I've been reflecting upon the increasing incidents of big time cheating in our major tournaments lately and I've also talked to a couple of members of the community and I think that there is something inherently flawed about it. I'm not trying to get this thread to be a grumpy "everything used to be better"-thread and I also don't want this to be a namecalling and shitslinging thread. I am genuinely concerned about the tournament culture on this website. I don't have any real solutions so far but I just feel that there are a couple of issues that need to be addressed. Maybe nothing comes out of this, maybe others share my concerns or maybe we can actually figure out something to tackle the issues. Another preface: I think the tournament directors right now are doing an amazing job and I am actually very happy that more and more cheaters get caught.

The base issue:
Cheating might be rooted in our tournament culture at this point. Thinking back from the bloo ost onward I've just been thinking off the top of my head what happened in the official tournaments we had. There were several ghosting incidents, including a ghosting ring in wcop leading to half of team Germany getting punished. There were several people disqualified in the playoffs of non-team tours, we had several tournaments cancelled, including our frontrunner team tour spl. There have been several people ejected from ost again. I haven't been following most tourneys too closely but isn't it kind of sad that off the top of my head I remember more illegitimate winners than actual legit ones? Maybe I have a distorted view of the past and maybe I am just not the guy who "gets" cheating, but I feel like it has been getting worse. Not only is that due to the fact that cheaters actually get busted now (which is a very good thing, just to clarify), but that for many people in the tournament community, especially in the vocal part of it that makes up most of the participants in official tours, the "elite" so to say, it's just not a big deal to cheat anymore and that the methods used are getting more extreme as time progresses. I've had a couple of thoughts on why people actually go as far as the cheaters nowadays do and the problem might not be with these individuals but with what motivates them.

Approach 1: Big-effort cheating is rooted in prestige and glorification
Ok so here is the deal, I will for this part mostly address big-effort cheating. I am talking turn by turn ghosting, I am talking rigging tournament matchups, I am talking deceiving other players, conspiring for wins or using technical tools to gain an unfair advantage. The things that usually warrant an official statement. If you put this sort of effort into cheating there is something inherently wrong with the picture of the reward you have. Straight speaking it's just a pixelated trophy and the acclaim of some people on the internet, right? The problem is that as a community we are putting a very high virtual value on those things. What we are playing for are virtual goals with no value in the real world. The fact that it is an actual thing that people go out of their way and do almost anything for these virtual goals just shows me that they are forgetting that this is actually a game, that we are actually just playing pokemon on the internet. And the issue is that this hasn't only happened once, the tendency is definitely there.

I've been thinking about the fact if prestige is actually only a positive thing and I came to the conclusion that it definitely isn't. After a cheating scandal someone always says something along the lines "this is why we can't have money tournaments on smogon" and I think this is absolutely not the case, because even though there is no money involved the problem is already there. Cheaters wouldn't be motivated by a couple of bucks, they are motivated by the virtual reward, the prestige.

I have two comparisons for this: pokemonperfect is as many people here probably know a small tournament community and to my knowledge there haven't been any real incidents of cheating. Sure the environment is completely different since oldgens is kinda more honest to begin with, smaller community, yada yada, but the thing is nobody really cares about the trophies or the community acclaim there, winning an rby seasons doesn't mean anything more than it actually is, even though it is a big achievement. The community isn't driven towards the glorification of the winners so there isn't that big of an incentive to actually cheat since it's more about the game than the results.
The second one would be Magic the Gathering. This is a competitive scene that is very much driven towards the glorification of the winners and the prestige. The pros are treated like superstars in that community, so there is a really big incentive for people to cheat. In one thing it is comparable, it is a turn-based, decision-based and not a timing-based game. Just like competitive pokemon. The difference is that this game and this community has very high resources and a different technical background. There are professional judges and several safety nets that prevent cheating, if you tried to cheat on the pro tour you wouldn't be able to. Their simulator is a company-made permanently professionally moderated environment that both makes it hard to cheat and doesn't give the incentive to do so, since mtgo isn't as prestigious.

