Decisions and members night changes

Often I have to make decisions and take action whether I am confident in them or not. I suppose that is the nature of running a business, especially one suffering from a cash crunch. This has been a learning process for me. Bruce Lee once said "If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done". I think that applies here. I have learned that sometimes you have to make a decision and implement it, and if you were wrong you deal with the consequences after the fact. You can't constantly second guess the decision and you can't flip flop.

Often times I will have a long conversation with a pilot that thinks I have made the wrong decision. On the one hand I feel it is my obligation to listen and try to explain myself, because it is the pilots that allow this place to exist. If someone thinks I am making a mistake, they are often right, but often there is not much I can do. Actions must be tested to see if they work, and changed later if they do not. I am the only one that really knows everything that is going on around here. Sometimes I am making a mistake, or sometimes it appears that way because I have information that the pilots do not have. I am the only one that has heard the complaints from all sides. I am the only one that knows how much money is in the bank at any given time. I am the only one that knows what bills are due next week.

I have a lot of little projects I have been working on. Plans for the future I have started to put in motion. The second lesson I have learned is that it all takes much longer than it should because I am spread so thin. I devote 5 minute chunks of time in a lot of different directions and progress is slow. I have learned that it is best to keep some of these projects quiet until there is real progress, because I don't want to disappoint those that are directly effected by them. Rest assured there is a lot of this stuff in the works. I hope this place survives long into the future and we get to roll some of this stuff out. Unfortunately when something goes horribly wrong we have to stop and deal with the emergency at hand sometimes.

This members night thing is exactly that. I would love to pause the game and think about this for a while, but that doesn't stop the rent clock from ticking. We have to change this right now, and it absolutely has to work this time. So what I would ask of all of you is that you make an effort to make this work. So many of you have made sacrifices to help keep this thing going. Don't think I haven't noticed or don't appreciate it. Please support the new nights. We are going to need everybody to get this thing off the ground. We are splitting a crowd that has dwindled to a dangerously low level. If some of you that we haven't seen in a while don't show up, this won't work. I intend to roll out a schedule for members nights in May later today. It isn't going to work for everybody. If we find that it is wrong for a lot of people we can consider changing it in June. We will have plenty of time to discuss it at the members events, or you can always drop me an email with your concerns at pilotinfo@the-airlock.com.

In the meantime, please take a look at your schedules, if something can be moved so you can show up, please move it. We really need the help in the short term to get this stuff established again. Last summer we had members nights pushing 30 people quite a few times. If we don't get back to that level very quickly we are going to run out of money. Those who were here for those nights know they were a lot of fun.

In a future post I will discuss an emergency promotion that will allow people to get themselves on the members list quicker and cheaper, providing they can commit to supporting the next few members nights. This means if you have any friends you have been wanting to bring to a members night, we should be able to make it more accessible. If you have already purchased missions to get you to membership, and you want to come support the new nights, please come talk to me and we will work something out.

On Monday we have a Martian Football pass for $20, members or non members, doesn't matter, but everyone should know this is some pretty advanced stuff. All skill levels are welcome but expect to lose if you are not at least an intermediate RedPlanet pilot.

On Wednesday we will have the last Wednesday members night of it's kind. It will be BattleTech only because the RedPlanet people have their chance to get their fix on Monday. This means we will be loading all sorts of BattleTech games, ranging from the completely stupid, to the most advanced and serious games we have. Everybody will have a chance to suggest games they want to play. All skill levels welcome as always, but expect some very good pilots to be in the game.

The following week we will implement the new schedule which we can reevaluate at the end of May if we need to make changes.

Tuesdays (starting May 10th): Advanced BattleTech, members pay $20 to play all night. This will be what advanced night was last summer. Friends and fun and Mechs and blue tunnels. The comedy club is open for open mic night if people want a break for some cheap food or to grab a drink. There will be serious missions, stupid missions, and you can play in either or both. We will get back to some of the extreme advanced missions that we haven't been playing lately due to the split time between BT and RP. This night will be ONLY BATTLETECH, there will not be ANY RedPlanet on this night.

