I guess its time that i address this officially for people who want to use words like "Failure/waste of money" in association with VxG, and dont have any facts together. While most of those who were throwing around baseless rumors about VxG have come and apologize after talking to the players who were here, i guess Mr. Revolver and maybe some other might want to check their facts.
First of all, VxG was never intended to be a huge number tournament. Sorry, but having 200+ entrants in each game is not what interests us. What interests us is the total number of people that come to the tournament. Total number of international people who travelled to the island and stayed at Sonesta Maho for our tournament was 378 people. That is just under triple the number that came last year (128). These were spread across many games, including fighting games, but let's not forget several people who came just for the vacation aspect and parties of VxG. We have met the target of the hotel, the government and the people of St. Maarten who got extra work and benefits in this slow season on our island because of this event. I think the 8000+ people who came out to our Sunday Celebration with the gamers on the beach is a testament to the appreciation our island people have for the gamers who came here.
Also, if you understand the nature of tourism advertising, it is about building awareness about a destination. How many members are there on TYM? say 10k? Well guess what, while most of those TYM members NEVER heard of St. Maarten before, now every single one of you knows about it being a tourism destination. Sure, not all of you may travel here, or even like the destination, but if even 1% of you travel to our island over the next 5-10 years for one trip, the money invested was already a success.
VxG was by no means perfect. Keep in mind that a lot of the issues we had was some let downs from people we hired in your own FGC. We'll make adjustments on the partnerships and people we hire in 2014 to ensure that we do even better. We know we some things to improve on for next year, but this is just our second year as an international tournament, our first in which we attracted a large number of people.
The fact is: almost every single person of the close to 400 people that came here had the times of their life and cant wait to come back. Ask any of the mk or injustice players or other of their overall experience here for yourself if you have doubts. Stream monster experience was not as great, and while this is secondary, or actually even tertiary to who we want to impress, we still knows its important to put on a good show for the audience online and will improve that a lot next year.
Finally let me say, that the overall lack of support we got from people in this community during the weekend was really sad. To see certain individuals lick their chops at the opportunity to take a swipe at VxG's shortcomings is something most sponsors would back away from and cease to support your scene. Luckily, i am a strong willed person and have given the thumbs up to our government to go ahead for next year. I could just resign based on the few trolls who tried, like revolver, who try to crap on the event, and just do a league of legends tournament, but i want to give the FGC a chance at big prizes and an awesome vacation every year. But if trolls continue to polute and attack sponsors at will, the scene is not going to grow. People have to be careful of the level of trolling. Some of you going as far as to try to send the thread insuperable made to our local newspaper is proof that some people are maliscious in intent. But most have apologized for these actions and i hope now that the dust has settled people can give us a chance to show them why VxG is an important part of the FGC from now and many years to come.
If you want to make this a thread of its own TYM go ahead.
