of the tournament. Sometimes we can give additional time for players to make the games actually played, but we all have experience of what this indulgence may lead to. Anyway, often a trade-off should be made, to kick out a player thus destroying a game experience for his opponent or provide more time for lazy players thus prolonging the overall time of the tournament.
Okay, enough introduction What can we do to minimize these side effects and stimulate more motivation for players to play their games in time and get more newcomers who will be interested to play in CWT and most importantly, make it to the end?
All of the players we got are actually enthusiasts. We play because we like to play and have fun. But is it really enough? Many players don't take the tournament seriously enough. We need to make something to change this situation.
So the first idea coming to mind is to introduce a prize for the winners (first 3 places at least and maybe some consolation prizes for quarter- and semi-finalists). In some of the early CWTs we had a T-shirt as a prize for champions. Now we have nothing. Being embedded in the history of worms as a champion of CWT is nice, but not enough to be motivated enough for many players.
So if we introduce a prize, what will it be?
1. Money prize for winners. Best motivator in my point of view. The bigger the money prize, the more motivated the players will be. Like in any other sport, if it's for fun, it's played for fun, i.e. not serious enough. You are gonna ask, where the money will come from? There may be several ways to build the prize pool:
a. We can make all participants to pay a small entry fee.
b. We can ask members to donate as much as they wish. I suspect donators will be the biggest contributors to the prize pool. I can be one of them too.
All collected money will be distributed among the winners. For example, in such proportions: 45% to the 1st place, 25% to 2nd, 20% to 3rd. And we can use the last 10% to buy some consolation prizes for other quarter and semi-finalists, like a T-shirt or something. It might be a good idea to reward the host for his work too
We shall elect a responsible person who will collect all the prize money. It must be the person we all know and trust.
2. Any other non-money tangible prizes, like a T-shirt or anything else. Not much of a motivator, but still nice.
The possibility to receive a prize will also attract more people to the CWT. The more people wanting to play -> the more competition will be -> competition will "screen" bad and inactive players thus allowing only the most skilled and active to participate in the main tournament.
Your comments welcome