The point I am trying to get across here is that we might glorify our winners too much. I know this sounds harsh to anyone accomplished on this site but that is just my take on this. The value we give to the trophies as a community is just too high and the resources we have to prevent cheating are too low. Former makes people play for a virtual achievement which makes some forget what they are actually doing, latter is making it possible for people to actually get there in unfair ways.

Approach 2: A vocal part of the community tolerates "small" cheating
I know that this has been beaten to death before in the ghosting thread but it is still an issue and I wanted to address it. I am not trying to point the fingers here but it is a problem that a big part of our tournament regulars just tolerate cheating. I can't even count the times where I heard things like "everyone is ghosting in team tours" and people denying they cheated despite there being clear evidence. It's just this constant bending of the rules that the community does that just leads to a very elevating mindset for people.

If someone comes into the tournament scene they are confronted with this vocal part of the community. And even if this part isn't representative of the whole tournament community it is the one that defines the mindsets we have and that sends out the images people have of this website. This is a community issue that we need to address as one. I am enraged every time I see someone make a hypocritical post after every cheating scandal about how bad it is, even though I know exactly that they are promoting this very mindset of "everyone cheats so I have to do it too".

Why is this so important?
I already said that I think the work of the TDs is great and it is helping a lot, but recent events just keep showing that they are only treating symptoms and not the actual problem. You can set so many examples with harsh punishment, but if people just keep committing crimes the problem might have to be tackled from somewhere else. The image of official smogon tournaments that goes out to the world isn't a good one right now and every time a tournament is getting cancelled, redone or decided by disqualification it's just making it worse, even though these decisions are necessary. I just don't see a very bright future for the tournament community as a whole. I know people who feel very annoyed playing tournaments at all because they feel that a big part of their opponents are going to cheat in some way or form. This is a problem and if nothing changes this sentiment will continue and spread.

I am not saying remove all trophies or anything, I just feel that these are some viewpoints that many haven't considered yet and that recent trends in tournaments aren't really pointing towards a bright future, so they might be worth thinking about.

Jesus Christ I really just wrote this. Apologies for grammar and semantic errors : )

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since i have to waste 7 more hours until i take a bus to get out of university, i might as well write a post to fill up the time

first off, i might as well talk about what i would describe as the "tournament spectacle" which has grown over the years since i've been here (i have actually talked to finch about this irl lol).

the tournament group of players are the single most isolated group of players on this site, and have increasingly become what i would define as a cult. this topic has been beaten to death for quite some time, and i would say this idea of the "cult of tour players" has been slowly evolving starting from probably around just slightly after BW1's release in early 2011. positing this as a truth, this is where i believe the philosophy that encapsulates the modern tour player comes from. as time goes on, i notice more and more of a disconnect with other sections of the site, and instead a major focus on specifically tournaments and playing in them. nobody cares about writing an analysis, or tutoring, or whatever when it comes down to it at this point. we leave the majority of those jobs to people who don't play tournaments at a high enough level for us to deem them members of the tournament cult. there is a complete disconnect between those of us that do the other sections of the site, and those of us that play tournaments (or strictly involve ourselves in only the singular metagame aspect of the site) now.

this has led to a rather discernible decline in other aspects of the site to the point that i would probably advocate new players to stay away from them if they want to ever be good at this game. i have openly said that i believe almost all aspects of this site's "educational" basis are now of incredibly low, out of touch quality. for a short example, i would say that the majority of the tutor's that currently exist are of a playing quality so low that i would not even deem some of them to be at spl level. these days, people come immediately into the tournament scene and stay there instead or branching off into other areas of the site. there is absolutely no allure to getting badges anymore outside of TC; the only thing that matters is getting a trophy. a trophy is the only source of validation on this site at the moment that is universally agreed to be positive. old concepts of "badge-whoring" are anachronistic and almost laughed at. the ladder of success for the top players nowadays is an incredibly linear and predictable one.

