I'm going to wade in for just a second...

For those people that don't know, part of the underlying thing is for a long time there was a "good ol boys" group of players who worked to basically select the top players and the top tournaments to continually give themselves the best chance of winning. In the early days of the IFPA reboot, the IFPA was really a driving force on trying to change that as much as possible, letting in lots of people to play in simple ways, while creating a system that was solid enough to get the "good ol boys" to more or less adopt it as their own thing while growing the sport. Suddenly, anyone could become a tournament director, submit their own results, and that network controlled less. A lot of people thought this was a good thing.

A big part of this of the current concern I think is this undercurrent that now, the IFPA has suddenly decided to give the good ol boys network a huge cash windfall because they are the best on the state, and I think that's a fair critique. I don't think this was their goal, but I think that the communication of the change, which many tournament directors heard of well after it was already decided, probably wasn't the best way to handle it. Making the decision with the behind the scenes people of the IFPA, which does have many great players in it, makes it questionable to those of us who are being asked to pay into the pot.

BUT, there are two things that seem to have been mostly overlooked by both sides in this. The first is that the IFPA has been run as a business behind the scenes since its inception (reinception?), not just a for fun thing. At some point, the market of tournaments starts to become saturated and needs to grow. This leads into the second point...

A lot more people are top players now. Like, a lot. So this being a pure "good ol boys" move I don't believe.

So everyone is in some ways correct. But threads like this won't change anything. The best players, who are the most vocal about liking the change, aren't going to convince tournament directors that feel burned by the new rules that making the state championship that they are competing worth more that this is suddenly great. Tournament directors aren't going to be able to go back in time to get the communication in a different way that makes it feel like it isn't a good ol boys idea suddenly being pushed.

Ultimately, this is what the IFPA feels is the best way to grow as a business, and I don't necessarily think they are wrong. The Midwest Gaming Classic won't be participating because of weird Wisconsin legality things that I don't care to get into. I spoke directly with Josh about this, and he understands and support it, the same way I understand and support what he is trying to do.

The flip side, and this is what i would encourage tournament directors to think about, is that if you choose not to do IFPA points it does open up new things. For those who haven't been following forever, one of the difficulties the IFPA encountered was that as it grew, certain tournaments abused the formats to try to give themselves more points. This led to format changes with point calculations, and at least for the MGC, made us drastically change how we ran certain tournaments. This year, we get to re-explore formats that would no longer be IFPA legal or would result in almost no points that players used to love.

I expect we will have a few people who won't want to participate because of that, but an equal amount who will want to join in casually because of the change.

My favorite formats are casual, and if you're not going to do IFPA, I challenge you to explore something fun like that instead. As for the IFPA, I hope it thrives, and the nationals become the biggest tournament by money in the country, like they should be!

Yeah, I'm clearly just a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.

But I'm a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist that hosted the relaunch of the IFPA in 2006 at the Midwest Gaming Classic, and who worked for hours directly with the IFPA on creating a more open system

First projected from above pinball machine? That was us! (Although we only did it once!) Multiple format changes and tweaks to encourage new players? That was us too! Both developed with the IFPA directly!

But since I'm from Wisconsin, I must not know what I'm talking about! I like drama!

Yeah, but you're not right. I mean, I'm probably just a moron, but...

Those players would make commitments to certain tournaments. Now, you can say something like clearly those were the best, but there was no specific way to determine what caused a tournament to be great, it was mostly just the top players would decide where they were going.

This led to some difficult things to overcome. Like, why, other than money, would a player bother coming to a different tournament if they knew those top players weren't going to be there?

For players trying to get in and score points, you had to know who the top players were, and which tournaments they would be in ahead of time if you wanted your ranking to be worth much. Larger tournaments (MGC 2009 for instance was bigger than CalEx 2009 by player count) might be worth significantly less points than smaller ones. It was difficult to have any idea how this would go unless you were one of the players going to these places.

If you think this is all a made up thing, and that there wasn't a ton of work put in to help smooth the system over the years, making it better so that new players could play in enough to make it worth their while, sure. I think this was the biggest part of the change, making it so tournaments without many (or any) top players could still make a significant difference. There is a reason small local tournaments are wrestling with this choice, and ten years ago they wouldn't have bothered... And that's good!

The problem is this tin hat wearing conspiracy theorist was there the entire time, and may just know the actual history behind it.

Depending how it was presented, I honestly think it could be the point thing. You end up potentially dividing the base, and so you either have the half that wants points lose some interest or three half that doesn't lose some interest...

I've seen it a bit with mgc. A few people have asked us what we are doing. Legally, we can't run an IFPA tournament at our show. Josh and I spoke on the phone about it at length and there are no workable solutions that we found. Neither of us are mad, I'd say we're both disappointed, but we also understand exactly why the other is doing what they are doing and it is what it is.

