Competitive Tetris Scene Rant

[Rosti_LFC]

[div align=\\\"left\\\"]It's easy to point fingers at TTC, but as a community we're hardly making things straightforward for them.

First off, if they agree to implement a hardcore Tetris VS game, what rule-set do we want them to use? TOJ? TF? TetriNET? Blockbox? Tetris DS? NES/GB Tetris? Each has its own merits, and each has a group of people who think that's how multiplayer Tetris should work. Personally I absolutely hate combos sending garbage, but there are people out there who prefer it that way. Same goes for T-spins. It's not easy to implement a standard competition format when there are so many to choose from. It's the same reason mahjong doesn't have a particularly huge competitive scene (it's the reason in Europe at least).

Then there's the financial aspects, which I think some people are being a little bit unrealistic about. Tetris isn't seen by many casual players to even be a multiplayer game, let alone a game that could become an e-sport. It's not so easy for a company like TTC to just work to a "if you build it they will come" philosophy when it comes to creating a competitive game and scene.

There are two aspects of this community that most likely aren't endearing prospects to TTC when it comes to making Tetris a profitable e-sport.

The first is our size - we're pretty damn small. HD has 2000+ members listed, but how many of those are actually sticking around competitively? I doubt the current competitive scene is bigger than 100 players, and I've yet to really see anything that properly contradicts that. Note that Tetris DS sold 2,000,000 copies, had fairly decent multiplayer wifi, an online rating and leaderboards system, and hasn't garnered a huge competitive player base. Tetris is presumably making a shitload of money for TTC right now, and they've got no real reason to throw that away to try and please such a tiny number of hardcore competitive players. 100 compared to 2 million is not even 0.01%.

There's no reason why they can't make a game that appeals to both casual players and hardcore players with different modes, but if they're going to try and make it an e-sport then they'll need to focus on hardcore competitive online gameplay, which might potentially lose them the millions of sales they're getting from mostly casual players.
Sure, there are games that have casual players and also MLG tournaments, but they're not Tetris, and they didn't start off with the image that Tetris has currently grown. Just making a competitive Tetris game isn't enough to make Tetris a competitive e-sport - they'll have to overcome the misconceptions and stigmas associated with the game as well.


The second is a combination of the fact that we're so damn fragmented in our preferences as a community (as I said at the start of the post) and that we're so happy to play unlicensed and/or fan-made games. How many of the hardcore players here actually play Tetris Friends on a regular basis? How many people stick to games like TOJ (which aren't licensed in the west), to games like Blockbox and Nullpomino? A decent majority, I expect.

And why? Because we prefer those games. Does that necessarily mean that TTC are doing something wrong? Quite possibly, but it's not for certain, because so much of it is just a matter of preference. If TTC made a game which implemented VS Tetris with the exact rules of Blockbox rated (and a better rating system), would it make people stop playing TOJ and play this new game instead? Maybe, but it's far from guaranteed.

The hardcore community isn't even that big, and yet TTC still won't be able to please everyone. And the track record we're currently setting is that if the game doesn't please us, we've got alternatives that don't make TTC money, and we'll stick to them. Even if they go to the effort and produce a well-made, competitive version of multiplayer Tetris, there's zero guarantee that the whole hardcore scene will adopt it as the de facto multiplayer Tetris standard. If anything, I'd be pretty surprised if that was the case.


On one hand I support the petition and all this effort to try and get TTC to move their asses, but I'm massively sceptical it'll make any difference. Above all, we have absolutely no collateral, no bargaining chips. Think about it: you're asking them to abandon a business model of making games that are fun for soccer moms and casual players, which seems to be making them a fair bit of money, and what are we offering them in return? That maybe the relatively insignificant number of players here will drop our fan-made clones and play the game that they make, providing it meets our extremely high standards that we can't even agree upon ourselves?

You're making what may seem like simple demands, but which financially are high-risk demands at their end, and you're offering what amounts to pretty much diddly-fu**ing-squat in return. It's totally the wrong way to go about it.