Wednesdays (starting May 11th): Advanced RedPlanet night, members pay just $20 to play all night. This will be mostly football, with a few change of pace death races mixed in. We will not load any BattleTech missions at all.

Thursdays will continue to be beginners night and we will happily teach people either game, or both.

Fridays will continue to be free mission Friday, so members who stop by will get a free mission.

Starting immediately, members who show up for BOTH RedPlanet AND BattleTech advanced night passes in the same week will get the second pass for just $10! So for $30 you can get two unlimited passes in the same week!

I will be updating the calendar later today to reflect these changes. For now I need to get ready for the King Of The Hill tournament tonight. We really need this to be a big night, everybody get out here, call your friends, lets have some fun!

Details on the rapid membership program coming in another post soon, Thank you all for your time!

--uglyman

Play nice...

 
The biggest issue

I want to start to tackle a very complex problem that The Airlock is facing right now. The advanced night members crowd is one of the only stable sources of revenue the business has. Parties and walk by business and all of that kind of stuff is great, but it tends to be inconsistent. The Members night pass has allowed us to pay our bills through the first year... almost year and a half of business here. We have lost a lot of our members night regulars over the past few months, since the installation of RedPlanet. Some of them are gone because they are BattleTech fans and they were suddenly getting half the BT missions for their money. The rest of them are gone because of a sudden change in culture here. A sudden lack of sportsmanship, and friendship that made this place great in it's first year.

If members nights don't improve dramatically I suspect we will be out of business in a few short weeks. I will be making some big changes to the way we handle members nights. The schedule, and the rules are about to change in a big way, and I will try to get to that in the next post. My next post will lay out the plan going forward for how to fix the scheduling issues. I have nights that are almost empty every week, and I have people who are staying away from members night passes because they don't get to play enough of the game they like. That is going to change immediately. There is going to be an additional discount available, and there will now be two members nights. We will not be mixing games on members night anymore, but I will get to that in due time. In this post I want to deal with the sportsmanship issue, as I feel it is even more important. 


What is RedPlanet?

For those of you who don't know, we got our hands on the beta for RedPlanet a while back. RedPlanet is a racing game in rocket powered hovercraft in the mining tunnels of Mars. There is a popular game type called MartianFootball in which the players are assigned to two to four teams. Each team has a runner, who gets a bigger score multiplier (up to 16x) for each consecutive lap completed without crashing.

There are three positions, runners, crushers, and blockers. The crusher's job is to smash the other teams runner. The Blockers job is to help the runner by smashing the crushers. The game is incredibly intense, with a very volatile scoring system. A runner on a 16x can add 100,000 points to the team score with a few good boosts, and the crushers add 100,000 points to their score with a well placed hit or two on the runner.

RedPlanet has a tough learning curve. It takes a few missions just to learn the basics of controlling your vehicle. What is different about RedPlanet when compared to most games is that it causes an actual adrenaline response. The combination of the fast motion, the immersion effects of the pods, and the optical system is very intense. We often see people get out of a good RedPlanet game with their hands shaking a little bit, and it is always fun to watch people try to duck so they don't hit their head on a pipe when they fly by.

RedPlanet has a history in this area that goes back to the opening of the Wizards of the Coast game center in the mid 1990's. Many champion players got their start in Seattle and the level of competition was very high. Lots of these players have come back to play the game they have been waiting for since WoTC closed in march of 2001. They did not forget how to play! A lot of our new pilots are also hooked on RedPlanet now, and some of them are experts at this point. 


Sportsmanship and sharing the toys

I have noticed a lack of sportsmanship that we never had a problem with in BattleTech. I have had lots of complaints and there is no pattern. Some people would like to blame a select few, but I see a lot from behind the counter. I think almost everyone is guilty of losing their temper a few times if they play enough football. My feeling is that bad sportsmanship is really part of this particular game. It is built in. I have lost my temper, and I keep seeing normally laid back people angry after a football game. There is nothing more fun than an adrenaline packed, rage filled, high speed battle in the mining tunnels of mars. I guess it wouldn't make much sense to be polite as you try to smash the other team into the wall. I am actually ok with that. As I said I think it is part of the game. I think if games are heated, it just means that people are taking it seriously, and that it is important to them. That all needs to end when the screen goes blank. Now we are friends again.

