NZism interview – ‘fluxcore’

Keeping in line with our focus to support and profile local gamers and organisations, Game Culture recently interviewed ‘fluxcore’, owner of the fighting game community website ‘NZism’.

We spoke to flux all about NZism, what it is, how they got started and what they do as a gaming community in New Zealand. Flux had a whole heap of interesting info to share about the fighting game community in New Zealand, so if fighting games are your thing, read on:

GC: Could you please introduce yourself flux. What is your website all about and what do you do there specifically?

F: I’m fluxcore, owner/maintainer/general admin of the NZism website.
Our goal is to serve and expand New Zealand’s fighting game community through holding and promoting various events, as well as providing an open and welcoming board for discussion and information relating to all fighting games and players of fighting games, with special emphasis on anything within New Zealand.

GC: How did your website get started and how long has it been around?

F: There are many websites devoted to the fighting game scene, including
some absolutely indispensable sites such as shoryuken.com (SRK) and tekkenzaibatsu.com (TZ).These sites are the linchpins of the community, and tend to have the most discussion of strategy and international events. However, due to the sheer size of the userbase on them and the scope of discussion, a tiny place like New Zealand gets absolutely no coverage – it’s lucky if we have a forum for the entire asia-pacific region!. It’s very difficult to find other local players or advertise for events. Basically we’re just lost in the noise at sites like those.

A few years back I came across ozhadou.net, which is the community for
the Australian fighting game players. Rather than trying to act as a
replacement for sites like SRK and TZ, Ozhadou focuses less on the strategy talk, and instead concentrates on the Australian scene. They hold yearly events and even produce DVDs, but in general help fighting game players hook up with other like-minded individuals. I thought having a website that was the New Zealand corollary of Ozhadou would be a great idea, and in January of 2007 NZism was born.

Since then, at times it has been a bit of a struggle to get the word out and have enough users to maintain a decent level of conversation, but the release of Street Fighter IV in February of this year really helped. Tekken 6 will be out on consoles soon, so that might help also, Tekken being as popular as it is.

GC: You run competitive events for gamers. What sort of events do you run and where do you run these events?

F: NZism has run two formal tournaments and a number of ‘training sessions’ which basically are just an excuse to hire out a bunch of consoles, invite everyone in NZ to come, and jam on fighting games for six hours with the aim of gaining experience and tips from players of all skills in an offline environment. There have also been severalless well advertised events which are usually either short notice gatherings or semi-private gatherings at some generous person’s abode.

In general these events occur up in Auckland, mainly because it has the greatest concentration of players. A couple of years ago I also ran one Tekken 5 DR tournament at the arcade here in Hamilton, and there are other members who are running their own regular gatherings for other games in other areas. I try to advertise these events as much as possible on the front page of the site, our google calendar, and the details are usually posted in the forums initially anyway.

I should point out that as yet we haven’t held any online tournaments. It’s something I think about fairly often, however the inability to play 360 vs PS3 or PC really hampers efforts due to splitting the player-base drastically. Once a critical mass on any one system is reached I think we’ll start running online tourneys as well, possibly in conjuction with Ozhadou to get some real competitions going.

GC: RvB supports you guys with their venue, which is great. Who else
supports your community and how did you go about gaining that support?

F: We’ve had tremendous support from many organisations, most of whom say what we’re doing is really awesome and sincerely want to help make each event as good as it can be. RvB is an excellent example of this, it’s a great venue for holding a tournament, they give us a good rate, and the staff always are extremely helpful in the case that we need an extra cable, or a soldering iron to bring a stick back into functionality. Even when we are running out of time they understand that the grand finals of a tournament is important, and help to work out a solution. Also of course they have a liquor licence

The main other continued support I’ve received is from a friend, Bunkei, in the U.S.A. who owns the alphaism.com domain and graciously hosts the NZism website, even when I neglect to pay him for a few months at a time. Luckily we have fairly low bandwidth utilisation by American standards! Bunkei was the host of a call-in internet radio show which (mainly) covered the fighting game community in the US, and after chatting to him for a few months I asked if he’d be able to host my site, to which he agreed. While it would have been easy enough to get hosting through another source, I like that he understands what NZism is about and shares the same passion. I think it’s important to help each other out in a community.

In a different vein, for our 2009 National Street Fighter IV tournament we solicited a number of companies for sponsorship prizes – it was the first time we’d done this and in the midst of the recession some companies couldn’t help even though they would have liked to. However, we did get a few key sponsors and they really made the prize cabinet look pretty sweet. Don’t be afraid to look for sponsorship in places that are ‘out of the box’ – you may be surprised by which places will give you a positive response.

As for the method of approaching potential sponsors, it’s always best to meet in person if possible, that goes a long way to showing that you are actually serious, and also have a worthy proposal. Offering them advertising space on promotional material is a good start, along with letting them have their own merchandise/brochures at events. Even letting a representative of their organisation deliver the prize and maybe a little speech. Try to be as professional as possible and even if you get denied, thank them for their time and say you hope that you can work together in the future.

