National Airsoft Game, Is it feasable? Why/why not?

[zero delay]

Straight off, if you are new to the sport, and have never attended any larger scenario games please refrain from commenting on this because it's highly unlikely that a person with out a wider frame of reference will have the game experience background to really make an informed contribution. I'd like to hear specifically from the people who have either had a hand in planning, running or administrating, as well as those who have attended multiple large scale games over numerous seasons.

What I'd like to know is whether a truly national level game could be successfully held. I realize other games have been held that had a contingent of a few players from distant provinces, but what I'm talking about is a game that would effectively have a strong presence from all of the major provincial airsoft communities. In excess of 10 players from every province that has a strong player base.

I'm not spinning off on some highly improbably fantasy tangent here I have been directly involved in the planning of major events, and I'm certain I am one of the few individuals in the entire country who has the resources, the motivation, as well as the ability to actually make such a game a reality. What I'm trying to find out is whether this is something that would generate enough interest from the standpoint of the serious MilSim player base, to make it a reality, and a reasonably successful one at that.

Right now, Airsoft as a sport doesn't have a cohesive element that helps solidify the entire country in terms of common rules and regulations, with the advent of something like a national level event you have the embryo of the apparatus that could effectively create that. I think that this type of event can only serve to further the health and longevity of Airsoft in this country. Like the old adage says “If you aren’t progressing, you are regressing”

[Bravo One-Six]

Is it possible?
Yes.

What are the hurdles when it comes to player base?
1) Start by eliminating any players who's sole interest is skirmishing or light milsim (single day long scenario with breaks, for example).
2) From the remaining players, eliminate those individuals without the resources or motivation to attend an event like this (say, the 16/17 year old age bracket and those unwilling to travel long distances for an event).
3) From the remaining people, eliminate those who will not enjoy the scenario you're proposing (a Vietnam themed event won't attract the modern SF impressions, and a modern Iraq event won't attract the WWII component).
4) From the remaining people, we cut out those who won't be able to attend due to work, personal issues, or flaking (avg about 25-50%).

If from that, you can still pull out 10-15 people from each province... then you only need to make a good solid event. The reputation of a good host will help as well (and I know you have that). In all honesty your events that you've held in the past are more than adequate to get the player count. What you need in addition to the event is a method to gather interested parties from the said pool of perspective players and get them to your event. Setting up a regional host for example?

Someone in Toronto to organize a Toronto contingent. A Vancouver individual to organize a Van City contingent. Perhaps these people should have travel arrangements ready to go? A 'buy in' price perhaps for interested people? Pay 200$ and all your travel/accomodation is included (even if it's in tents).

Seriously, your events are more than acceptable for a 'Canadian event', you just need to get people there. That's the only difficulty I see.

[Porkchop]

Originally Posted by Bravo One-Six

Is it possible?

3) From the remaining people, eliminate those who will not enjoy the scenario you're proposing (a Vietnam themed event won't attract the modern SF impressions, and a modern Iraq event won't attract the WWII component).

This could actually make for a really interesting scenario:
People with Nam and WW2 gear versus modern SF types. Sounds like a situation straight out of Africa.

I would say more than anything the venue would be very important.
It would probably have to somewhere in Central Canada. More likely that not, Ontario. While it would be awesome to have an event in Alberta the logistics might be somewhat cumbersome. But who knows. On the right game, I would seriously consider a roadtrip out there.

We came pretty close to having just that a few years ago, but Jetsgo killed that. Too bad.

[Primus]

Originally Posted by Bravo One-Six

Someone in Toronto to organize a Toronto contingent. A Vancouver individual to organize a Van City contingent. Perhaps these people should have travel arrangements ready to go? A 'buy in' price perhaps for interested people? Pay 200$ and all your travel/accomodation is included (even if it's in tents).

There is your answer right there to a successful Canada wide airsoft event. Having a person or a small team setup in all the major areas taking care of the details of travel/accomodation (and if you want to go so far, meals) people will come.