The problem is that we have lost the crowd of people that was sustaining The Airlock Financially. Members nights have gone from a huge group of people that were going to movies together on days that The Airlock was closed, to a small group of people who seem to hate each other half the time.

I have been talking to Roadkill about this and we believe that the problem is the fact that in BattleTech everybody can have a good game... everybody could shoot better and score higher than they normally do, all in the same game. In RedPlanet, and specifically MartianFootball, if one player does good, another player does bad. If a runner has a great game the crusher may chase for 10 minutes and never get a hit. If the crusher gets a bunch of hits the runner may never see the score zone. Add the frustration that somebody might feel if they are really a BattleTech fan, and they don't care about RedPlanet, and we have a huge problem. 


The solution

This is all going to stop now. We are starting to put together a new document, the RedPlanet pilot's code of conduct. There was a similar thing that was around in the old days at WoTC, we have never needed it here before. Clearly we do now, when I have people telling me that members nights stopped being fun and they aren't going to show up any more. When I notice people who have not just stopped showing up, but deleted The Airlock on Facebook because they didn't have fun getting yelled at on members night.

Rule number one is going to address the fact that this is an intense, emotional game, tempers generally run hot. That ends at the ten minute mark. The screen goes blank and everyone is forgiven, we are friends again. We generally don't run football on anything other than a flat rate pass night. If you had a bad game, we just play again in a few minutes. If the teams were unfair, suggest a way to fix them for the next game. The guy you were yelling at to "GET THIS GUY OFF OF ME" is forgiven, and the guy who yelled at you because you missed is forgiven. If you have a complaint, gripe, etc, that needs to be addressed after the game, that is fine. These things come up, but it will be done in a respectful and calm manner, every time, no exceptions.

If you cannot adhere to the simple rules we are drafting, you will not be welcome to play here. This is not because I am trying to be the referee, or hold down the level of competition, it is because if something doesn't change The Airlock will cease to exist and you will have to go to Colorado to play in a set of pods.

In the next post I will start to lay out my plan to fix all of this, BattleTech fans, RedPlanet fans, and fans of both are about to get A LOT MORE CHEAP MISSIONS, but I am going to need a lot of help from you all to make this work.

Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other

--Jerry Sp.... I mean.... --uglyman

Thank Your SEC!

Glenn "Roadkill" Elliott has been putting a huge amount of effort into his job here as SEC. SEC, for those of you who don't know is the "Special Events Coordinator", a title that comes from the early days of Virtual World competition. It is a combination of duties that include designing and running tournaments, making sure that "official" tournaments are run according to the book, general referee duties, and reminding the site owner of all the event related stuff he keeps forgetting to do.

I have played in a lot of tournaments over the years, spanning across several different hobbies. I have never seen tournaments run with such skill. He has a lot of experience that makes him the right guy for the job. Many of you are not aware that he has been playing in the pods since the mid 1990's and is one of the most decorated pilots in Virtual World History. He worked on the BattleTech CCG for WoTC as well as lots of other game industry experience. From a business standpoint I feel more than fortunate to have him, The Airlock would not have survived the slow season if it was not for his efforts. From a personal standpoint, his friendship is one of the more valuable unexpected perks of opening this place.

His hands have been tied in a few cases by my lack of business experience, hardware issues (which sometimes remain longer than they should for financial reasons), or my inability to work through the other items on my task list and put the necessary time into event planning. I am hoping that is about to change, and I hope we can put to use all we have learned about what type of tournaments our pilots want to play in!

A few days after most tournaments you will find a writeup on this blog, posted by Roadkill. He puts a lot of time and effort into these and I hope you will all take the time to read them. We are building a new history of VWE competition here in Seattle and I hope you are all as excited to be part of it as I am. If you have missed any of them, they remain available in the sidebar here at The Airlock Blog!

