stuff
PREACH ON REVEREND!
GS Internet.
First off, I'm one of the two guys that runs Season's Beatings, Fugee being the other, incredibly clear if you read the first page on the thread on any site it was posted on. Keits hasn't run anything in Ohio since like 2002, since he lives out of state, and we've been running SB, which has become one of the biggest tournies in the country always featuring top national players, for four years now. If you read the results/shoutouts threads it's pretty clear how we're thought of nationally, and how much players enjoy SB and get along w/ each other, so I'm sorry you didn't get that experience.
SRK SB4 shoutouts
The Cincy scene is fine -- actually the entire Ohio FG scene is much larger than it ever was. Each city (Cle, C-bus, Dayton, Cincy) has a decent crew that gets together about every week. Post up in any of those threads on SRK and you will be welcomed, I guarantee. Toledo is pretty dead though -- PM Perfect Legend on SRK, that's your best bet to get something going. He's a national DOA champion, a cool guy, and he plays a lot of games (SFIV included), and he's in Toledo still :P
The fighting-game scene is known for people far less nerdy and more sociable than other gaming/anime/PC scenes. Due to the fact that you have to A: Travel and B: Interact with a wide range of people (there are almost no stereotypal videogame-player weirdos, at least in Capcom games -- in my crew in Cle we have a black guy who works at Target, a Latino, me the skinny white dude, two married 30-somethings, a Mexican, two Asians in nursing school, etc, all fun and personable) fighting gamers are pretty outgoing, and in general pretty open to new people. I hate SFIV but I'll play it with all the new games who joined the scene because we like getting new people into these games and teaching them what we've learned from playing fighters since SFII came out.
If you were trying to talk to people watching matches, you should probably expect not everyone will want to be BFFs with you -- the best way is to get games in and chat after a match, then try to go into other stuff. It's a tournament; a lot of people weren't there to chat with somebody they don't know all day; it's a long, tiring weekend and there's almost no chill time (outside of Sunday, which was just the Top 8 in all games); people were there to play and watch the best players in the world; and meet people from online and also see friends they can only hang out with like 2 times a year. It really helps if you post on the forums and people have an idea of who you are though -- and if you like fighters, the SRK threads are definitely the #1 place to network for you.
And there were 400+ people there -- I find it hard to believe you even tried to talk to many people. If you'd like to learn more about any Ohio scene I recommend getting to know players in person or just post on the forums, I can only think of one jerk who posts in the whole state. And I know a LOT of people who would happily just strike up a convo with random people.
Also SNK is not very big nationally -- if Dark Geese shows at a major he brings a lot of SNK gear, but it's not big enough for us to feature. We had like 10 BYOC TVs (in the karaoke area) and anyone was welcome to set up whatever they wanted in there, as we said in the OP for the tourney. UMK3 was hosted because we had a machine, and though few people play seriously now (even though Chicago came -- top U.S. best players) TONS of people played it in arcades back in the day, and it's a hype game Fugee and I really care about as well. It ended up being a highlight of the tourney for many, surprisingly to us. That machine was stacked all weekend.
Good luck with your events, but I used to be in Toledo like every 3 weeks for a # of years and seemed like Perfect Legend was the only player. Since MI is close I'd recommend their thread too, they have a lot of gatherings now and on average have better players in more games than OH does anyway. I remember Pefect Legend (who is a name everyone on SRK knows) running Toledo tourneys he got only handfuls of players for
MI thread. even though SRK is not very mainstream you'll find people to play it, and you might pick up some new games too.
edit: McGuillicutti, your bro is Kenji then? He's such a friggin cool guy, wish he was still in OH. Tell him hey for me, haha. He runs tourneys like a pro as I'm sure you saw.
