We must give money prizes to tournaments. Take 2.

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Vileman

Vileman

You're gonna carry that weight.
is a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Former Old Generation Tournament Circuit Champion
This is going to kill our competition. It has been killing it. We need to fix this.

For the decade I've participated on this website, there has always been equivocations, excuses, and pushback against cash tournaments. In my younger years, before it became more normalized in other communities, the difficulties of "paying minors" was emphasized. And then it was "there will be cheating". And then it was "who will put up the money"--the latter is probably the most honest.

We do not incentivize our players outside of pixels and custom avatars.

In my view, the best tournament of the year is the Callous Invitational which has a 2k+ prize pool entirely comprised of donations (which I think is a cool format, fwiw), and it is organized completely off this website.

There ought to be different prize formats; buy-ins, donation pools, SITE-ORIGINATED PRIZES. Hosts ought to be paid. Smogon is a uniquely terrible community when it comes to supporting the hosts, contributors, and players that maintain the website. We can't continue playing like this.

Hosts are burning out, the playerbase is stagnating. Everything feels so tired.

What can we do? Do we just quit playing competitively until things change? How do we demand more? We deserve more. Discuss here.

edit/disclaimer: yes this is dice 's post excluding the problematic part. Reposted bc i think its a legitimate issue worth discussing.
 
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I really wanted to post something constructive in the prior one so I’ll give it a shot here and hope it’s not locked…


Contributors should definitely be given more meaningful rewards than just a CA for their sheer work in keeping this site running + filled with quality content, just giving people a badge is not really sufficient. I’m not necessarily suggesting paying them because thats a whole mess to figure out and would probably make things like analyses/QC/GP a lot more contentious instead of collaborative, but perhaps some of the site revenue could be put toward something that benefits contributors in some way?

Since that’s not the focus of the thread, though: tournament money prizes are nice but I truly don’t know how people could prevent or detect ghosting without some really invasive or inaccessible stuff like making people stream their games on a 5 min delay (impossible for many people who don’t have the tech/know-how) or using the same kinds of invasive “anti cheating” tech used for exams that is all kinds of problematic and authoritarian. I also definitely would worry about this making team tours more hostile if throws or RNG happen. I mean, you literally played an SPL game where someone effectively threw by not registering their account, I’m sure they caught enough shit for that as is without it also damaging their teams chance at hundreds of dollars.

I don’t think these concerns are enough reason to not have prize money for more tours, especially because the amounts we’re talking about are effectively peanuts compared to working a job in many places (I grant that changes if you’re in a place with worse wages/exchange rates), but there’s more considerations in my mind than just whether or not there is money available to do this. I’m really happy this is getting talked about though! I just had a conversation about contributor burnout and lack of reward not 2 days ago and think this is coming from a similar place.
 
Seeing as it’s been made clear that the creators of both sites are unwilling to fund these directives, we need to come up with alternative methods as a community. Crowdsourcing is the obvious solution, with people within the tournament community donating to some “yearly prize pool” for that year’s tournament circuit. Something similar could be done for contributors. Ultimately the issue with funding tournaments and contributions is that it appears to be a bit of a money sink. Investing into something that doesn’t give you returns can only work for so long and finding some way to monetize tournaments so that they could pay for their own prizes and payments for hosts/contributors would be ideal. I’m not exactly an expert with regards to monetization, but that would be the route to take if possible.
 
Sabelette said:
Contributors should definitely be given more meaningful rewards than just a CA for their sheer work in keeping this site running + filled with quality content, just giving people a badge is not really sufficient. I’m not necessarily suggesting paying them because thats a whole mess to figure out and would probably make things like analyses/QC/GP a lot more contentious instead of collaborative, but perhaps some of the site revenue could be put toward something that benefits contributors in some way?
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Like what? Literally the only thing I could think of is paying for tools that would make creating contribution work easier if you don't want to just outright pay a salary. And while paying a salary would be cool and all, I think that would make contribution a lot more about making money than actually helping other players.
 