If you have not yet played in one of our tournaments, tomorrow night there is a king of the hill tournament that would be a great chance to start! If you can't make it to that one, please consider the soon to be announced next one. These events have been a lot of fun lately, but we really need to bring in a few more people to fill them up! The best way to thank your SEC is to continue to make sure these events are busy nights at The Airlock.

Thank you all for your time and support!
--uglyman

Press Start episode about The Airlock!

I want to kick off the blog-o-rama with a housekeeping item and share something with the community that I think it pretty cool. If you missed the previous blog post this morning, please check it out: http://blog.the-airlock.com/2011/04/everybody-listen-up.html

I know some of you have already seen this, but I am hoping we can spread it around a lot more! If you are trying to explain to your friends what this place is, this video may be a great way to show them!

End Boss Studio stopped by recently and recorded an episode of Press Start, a web series about gaming and gaming culture. They booked a private event so as not to disrupt the normal mayhem here. It was a lot of fun to load them up for some missions, especially because it was the first time most of them had ever played in a pod!

Fair warning there is a little profanity included, but I think most of us remember our first heat missions, and just how intense it can get!

Many thanks go to all of them for the hard work they put into this. I hope we can have them back soon, as they expressed some interest in covering a tournament here at some point. In the meantime I hope we have met some new pilots that will stop by from time to time to hop back in the pods!

More bloggage soon!
--uglyman

Everybody listen up!

Hello again Pilots,
I realize I have been a little quiet lately on all the various places online where I usually communicate with you. A number of factors have played into this, obviously a lot of my problem is time, and of course there is my intense frustration at the slow season, which hopefully we have put behind us for another year! I have been working hard on some other things here behind the scenes, and have not yet been ready to "show all the cards" quite yet.

I have a lot of things I really need to communicate at this point. There is a lot of news I need to share, some changes will be made soon to the schedule, among other things. We have been struggling with a cash crunch here for a few weeks that needs to end as soon as possible. We are extremely vulnerable in our current financial situation. If a few things don't change very soon we will be in big trouble here.

The good news is that the difference between where we are now, and where we need to be is a pretty small gap in the grand scheme of things. We need some of you who haven't been here in a while to make it a point to drop by and play a few missions. We need those who have been showing up regularly to continue to do so. There are lots of other ways you can help, and hopefully some of those ways will be explained here over the next few days. Please be patient with me as I start to put together the various pieces of the puzzle.

Anyway, the details aren't important at the moment. I wanted to preface what I hope to be a week or so of fairly intense blogging. I have learned over the past year and a half that for me to promise anything these days is unrealistic. Let me instead qualify it and say: providing that no major unforeseen disasters come my way, I will be rolling out a lot of information here over the next week or so.

My lack of writing experience, and my prior unwillingness to ever pay attention in English class, severely limits the efficiency of my words, but I hope you will read them anyway. If you care about The Airlock, I ask that you all PLEASE pay attention to these posts. The success or failure of this place rides entirely on the projects I am working on, and starting to roll out now. The projects I am working on will do nothing if the pilots aren't aware of them. I feel that the next 2-4 weeks will determine if we are here for the long haul or not. I personally do not want to live in a podless Seattle again, I hope a lot of you feel the same way!

I know that keeping the pods alive and well here is very important to all of you, and I have pretty much devoted the last year and a half of my life to that end. It is the players that have made this possible and that is never far from my mind, thank you.

--uglyman

Zax Osis

No, it's not some new disease that Mechwarriors catch in the pods, it's Zax's new bloodname.

On Friday, April 15th, a Bloodname tournament was held at The Airlock. Bloodname tournaments are derived from the Clan fiction and are very similar to Gunslingers tournaments. The main difference is the prize - the winner is awarded a Clan Bloodname - but there are a couple of differences in the mechanics of the tournament as well.

