Childintime wrote:

Rugby doesn't do it for you? Nit trying to start a rugby vs yankball slag-off - they're both hardcore, legit sports - just that rugby also has danger, plus an extra dash of homoeroticism and grown men crying to national anthems.

davyK wrote:

Watching elite players is too intimidating and hard to follow. It is great to know that a game is deep enough for people to become that good, and that would be an attractive quality of a game for many people, but it also needs to be attractive to novices, or even intermediate level players. 

For example my best 40 line time is just under 2 mins. For many people here that wouldn't even rate me as intermediate. How can I get involved in competitive Tetris and have an enjoyable time? Quite often when I went online with Tetris Party I would have my ass handed to me even with the rating system enabled. That isn't enjoyable for me and I imagine quite boring for my superior opponent! If there were ways of grading players with methods of moving up the divisions then maybe more people would be attracted.

Many people consider Tetris as a solo game and don't even know about battle mode. I have organised some events in work and people were amazed such a mode existed. I work in IT and you would think more people would know about this - so imagine how little is known about it in other walks of life.

Selecting the mode is important too. I first tried traditional Game A battle in my competitions and this was a bit boring to watch because most people play too slowly. I quickly switched to Game B - first to 25 lines with garbage attacks on (this mode is available in Tetris & Dr. Mario on SNES) and the game was transformed by the race element. It got people playing and after a whiile some started playing Game A informally.

Tetris could be a great game for spectators as everything can be seen and understood from a single screen view. Even elite level play can be enjoyed up to a point. My office competitions have been achieved by hooking a SNES up to a projector for big screen play and it really makes for entertaining experiences for players and spectators. Opportunities for local and online gaming need to exist.

Finally it needs the right mix of promotion , marketing and organisation. The support of the Tetris Company would be key in doing this and that would be supplemented by the energy of the tetris community.

davyK wrote:

Thinking about the spectator's view a bit more - they could perhaps see a longer piece preview queue as well which would offer a similar experience like watching poker.

Items are a good idea - the selection of them would need to be carefully chosen so it wouldn't be too easy to figure out an optimal set.

davyK wrote:

Elite players not wanting items or other rule changes is a valid position. However if the community is to grow and become acessible for all then changes would need to be made. There would be room for an elite division playing what they consider to be pure (though any rules set is arbitrary - lets face it) but to keep the whole thing encumbered by that would sadly see it never become truly relevant.

The community should want more people playing puzzle games - lest we see what happend to Cave in the shmup community.


The previous post has some great ideas about slowed down replays between rounds - you would need pretty well informed commentators though - but I guess that isn't impossible to achieve.