What we need are:

- A detailed outline of gameplay mechanics which are agreed upon by the community to become the basis for future multiplayer Tetris games. It's not enough to just say "make Tetris Friends better". It's not helping for people to also say things like that they should offer fast, customisable DAS for free - ultimately there's nothing wrong with them asking us to pay a small amount of money for it, and we're not endearing ourselves to them when we refuse to. It's important to decide on exactly what we want, because there's pretty much no chance TTC are going to get it right without us telling them, and there's not much incentive for them to try otherwise.

- More people in support of this. TTC can easily afford to lose a few hundred people when they've got hundreds of thousands of players. They have no need to care if we're not even going to make a scratch in their revenue.

- Drop the demand that they should leave fangames alone. I totally support the demand, but there's absolutely no way it'll happen, because it's ultimately completely not in their interest financially to do that. There should be other middle grounds that are worth exploring. Perhaps asking them to give support to fangames and accepting them as licensed Tetris games (as happened with Neave Tetris/N-Blox), maybe some sort of Tetris SDK or something.

- Some sort of argument, preferably with evidence from surveying people and the like that a competitive Tetris format would actually be viable, and would potentially make them more money than they're currently doing now. This would be a total b**** to do, and would take a long time, but really, it's the only thing I can ever see actually making an impact on TTC. Money talks far louder than a "a few hundred people want you to do this" petition.
The ultimate way would just to produce a competitive Tetris-based game, to spread it around as much as possible, to grow a large, competitive community based purely around this single game and nothing else, and to potentially get this game featured in some of the main-stream e-sport formats. And to do all of this while defending lawsuits from TTC to keep the game in action. There are plenty of people who go on and on about how TTC have no valid grounds to sue fanmade Tetris games, so maybe these people and the community should put their money where their mouth is. I can't see this ever happening, but it'd be the ultimately "actions speak louder than words" response if it did.


tl;dr - I support what you guys are trying to do, but I'm pretty damn sure isn't going to work for various reasons. That said, there's definitely ways that these reasons can be addressed and make something like this far more likely to work.

Much longer post than I was expecting it to be when I started writing it, but meh, that's my two hundred cents.[/div]

[Wojtek]

there are not many competitive players, because official games lack competitive/challenging gameplay.
community is small because they do nothing to make it bigger.
and making tetris esport is not our idea, its ttc main goal according to what henk rogers says.

[EnFuego]

First off, if they agree to implement a hardcore Tetris VS game, what rule-set do we want them to use? TOJ? TF? TetriNET? Blockbox? Tetris DS? NES/GB Tetris? Each has its own merits, and each has a group of people who think that's how multiplayer Tetris should work. Personally I absolutely hate combos sending garbage, but there are people out there who prefer it that way. Same goes for T-spins. It's not easy to implement a standard competition format when there are so many to choose from. It's the same reason mahjong doesn't have a particularly huge competitive scene (it's the reason in Europe at least).

http://harddrop.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2537 This thread is a response to most of your arguments.


Alexey and Henk have both gone into interviews and said they want to make tetris a sport. I have never seen them go on record and state they would love to make tetris a sport if it would be profitable to them. If they don't have any plans of ever making it competitive, why don't they just send an e-mail to harddrop and say that.

How is not making competitive tetris in their best interest? How many people look at a TGM3 video and never play tetris ever again? I don't get how people think they will lose money making tetris competitive.

Oh hey starcraft 2, game made entirely for super competitive gameplay, how are you doing?

[Someone2knoe]

Yeah if they want to make it an e-sport then the hardcore players that are on harddrop are going to be among the top players no doubt. So really they would need to listen to us to get our support.

Also if they want to make it an e-sport, they should at least start out by making tournaments... You can't just jump from no tournaments to being an e-sport. The way I would think it would work is that the tournaments get bigger and bigger until it is recognized as an e-sport.

At the moment their e-sport goal is just complete bull, because if they were really working on that we would already see tournaments.

[solo2001]

tetris will never succeed as an esport
truth hurts man

What? Tetris would thrive as an e-sport! How exactly would it fail? Considering all the other games out there that have official tourneys, this should already exist!

[Someone2knoe]

Yeah provide some evidence on why it will fail, don't just say it will fail lol..

[Agamemnon]

What? Tetris would thrive as an e-sport! How exactly would it fail? Considering all the other games out there that have official tourneys, this should already exist!