Up to 31 pilots can be entered in a standard Bloodname tournament. The 32nd spot is then filled by holding a Grand Melee. We ran a half-size tournament with 16 entries instead. We had 9 pilots, 8 of whom wished to purchase a second entry in order to fill out the brackets. So we held a "grand melee" to determine which 7 of the 8 pilots were allowed to do so and awarded New Guinea to the eliminated pilot. Gurn decided that New Guinea was more appealing than a second entry, so he chose a Vulture C (the twin Gauss Rifle variant) for the grand melee, rapidly ejected all of his ammunition, then self destructed.

In each duel, one pilot is randomly selected to choose the weight class. The other pilot then gets to choose the map. The first pilot then chooses their 'Mech and then the second pilot chooses theirs. The duels are 10 minute no return matches, and as in a Gunslingers you must destroy your opponent's Mech and survive in order to win. It's possible for both pilots to lose, either by time expiring or by a simultaneous explosion.

As the end approached it was starting to look like Justice might end up facing himself in the finals - he'd reached the semi-finals in the top half of the bracket vs KwikPain and in the bottom of the bracket vs Zax. But then KwikPain pulled out a dramatic win in his round followed by Zax doing the same in his! For the finals, Zax chose Assault 'Mechs, which seems to be his specialty, so KwikPain chose HotPlate in an attempt to mix things up. The fight was brutal and in the end Zax came out on top.

Fiachain brought a sourcebook listing all of the Clan bloodnames with him. Zax perused the list and ultimately chose Osis, so he can now be known as Zax Osis in the pods. Congratulations!

The format proved interesting, especially allowing one pilot to pick the weight class and the other pilot to pick the map. There were some very strategic choices made which really added some excitement to the tournament. We'll have to figure out a way to add something similar to future tournaments as well.

--Roadkill OUT

Quick Update

Just a quick update today to bring everyone up to speed on the goings on at The Airlock.

We held an official VWE Purchase Mech Free-for-All last Saturday with a weight limit of 280 tons for all 4 rounds. Stock Mechs only, as per VWE requirements. 14 people entered, and at the end of the night Zax reigned supreme with Justice close on his heals. Most of the Mechs purchased were what you'd expect, and most people even stuck to the same basic plan - buy one light(er) Mech, one heavy, and then a couple of Assaults. The "average" purchase looked something like an Arctic Wolf, a Vulture/Nova Cat/Thor/Grizzly/Avatar, a Templar, and a Masakari or Deimos. A couple of people went even bigger to get a MadCat Mk II, but for the most part the 85-tonners were the biggest Mechs we saw.

Gurn had probably the worst draw through no fault of his own that I've seen in a tournament at The Airlock. He'd saved his Artic Wolf for the finals because its 4 x Streak SRM4 missile racks score a lot of points. But the finals consisted of his Arctic Wolf, 3 Templars (which have AMS), an Uller (which has AMS), and two Vultures (which have Reactive armor). Yikes! Talk about bad luck!

This coming weekend we'll be holding a Random Red Planet tournament. Soto's birthday tournament was so much fun last month that people have been demanding that we try it in Red Planet as well, so that's what we're doing. Show up on Saturday for some random mayhem in the canals on Mars! The format will be the same as last month's random BT - random maps, random VTVs, random conditions, etc. Each pilot will be allowed two re-rolls of the randomness which I highly recommend you save just in case you get stuck in an Armadillo on Blades. :-)

Also starting this week is the return of the Battletech Tandem League! We've slowed things down based on what we learned in the trial league, so you'll have 2 weeks to complete each mission. The first mission starting this week and running through April 16th has you and your partner in Inner Sphere Mechs scouting reports of an abandoned Clan assault Mech. Of course once you arrive you realize that it hasn't been abandoned at all and the fight is on!

The last bit of news for this week is that we're going to be holding an event similar to a Gunslingers on Friday, April 15th. It's based on/derived from the Clan Trial of Bloodright in which pilots compete for the honor of receiving a bloodname. Ours will be unofficial, of course, but we'll have a lot of fun and it will be good practice for Gunslingers later this Spring.

I hope to see you all soon at The Airlock!

--Roadkill OUT