Tetris Sport - summary of 3 first years

[Wojtek]

So about 3 years ago we were introduced to idea of Tetris Sport, it was all in news.
Kotaku: Tetris Creator Wants to Turn Puzzler Into Sport
CNN: Tetris turns 25: Is it the next Olympic sport?
etc.

I am sure many people in tetris community were excited about it. Idea returned in many Henk Rogers interviews that spammed harddrop news section for a while. But seems it got bit more quiet nowadays.

So let's talk about what has been done and with what results.

I will start:






[Intentionally Left Blank ]

[caffeine]

I know your thread is just meant as a joke or something. However, now I'm kind of interested. Here's a summary of Tetris competitions over the last several years. To the best of my knowledge, they all had some level of involvement from TTC or a TTC-licensee:

• 2007 - Tetris Evolution tournament at the mall in Honolulu
• 2007 - Tetris Cup Challenge
• 2008 - EA's Tetris Mobile Tournament
• 2008 - Guiness World Record Tournament in Canada
• 2008 - 2009 - Hudson's Tetris Party tournament where the top 500 ranks got 1,200 points in the Wiiware Shop or something. (Thanks, Blink.)
• 2009 - Burger-King Ongamenet National Tetris Tournament
• 2010 - Classic Tetris World Championship
• 2011 - HD TTO (prizes and Tetris.com stream)
• 2011 - 2nd Annual Tetris World Championship

I'm sure I missed something, so just let me know!

[Wojtek]

Joke? No, I am dead serious.

Good list you have compiled. I hope it is not meant to disprove my statement, just provide extra details. Classic Tetris World Championship is only thing we seen in past years and I think it's too little (to say the least) to cover Roger's bold claims. Two niche tournaments don't make Tetris "first real virtual sport".

It is clear to me that what Rogers was saying was just PR mumbo jumbo without any coverage in real plans or whatever. And anyone who believed him is sucker. But I welcome interesting discussion with those who disagree.

[SmokesCement]

I'm pretty new to the Tetris community, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

For Tetris to be a successful sport it needs to be interesting to watch. A high level match, to the untrained eye, might only be interesting for a few minutes.

Some sports are only entertaining in a limited amount (as opposed to sports like football). The Olympics, for example, have many sports which are only entertaining like this: the shot-put, archery, curling etc.

This doesn't make those sports bad, and they can be very enjoyable to participate in. But they won't ever really be successful as a sport like football or tennis if they're not fun to watch.

Tetris works as a player. We know this. The formula has been tried and tested for nearly 30 years, and it has been proven competition worthy. But, it won't ever catch on as a sport, if it doesn't involve the spectator.

If you were to commentate a series of Tetris matches between top players, could you keep it interesting? Talking about strategy, impressive block placement, making players making mistakes and recovering exciting?

Perhaps it could succeed. Holding a yearly world tournament, with the top players from across the world, people might watch it. With enough build up, player exposure (for fans), and a high quality stream (with good commentary), it could work as a sport.

[caffeine]

Those are some good points, SmokesCement. Competitive Tetris may not be interesting enough to watch for it to become a successful spectator sport such as football. But as you said, it's definitely interesting enough to play.

Some people have said before that we should change the game so that it is better to watch. I don't mind changes that wouldn't affect the core gameplay too much. However, some have recommended drastic changes such as slowing the game's pace down significantly. In my opinion, this would hurt the core gameplay. I believe being able to play very fast is crucial. For those able to play fast, it adds an element of fun to the game (see: "flow").

In short, we should prioritize making a quality game to play over making it better to watch. That said, if HD's stream is any indication, Tetris players at least find commentated matches to be interesting enough to watch.

[SmokesCement]

I absolutely agree on keeping the high speed play, caffeine. You want to see players doing something you cannot, so watching two world class players at 20g is going to be far more exciting.

In my opinion, to make VS Tetris exciting, it needs a high level of interaction between the players. Sending junk simply isn't enough. For example:

- Players can use different abilities against their opponent, with timing being critical
- Reward certain styles of play, and combos (5x back to back T-spins, perfect clears, etc. build power to spend on these abilities)
- Comeback mechanic (adrenaline can be activated once a match to slow your blocks decent for 5 seconds?)

Obviously balancing something like this is tricky. The ideal scenario has your opponent struggle against these abilities, but if they can survive they are then placed in a better position than you, and can retaliate.

