Last week UVS Games announced that the world championships in Orlando, Florida will be closed to the public. Only invitees, press, and staff will be allowed in the venue. Many players were stunned at this announcement, asking UVS games to allow the player base at the apex tournament of the year, calling it the Celebration of the game.

As I read through the comments, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I think it’s a no-brainer to not allow spectators at the event for several reasons.

Nats = The Real Celebration

It’s natural to feel the tournament that crowns. The highest honor is the the biggest event, like the Super bowl is the biggest football game of the year. However, in this game, the biggest event of the year is NA Nationals! Last year, it had by far the biggest attendance, the biggest side events of the year including retro Nationals, voice actors available for signatures, and giant cards being given away! If you want to funnel players to one event, that’s the one you want to send players to. You don’t want to have people choosing to skip Nats in Dallas to maybe backdoor into Worlds through an LCQ, effectively skipping the whole OP system and dodging the best event of the year.

Boredum

Worlds in Orlando was awesome, but it was on a much smaller scale and after the LCQ, it was a bit awkward to host 100 people that weren’t really there for anything more than small side events, venders, and a silent twitch stream.

Fair Play

Why was the stream silent? Well the players were just on the other side of a retracting wall. It’s fair to say an announcer comment that was a decibal too high or a huge roar of the crowd could affect the match in question. It’s just a better viewing experience at home. I didn’t know what happened with most of the matches until I returned home myself.

Backlash

And for all those reasons, it’s easy to see what was coming if they allowed players to attend. How could players be happy with traveling to an event with basically nothing for them to do? The comment section afterwards would have been relentless. Much better to just tell everyone to save your money, stay home, and enjoy the twitch chat. 

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. I hope to see you all in Dallas this year and until then I’ll see you on the tables!