I play Pokemon cuz I enjoy it, same with any other video game. Tournament players don't make this website money and if you deleted the tournament section of smogon I doubt there is much difference in revenue.

If you want to put money towards something it should go to the people who contribute to this website and its resources.

Also buy ins to tours are a terrible idea, all it does is gatekeep certain members of the community. What's pocket change for some could be a whole day's work for others depending on where they live.
 
smash summit funds its prize pool partly through merch sales. is that feasible for smogon? i know we've done spl merch in the past, would it be practical to use the proceeds from that to fund a prize pool?
 
MAMP said:
smash summit funds its prize pool partly through merch sales. is that feasible for smogon? i know we've done spl merch in the past, would it be practical to use the proceeds from that to fund a prize pool?
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The proceeds used to be used to help fund OST, but this is not enough to fund a collective unless change occurs.

Merritt edit: to be clear, the spl merch sales already do go towards tour prize pools, this year's OST prize is from that pool.
 
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Are there any ways to incentivize particularly affluent users into funding a prize pool for tournaments? Feel like if prize money ever comes from anywhere, it'll be from donations

Alternatively is there any merit in implementing a points system where you gain a certain number of points on the website depending on how well you do in a tournament, and these points can be used to redeem profile cosmetics such as banners (if Xenforo allows for more than one), stuff on your postbit (could add Pokemon sprites to the postbit w/ seasonal Pokemon), custom avatars (bc let's be real everybody wants one), and/or inactive usernames? I don't really think this system is an incredible alternative because why compete for cosmetics when you can win real money to buy clothes/games/food with IRL, but if an actual money system is unfeasible then this doesn't seem like a terrible compromise in my head lol
 
My 2 cents.

Smogon is fundamentally a hobbyist's website. Nothing about it is professional enough to sustain significant money incentives.

C&C Contributions: as someone who wrote a large chunk of the RBY dex as well as other instructive content, and I'm frequently told by people that the stuff is really good, I can tell you it really isn't professional lol. Most of it is "ah I know this stuff and I feel inspired to share it with the community let's set an hour apart to do it". Arguably it's work that some people would pay for, but people would be paying for my knowledge moreso than the way I express it. It's not communicated professionally, because no one pays me, and something that just gets the point across is good enough. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone working on the Smogdex to a professional degree because well, they aren't professionals.
The only way to make money out of teaching new players how to play the game, is to ask the new players for a coaching fee. The Smogdex can at best be an advertisement for your coaching services? Otherwise I don't really see how this would ever generate money. I suppose you could sell books the way they sell chess theory books but that seems really unrealistic for where we are today.

Tournament hosting: I am giving my absolute everything to WCoP in particular but even there we are firmly in "one man doing whatever seems good" territory rather than anything organized and standardized to a high level of quality. Almost every official we're having to find new hosts, not many people hang around in this territory long enough to gain the experience and the knowledge to offer quality hosting every time. The ones who do are battling burnout frequently. Ticken probably deserves to get paid for his work on resources, but no one else is really getting scammed here.

Tournament playing: Look, I'm all for it in theory. I'd love for Pokémon to have viable money prizes. But competition for the sake of competition, though noble, generates no money. Chess managed because it was bankrolled by countries for the sake of propaganda and by several extremely rich people with a fascination for chess. VGC is effectively bankrolled by Nintendo and I'm fairly sure it operates at a loss, but they keep it running as a publicity tool for their own game. Cases like these aside, everything else, real sports and esports alike, desperately needs to sell itself as entertainment to make a profit. It needs sponsorships and it needs a large passionate viewerbase. Money will not be generated elsewhere. Not enough of it.
Hell you have people inside literally Cloud9 arguing on twitter that you shouldn't get paid much unless you also contribute something in terms of content for the viewers. This is literally people who managed to make a living out of esports telling you how to do it - it's not the esport, it's your ability to sell it. Smogon Tournaments cares not about selling itself, and as such is going nowhere.
Oh and cheating is very obviously a fundamental issue too if we're talking money in tournaments as a whole.