Some ideas for these abilities (they shouldn't be too crazy or extreme):
- Flood (The next 'X' shapes become the current shape, if you use this wisely you can give your opponent a lot of tricky shapes, but poorly and they can enjoy all lines)
- Deny (Clears the next shape, and for the next 'X' shapes there will be no more 'X' shape)
- Clear (The next 'X' preview shapes are cleared and replaced with new random ones)
- Force Hold (Automatically holds their current block as though they had press hold, even if they have already done it once)

These abilities must be timing critical, and their strength determined by how you're doing. This way there is skill when using, avoiding and surviving them. You could build power by clearing lines, up to a maximum amount. Certain abilities require 'X' power, and have an effect of 'X'. For example:

- If I anticipate you using Force Hold, I can press hold myself a split second before you. This results in you swapping back in my current block, with no real effect on me. Now you have wasted your stored up power.
- I see you're going for a double T-spin (builds a lot of power and sends a lot of junk), so I block your T shape just as you're about to get it. However you could irrationally instantly place 2 blocks poorly so quickly that I miss your upcoming T shape and end up blocking the wrong shape!
- Watching your upcoming shapes I see a killer combo coming up, so I quickly clear your previews.

You should never be able to instantly defeated your opponent, unless you do something truly spectacular, and they let you get away with it.

Ok, I think I'm getting carried away, so I'll stop now!

[bigwig]

If Ongamenet is the ESPN of esports, then why can't Tetris be the Spelling bee of Ongamenet? I wonder if that burger king tournament viewed well.

[Wojtek]

I think Korean tournament event was never repeated. That's sad because it was very interesting and promising.

[Paradox]

there is no way in hell tetris would be the first virtual olympic sport. Maybe eventually, or maybe it will get very big. RTS and FPS games are far ahead though. The tetris scene is just the 30 active hard drop members lol. the are casual players with sprint times over 2:00.

The people that can make a difference and how:

1. The Tetris Company - requires little explanation, they own the game so they decide what to do with it.
2. Sponsors - Someone with money who likes tetris can hold tournaments
3. Programmers - They can develop new games that are more appealing than the existing ones.
4. Players- They can support tournaments and games put out by the above 3


Anyway we can emulate the burger king tournament (which i was thinking of doing)

korean pro gaming is always team based. if you play 1v1 you still belong to some sort of team. It makes it very fun and exciting.

Also there is no game right now suitable for competitive play except for hangame, and we don't really have easy access to it.

[Blink]

Like Smokes said, high level Tetris is only fun to watch for a few minutes and be wowed with but too difficult to follow after that.  I  think in order for Tetris to be a successful tournament game it has to keep the spectators attention for a long time.  

One possible suggestion to improve things:

Have characters in the game that do things when you're sending/blocking lines/t-spin/tetris/single/double/triple etc.  I think both players and spectators would be more involved if there was a character to connect to.  Almost all successful tournament games have some sort of character (the soldier/terrorist in first person shooters, the heroes in League of Legends, the units in Starcraft, the fighter in fighting games, etc.)

That way, people who might not be able to fully follow the gameplay and what's going on can watch the characters fighting it out.  They might not know what a T-spin is but they saw a nice attack done by one character to the other and can sort of learn that T-spins are a good thing to do.

[Paradox]

high level Tetris is only fun to watch for a few minutes and be wowed with but too difficult to follow after that.  I  think in order for Tetris to be a successful tournament game it has to keep the spectators attention for a long time.  

Thats exactly right, there needs to be additional mechanics in order to make it interesting for spectators. What it needs is more strategy and less SPeed + apm + downstack = win.

right now improvement comes almost purely from intense practice. There isn't much a top tier player could tell you outside the basics. most of us knows what makes players good but lack the practice to be at that point. there needs to be more deeply intellectual strategic decisions.

[bigwig]

Like super puzzle fighter?

[Blink]

Yeah bigwig, but now that I think about it, it didn't really help Super Puzzle Fighter in the competitive tournament aspect.

Also, might not be worth mentioning but to add to caffeine's list of events:  Hudson had some Tetris Party tournament where the top 500 ranks got 1,200 points in the Wiiware Shop or something.

[SmokesCement]

Teams are definitely something that would help spectators get involved.

Teams based on nationality tend to work - even if there are only top Japanese and American players, people from across the world can generally pick a side to relate to still. Better yet if a player from their own country is involved, then they're likely to back him for that reason alone.

Teams of top players can easily work too, but they require more personality and balance. Personality in the players - jokers, weird play styles or rivalries between players for example. Balance between teams, it's not interesting to watch the same team win over and over, they need close competition. Interviews of players would also help with building fans.

[Wojtek]

I don't think spectators are such big issue. I think all of current of eSport games are interesting to watch only for somebody who are not playing this one game or similar one, and people not familiar will this type of games would be most likely unable to follow it properly. Also It will be more interesting if players are shown not only the game, so certainly live event stream can look much better than online tournaments we have currently.

Main purpose of sport is to provide entertainment for participant not for observers. Take note than none of real life sports were designed with speculating in mind. Of course any heavy commercialized sport would need spectators, but this is certainly not where it starts. Also people watch sports they watch not only because it is interesting (in most of causes it's not really), but because they believe it is important and this is from where most of entertainment comes from.

To say it shortly, if you want spectators invite your mom (that apply to any eSport, not only tetris).