His key issue with Tetris as an e-sport is quite vital though. There are too many standards and versions, but no single one that everybody would agree on. It'd have to be by orders from some kind of official organ, or people would just end up fighting over that too.....

[Someone2knoe]

There could be standardization. If thats what we need I'm willing. As long as the committee who decides on the ruleset listens to the people, so that enough people will be satisfied.

Personally I enjoy playing, no spins, t-spins only, and all spins. So I wouldn't really mind all that much. But I do think All spins is the way to go, it allows for variety and requires the pros to be masters at manipulating their field. But I think spins should be weakened.

[sonic]

Nice, how did we get Sonic on board so quickly?  

a: i agree with most of the complaints issued  
b: i have my own gripes about the way things have been handled :/

for example:
1 i was banned from tf forums for the longest time for no reason, without warning.
2 upon inquiring about the replay bug i was responded to with "we'll look into it". havnt heard anything yet, and now several weeks later, i have an amazing game of marathon and the replay bug has ruined the replay  this makes me very sad, as it was a near perfect game(well... 4 mistakes.  ) and no one can see! not only does it feel like someone used color crayons on my mona lisa, but that game replay would have made a good model and tool for people trying to break a million or increase their high score :/
C: if they did care to really make this game a sport, why is it that we seem to lack a liaison between us, the the ones that want to help them with their stated goal, and them, who do what seems to us like irrational and backwards things without explanation. i mean really. cmon. we as a community can handle truth, as frustrating as it can be sometimes, but imo, there should be someone here  who can explain the actions of the decision-makers. even if that decision is based on $. i'd rather hear what the business decisions were based on than to be left in the dark flapping around because i have no idea whats going on. if they really are just a business and looking for more dollars, i'd personally rather hear that than some contradictory "we want to make tetris an e-sport" guff.

crap that went on for too long already. thank you tf, for all of the 'free' games we'v played. i can only hope that the level of frustration we are expressing here inspires someone to take the time to get into the community and find a happy middle ground for us all.  the end. <3 sonic

p.s. imo, the perfect tetris game would be one of many options, where one could choose everything from combo table to softdrop speed to garbage distribution and targeting style. even where the pieces spawn and randomizer. i think if there was one game that could combine some of the options of the other good tetris games available, it would be a huge hit. as long as it didn't lag >.< rant complete.

[jemm_4]

you people write a lot on these forums...

[chopin]

Yes, Rosti is right that there may be a problem deciding on rules for a game. But I'm 100% positive that if the right people sat down and worked on fine-tuning the balance, a perfect game will arise. I personally think that TOJ or Expert Plus mode on Tetris Friends is almost ideal to a competitive Tetris ruleset. Years down the line when the game attracts more viewers, maybe All Spin scoring can be added, but for starters things should be introduced simple enough (Tetris, T-Spin, Combo).

I myself also play multiple styles of Mahjong. Yes, there are many styles, but they all have basic common rules. One thing that the Mahjong world did was create a whole new ruleset based on various styles. They then played through it over and over and then balanced it out until it seemed right. After a tournament they then implement and tweak a few rules (scoring, etc.) to fine tune the game further for the next tournament. I think that's what competitive Tetris can do. The style is called Zung Jung and it's the official ruleset for the World Series of Mahjong in Macau. It was/is successful for thousands of Mahjong players from diversely different styles.

Tetris has much fewer styles than Mahjong does, something like 15 compared to hundreds. I'm sure we can make it work. The scoring system for the "official competitive game" has to be tested correctly and thoroughly -unlike how it seems to have been done for certain games (such as Tetris Friends).

TTC USA can take example from other countries such as Korea and Japan for tournaments. I mean, come on, Korea was able to successfully attract a small audience with a Tetris league sponsored by Burger King and 5 second combo map games. If people think that that is interesting, they will love Expert Plus (or whatever).