Smogon's structures are so far from ready for something like this that the only possibly realistic way for tournaments to make that step up is for a new separate project to be launched entirely. Someone needs to lock freezai / temp / blunder / aim / RedEmption etc in a room with veteran tournament directors and players and hosts. You find some random AssholeVPN willing to throw a bunch of money at you, you pay a small chunk of that money to the people who will design you a tournament format and work the backend to host it, a small chunk of money to much stronger anticheat measures and referees, a small chunk of money to Ticken or whoever else will make the resources to make the tournament an actually watchable & easy to follow experience (artists / graphic designers maybe), pay someone to do player interviews after the games too, and the rest in a bigass prize pool. Maybe then things will actually be done well enough to warrant it.

I'll repeat, Smogon is a hobbyist website. If chaos is content with his salary and has no dreams of expanding further and hiring people to build up the size of this website, that's completely within his rights. If we want this to get anywhere substantial it won't be viewer donations funding anything - maybe you can get a handful of couple hundred bucks donations now and again, but nothing self-sustaining. If we want competitive Pokémon to get somewhere else we need to take it there ourselves. The people who generate money (content creators) need to be willing to reinvest it into a project with no guarantee of success. If they are bold enough for it (and some might just be - Mt. Silver Foxes anyone?) then something can happen. Otherwise, yeah, keep dreaming of donations I guess. That'll be as good as it ever gets IMO.
 
definitely pay contributors ahead of funding tournaments. i doubt there's anything on the website as expandable as our tournament players are. the old either quit, stay or probably get banned while new generations of players find their way here in return. and if that starts happening less and less, that's fine, too. just let it die. don't expect any preventative measures or big efforts from staff to save the sinking tournaments ship. from staff's pov this is their least favorite section, home of almost all of the website's problems. finch and merritt aluded to ost's prize pool being funded by something like an spl store, but don't count on anything like that anymore either. we just go through the motions now until it eventually ends, and that makes sense. i used to think tournaments was the most important section of the website, but then i became a staff member myself and learned otherwise.

why change anything when things are going fine and there's always people desperate for validation they can't find in real life to do the hard work for free, right? i get it, anyway. i think longtime strongholds that the website has leaned on, such as lumari, should get paid ahead of any tournament being funded outside of donations. dice mentioned callous invitational thriving on a donation based system, and i think that could be a way to go for smogon tournaments as well, if we can get people to literally buy in. the difference between smogon and callous's server is that, for all of its faults, the callous invitational actually has a strong sense of community. it's a big event and people actually want to donate. why would anyone donate to OST? nobody gives a shit and it certainly doesn't help that the higher ups don't donate much, if anything, themselves.

so yeah, the tl;dr is just don't bother. get out of the hobby what you can get out of it. if you find yourself not getting anything out of it anymore, then find something else. if you want to use pokemon as a platform to get paid more money, try something like vgc or youtube. or learn adv and take the callous invitational by storm. smogon tournaments will not change for the better. we can either accept that or continue to scream into the void via threads like these.
 
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Tony said:
but don't count on anything like that anymore either.
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Not sure if it was meant as a callout to me, but I'll reply anyway. I can prob chalk up anything I say of being lazy is mostly that I'm very good at procrastinating and at this particular time am also on partial sick-leave from my job for stress related reasons (stress at my job, not at Smogon), so this hasn't been at the top of my priority as of late when I'm trying to get better physically. Might be oversharing, idc, my main point is that I've not abandoned it and I have an ambition to get SPL and SCL shop running before SPL is over. I would also like to include more general Smogon designs as well, with proceeds going towards a tournaments prize pool.

