Well, I suppose technically my winning tournament streak came to
an end last night.
Let me qualify that…I had taken first place in several small
tournaments in a row between February and mid-March and then of course COVID
put a halt to my participating in any tournaments that I might have wanted to
do later in the year, so that’s the only reason that my winning streak had held
for so long. However, I was surprised by the series of events that resulted in
my playing in (and…spoiler alert… ultimately losing) a tournament that only
lasted six minutes in total.
I should preface the rest of this by saying two things. First, I
had no real skin in this game in as much as I was called to fill-in on a squad
with all of about three hours notice. I am appreciative that I was offered a
chance to play and was just lucky to be in a place where I could drop what I
was doing and drive to Rochester area to participate. My team had won their way
into the finals before I even stepped foot inside the building, so this was
nothing that I had earned personally. Second, this is in no way meant to
criticize the efforts of the host facility (LASERTRON Rochester), as I believe
they were doing their best walking through a new endeavor and trying to pull
off an event as best they could considering the unusual circumstances that took
place. I appreciate that an event happened at all and I hope they continue to
host tournaments in the future.
OK, all that said…this may have been the weirdest “tournament”
that I have done yet (and that even includes the one where I received an award
covered in plastic insects). I was aware of this event going on because my
friend Emily was competing with a team right on the heels of winning a similar competition
in Buffalo. All I knew about it was what she had told me a couple of weeks ago.
So when I heard that a team that had made it into the finals might need a replacement
player I let it be known that I was available and interested in trying out the
new Battle Royale squad format, which I had not experienced playing yet. I
actually didn’t expect to be playing in this event at all, so I was out and
about just doing my normal Sunday activities (driving from the craft store and
meeting my mother for lunch), when I saw a message from one of the players had
hit my phone around 1:00 in the afternoon saying that a player had backed out
and inviting me to fill in. Well, that is all I needed to hear to turn on a
dime and head out to Rochester to join the squad called “3Strikes” and meet up
with Terry (TD), Nardo and our squad captain Layla, all of whom I was delighted
to meet and glad to play alongside.
TD and Layla both had kids playing in the youth tournament that
was scheduled to take place first, so they were both there a little early and
that gave me a chance to chat with them and learn a bit more about the Battle
Royale format.
Battle Royale is an elimination game and the object is to have at
least one player on your team survive longer than all the opposing teams. You
have virtually unlimited shots and lives are limited (I was told normally you
start with 60 energy units, but they changed it to 100 for this event) and you
MUST tag an opponent at least once every 30 seconds. If you fail to do that or
lose all your energy (lives) then your pack will turn purple (aka becoming the
Purple Storm) and you must re-energize. When you are Purple Storm you are in a
strange in-between state of being both tagged out and yet somehow still in the
game, so you want to continue tagging opponents to support your still-active
“green” teammates.
The youth tournament had only four teams and they let the kids go
through the process of the preliminary games, although when it got down to it
the finals in the youth division consisted of the two youth teams that had
earned their way there in advance based on points. I think that was just fine
and they passed around a QR code to vote for which of the two teams you thought
would win. My teammates had kids on both teams, so either way would have been a
victory, but I selected the correct team and was rewarded with $9 added to my
card. That was nice.
Then it was time for the adult tournament. Sigh…I am using the
word “tournament” a little loosely now because the entire thing from start to
finish was over in six minutes and one second. Here’s how that happened…EVERYBODY
who showed up just jumped directly into one round for finals.
As I mentioned, I had joined a squad that had already won their
bye into the finals. Over the course of the preceding thirty days each squad
could earn points by participating in qualifiers and my teammates had the
second highest amount of points accumulated out of nearly 400 participants on
the leaderboard. That is based on the list of standings that was posted online
prior to the tournament. My teammates had earned over 1400 cumulative points to
get into that spot, which should have afforded them the leisure of watching
quarter-finals and semi-finals play out (and other teams exhausting themselves
in the process) and then have the victors from those preliminary heats ascend
to an earned place in finals. However, out of 28 qualified squads only four
actually showed up. And they seemed to be a bit pieced together from other
teams (although considering I was a replacement player as well, who am I to talk).
Although the youth tournament had exactly the same number of teams
show up, the adult group was not required to go through the same formalities
and they did not bother with either a quarter-final round (where one team
qualified based on 475 points upon arrival) or a semi-final round (where the
other team qualified) and instead just sent all four teams directly into
finals. One game, the end. Now, even if the result would have ultimately turned
out the same (which with only four teams would have inevitably been the case),
it just feels like something was missing in the process.
I’m hard pressed to call what transpired last night a tournament, as by definition a
tournament is “a series of contests between a number of competitors who compete
for an overall prize” and in this case there was no actual series of contests,
unless you are counting the earning of points prior to the event itself.
However, in this circumstance the earned points really did not matter at all
because everyone who showed up with a team ended up going right into finals
anyway. Also, if the rest of the 28 top point earners did not even bother to
show up it makes me wonder how many were really consciously participating in a
tournament versus simply playing the game because Battle Royale is the only
game format that was offered at this site in the last 30 days.
Now, this was clearly an unexpected level of participation and I
think that the staff handled things as well as they could have without being
able to anticipate the turnout in advance. I’m sure they were planning for
more. I don’t attribute this to the pandemic (as everyone had qualified within
the last month), but it is what it is. And our team played hard, but ultimately
got taken out first from that one and only game (which is just the way the
cookie crumbles some days), but I think that from an organizational standpoint
it would have been wise for the host facility to have a back-up plan for the
handling of this scenario.
I am not an advocate for “participation trophies”, but I also
don’t think it makes sense or breeds good vibes to give medals to three teams
while leaving one team (particularly one that had actually qualified for the finals
on merit) standing unacknowledged. I fear some of my teammates may have felt
that sting because I could not even find half of them to say good-bye at the
end of it all. Now again, I myself was a fill-in player and recognize that I
did not earn anything personally to be here, so I don’t have any real stake in
this other than watching the events unfold and thinking there had to be a
better way to handle this to make everyone feel that they had gotten a complete
tournament experience. Even a warm-up round would have at least made things last
a little longer. As it stands, I felt like this one was over a bit too soon and
that seems like a shame since the overall concept seems like it was designed to
open up more opportunities to compete, not less. Still, I want to offer
congratulations to the other teams who placed as follows:
1st Place - AM I TOO SLOW
2nd Place - The House
3rd Place - God Save The Queen
And I must say that all in all I am still glad that I got to be
part of this. In addition to meeting some great people and also being able to
visit with my ‘geddon teammates Wil and Emily, it was the first time I’ve been
back to this site in well over a year. Because I live two and a half hours away
from this arena it would be difficult for me to qualify for future events like
this in any way other than by joining a pre-existing squad, so I do want to
thank Team 3Strikes for inviting me to join them.
Also, I have spent a lot of time collecting unique laser tag
experiences as I have traveled and competed all across the country and I can
say one thing about last night…I’m pretty sure it will stand uncontested as the
shortest tournament that I have ever or will ever play, so for that reason
alone I will chalk this up as a new and interesting experience being worth
taking the time out of what would have otherwise been a pretty ordinary day.
Comments
or Questions?
Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
