[Kotei] Houston 14-15 juillet

Long post alert: Okay, so Kotei Houston! The purpose of this post is in part to talk myself into going, and in part to convince other people on the fence to do so as well. Through talking with other players locally and at Atlanta/Philadelphia I find myself frustrated (and I’m not alone) by FFG essentially ‘locking’ their high level events behind Con paywalls. I am not in the games industry but I have multiple friends that are, so I know enough to understand that it is much cheaper for FFG to rent out a few tables at a large Con rather than purchase dedicated space at a convention center to run their events.

There are pros and cons to this, one pro being that cheaper costs to run events theoretically results in more events being held (as the Organized Play ‘pot’ can get spread amongst multiple tournaments). The con, of course, is lower turnout to each event, as players that would go are scared away by $60+ entry just to get into the hall (for a convention they might not even be interested in attending), on top of flight/hotel/entry for the actual event. Factor in $250 for a flight and $200 for a two night hotel and you are looking at $550+ (before room splitting) just to attend a tournament, of which the prize support is…lacking, to say the least.

There are numerous things we can do to improve this situation, though FFG has shown they are reluctant to pony up for OP for their myriad of products. I don’t think we’ll ever see FFG offer cash prizes, though we could force a change if we collectively refuse to pay $100+ for a set of cheap acrylic rings and the like, which is the only thing balancing out the exorbitant costs to play in these events. What we CAN do, however, is vote with our wallets by showing up in force at Koteis that aren’t tacked on to a larger con. In the US so far that’s just Houston, July 13-15, which is being run by Cascade and it is 100% a standalone Destiny/L5R event. If we could break 200 attendees, coming off the poor showings at ATL/SF, it would at least give weight to the argument that if FFG pays a little more on their end to make the entry cheaper for players, more players will show up.

Even though GenCon is 3 weeks after Houston (and I plan on going there as well) I’m still 80% to go to Houston too, mainly to cast my vote for more frequent, cheaper events. For those familiar with Magic, if we could get to a point where FFG is paying Cascade to run Kotei-level events at regional convention centers (monthly would be awesome) so events are both cheaper and within driving distance that would do wonders for the growth of the game. Let me know what you think and see what you can do to spread the word if you agree.