That's all I had to say, I've discussed some things on discord too but not something I'd want to address here as some official admin response.
 
nah Kalalokki it's about the store happening at all, not about you being the person not doing something. if you're dealing with shit irl then something like this shouldn't fall on you alone. hope things get better soon and i'd definitely recommend delegating responsibilities in the meantime.

edit: the timeliness of the store is important, too. at this point it's too late and nobody is gonna buy anything anymore. if we want to open merch stores ahead of our biggest events, then they need to be opened right as the tournament is about to start. hype is greatest then, dreams are biggest then. nobody is buying a hoodie if their team doesn't win any of the first three weeks. i doubt many people would still buy a hoodie in the first place, but definitely not now if the spl store opened today. i would suggest staff and the td team plan these launches together in the future to make sure it's all set in place and doesn't fall on just one potentially overworked contributor.
 
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How much funding is the goal here? $10k a year? More? Less?
What is the metric that we are using to define tournament success/growth? Signup numbers, "hype", etc. What can we look at to say that yes, funding tournaments does lead to increases in X, Y and Z. How do we measure the cost-effectiveness of a hypothetical tournament structure?
Is tournament growth even a problem?
What/how would the money be allocated for? Does it include spending money on advertising?
What is the plan beyond "yea free money would be cool"? There's nothing to actually respond to in this thread

Everyone wants free money, but somebody has to pay the bill, whether it be Smogon or something else. Very realistically money spent on tournaments will not have a good ROI.
Donations are stupid and unsustainable and other self sustaining options like Smogon Youtube have their own issues and the Smogon Shop doesn't make a lot from what I understand. Are there other self-sustaining ways to make money for Smogon Tournaments? Who would even work on something like that when they could just spend the same man-hours making money for themselves? The conversation between doing something for fun and for money for Smogon is very different

chaos If there was a tangible, actionable plan to reinvest a portion of Smogon ad revenue into tournament funding in order to (hopefully) lead to more tournament and (correspondingly) site growth, would you be open to it?
 
If you want to pay someone, pay contributors not tournaments players. Contributors keep the site alive and most of them help newcomers to become new contributors or tournament players. There are a few of them that have contributed to a point that not having had them would actually make a big difference, and they did (and keep doing) all that for free. What's more, tournament hosts deserve being paid more than the players. Yes, idealistically, paying tournaments players with the site owner putting the money would be great and give even more prestige to the site but accept it's not going to happen.
 
I respect all the hard work of contributors and agree they should be paid but I don't think it is feasible. Maybe I'm just jaded but I doubt people are gonna donate to a pool to pay others for their work instead of particular individuals. I don't think chaos would pay these people either as he wont see a return on money and they already do amazing work for free. A suggestion I have is that you could set up a tipping system at the end of articles/resources so people that enjoy it can donate if they please. To me, it seems harmless as you won't have people who are rushing articles for a quick pay-out.

Whereas it's easier to pitch donating to a tournaments prize pool, this is much more alluring for new/current players creating site traffic and hype. I do think the original post of this thread comes off as very entitled though, donation money is just a bonus to the tournaments we are already entering. We don't need a prize pool.

I'm getting a little of topic but a better option would be to pay for Pokémon youtubers to promote a tournament (or other means of advertising). Advertising could be paid for by chaos as an investment into the site and hopefully he receives a return on investment in site traffic/ad revenue/new potential donators. If he doesn't I don't see a reason why he would continue to pay for it.

Of course this is whole thread is just wishful thinking at the end of the day, maybe we will get lucky and some oil prince will solve all our problems.
 
