KC’s Log: Little Towns, Big Competitions

Every now and then, I find local news articles about Pokémon card tournaments for both the video game and TCG, and the excitement they bring to small towns.

It’s just funny to me that after more than a decade of worldwide popularity, all of these articles have to explain the game from scratch again, including what “Pokémon” means and its pronunciation. I also find it funny that you hear many of the same explanations of the game like, “It’s easy to get into, but difficult to master.”

But what I found most striking is how big some of these tournaments get – some of them have 80 players. That’s more than I see at the comic shop King’s Games in Brooklyn. I hope this doesn’t sound like a knock, but maybe in the smaller towns people have less to distract them, so it’s easier to get them dedicated to something like this. But there is a misconception, I think, that all of these articles fail to help clear up: most competitions like this are organized by ordinary people. And that’s what brings me to…

KC’s rule #2: If you can’t find competition, create competition.

Many people have emailed us that they can’t find opponents because they live someplace where people don’t play as much, or that they have no tournaments like we get in New York. Well, I say that’s because you haven’t started one yet. It’s really not that hard and you don’t need to run a comic shop to do it.

Back when I used to play the .hack//Enemy TCG, my roommate got certified to hold tournaments simply by sending an email to the company that made it. The only requirements were that we had to have a minimum of about 6 contestants, and we had to upload the results to their website so competitors could be ranked. After we held one or two of these at a local cyber cafe, they started sending us prizes to give out to winners including t-shirts and boxes of booster packs! I personally did something like this for the miniatures game Mage Knight, and I was treated to free pieces and other cool things to help get people started.

If you like the TCG or the TFG, I strongly recommend you visit Go-Pokemon.com and look into organizing your own league. I’ll probably start a thread in the forums for anyone who wants to share advice on how to run or maintain one.

While I don’t know of any official equivalent for the video games, you can still set-up your own ladders or tournaments like we did on this site (of course, you can also try to just get your friends to join our competitions).

So go out there, get people excited to play again, and maybe you’ll make local headlines for finding the next World Champion!

[Go-Pokémon.com (Leagues)] [Kansas City Star] [Marin Independent Journal]