[NeWnAr]

Hi Revenant, I am newnar, head of General Administration for OGM and I am here to respond to the comments and address some misconceptions the community at sc2sea might have about our Rumble@Colosseum tournament. I am sorry for making this a really long post but this is already my maximum capability to be concise.

Firstly, let me thank you for your professional feedback and your overvaluation of OGM's operational capability as well as amount of resources. As much as we hope and want to fulfill the aspects you have pointed out, we are in several ways, unable to do so due to myriad of reasons. I will explain more further down.

Next, I would like to clarify on the nature of our tournament as well as our organization. OGM is a very young non-profit organization that is completely fan-based and grassroots-minded. Our goal is to make participants and spectators of our events feel good, regardless of whether they win or lose. The group was started on a notion that it really sucked as an average SCII fan to join a tournament for a small sum of money, play 2 games, get knocked out, then leave without anymore participation. To us, it is SCII's pride and passion that fuels the community, and it is the community that upholds the entire game. We recognize that most of the community are amateur players or casual players and they are actually the ones who are actually supporting the game to grow and prosper. They are our focus. To create a player and spectator-friendly tournament/event environment is our goal. To sift out pros from the community or to hold giant tournaments with very high prize pools that are more competitive in nature, that to us, is secondary. Please do not misunderstand this as we hate SCII high-level play or professionals with high standards, it is that we recognize the fact that usually these communities are already very well established and stable on their own. OGM stems from necessity and thus this necessity has brought us to Rumble@Colosseum. Rumble@Colosseum is OGM's first offline tournament. The focus of the tournament is to advocate and put into practice OGM's concept. Therefore, it is really focused mainly on amateurs and maybe semi-pros. We are trying to use the launch of HotS to revitalize what we think is a dying Singapore SCII community. This is something that pains us to see and we will do anything that we believe will work to establish the amateur community. Having explained this, I will now address each of your suggestions separately.

1. The tournament was set on a weekday not because we totally forgot that NSFs or adults will be working on that day. This is entirely due to budget constraints. In fact, the $10 registration fee is 100% paid to the venue vendor, and absolutely 0% taken into prize pool or our own pockets. With what choices we had, Colosseum was already friendly enough to offer us a discounted price to hold our tournament on a weekday during the school holidays, which I understand is the period most of their revenue stems from. We could have put it on the weekends, but the registration fee for the competition will have to be increased by a sizable amount. Barrier to entry is a big thing for us because we want to keep Rumble@Colosseum close to the grassroots, close to those who aren't sponsored and close to those who still love the game even if they don't play very well. We decided in the end that to keep the price down for those who can make it, we have really no choice but to put it on a weekday.

2. For this, I personally apologize deeply. The prize pool is something that we had a lot of trouble with because of 2 things: 1) We are not under any direct sponsorship and are therefore very limited on funds. Registration fee, as said above, accounts for 0% of the prize pool. 2) We do NOT want a large cash prize to attract only the extremely high-end players, who will unknowingly yet definitely knock out the weaker amateurs. We understand that this is not the pros fault, but we want the absolute best experience even for the worst players. Simply loving the game regardless of how well you do in it means more to us than anything. Even with the above reasons, I agree that there is no excuse for taking so long to confirm the prize pool. That is indeed a lack in our operations and thus my sincere apology. You will be happy to hear that in my response to your comments, we will be announcing the prize pool very soon(either tonight or tomorrow) on our FB page.

3. As for why the number of participants are limited to 16 per competition group, it is simply because of our relatively small operational capacity. As I have stated above in the second paragraph, we are a young organization without proper funding or sponsorship. It is difficult but we will never give up on what we think we should do for the community but there is a limit to what we can perform physically. We don't have a large crew of 20, 30 people nor do we have the reach to be confident enough to assure our venue vendor that we are able to get so many to sign up such that the registration fees could pay for the cost. You could say that it is our incapability but we have no other way to respond except to agree. OGM has been working in the past months in the absolute red with our own core members putting our own money into the competitions that we have set up. Most of the time, it can't be helped, and instead of sacrificing the community's faith in us, we choose to sacrifice our own wealth. I am not asking for pity here, I am simply hoping to attain some general respect for us who are using our own time and actual money to help a community we all care about so much.

To us, community is number one, competitiveness is number two. We call Rumble@Colosseum the first ever offline HotS tournament in Singapore because, yeah, technically it is the first, there isn't one before it. If you want to call it lackluster because it isn't shining off esports stardom or it doesn't have a great prize pool and a huge cup with big name sponsors like Alienware or Razer or because it's not held in a grand enough location like Expo, we concur. It is definitely lackluster by this comparison, because we are not an organization being treated with similar luster, we are just a bunch of normal gamers who just CANNOT BEAR TO SEE SCII COMMUNITY SHRINKING IN SINGAPORE.

I am sorry for the long wall of text, I am not very eloquent or concise and I am sorry for being so. If anything above has offended anybody in any way, I am, again, sorry for saying things in such ways. Revenant, I love SCII and I love how you play, you are an awesome SCII player and one of the brightest stars in the Singapore esports community. I really thank you for giving us such insightful advice coming from a standpoint as experienced as yours -- discussing them opened us up to things we never thought about and helped us establish ourselves more solidly. I hope what I have said above will help clarify some doubts or misconceptions about us and Rumble@Colosseum. If you still think of OGM as being irresponsible or under-performing after reading, then again, I have no choice but to say that I am truly sorry, this is the absoulte BEST that we can do. And be sure that whatever happens, we will continue to do our BEST because our resolve doesn't falter easily.

Lastly, I promise to all those in Singapore who play SCII (and those who don't, we're growing the community remember?) that Rumble@Colosseum will be NOTHING like you have ever experienced in ANY tournament, SCII or not. We have truly gathered all that we can muster, all that we think will make Rumble@Colosseum completely different in terms of event experience for the player and even non-paying spectators. So even if you don't have money to sign up, or have friends like that, just come down on that day and we ASSURE you that you will NOT be left out of any of the fun and EVERYONE will get to live in the joy of SCII gameplay. Things we have planned out are never-before-seen in any gaming event. And if you have signed up, please try to get more of your friends sign up as well. We are doing a little something special for the winners out of our own pockets and we hope that everyone will love it.

Sorry for taking your time.

newnar
General Administration
Only Gaming Matters

P.S. Please don't misinterpret this message as OGM Ruble@Colosseum shutting its doors to pros. In fact, we invite all Grandmasters and above professionals to come down to mingle with your fans, to help build awareness of SCII by showcasing your skills and much more activities such as offering on-the-spot coaching advice to fellow players of lower caliber. Support the community effort like a real Pro!