My report is here. It was done on monday but I had to triple check it with my sources. At the end is a very tiny update including JDCR's stream from a couple days ago.
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Ok guys, seems like the skype stuff is not happening. JDCR most likely wants to forget about the whole thing and he won't participate in a podcast nor chat about it with us. So this is my report on the whole thing. I will only state what I know is true and will try to be as unbiased as possible.
There were plenty of bad calls by the TOs managing our visitor here. Most of them seem like lack of experience and/or poor judgment, mostly overlooking/not taking into account that our visitor was NOT from a third world country and a prominent lack of proper communication with him(the main organizer doesn't speak english). This irks me a lot because as a part of the group that helped with Jwong and ChrisG(and other south american players)'s visits here I personally went through some pains(huge fights with the wife, postponed work issues, money struggles) just to be there almost all the time with my car available in case they needed something at any given time of their visits. My friends also went through a lot to get things done well so we share the pain of watching that(and years of ranbats/casual sessions/tourneys/community efforts/youtube content and so on) go through the drain.
Back to what happened. The entire thing was mostly funded by a handful of people and mainly by one of the organizers, Pablo. There were many funding/donation events and finally a big part of the target was met. After some negotiantios with JDCR, a US$2K Korea - Final Round - Lima - Korea round flight was paid for. The atlanta stopover and cost were added/paid later, closer to the travel date than expected. It can be safely assumed that after giving JDCR the choice of going to atlanta first at no cost his expectations about the Peru trip were very high and he might've been expecting another
TxT(the tournament KoR attended here). Needless to say, the TxT tournament was a success (not without its own issues) and a big step on the rigt direction for Tekken TOs here in south america. So with that in mind,
check some TxT 2014 pictures here(this time hosted in bolivia tho) to have an idea of JDCR's expectations. Thing is, it's safe to say that no one told him that most of the tourney's budget was already gone just on his plane ticket and that a cheap place had to be found to house him and to hold the tourney. Other detail that wasn't mentioned was that in order to get some money back(to cover JDCR's expenses) TOs increased the tourney entry price to a hefty USD$22(that you had to pay even if you donated or if you just wanted to spectate) which effectively eliminated pot monsters and spectators since most tekken enthusiasts are used to pay USD$5 at most for very big tournaments here. And most importantly, seems like no one told JDCR that money was a very big issue.
You have to keep in mind that here most people don't own a console and would rather play at arcades(we still have some pretty big ones here with mostly tekken and kof cabs) or go to "vicios" - the equivalent of FGC's lan centers - small places where you can pay FGs for hours with lended sticks. Yes, owning a stick is also a rarity. Most of these vicios started as
lan centers with a TVs and a PS3 with custom FW and a HDD full of pirated games. Because of this, the "input lag" concept is sometimes hard to explain to people unless they have played in many vicios with different TV sets or have TVs with noticeably different input lag at the vicio they mostly play at.
So after attending(and getting 1st place at) Final Round 2015 JDCR arrives to Peru on monday the 23rd, late at night and is taken to a hostel - not a hotel - to a $10 room. First huge oversight.
The place is not that bad by our own standards but our standards are clearly not his. One of the TOs(and the one that got more money of his own pocket than anyone else), Pablo(who lives in
Cusco, near
Machu Picchu, was supposed to come to
Lima(roughly 350 miles away behind the andes and, being at sea level, 11,200ft below Cusco) to be with him and to be his guide but he only could make it on saturday. That meant that JDCR had to be alone and by himself unless they could get someone to hang out with him and (as we now know) that was difficult for the TOs. In their defense, the TOs tried their best but the language barrier and lack of experience and foresight(specially regarding the cultural shock plus managing stuff from another city) made them do most of their coordinations by phone and not monitoring/double checking most of their schedule. Pablo's right hand here speaks english better but there's plenty that gets lost in conversation if all you can do is ask yes/no questions.
JDCR spent two days at that hostel and at least his second day wasn't that bad(that's when
this picture was taken) because he went out with a friend of mine and he heard no complaints from JDCR, they discussed plenty of stuff(my friend's english is good) including the korean community and how JDCR saw things there. The general idea was to get the visitors to play different tekken groups each day. At this point JDCR knew that some spanish players were coming too and that they were going to stay with him so he asked my friend to tell Hugo that he wanted to be on his own room(to get some privacy) if possible. No other complaints about the place or noise were had that evening, so the TOs made arrangements to get the spanish players on their own room and JDCR in his own room(still in the same hostal). That night, the spanish players arrived and were taken to the hostel with JDCR. Food and taxi cab expenses started to become a big issue for the TOs.
The next day, JDCR started to actively mention trying to get out of "the worst hotel ever" and it becomes evident(even for non english speakers) that they have to get him out of that hostel. The TOs try to get them to a better place where JDCR can have his own room but they're already over their budget so there's little they can do except give money from their pockets which I guess they must've done. Meanwhile the 3 visitors(JDCR and the two spanish payers) find
another hostel in a better area(and with bigger rooms) so they decide to go there and cover the cost themselves. Still, the TOs helped them cover the cost of the new hostel. Since JDCR is not alone anymore and the spanish players do talk spanish(duh), seems like a safe bet to say(according to the facts) that the TOs thought assumed that the visitors could take care for themselves so they(the TOs) wouldn't have to waste more money in transport and food with them and they only had to coordinate(over the phone) with a different local tekken group each day.
