Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Buncha Goons

You know, every time I get a little frustrated about the lower-than-usual turnout we've been experiencing this season, I snap out of it and realize the great set of people that DO manage to show up.  Every Thursday, when I leave Mission Park West, I'm left with a great feeling.  It doesn't really matter how many games my team won or how much I may or may not have dominated a few memorable shootouts... I just am so happy with the bunch of folks that have been making each week a delight to host games for.

From a numbers standpoint for turnout, this season compares much more to our earlier days.  Game 1: 12. Game 2: 10.  Game 3: 17.  Game 4: 15.  Game 5: 18.  Game 6: 14. Game 7: 13.  Game 8: 14.  Game 9: 26. Game 10: 14.  Our highest turnout was on our Independence Eve Blast event... which was the only event held on a Friday.  It makes me wonder if we should've been hosting these games on Friday nights instead... but I've always been of the mindset that there's too many other things going on that might conflict with weekly turnout.

Forget all that statistical mumbo jumbo, though.  I keep having fun every single week and folks keep having an equally good time.  It kind of reminds me of a post I made a little over a year ago about Nerf games being social... that we can so easily get caught up in modifications or statistics or heated debate on a forum or chatroom... we forget it's the PEOPLE you PLAY those games with that make it worth it.  I'm guilty of sometimes forgetting this fact, so I figured we could all use the reminder.

I suppose it'd be nice if we had more folks showing up for games, but I'm just fine keeping these games in a "Quality over Quantity" mindset.  We may not be breaking any attendance records this season (not yet, at least) but I couldn't be happier with the great people that make these games worth organizing each week.

5 comments:

  1. Sounds like a winning formula to me!

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  2. No offense, but I think you should post more nerf related stuff...

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    1. None taken! I post what's relevant to what I'm doing. Right now I don't have anything to really report Nerf-wise. I've been covering the new products for ZombieStrike and Rebelle the past few days anyways, so I really don't see what the issue is.

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  3. What was the cause of the Game 9 anomaly? Was that the Independence Eve Blast?

    I've got to agree about numbers not making games fun, for my nerf group the more people who show up the more tactical the games get and the more time you spend in combat (higher saturation of enemies in the same area), but a large amount of first timers has it's own problems such as blaster supplies and lack of experience. It'd rather have a smaller, recurring group of players than a larger group with fewer returning players.

    Is there a place I can find the rules you use for your games? It's very hard to find good sets of rules for Nerf and Laser Tag games on the internet.

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    1. Game 9 was on a Friday, our Independence Eve Blast.

      Our rules are stupid simple. We have one rule: don't be a jerk. If you THINK you're being a jerk, it's because you are, and you should probably stop. lol

      It's essentially an honors system. We encourage folks to play the game as it is intended. Often times, having a huge slew of rules just means that folks might try to find something that ISN'T covered as a rule.

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