Actually, I'm not better at all, medically speaking. If anything I'm worse. But on the plus side: I HAS INTERNET NAO. Again. So whooo! *does Flair Flop* Ow, my chest.
Thanks to my tricky internet situation I've been out of the fedding loop since early autumn last year, meaning I've missed some developments. I've also realised how much I've not missed all-nighters working on results, unreadable contract apps, and wrangling people's match ideas into a workable card without relieving oneself on anyone's dreams too much. But that's fedding for you! We do it because we love it, and not because we're all hopeless addicts. No sir.
While I was away, a number of interesting feds have sprung up. Prime among them is True Glory Wrestling, which made RoughKut's top ten e-feds a couple of months ago and is recommended by my buddy James, former owner of the much-missed Phoenix Wrestling Enterprise, which is good enough for me. TGW runs a weekly show and monthly PPVs and the front end is incredibly slick, with an easy-on-the-eyes colour scheme, simple and effective graphics and a great, easily navigable layout. There looks to be a decent range of talent there, and results are fairly well written, although the matches are a little on the short side. Overall it's a very stylish promotion and while it's not doing anything especially new, it does what it does well.
In the spirit of the aforementioned late Phoenix Wrestling Enterprise as well as the short-lived, Chikara-influenced New Revolution Wrestling Association, comes the excellently monickered Death Company Wrestling. It's still building to its first show, and already has a great OOC community going. Fedhead Boomtax is never short of inspired, unique ideas, and DCW promises to be crazy, anarchic and very funny. Not everybody will 'get' DCW, but those who do should have a blast. Also hosted on the DCW board is another promotion, Nic Cage Championship Wrestling. Mere words can't be employed in the expression of how much PURE CONCENTRATED AWESOME is in NCCW but suffice to say, it supplies over 250% of your RDA of Nic Cage.
One very intriguing fed which both opened and closed during my time away was Virtue, brainchild of noted hyperweirdo Ripplemagne (I mean that in a loving way, Ripp) which is every bit as unique as its progenitor. It's set in 1985 which already makes it genius, with all of the trappings that entails - small arenas, no Tron or pyro, terrible mullets and sweet electronic entrance music. It's currently out of commission as Ripplemagne has computer issues, but if it comes back (as is threatened), it has the potential to be truly radical to the max, as I believe was the vernacular in the mid eighties.
Another fed with a great gimmick is Unleashed. It's all based around underground, unsanctioned fighting with more influence from MMA than wrestling, with win/loss records kept on display and match cards presented like a genuine company. It has a tremendous sense of style and professionalism and is also possibly the fed with the highest overall level of writing talent within its membership I've ever seen - it seems to be a magnet for the most scarily awesome roleplayers I've ever had the fortune to get my ass handed to me by.
Femme Fatale Wrestling shares a lot of the same handlers as Unleashed, meaning the overall quality should be high. As the name implies, this one is all about the ladies, and while I've never exactly been noted as a fan of character segregation in e-fedding, I thoroughly applaud any fed which encourages people to break out of the 'white 20-something American male' default character in any regard. They're currently seeking tag teams, so those of you with any all-female teams should very definitely check it out. If I had the time, I'd be signing up for sure.
Finally, a real wrestler fed to close us out. ECW Hardcore Revolution has a pretty unique approach for a real wrestler fed, in that it's indy - specifically, a modern update of the pre-Invasion ECW of old, with a roster featuring some true hardcore legends (including Iron Shiek, Terry Funk, New Jack, Mayumi Ozaki, Steve Corino and... er... Colin Delaney). Shows are wild, free and untamed, much like the hair of current ECW Champion Brian Kendrick. God he's sexy.
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Friday, 23 April 2010
Saturday, 21 February 2009
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.
Hey kids. Sorry for the big gap in updates. You'd be amazed how much costochondritis can jerk around your passion for things.
So. Guessing game time. Guess what annoys me most on a new contract. Using the entrance music of whoever happens to be popular in WWE right now? Nope. One of the same handful of picbases every fed seems to be clogged up with? Nope. Yet another psycho heel promising to cleanse the promotion of the scum inhabiting it? Nope. A 400lb guy pulling moonsaults and planchas as regular moves? No, not even that.
Annoying as all of that stuff is, what's really guaranteed to kill my interest in a contract is being told about how the character is a huge deal, a million-time hall of famer, a trillion-time world champion, courted by major sponsors, a worldwide legend the fans will clamour for and opponents will fall weak at the knees just thinking about.
No, you're not.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but a hobby as loose and informal as e-fedding doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how big you are, how much you've accomplished - pick a random startup fed from Chris Hart's, and chances are nobody there will have heard of you. If Edge or Cena joined TNA tomorrow, they'd start at the top, but all of TNA's fans will instantly recognise them. Much of the time in fedding, that ain't gonna happen - you're only known to the people you've shared a fed with. Why should bookers make you a main eventer right from the off when they haven't even seen your writing? How are your opponents supposed to respond to a Hogan-level superstar, about whom they know absolutely nothing? This comes back to the unified canon thing; being a world champion basically means nothing in e-fedding, outside of one fed and its circle of affiliates. I don't mean that to denigrate titles within that context, but pretty much every character who's been around more than a couple of years has been a world champion somewhere.