The new hostel and the company seemed to have a positive effect on JDCR. They went to
Larcomar, one of the nicest places in Lima(yes, Lima is right next to the Pacific ocean,
unlike Cusco and Machu Picchu that are on top of the andes) and they start to go to the Casinos. Seems like
JDCR is a Casino nut!
From here on seems like most issues are solved, JDCR is mostly being taken care of(mostly by the spanish players and the local casinos) and the only issues for the TOs are checking on him from time to time and get the local tekken groups to play with him. This is where the "seven hours late" and the "didn't even show up" happened, while the TOs were trying to get the groups to show up over the phone and failing to coordinate who could be with them checking that everything's ok. In the meantime JDCR even
gets interviewed by local press(you can check the video, it's in english) and has a better travel experience, until saturday and the start of the tournament.
A very brief intermission, usually autumn is already here BUT every few years we have a rather inconvenient weather change that we call
"El Niño". Think of it as a miniature instant global warming bomb that brings drought in most parts of the country, copious rainfall in other parts(
that sometimes are not supposed to get that much rain) and it's always
bad news in one way
or the other. Guess what? This year we had one Niño so the weather around here is crazy hot.
So, the tournament. Usually there are parts of your city you don't want to take tourists to. The place chosen to home the tournament sadly is in one of those ugly parts. That doesn't mean that
some tourists can't have fun there but not if they are deep in culture shock and they were expecting a bigger tournament in a better place with lots of participants. And you can see here that
the place is usually a restaurant and it was rented for the tourney due to obvious money restraints. Again, huge TO oversight, period. Saturday was supposed to be free play against JDCR for the people that donated/had already paid the hefty(for us) tourney fee, but few people came because the entrance fee was so damn high it eliminated all the pot monsters and spectators from the local Tekken ecosystem leaving only 28 players for the tourney. There were TVs with different input lag timings, some borrowed and some rented. Yes, there was no AC because here it's a luxury. Some people can afford fans, a few can afford AC at their homes, and maybe at the nicest stores but that's it. And the dogs eating from the garbage bags... yeah
that is kinda common in the not-so-nice parts around here and dogs usually come after people that search said bags and leave them open for the dogs to do their thing. So I don't blame JDCR for another cultural shock. I do blame the TOs for not informing him properly about the tourney details. Even the spanish players were very dissapointed. And on top of that, at the end of that day they told the visitors that they could move them to another hostel so that JDCR could have his own room and that the "good news" were that the hostel was pretty close to the tourney premises. JDCR was less than thrilled. Again, misscomunication.
Sunday came and nothing improved. First pool of the day was supposed to start at 12pm, but it started at 1pm. JDCR's pool was supposed to start at 2pm, so the tourney runners made sure to rush the 1st pool so that the second pool would start at 2pm and that's how it happened. JDCR was sent to losers in pools, made top8, everyone at top8 was in winners again, he was sent to losers again on his first match, made it to grand finals, was beaten by abel del maestro. The tourney site stated that first place was a ticket to TxT 2015 only if the winner was a peruvian(and if the winner wasn't abe del maestro, because he already had a ticket as the 2014 champion) so there was no second place prize for JDCR because there was no money left. Seems like that was known from the start by everyone except JDCR. And the food incident? You guessed it, another huge oversight. Everyone assumed that since the visitors arrived at 12:30pm they had a late breakfast and that they would not be hungry for a whille or that if they were hungry they would speak up. Pablo, the main TO, took JDCR to a small grocery store nearby to buy something to eat before his pools started. JDCR ended up buying a couple bottles of water and some cookies and before losers finals he asked if there was going to be a food break. The answer was that since they were so close to the end of the tourney, it was better to end it rather than doing an hour break. Yup.
In the end, most, if not everything JDCR said about the tourney was true. I would say that after the first hostal scare and before the tourney he might've had a good time with the spanish players in Lima, getting to know some nightlife in the nicer parts around and doing Casino runs. Not so much wasting time waiting 7 hours for players or waiting for people that never showed up. And not so much being lied to. Yes, they paid for his flight to Atlanta and here but that's no excuse for treating an EVO champ like a local player. Finally, I think that even tho the TOs lacked experience, good judgement and were ill advised from the start, they had good intentions at first but this enterprise was doomed from the beginning and once they paid for the Atlanta extension(over USD$600) it was already over: they had to compromise everything else(not only money wise) and that meant a smaller place to do the tourney, less money for expenses, expensive entrance fees and finally even getting in debt to get things done which clouded their judgement and made everything else just fall apart. So I don't think they were letting cooler heads prevail when they answered back(specially with an empty legal threat) and I don't think they will ever accept that they screwed up. Only thing left for us(other peruvian TOs) is to learn from this and to try to sweep this under the rug by doing what we were already doing beforehand: our best to make our local scene grow and to try to get the world's eyes on us. In a positive light, hopefully, next time.
TINY UPDATE: After watching JDCR's stream where he mentions Peru, seems like yes, he had a good time here(he mentioned that he liked the beach, the food and Miraflores, one of Lima's nicest areas) but he won't talk at all about the tourney.