[Scarecrow]

I think the biggest hurdle will be a) transportation costs, b) vacation time. Summer will be bad for gas prices, so even going in on a rental, people have to be motivated and willing to pay for travel. That being said, I'd love to attend a national event, but this year is CJ'07 and I am out on Quebec for two weeks already. But I would say that with the more mature player bases in each province, you could probably scare up the necessary players to do it. I do think you have to plan it fairly far ahead so people can get their vacation times sorted out and deal with an domestic negotiations to make it happen.

[MadMax]

I'm going to be an annoying Ontariocentric jerk saying this: I think placing a national event in Ontario would benifit from lower air fares. Toronto is more or less the centre of Canada as far as airlines are concerned.

[Dracheous]

It would have to be a BIG game and a long one to warrant the cash needed to fund people to go.


I looked into doing a travelling for a game, with 16 people your could rent a large van with cross country fair ((slightly cheaper if your local rental company does it)) and a small trailer and have travelling costs somewhere around the $3-400 range there and back. But then you'll have feild fee and ammo costs and food added on top of that. So $500 for one game is kind of expensive. But if this were a game that was say 3-4 even 5 days long ((thats ALOT of ammo)) the cost would kind of be worth it.

[Capt. Tyco]

Originally Posted by MadMax

I'm going to be an annoying Ontariocentric jerk saying this: I think placing a national event in Ontario would benifit from lower air fares. Toronto is more or less the centre of Canada as far as airlines are concerned.

Calgary is also pretty cheap to get to also.

[redhawk_six]

There are lots of things to consider in a Canada-wide game.
In my mind, the 2 biggest are location and administration.

For location, you have to consider not only cost, but enviroment. Things like weather, terrain, and possible wildlife/pests.
For admin, you need good people running the game, and for a game this large, there'd have to be quite a few. One thing I've always noticed is that when admins are on teams and fully participating in the game, sometimes rules have a tendancy to bend in the favor of the team with the admins on it. It's not intentional, but it can ruin the game for some. The best milsims I've played in were ones where the admins were either not playing, or making up a neutral team. For example, the last Westcan milsim in Vancouver, when the admins played as UN Peacekeepers, only firing when fired on, that was a great game.

Personally, I think Alberta, either calgary or edmonton, would make the best setting for a Canada-wide milsim. It might be a little more expensive for those out east, but there are some great milsim organizers out there.

Oh, and on a final note, realism is another thing to consider. How realisitic do you want to go. Some milsims, for example, will have kit, camo, and gun limits to make it very realistic, others will have the american team in cadpat. I personally like the more realistic games, with limits on kit, etc.

[zero delay]

I guess I should have been more specific when I said I ran a major event, I was one of two People (Charlie Tango From the MAA was the other) that planned, organized and ran Keystone Strike ( and neither of us did anything other than run the game) so when it comes to Realism, Camo restrictions, Weapon restrictions, Ammo limits, and any other major element of a serious MilSim I have extensive experience in not only planning, but also implementing the plans, as well as taking care of the logistical aspects such as co-coordinating helo time, vehicle usage, interactive demo sim deployment, and a myriad of other things that other game organizer have never had to consider because I developed the props and pioneered their usage in the game.

What I'm talking when I talk about a national game is a something completely and utterly innovative, where all the game admins effort's are concentrated solely on the creation of a infrastructure for the game upon which the participants decision and actions are the driving force that determine the tempo and flow of the game, and finally the outcome. Scripted games are fine but they lack the realism of a %100 fluid environment, the kind of situation real soldiers and CO's find themselves in daily. When you have the right people acting as the Command element, the game itself is only limited by their talent, and ability to improvise. THAT'S MilSim, and that’s the direction ultimately, I'd like to see the sport heading in, and something I've been working towards for years, and will continue to work on.

Basically my tenet is to simply provide the tools, field and premise and some minor directional influence, and let the participants create their own experience, because in the end that's what’s going to generate the most immersive experience for all involved parties. To do anything less than that isn't tapping into Airsoft's maximum potential.

The whole purpose of this post is to find out if the assembly of the most important component of the entire enterprise, the people, is even realistically possible at the levels needed to actually insure the game's success.

