Starting A 3s & Other FG Community When I Go To College... Help

#1

Introduction

Alright… I am going off to college next year and the community around me is slowly dying. I am looking to create my own little community at school when i move away.

I have talked to management and have been given the ability to re-do their on campus arcade… meaning I can use approximately 3000$ to get new machines.

It has also come to my attention that you can start a group/club and if you survive a semester you are funded if you have 10 or more members. That means I should get another 1000$ after the first semester because I already have 6 people other than myself who would support this thus far.

What games?

Third strike: Easy to get into, entertaining… pretty inexpensive to get a machine for. My FAVORITE Game. (this one is a definite)

I need to pick 2 of the following… so help me choose. Right now leaning twords mvc2 & ST

Marvel: my school is known as “u.r.HIGH”… so this game might have an appeal to those players. I like it… and it’s lots of fun. But for new players i’m not sure this is the best idea to go with. Game is also relatively inexpensive to get.

Capcom vs Snk 2: Game is pretty inexpensive to get. Big problem is it has such a high learning curve and could shy people away from playing it with any seriousness.

Tekken 5 DR: Tekken 6 comes out soon, this is expensive as hell.

Guilty Gear XX: AC: Moderatly expensive, anime people will like it as well as some casual gamers

Super Turbo: Cheap as hell to get, people remember it from when they were kids… could open the door to people playing others.

How to promote the community?
My ideas so far are to do weekly 30$ winner take all tournaments. No entry fee (1 game per week… would most likely be 3s)

Lots of advertising around the campus…

Any other ideas?

How to make information available?

Since 3s is my game of choice I was thinking I would make a website with gathered information from this website in one central place with visual appeal. The other part I would add is to have an organized library of videos from youtube so that people can watch specific matchups. With that being said I would be looking to do a breakdown of a lot of matches so people can understand the thought process while playing as well as the concept of mix-ups, baits… etc.

How to keep people playing and getting better?

I know I can’t force this… but I was thinking since 3s is now emulated that running an on campus kaillera server would help LOADS of people get better and give casual gamers as well as the people who play in the weekly tournaments a place to play in peace with out pumping quarters while learning.

Help!

I need information on how to get my hands on the boards and cabinets I can modify to use Japanese parts… preferably 2 person cabinets with a big CP so I can put the controls far away from one another so there really isn?t any clutter.

Closing
Give advice and ideas… don?t be shy!

Also TY to buktooth to discussing this on aim with me a bit earlier.

#2

damn, i wish i had somebody like you at my school (binghamton university). what school are you going to?

you’ve got a good set of games there. the last time i played someone on campus in the arcade, he asked if there was a mvc2 machine. too bad we don’t have one, even though i don’t play it. however, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that most people don’t play fighting games anymore. some people are just going to be like “ugh, wth is street fighter. shooters are the best!” it’s sad, but it’s the truth.

for promoting the fighting game community, well, fliers would be a good start. but, i really don’t think college kids look at fliers too carefully (i know i don’t). you should have a form of electronic communication. i know that for my school, we get a daily newsletter sent to us through our school e-mail addresses. and in the newsletter, announcements are made (including club interest meetings, if the president asks for it). so, i think it’d be a good idea if you could somehow get a hold onto that situation.

and as for the tech stuff, i have no idea. i really don’t know much to begin with. :lol:

you’ve got a lot of good ideas. keep up the good work. :tup:

#3

may i ask what school?

#4

university of rhode island

#5

hey colin wussup bro yeah it’s great that u r trying to put something together at your college.

Best bet is what people have stated flyers, free food will bring in starving college kids, start playing in Halls casually and crowds will appear out of interest. Basically exposing urself as much as possible

#6

playing in halls? can’t in my dorm cause like… it’s fuckin small lol… i’ll have to think of where we can play and get an audience.

#7

naw what I mean is like in the foyers or next to the dining halls

#8

well, i think the point he’s trying to make is to start off small.

if you’re always playing fighting games when friends come over, eventually they’ll start asking questions / becoming curious. and if it’s all you’re playing, eventually they’ll start occasionally playing you too. and, of course, they’ll eventually get sucked in! :devil:

that’s how it started with my friends (kinda). we used to go bowling or to the pool hall on weekends, and the place is right next to the arcade. so, i always had to go play a round of cvs2. and, seeing me play all the time kinda got them into it.

it’s all we/they play now.

#9

Hey, I currently run a FGC in a University, the big thing you usually do is exposure of what you do man. Play games in public areas, Lounges or rent out lecture halls and stuff. If there is comp…they’ll see the games and ask to play. Flyers and free snacks and drinks do help, but seeing how you’re a student who’s probably on a student budget, it’s hard to do something like that if you don’t want to be dead broke.