Permanent advertising on a website is another avenue that can be considered, however NZism hasn’t found a case for that one just yet.

One caveat I should point out to people seeking sponsors is to be careful to avoid conflicts of interest between sponsors. Even if you aren’t signing written contracts, there’s a basic level of common sense and respect for your sponsors that you need to take seriously. It never hurts to ask whether a sponsor you have disagrees with the addition of another sponsor who may be a competitor, and leaving a trail of happy collaborators is both beneficial to your own efforts and makes you feel good too

I think basically if people think what you’re doing is cool, then they’ll be pretty happy to help out!

GC: We know that NZism focuses on fighting games specifically. What games do you support and on what platform?

F: As a general rule, everything on every platform as long as it is vaguely a competitive fighting game. While there are certainly particular games which are the current focus (such as Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue and Marvel vs Capcom 2), the fighting game field is an ever-shifting one, and many of us have followed dozens of games in dozens of different series’ over the years. I’m sure if I mentioned International Karate+ on the C64 someone would respond with a challenge! Even obscure games such as Tattoo Assassins or Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game have a few enthusiasts on the boards!

The New Zealand scene in general is too small to be able to segregate communities, so absolutely my cardinal rule for NZism was to be open to all fighting games, whether they be new or old, 2d or 3d, obscure or popular. Obviously I have my own preferences, and I’m not afraid to make them known, but everything is welcome and encouraged on NZism.

GC: What sort of competitions do you run?

F: We try to follow the tournament format set by the American scene, specifically the rules used by the yearly Evolution tournament series. This means double elimination, best 2 of 3 games per set, best 2 of 3 rounds per game, and the finals being more games per set, time permitting of course.

Double elimination means that in general the top 2 players will end up playing each other in the grand finals. It’s a pretty consistent format for that, and I think the players appreciate getting two games in before being eliminated, especially if they’ve travelled a fair distance to come to the event! It’s also the most common tourney format for fighting games, except in Japan where single elimination is more popular. Single elimination is pretty harsh, and the results tend to be more random, but Japan holds enough tournaments and have enough players close enough together that it works out for them somehow.
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GC: How often do you run competitions for gamers?

F: NZism has only been running for a couple of years, and only started seriously pushing tournaments in the past year, so we don’t have any set schedule yet. We intend to continue the yearly ‘Nationals’ event where the most popular games of that year get showcased and entrants from far and wide will attend.

Other than that we have less regular tournaments (every couple of months or so) just to keep things alive. Of course if anyone wants to run tournaments in their area, we’re very keen to help out in as many ways as possible!

The easiest way to keep track of upcoming events is to look at sidebar on the NZism front page, in the Pre-tournament discussion forum, or our google calendar.

GC: How do you feel about the gaming community in New Zealand as a whole? Do you think gamers get enough support? Why or why not?

F: I don’t think there’s any problem with the gamers themselves. We’ve made some pretty strong communities for specific games over the years that do really well. Unfortunately they don’t seem to get any real penetration into the mainstream sector, which could potentially open some people’s eyes that competitive communities for those games actually exist.

I strongly feel that New Zealand has far too many separate ‘general gaming’ communities and that it’s not healthy considering our small population. It’s especially difficult given the rivalries between some communities, and it can be hard to advertise events when you have to effectively spam 5-10 sites and monitor them constantly for questions, even when they may not have a very large userbase. Obviously some divisions make sense, and there have been a couple of junctures where NZism has been approached to integrate with another site. Perhaps I made the wrong decision to stay separate, but it’s difficult to merge into another entity when your community has its own strong sense of identity and way of doing things.

I guess basically all the communities just have to be willing to band together and support each other for the greater good of competitive gaming in NZ. Many sites are VERY protective about ‘advertising’ of other gaming sites, which combined with the points above really stifles the ability of small, very specific sites like NZism to get the word out about events and even just our existence. We’re certainly no threat to any general gaming site, any more than their sites are to general boxing sites because they have a thread about Tua vs Cameron! It’s even very hard to get some of the larger gaming sites to put up a news item about one of our tournaments, presumably because they see the ‘NZism’ tag as being more important than the ‘competitive gaming tournament’ part of the equation. Personally I think if an NZ CoD4, Dance Dance Revolution, Starcraft or any other community goes to the effort of putting on a serious tournament, knowledge of it should be spread wide and far around the gaming scene. Hopefully the Game Culture website can help with that

Also, there is still very much a stigma about video games in the mainstream NZ coverage. I think events such as XLan get coverage on TV because they are still considered niche and ‘freakish’, rather than to actually show the general populous that competitive gaming exists and is as real and serious as any sport tournament. We’ve also been approached by several media fronts that have been very interested in covering events, only to completely disappear from contact when the event actually occurs. This is, as I’m sure you understand, very frustrating and disappointing!

Part 2 of fluxcore’s interview is continued here.