[larrytetris]

[div align=\\\"left\\\"]
- Some sort of argument, preferably with evidence from surveying people and the like that a competitive Tetris format would actually be viable, and would potentially make them more money than they're currently doing now. This would be a total b**** to do, and would take a long time, but really, it's the only thing I can ever see actually making an impact on TTC. Money talks far louder than a "a few hundred people want you to do this" petition.[/div]

Towards this purpose:
Does Hard Drop have an IRS-approved tax deductibility code? Are we registered as a 501©3 non-profit? If so, it'll make finding sponsorships a lot easier, and consequently allow us to host a tournament to show the popularity (or lack thereof, after which we would drop our case) of competitive Tetris and turn TTC heads.

[Magnanimous]

What? Tetris would thrive as an e-sport! How exactly would it fail? Considering all the other games out there that have official tourneys, this should already exist!

Well like Rosti said, there is kind of a stigma associated with Tetris. Pretty much everyone knows about it, but I'd bet that when you say "Tetris" the average person will think of single-player A-Type GB Tetris. Most people don't even know that you can send lines... Whenever I say I'm playing Tetris against people, someone always asks "Wait, isn't it a single player game?" Starcraft was built for multiplayer, so it's a little more obvious for an e-sport.

[Someone2knoe]

That stigma is based on people who have played the game once or twice. They aren't even qualified as casual. It doesn't even matter what the stigma is or what people know about tetris, this fact is they will never know its competitive unless it uh actually is and has tournaments. And it can easily get competitive despite what people think about the game. TTC has made no attempt yet at making it competitive. TF is all geared toward noobs (casual players), when it can support both and even convert casual players into hardcore players.

[Rosti_LFC]

Tetris DS did make reasonable steps to making it competitive. At least, it was the largest jump that there's been in the series for western players. It was reasonably competitive back in the day, it just didn't stick.

Magnanimous understands what I'm getting at. You can make the greatest competitive game in the world, but it won't do anything unless you get the right people playing it. Most people, even people who are pretty into gaming, have the idea that Tetris is a single-player game. It has a massive preconception associated with it that it's a fairly simple puzzle game, that mums like and that is mostly to kill a few minutes on your own rather than something to be a massively competitive online e-sport.

It's easy to compare things to the likes of StarCraft and say that e-sports can be huge and massively profitable, but that's not really much of an argument. StarCraft is a real-time strategy series. It's the sort of game that even to a casual gamer is clearly something with a lot of depth to it. It's the sort of game that attracts the sort of people who have made it such a huge e-sport. A new Tetris game struggle to get that kind of image on its own, even without the sort of stigma it already has.

StarCraft is massive, but I'm fairly sure there'll be dozen of games out there which attempted to be e-sports and never gained enough popularity. You can't just hail StarCraft as proof that an e-sport model would definitely work for Tetris, because they're completely different games. That's like saying that making LARPing more of a competitive sport would mean it'd attract viewing audiences that rival the FIFA World Cup final. That sort of comparison just doesn't work.

The existence of StarCraft also means that there's some pretty stern competition for Tetris to face-off if it wants to become big. There's only so many gamers out there who are willing to devote themselves to a game to become competitively good at it, and I don't think Tetris is appealing enough to lure people away from the likes of StarCraft, Eve Online and the dozens of FPS games that have that sort of following. Especially when some of those games were specifically designed to provide competitive online multiplayer, while we're basically trying to shoehorn Tetris into it.


You've got to appreciate that Tetris is massively successful even in it's current form, and that it has been for over twenty years. If they wanted to make it competitive, they'd have to really emphasise the point to people that Tetris can be competitive, because hardly anyone would be aware of it otherwise. And in doing that, they'd be risking the casual model that they currently have. Risking a model that makes an absolute ton of cash for them, and even if it's not what Henk and co say they want for the game, I'm sceptical that they'd throw away their current mountains of cash for it.

As much as TetrisFriends has it's flaws, I really don't think we've helped ourselves by mostly shunning it. They've tried to make some sort of compromise with us, and the basic vibe we've given back is "if you can't make it perfect, we ain't playing it". If we're so damn hard to please, it's no wonder they don't seem to want to bother to please us any more.

@chopin: I know what you mean with the WSoM in Macau, but the game still has tons of different factions who all think that their version is what everyone else should be playing competitively, and it hurts the game that everyone who plays mahjong isn't playing the same type of mahjong. And you say there's hundreds of mahjong variants, but there's only five or six main styles that are popular.