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i hope im not repeating anyone but i just think the tours scene should be making money for it to get money back, no? that's usually how it works with other esports and sports as a whole (with ad revenue and sponsorships funding the prize pool).

if the tours scene has enough of a fan base to have merch sales, donations, and maybe watch ad revenue (although that one wouldnt work because i dont think anyone would wanna watch games on twitch or youtube and watch ads in between, whereas they can watch games on smogtours with no ads, unless there's some differential like live commentary — but in that case the commentators should probably get a part if not all of the what i presume would be a small revenue) then it should be absolutely fine for that money to be redistributed to tour hosts and the winners of said tournament (because we're definitely not getting sponsors for spl, that's for sure), but without that where's the money coming from? i agree with some previous posts that if chaos wakes up feeling generous some thursday and wants to distribute smogon's earnings with the community, that money probably should go into the contributors of the site as they directly contribute to its growth unlike the tour players that do so indirectly, but as that's not likely happening (and all within chaos's rights) really the only way for tournaments to have prize money would be the aforementioned methods, and i don't think enough people watch and care about spl for that to happen, unfortunately.

i think the most likely outcome would be to have a donation pool, and inconsistent as it may be, whatever money ends up there is given as prize money, but otherwise, i don't see where the tour prize money would even be coming from?

i would also like to add that if the spl shop does run on a profit i think at least some of the funds (if not all) should go to the people working on getting it up and the artist that made the beautiful designs we end up selling first, though, before the tournament-playing playerbase.
 
I intend to reply to this thread, but it may take me up to a couple of days (or sooner, it just depends on when I can fit it into my schedule). Just saying this because I think some of the posts in this thread are reasonable and I don't want those posters to feel like I am ignoring them.
 
lydian said:
i hope im not repeating anyone but i just think the tours scene should be making money for it to get money back, no? that's usually how it works with other esports and sports as a whole (with ad revenue and sponsorships funding the prize pool).

if the tours scene has enough of a fan base to have merch sales, donations, and maybe watch ad revenue (although that one wouldnt work because i dont think anyone would wanna watch games on twitch or youtube and watch ads in between, whereas they can watch games on smogtours with no ads, unless there's some differential like live commentary — but in that case the commentators should probably get a part if not all of the what i presume would be a small revenue) then it should be absolutely fine for that money to be redistributed to tour hosts and the winners of said tournament (because we're definitely not getting sponsors for spl, that's for sure), but without that where's the money coming from? i agree with some previous posts that if chaos wakes up feeling generous some thursday and wants to distribute smogon's earnings with the community, that money probably should go into the contributors of the site as they directly contribute to its growth unlike the tour players that do so indirectly, but as that's not likely happening (and all within chaos's rights) really the only way for tournaments to have prize money would be the aforementioned methods, and i don't think enough people watch and care about spl for that to happen, unfortunately.

i think the most likely outcome would be to have a donation pool, and inconsistent as it may be, whatever money ends up there is given as prize money, but otherwise, i don't see where the tour prize money would even be coming from?

i would also like to add that if the spl shop does run on a profit i think at least some of the funds (if not all) should go to the people working on getting it up and the artist that made the beautiful designs we end up selling first, though, before the tournament-playing playerbase.
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While I agree with what you're saying, I do think the point of contention for people is that most e-sports communities don't have a Pokemon Showdown- a fan-made website with thousands of impressions per day that also runs ads. The average Smash tournament is really just a bunch of sweaty dudes in a room with Gamecubes, you know what I'm sayin? Meanwhile, nearly every piece of content featuring Showdown in some way indirectly contributes to the revenue of the site, a revenue that doesn't come back to its players or contributors. Now, I am not saying that the owners of Showdown *should* start contributing money in that way, but I just feel like that was the perspective of the original post that may have gotten lost.

Regardless, I think this post hits the nail on the head. The Smash community (specifically referring to Melee here, truthfully) has enjoyed a very vibrant and long-lasting community- older than Smogon's. Competitive Smashers have long bemoaned the terrible pay-outs and cash prizes. But where Smash succeeds where Smogon doesn't is just in... the whole optics of the situation. I don't even play Melee competitively, and I barely follow the scene aside from tuning in to some EVO grand finals here and there. Yet I can tell you all about players like Hungrybox and PPMD and Leffen and shit like that, just by virtue of being a fan of Nintendo games talking with other Nintendo fans. Yet, Melee has proven to be a viable springboard for its high level players, Mango is a big streamer, Hungrybox has a reasonably successful channel. And then there is Ludwig, who was once the most sub'd to streamer on the platform (though he has do deal with jerma, so im not sure if thats really a win). Meanwhile, I doubt the same casual to Pokemon as I am to Smash could do the same thing but for big name Smogon tournament players. I barely could and I've been engaged in this community for nearly a decade. Is it just me?