There are a number of people who have told me that without the points, they are far less interested in coming to the show or competing in our tournaments. It's not tons, but it's definitely some. So that potentially lowers the totals.

We're planning to run things a bit differently this year, so it will be difficult to determine if overall tournament play is up or down, but we're monitoring it to see what we can do if this method stays long term.

No.

There is a long explanation I'd be happy to explain in email, but I don't want to relitigate it here where armchair quarterbacks like to call me a drama queen for knowing the local laws. I'm good with the state people that I know who work in enforcement giving me the answers.

There is no legal way with the change this year for us to run an IFPA tournament, and based on the actual contracts I signed, it could put me in jeopardy a few different ways. Josh and I spoke about my unique situation on the phone at length, and there is no way around it.

Again, I hold nothing against the IFPA and don't think the change is terrible, I'm just in a unique situation. As the birthplace of the modern IFPA, it is going to be disappointing to not be able to host an IFPA event this year.

Having said all that above, it's going to allow us to make some format tweaks to make our tournaments run in fun ways that are no longer IFPA compliant. Like a return to the original Clock Chaos format is being discussed. It was drastically changed to comply with IFPA rules a few years ago. Pingolf has a tweak planned we think will make it even more competitive, but would disqualify it entirely as an IFPA event.

And again, that's what I suggest for other tournaments to think about doing. There are competitive options out there that may appeal to new players more in particular that wouldn't apply for many or any IFPA points in the old method. These formats may draw in local players just by the fact they are different, and then everyone wins.

Its the best solution we could come up with.

I don't know that it is they have lost interest so much as they are becoming two separate player bases that each look for something different.

I mean, not to toot my own horn, but the MGC by player count has been a top ten tournament countrywide for years now, but we have never been about trying to attract the top players. We worked directly with the IFPA to help develop ways to make it so that new players could just have a blast playing. It didn't help that PAPA was on our dates for many years, or that we lost the ability to give any prizes, but neither of those affected our attendance.

A lot of tournament formats were based directly around maximizing IFPA points which has made what you can do with those formats more and more limiting, because a lot of places worked their formats to ensure they would be worth the absolute most points instead of ensuring they were super fun first. I think in those groups where the question was asked of the dollar, a lot of players took it not as just a dollar, but the choice between more relaxed, casual play and more serious play. Before, that choice wasn't really acknowledged. Now it is, and that has changed the dynamic for some players.

There is nothing that turns me off more than a good player complaining that they aren't getting enough for something I have been just having fun doing, and I think the places that allowed that vote have exposed that rift a bit.

Well, and here's the thing... More of this stuff should happen! I personally have little to no interest in playing in "traditional" tournaments, which are the ones now that qualify for the IFPA points. I don't want to spent six hours playing I'd rather play for an hour. I will fully admit that those methods don't prove my skills as much, but I'm not so concerned about that.

There is an underserved market of people like that. Different formats can and should be introduced to try to better serve that market without the IFPA points.

If everything works out, what actually happens is you have a bunch of casual, fun, public tournaments that serve as the gateway to the more serious IFPA tournaments. In that case, the playing group divides and does both smaller this year, and then they both grow in the future, which is what I honestly think will happen.

We just need to get over the initial rift and for that I simply say players, give both sides a shot. Don't write off tournaments that don't do IFPA points as worthless and see if they are fun enough to be worth your money anyway. And don't write off IFPA tournaments as worthless until you play in them and see what it's like. They will probably become more serious with less of them, which should ratchet up what certain people really love about them. If they do, everyone wins.

I don't understand why you feel that saying this was a goal to move beyond is in some way some sort of weird personal attack but... cool? I mean, those who want to question if that was a thing...

Regardless, we're supposed to be on topic about the suppression thing, not how you have some sort of weird personal issue with me because I publicly identified the "good ol boys" network as one of the issues that the IFPA was working to overcome. At one point six years ago, people were even jokes about putting that on a shirt.

You can say it doesn't exist all you want, but the perception is what matters, and the IFPA worked directly to counter that perception. This change risks making it look like it doesn't counter that perception, and that is where part of the strife comes from in my opinion. I've had direct conversations with Bowen about that perception long ago now, and I wonder if the rule change was part of what led to his suppression.

I could point out direct ways that I think that the rest of your argument isn't what really was going on, but I can tell that it won't matter, and it's not exactly on topic for this particular thread anyway.

I think it was in the other thread that Josh mentioned that the communication of the change wasn't the best, and many TDs learned about the change via message boards and text messages, and so they responded there before fully knowing what was involved. It's mixed into this conversation because of the discussion of player suppression seeming to be the "other side" of the coin, and that re-jump starts things. It's a complex issue. Once the formats actually start and data starts appearing about how much this helps (or hinders) growth, it will just become normal and there will be less complaining about it. Well, at least until Josh announces the 2019 rule changes, whatever those will be...