[Gish]

There are a couple of factors in getting people out to other peoples games.
1. Time
2. Money
3. Comroderie

Because Canada is large it does take quite a bit of Time, Effort and Cash to get anywhere else short of the local playerbase. When I attended the Keystone event it took 2 1/2 days of travel and ~$400ish in Gas, hotels, food. Thats quite a bit and we carpooled and went cheap as we could on things. Having an Ontario player come to Alberta would probably be pretty expensive too, and vise versa.

Comroderie: It's unfortunate but alot of players from other provinces or even inside provinces don't know the other players so they are hesitant to spend alot of time and effort to go to a far away Sim when local sims seem to satisfy them. This is pretty evident here locally where when I run local Milsims have ~70 regular players but when we arrange to go somewhere, even to Edmonton the number drops to ~10 or less. Occasionally we can prod people to go to a unique event (Such as a recent trip to Mission BC's Ferry) but thats because it was a new and unique experience for most of the players.

The closest I think we've ever come to national level was the old Westcan games where we had the majority of Western provinces come together for some pretty good games. Mostly because there were game administrators/organizers from each province/city arranging things. Which like you suggested would work.

But really if you build it players will come. If there was an event that had good planning and support i'd be sure to prod my playerbase to attend it and put in a good showing.

[Gryphon]

I have yet to attend a game out of province, although having run a large public op I have an idea on what kind of planning and forethought has to go into a major event whose scale can accommodate a large number of players.

This type of event is completely feasible. The only thing you need to do is find something that makes it worth the flight/drive for the majority of players that will be attending from outside the locale. To me, that's the most difficult hurdle.

Because we're a hobby-based sport with no real sponsors or capital aside from what we spend ourselves, getting enough scratch up to build a worthwhile scenario is outside the means of most of us. For my team's first game, Operation: Prairie Wind, we paid for everything out of our own pockets months before the game. We only recouped what we spent AFTER everyone had shown up and paid their entrance fee. In order to build a massive scenario complete with suitable land, structures, props, vehicles which would be necessary to make it worthwhile, you would need to be fronting a lot of cash that you really have no guarantee you'll ever see back again. One way to minimize your loss is to have an advance signup with an incentive for pre-payment, but you'll only get so many people doing that because they're buying into an unknown.

Location is important, but make the game interesting or cool enough and it will become a moot issue.

My biggest desire right now is to be able to play in a game that has developed structures, or at least ones that make an attempt to appear as such. Watching the Op: Irene videos gives me a hard on for all the multi-storey buildings, paved streets, and courtyards you can fight in and around. I realize such a grand facility is impractical here though all of the outdoor games I've played thus far have been strictly woodlands based. You start to yearn for more.

Where can we go that has enough varied terrain to be interesting, developed roads so that vehicles of any sort can be effectively employed, but is remote enough so as not to interfere with the public, can have structures built upon it either as semi-permanent or permanent, and can be terraformed to our liking?

Originally Posted by zero delay

What I'm talking when I talk about a national game is a something completely and utterly innovative, where all the game admins effort's are concentrated solely on the creation of a infrastructure for the game upon which the participants decision and actions are the driving force that determine the tempo and flow of the game, and finally the outcome. Scripted games are fine but they lack the realism of a %100 fluid environment, the kind of situation real soldiers and CO's find themselves in daily. When you have the right people acting as the Command element, the game itself is only limited by their talent, and ability to improvise. THAT'S MilSim, and that’s the direction ultimately, I'd like to see the sport heading in, and something I've been working towards for years, and will continue to work on.

I played a game like this last year, and it was fantastic. I've come to detest most milsim games with cookie cutter objectives "disarm the nuke" or "rescue the pilot" or "get component A and component B to use in device C" ETC.

I love it when an organizer says "here's the battlefield, there's your enemy. You figure it out. See you in 48 hours!".

MUCH more realistic.

[Gryphon]

I've come across an event that we should look more closely at, study, and learn from its success to see what we can apply here.

Hell, if my passport were valid I'd take a trip there this June just to watch it play out and take notes! Twelve hundred players is an incredible achievement that we can only dare dream about here.

http://www.berget-events.com