If this is to be something that happens, Smogon would need to refocus its attention on producing or promoting content that generates adsense and brings it promotions from brands. There is a very proven market for competitively oriented content on Youtube alone, meanwhile Smogon's presence is absolutely 0% in that sphere. I get WHY that's the case- it is very difficult to get people to produce high-quality video/streams for free- but, well, that's the entire point of this thread.
 
chimp said:
While I agree with what you're saying, I do think the point of contention for people is that most e-sports communities don't have a Pokemon Showdown- a fan-made website with thousands of impressions per day that also runs ads. The average Smash tournament is really just a bunch of sweaty dudes in a room with Gamecubes, you know what I'm sayin? Meanwhile, nearly every piece of content featuring Showdown in some way indirectly contributes to the revenue of the site, a revenue that doesn't come back to its players or contributors. Now, I am not saying that the owners of Showdown *should* start contributing money in that way, but I just feel like that was the perspective of the original post that may have gotten lost.

Regardless, I think this post hits the nail on the head. The Smash community (specifically referring to Melee here, truthfully) has enjoyed a very vibrant and long-lasting community- older than Smogon's. Competitive Smashers have long bemoaned the terrible pay-outs and cash prizes. But where Smash succeeds where Smogon doesn't is just in... the whole optics of the situation. I don't even play Melee competitively, and I barely follow the scene aside from tuning in to some EVO grand finals here and there. Yet I can tell you all about players like Hungrybox and PPMD and Leffen and shit like that, just by virtue of being a fan of Nintendo games talking with other Nintendo fans. Yet, Melee has proven to be a viable springboard for its high level players, Mango is a big streamer, Hungrybox has a reasonably successful channel. And then there is Ludwig, who was once the most sub'd to streamer on the platform (though he has do deal with jerma, so im not sure if thats really a win). Meanwhile, I doubt the same casual to Pokemon as I am to Smash could do the same thing but for big name Smogon tournament players. I barely could and I've been engaged in this community for nearly a decade. Is it just me?

If this is to be something that happens, Smogon would need to refocus its attention on producing or promoting content that generates adsense and brings it promotions from brands. There is a very proven market for competitively oriented content on Youtube alone, meanwhile Smogon's presence is absolutely 0% in that sphere. I get WHY that's the case- it is very difficult to get people to produce high-quality video/streams for free- but, well, that's the entire point of this thread.
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What comes back to the players is the ability to play competitive Pokemon battles conveniently without having to make a $300+ investment on a Switch + other peripherals. Granted, more could be given to the players, but the point is that the service of Pokemon Showdown is readily available and accessible to almost anyone, not just tournament players, whereas Smash tournaments require quite a bit of set up (i.e. renting a venue, getting setups availible, etc.), have things like entry fees, and are not necessarily permanent, nor readily available for players to use at their convenience to get practice (this isn't always the case, but generally is so). I'm not sure how others feel about it, but I think Pokemon Showdown running ads is a small price to pay for its convenience too compared to your average local or wi-fi tournament with Smash, since there is no need to travel and its mostly done through a web browser which almost everyone uses rather than the Switch or other Nintendo console. And hey, if you don't want to contribute to Pokemon Showdown's revenue, just use UBlock Origin or some other ad-blocking service.