A big thing that would help promote things is an Open House though…that’s if you start a University Club. But that’s all I can think of now. Hope that helps

#10

wow they just gave you the ability to do whatever you want. how’d you manage that? Are they expecting you to pay them back. id get cvs2 and marvel

#11

I think you should run those games on console. Cheap, effective and you can buy more than one game for the specific console(PS2 has almost all those games in an arcade accurate form.). That way you can have more setups, more games and more sticks(you can buy and maintain those at a cheaper price as well.) I hope that was helpful because machines have a tendancy to die randomly and they are expensive to fix.

Edit:I did’nt know it has to turn a profit back… Disregard my console fanboyism then. Then again you could just charge people to play per day and the house(Universtiy) could make more per person, per game. I hope this was’nt as useless

#12

that would make 0$ for the university.

no one has touched their arcade in 6 years, no one has given a shit about it… i just asked if they’d atleast let me try and they didnt say no :-P, i’m still discusing it with the guy still… but he said if they let me then it’d be 3000$ budget. Also he did promise me that if i did get a machine myself i could keep it in the arcade if i gave the university 25% of the profits it made.

#13

Wow you sure are ambitious; you’re basically trying to raise a fighting game community through the machines your college will (hopefully) let you set up. It’s a cool idea, especially since you already have some people interested in supporting it locally. I happen to be going to Brown next year myself, and since RI is tiny as hell anyways I might stop on by if you get some serious comp in your area. It’s like 2:40 where I am, so I’ll think of ways to help you out in the morning.

#14

:sad::sad::sad:

I wish we had ppl like you hear in my area…I’d so help you out man…damn shitload of miles between me and rhode island :frowning:

Good luck with your project:tup:

#15

sounds good man

URI is only 25 mins from brown

#16

that’s a very good idea, good luck with that. Maybe I should try to do the same thing at my school, lol, but u already have the support and I don’t, oh well, good luck anyways though

#17

I don’t exactly have full support or anything yet… but i’m hoping i will soon enough.

#18

yeah but a little is better than none, at least u have the foundation to start on and the school allowed u to do it, so what u got to lose

#19

I think tournaments will ultimately be the key to raising money and supporting an active community, but for the incipient stages of your arcade you have the right idea with allowing everyone to play, risk free, for a pretty substantial amount of money (these are college kids, pay in mind).

If there is no entry fee, it sounds like you are going to use the school’s money to finance the tournament winnings. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but I think giving second and third place some money would further encourage people to play/keep on playing.

…But in order to do that, you would either a) need to get more money from the school or b) charge entry fees to cover the costs, which would discourage the casual player from participating. So for now, until you get a core group of people who want to play competitively, try the no entry fee tournament, but think about giving something to people who fall a little short. The key is to ask the people who are interested how they want their tournaments run, which should be feasible once you run a few tournaments and find the people who keep coming back.

Just remember, running a tournament is not easy, so I recommend digging through the Domination 101 forums to find the article on tournaments, I think it was called “Banned.”

Cool idea, I saw your blog so this is definitely something you can do, but I wouldn’t go through the effort unless people are willing to actually go online and see the videos you put up.

Interesting…I don’t think your campus would allow emulation unless you explain you can run emulated software if you have the original boards for the games, so this might actually work. I don’t know how it applies to everyone else who needs to have a ROM of the game in order to play on your server (unless everyone has a 3S machine, stranger things have happened).

The biggest issue I see with this is the fact people won’t be playing on sticks on kaillera. Hell, I don’t even think most people have any sort of game pad for computer games, so playing ST on a keyboard probably won’t appeal to most.

This is where I can talk a little about what I was planning to do for my fighting game community in college. I was going to go the console route, inviting people to play my fighting games (I have a sizable collection of PS and DC fighting games, barring some of the more recent KOF games) on my sticks. I probably wasn’t going to create a community, but I’d find a few people who I could play with, which is more than what I can say I have been able to find where I live.

I only bring up my idea because it serves the same purpose as yours, to help players come together and hone their skills for the weekly tournaments, while providing them a means to play on sticks. Plus I think it’s a lot cooler to be sitting next to the guy you are crushing in a fighting game. As for issues: 1) you need sticks 2) you need games and consoles 3) you need to be able to trust people with your shit (harder than it sounds in my experience) 4) depending on the game, you might not have arcade perfect ports.

Well those are my ideas. I’ve said it a few times already, but the most important thing is to ask what the people who are playing your games want to do, because they who decide whether your community forms or not

#20

I was planning on going East for College.

University of Rhode Island may not be a bad place to go. :tup:

Anyway,I’d get 3rd Strike and Marvel.

When I first showed my 3rd Strike to some of my friends,they were all"WTF,there are a Street Fighter 3,and I didn’t know about it?!"

Maybe it will have that kind of effect on people,and before you know it you will have a scene for the game.

If you can afford it,get a MvC2 machine.It’s a flashy game and I’m pretty sure it will make some money,and cater to the people that know how to play the game,and the Comic book crowd that will enjoy playing as their favorite characters.

As for getting people interested.You could have little tournaments for the games.A minimum of 10 people enter the tournament at a $5 fee and all of the money is placed in a pot.Winner gets $50.Not exactly a bad trade-off