NOVA Open

The Nova had some of our local generals place very high and that always brings things into focus more clearly and grabs the imagination a bit.

I have wondered how NOVA among the cornocopia of tournaments out there, got to be so big.  It seems to me that many tournaments aspire to the size and bredth that NOVA has attained but have largely failed.  I think to myself:  what are the key ingredients for such success?  As an organizer, it intrigues me what the mechanisms behind such success are.

The changes in the way they end the tournament are interesting, as only the finalists have to play on Sunday morning.  But this doesn't really explain how it exploded in the first place.  Like most of these, there is a tournament FAQ particular to the event, which is common enough, and the NOVA tournament is certainly well organized, but none of that happens until it is a bigger event to begin with.  It isn't really that centrally located, so that isn't the attraction either.

I looked into this and asked a few people and it appears that it began just like the Ambassadorial Tournament:  32 players, lots of food and in their case, an outdoor tournament (which I thought was interesting).  Nothing special.

What seems to have allowed it to launch into the stratosphere though was good old fashioned salesmanship.  The NOVA was catapulted by the efforts of organizers who went out on a MISSION to gain sponsors.  The Prize support and ability to promote that prize support to "serious" players was huge in its quick evolution and bigger yet in its ability to interest important players who people pay attention to online and otherwise.  In fact, today and forever, like most corporate affairs, this is now a machine, a phenomenon.

It is organized like a company with some of the cheapest and most readily available volunteer labor any company could hope for.  As this event, as well as Adepticon, Bay Area Open and others continue on that path, I foresee that sponsorships for this niche market are going to become more valuable to the sponsors themselves. 

Gamers represent an enormous internet presence vendors covet.  One can VERY easily argue that gamers were the impetus for the power the internet enjoys now, as well as its form today.  Business and other interests certainly have made it a more mainstream enterprise, but it is the techies, the gamers and the nerds who made it this kind of juggernaut.  I'd venture to say that more people ARE gamers than ever before BECAUSE of the internet!  That's important information for sponosrs to know.

So as the NOVA Tournament comes to a close, I wanted to find some takeaways from it.  Those takeaways for me were:

1.  A good and motivated sales team is needed to build this kind of event anywhere.
2.  Quality of terrain is very important, as discussion of it is rampant and prolific after these events.
3.  Innovative thinkers are needed in order to bring something new to the gaming table in the way of how the games are playerd and in creating a "style" the tournament will be known for.
4.  Generating internet buzz is a huge component of the success of these events.

With these important ideas in mind, already it is helping me think about how I can make the Ambassadorial Torunament stand out as a gem in the northwest, something we don't truly have as far as competitive events.  Our entire northwest way of thinking is so much more casual that such things are harder to create.  But I am convinced that we can get the prize support we would need to make this event something special and we can thank examples like the NOVA open for paving the way.

Congratz to the winners!  Now lets use their axample.