Okay, look at Asylum or Magnum's list of accomplishments, and you can't help but be impressed. These are guys who've almost never been without a title, who've held literally scores of honours over their careers. Clearly, you don't get that much without experience and talent. But that doesn't mean that when someone as good as Asylum or Magnum walks into a random fed, they're automatically pushed to the top of the card. Yet I see no end of people with less than a quarter of those achievements expecting exactly that to happen to them. Sorry, but just no.
So. Guessing game time. Guess what annoys me most on a new contract. Using the entrance music of whoever happens to be popular in WWE right now? Nope. One of the same handful of picbases every fed seems to be clogged up with? Nope. Yet another psycho heel promising to cleanse the promotion of the scum inhabiting it? Nope. A 400lb guy pulling moonsaults and planchas as regular moves? No, not even that.
Annoying as all of that stuff is, what's really guaranteed to kill my interest in a contract is being told about how the character is a huge deal, a million-time hall of famer, a trillion-time world champion, courted by major sponsors, a worldwide legend the fans will clamour for and opponents will fall weak at the knees just thinking about.
No, you're not.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but a hobby as loose and informal as e-fedding doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how big you are, how much you've accomplished - pick a random startup fed from Chris Hart's, and chances are nobody there will have heard of you. If Edge or Cena joined TNA tomorrow, they'd start at the top, but all of TNA's fans will instantly recognise them. Much of the time in fedding, that ain't gonna happen - you're only known to the people you've shared a fed with. Why should bookers make you a main eventer right from the off when they haven't even seen your writing? How are your opponents supposed to respond to a Hogan-level superstar, about whom they know absolutely nothing? This comes back to the unified canon thing; being a world champion basically means nothing in e-fedding, outside of one fed and its circle of affiliates. I don't mean that to denigrate titles within that context, but pretty much every character who's been around more than a couple of years has been a world champion somewhere.
Okay, look at Asylum or Magnum's list of accomplishments, and you can't help but be impressed. These are guys who've almost never been without a title, who've held literally scores of honours over their careers. Clearly, you don't get that much without experience and talent. But that doesn't mean that when someone as good as Asylum or Magnum walks into a random fed, they're automatically pushed to the top of the card. Yet I see no end of people with less than a quarter of those achievements expecting exactly that to happen to them. Sorry, but just no.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
The Size Advantage
A big barometer of success in running an e-fedding seems to be the size of your fed - the number of weekly shows you produce, the number of members you have. The larger the better. RoughKut definitely works on this principle. Something occurred to me about that recently - it's bullshit. I've been on feds with 200+ members and you know something? I hated them. They're impersonal and cliquey. More members means you're less likely to go under but it also means that newer or less active members are more likely to be marginalised.
I can see the counter-argument to that; newer and less active members ought to have an incentive to become an active part of the community and get further up the card. The larger a roster is, the tougher the field is, the harder the glass ceiling is to break, and that stimulates members to work harder. Those who aren't interested in pushing themselves that hard shouldn't have joined in the first place.
This makes the mistake of assuming everyone wants the same thing, that everyone wants to be the most successful wrestler, and every fed ought to want to be the most successful - what about those who just want to hang out and have fun? It's a chicken/egg situation - on large feds, very often, only established veterans become big players - but only big players become established veterans. Furthermore, I for one have always found storytelling less involved in any fed of about 100+ members; there's so much going on you're expected to keep track of and so few people are interested in anyone else's storylines.
Now, I'm not saying that all large feds ought to keel over and die. Promotions like Pro Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. have their place, no doubt, and there's nothing wrong with being competitive. But there's also nothing wrong with NOT being so competitive. But personally when I want to get to know a bunch of people, kick back and have a laugh, and more than anything really roleplay with others rather than just compete for championships, I'm going to go to a smaller and more intimate place.
I'm stopping now before this devolves into ludology versus narratology - don't worry, I'm sure that one will come too at some point. :P
I can see the counter-argument to that; newer and less active members ought to have an incentive to become an active part of the community and get further up the card. The larger a roster is, the tougher the field is, the harder the glass ceiling is to break, and that stimulates members to work harder. Those who aren't interested in pushing themselves that hard shouldn't have joined in the first place.
This makes the mistake of assuming everyone wants the same thing, that everyone wants to be the most successful wrestler, and every fed ought to want to be the most successful - what about those who just want to hang out and have fun? It's a chicken/egg situation - on large feds, very often, only established veterans become big players - but only big players become established veterans. Furthermore, I for one have always found storytelling less involved in any fed of about 100+ members; there's so much going on you're expected to keep track of and so few people are interested in anyone else's storylines.
Now, I'm not saying that all large feds ought to keel over and die. Promotions like Pro Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. have their place, no doubt, and there's nothing wrong with being competitive. But there's also nothing wrong with NOT being so competitive. But personally when I want to get to know a bunch of people, kick back and have a laugh, and more than anything really roleplay with others rather than just compete for championships, I'm going to go to a smaller and more intimate place.
I'm stopping now before this devolves into ludology versus narratology - don't worry, I'm sure that one will come too at some point. :P
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