Alex Strife wrote a
blog post about Apex and complaining about AiB's coverage of the event. I'm here to add my own experiences and opinions to the discussion. I have been out of town since the evening of the 11th, hence the late reply.
Let's start by congratulating Alex, Chibo, VGBootCamp, and everyone else involved in Apex, because it was clearly an amazing tournament, and despite any conspiracy theories we always wanted and knew Apex would be a fantastic event.
Next we shall clear a few... misconceptions that Alex has perpetuated.
1. "blogs and such were pushed down before the event"
I don't know what on earth he's talking about. Over 36 blogs about Apex were promoted to the front page by moderators... and that's only the ones BEFORE the event. So many Apex blogs were featured that non-tournament users were complaining about the overload. Maybe Alex doesn't know how the active blogs work, but
this is a fabrication.
2. "[Apex was] removed off of featured tournaments"
This is
partly true. We decided back in April or some other early month not to have Apex sitting on the front page "featured tournaments" section all spring and summer. We removed it for the time
and put it up about 10 days before the event. I did this personally. This is a general policy, since aside from SuperCon and MLG events, no tournament is "featured" more than 1 week ahead of its start date. Reasoning for this policy includes a desire to keep the section always changing (seeing the same tournament every day makes people ignore the section) and other considerations we'll get to in a bit.
[But let's be honest here, folks. How many people find out about large tournaments like Apex because of the little Featured Tournaments box on the front page? 4, maybe 5?]
[Also, note the irony in Alex calling for "equal treatment of all events," when a summer-long spot on the front page is decidedly un-equal treatment.]
3. "nothing mentioned until Sat about apex article wise ( Thanks Rich )"
Again true, but
who's to blame? We have a content team with at least 3 writers who signed up specifically to hype the tournament scene -- curious you should mention Rich, since he's one of the three -- but none of them had the time or motivation to write about Apex. What's a volunteer website to do when the people who should be most interested in writing about the tournament simply don't?
Now, it would be easy to hang the content team out to dry for this, but that's not fair. People have real lives and even enthusiastic hobbies have to come second at times. Does it suck that the content team went largely MIA during Apex week? Yeah. Does it represent some sort of editorial conspiracy to keep Apex off the website?
Absolutely not, and to suggest so is disrespectful and ridiculous. Alex will point out that SuperCon and last year's Genesis received plenty of front-page content, and he's right. But what he seems to miss every year is the "Written by" line under each article. Check it out, and you'll see that every SuperCon article was written by JV (one of the hosts), and every Genesis article was either written by me or spearheaded by me. (I was one of the Genesis hosts.) What should this tell you? It tells you
if you want something done, do it yourself. I wanted Genesis to get massive hype so I spent a lot of time writing content and gathering volunteers to write as well. JV took the entire SuperCon writing project upon himself and got it done. We have ****-tons of other work to get done, yet we set our sights on a goal and accomplished it. Take that as a life lesson.
See, I think I understand people better than Alex does. Volunteers need constant prodding and reminders to keep up their work. You don't sit around expecting people with busy lives to take time to write about you. You go out and talk to them, motivate them, engage them, DRIVE them.
[Historical note: Alex and I went through this exact discussion last year after Genesis, as he was upset that his first Apex tournament wasn't as hyped as Genesis. I look forward to the same debate next summer.]
4. "This is something that clearly has ruined my belief in this site being a hub for smash and more to stroke egos of people that do not care for the community and would rather make money. Do I endorse making money? Yes. Do I endorse it at the expense of others ? Never."
This is just trolling. JV and I clearly hate the Smash community, which is why we made this site in the first place.
As a site did not make or intend to make money on SuperCon. 100% of entry fees went into the pot and 100% of venue fees went to Colorado Cutthroat Connection, a student organization at University of Colorado: Denver responsible for hosting the event. If we were out to make money then we would have kept the
$2000 sponsorship money that we put into the pot.
[Also, Alex should choose his words more correctly. He does in fact make money on tournaments literally at the expense of others. That's what expenses are.]
My own opinions Re: Smashboards vs. AiB Why is AiB held to such a high standard compared to SWF? Smashboards does not have a content team, news coverage, tournament highlights/recaps, result tracking, player profiles... SWF literally makes no attempt to promote large non-MLG tournaments aside from moderator actions like stickying threads and sendign PMs. Since AiB does these things and much much more, how is the website a "failure" and a "joke" when the extra stuff falls short? It doesn't make any goddamn sense.
Re: tournament content I don't know what to do anymore. People complain about content, and we run a recruitment drive. Sometimes the complainers sign up to help change things, but I guess they get tired and stop doing anything and we're back to square one, except they're still complaining despite being part of the problem. It boggles the mind.
Re: SuperJohns and all your other witty one-liners Congratulations children, you can jump on a bandwagon, connect lines that aren't there, and hate a tournament for which you have no reason. SuperCon never made an attempt to outdo Apex and the organizers always knew it wouldn't be nearly as big. Does that mean they don't have the right to run their event? Does that mean JV and I didn't have the right to post articles
after Apex was over about our tournament, using the site we've spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on as a service to the Smash community?
Where does one draw the conclusion that JV writing SuperCon articles = NO ONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO WRITE ABOUT APEX?
You know who's not a whining like a ***** and who saw SuperCon as the great opportunity it was? Mew2King, who walked away with ~$1300 in prizes. Well, he would have, if he'd bothered to pick up his checks... [Calm down, we're mailing it to him.]
Re: would AiB have posted Apex content if it was written? Yes, yes, one hundred thousand times "Yes!" But it wasn't, and no, there was no editorial mandate to exclude the tournament. See point 3 and "who's to blame" above.
Example: Alex asked a few months ago if AiB would publish an Apex site skin if his girlfriend made one. I said "yes, absolutely
, just tell me when you want to get started." Never heard back. I would have loved to see such a skin.
Re: my personal relationship with Alex Strife Alex talks constant **** about me and AiB. Search his posts on Smashboards all the way back to last summer around the first Apex. His rants usually coincide with some request/demand that he makes, or some situation where he feels he's not getting the attention he craves (and often deserves). I suffer his abuses and neuroses on AIM, but always politely, because he deserves respect for his tournaments and I feel that despite his poor communication he's really just an excited guy who wants the best for his tournaments.
How do I act in return? Always positively until now. I never put him or his tournaments down in public. I give him all the support I have the power to give. I spent 5 straight days during the week before Apex so that Alex could use a special, exclusive version of Tio to help with Apex's execution. I added tons of features, fixed dozens of bugs, ran hundreds of tests, and wrote pages of explanations just so Apex would go off without a hitch on the computer side. (I still haven't been thanked or acknowledged.)
Re: @ Nintendude, Atomsk, ViceGrip, FlameWave, Dazwa, Eggz, and others I had hoped that the reputations of JV and myself would at least grant us the benefit of the doubt. Thank you for remaining impartial when reading the rantings of someone with a lot to gain from a controversy.
TL;DR - Apex rocked
- Nothing was written on AiB, but it wasn't a site decision, it just wasn't written
- Who are you going to blame, and are you sure they deserve it?
- Always wait for both sides of the story
- Calm down
- Even though he doesn't like me, I'll always be around to do what I can to help Alex and every other large tournament host
Moderators: please don't recommend this blog. I don't need all my friends to come to my defense in order to make a point.