This is speculative, so take it with a grain of salt, but part of the reason I think Smogon can't get high-profile content like Smash does is that Pokemon Showdown is not an official product. Most Smash tournaments and invitationals used officially licensed software (and if they don't they are threatened with a potential shutdown as we saw with the use of Slippi and Project M). This video by Kit and Krysta I think goes into great detail about how once Nintendo became officially involved with tournaments, they started turning less of a blind eye towards game modifications. I think this is relevant in this case because various large youtube channels like VGBootCamp and Clash Tournaments removed project m content from their channel since Nintendo would threaten them with a potential legal actions. What's not to say that the same situation won't happen with Pokemon Showdown, a completely unlicensed and unofficial project that's already at risk of being shut down on a dime?

Just to be clear, I'm not against Tournament players or contributors making money for their activity on this site or on Pokemon Showdown. However, I think there are significant differences between this and the Smash community's current situation that are worth pointing out.
 
Hey, thanks everyone for your patience.

So I don't have too much to add that hasn't already been said by others here. Playing Pokemon competitively is fun, that's why Smogon exists, tournaments are fun, that's why we have them. It's also fun to win some money because it adds some real stakes. But I think there are some misplaced expectations here, like maybe that Smogon has an eSports team, and that I haven't properly compensated my roster for repping my brand. Or that if playing Pokemon isn't fun, we should do it anyway, but it's Smogon's responsibility to pay us enough for it to be worth our while. If you don't like playing here then I'm truly sorry, and I'm not saying that in a "PR" sort of way, I've been involved in (what eventually became) this community for over 20 years now and I care a lot about it and want others to enjoy it. But I will understand if you do not, and hope that you will find a community or even a different game that you find rewarding.

Personally this site has gotten too big for me to handle, but not big enough for me to hire others to share the load. I've been struggling with how to handle this for a while now and I think the most success I've had is to simply be honest and say, we aren't pursuing new things at the moment, but are taking the time to improve code and processes. From a technical POV, Smogon is in a significantly better place than it was even 6 months ago. I intend to keep my head down and continue this work.

On the subject of hosts burning out, I would suggest that a TD or two reach out to me, and we'll go over all of what is necessary to host and maybe I can improve the process. The job of hosting a Pokemon tournament shouldn't be soul crushing work, but maybe it is because we don't have the right technical support for it. If that's the case, again I'm sorry, and let's try to fix it. I kind of think this paragraph is performative because I've already expressed this sentiment in our internal TD-SS channel and to some TDs personally, but maybe saying it more publicly will encourage folks to take me up on the offer.

On the subject of cash tours, I actually do give money each year to a tournament fund that the TDs determine how to allocate (in addition to the SPL shop). I would like to remind everyone that contrary to what shitposters might say, I'm not some sort of oil baron that can throw infinite cash at any problem to fix it, I'm "a guy with a job". So, it's not possible for me to match the prizes of every tour, because those are funded by many "guys with jobs". If that means that "my" tournaments don't have higher prizes than other tournaments organized here with donations/buy-ins, or don't compete financially with the Callous tour, then ... oh well. I hope you guys will find them fun anyway, or we could get rid of them, idk. If any of what I said doesn't compute then I would suggest meditating on it until it does, perhaps reconsider some of your strongly held beliefs, etc. No matter how many threads that are made that make this point, my answer will always be the same. Anyway, maybe the allocation isn't optimal and it makes tournaments like OST seem devalued, or maybe I could in fact donate a little more and that would be more fun for everyone--that's something I'll have to discuss with the TDs.

freezai your post in particular is reasonable and to your question, it is hard for me to give a concrete Yes to, for the reason I gave above: I am very busy and have set goals for Smogon and need to be realistic/responsible, and I wouldn't want to waste anyones time by doing a suboptimal job managing whatever you are suggesting. But you're welcome to reach out to me in PM or on Discord @ chaos#1111 to give a business proposal and I'll carefully consider it.

I hope that I have addressed everything here, if not I'll leave the thread open but ask that posts are respectful of my limited time.
 
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