1. get tc
2. join tournaments
3. win tournaments
4. trophy
5. possible moderation position in the only other facet of competition that offers validation outside of tournaments - a council spot
6. quit

to basically sum this all up, the culture of smogon tournaments has become such an insulated one which only serves to feed itself and the people inside it. there is no need for those who deem themselves "good" at the game to every branch out. there is absolutely no care for the community. for most top players, the concept of smogon does not exist. smogon used to be a platform. now, smogon is a means to an end, which is, winning tournaments. if you don't believe me, then just ask most top level tour players. it doesn't matter where we play at this point, as long as there is a tournament running that comes with a sense of validation of skill level. this concept of "validation" doesn't exist on lesser forums like PP, which is why cheating is absent (or maybe it isn't, idk) in that platform. PP has little to no prestige involved in it, in the same way PO lacks the same thing nowadays. nobody cares about it in the slightest, thus there is less cheating because there is no incentive to win. nobody cites there powc / pocl records for reasons to be drafted.

the tournament scene of smogon is the literal definition of solipsism to most top players. we are the only part of the forum which matters to any degree of importance and nearly all of the rest of this forum is decayed to a point where it is below us to even participate in. if you don't believe me, just check post % of most prominent tour players and see what i mean.

this idea of the cult of tournaments is what inspires, and makes cheating so damn appealing. the tournaments sponsored by smogon are not about winning to most of the participants that choose to partake in them. they are entirely about the validation and spectacle that comes from winning a big tournament. because the tournament community is so insulated and renowned as the singular outlet for any sort of competition, there is an incredibly high bounty on winning any tournament. there is not validation for being good at this game outside of the tournament circuit. the ladder has been depreciated to a point where nobody cares in the slightest about who is #1; in fact, these people are often panned for being terrible compared to us. people who write any analysis are panned for being terrible at this game, tutors are laughed at for how inferior they are, and now entire lower tier communities are laughed at for even bothering to exist. there is no validation from getting a badge anymore, there is only validation from getting a trophy. when this attitude has been internalized and perpetuated, whether implicitly or explicitly, it has an incredibly large repercussion. these ideas that parts of this site are inferior become a reality because nobody is willing to fix them, or at least nobody who is considered to be "good" at this game. people in the tournament circuit have taken this idea as a truth, and slowly washed away the idea that you can be even remotely good at this game if you don't play tournaments.

as i said, this philosophy slowly becomes a reality. people inside the tournament circuit are not willing to contribute, and people outside the circuit are not willing to join the group to as high a level and dedicate themselves to both writing analysis and the tournament scene. there is a clear dichotomy between these two groups which i believe has grown higher and higher over the years to a point where there are sharp divides in friendship between these areas of the site.

this is why i say that smogon is not a community in the sense it was in the past. there is nothing special about smogon to tournament players, there is noting that really matters about this site other than the validation it offers and tournaments it runs.

you see huge amounts of people willing to win at all costs to be apart of this cult of tournament. mazar, for example, cheated in multiple tours to multiple trophies because he wanted to be seen as good. people who cheat in everyday tours win them for the appearance of being good at this game and making multiple playoffs. cheating to win (when you're not getting caught) gives the outward appearance of the only source of validation that this cult offers: being good at this game. being inducted into the cliqueish mentality and being told that, yes, you are good at this game and deserve recognition.

i also believe that the toxicity of the tournament cult has gotten worse and worse over time. people fucking destroy new players, or even regulars, for making misplays and playing below par. every single play is a choke, and everybody who isn't a making amazing plays is garbage. this toxicity is most attributed to the smogtours lobby at this point, which has become so ridiculously embarrassing in the insults it creates that a lot of people are growing sick of it after it turns on them. even worse, you see a lot of players who are not even involved in the tournament community repeat insults they probably don't even understand just to fit in. how many times have you seen players who are not ingrained in the tour circuit say phrases like "LOOOOOOL" or "CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE" or "LMFAO SO BAD" over and over until they feel like they're part of the hivemind.

so yeah, that's what i think about why cheating exists at such a high level today. cheating exists because it is not about the win, it is about the spectacle more than anything. back in the day there was cheating too, don't misunderstand, but the cheating back then i feel was more about the actual winning of the tournament, and not the kudos that come after it. it has entirely become about the idea of being good, rather than the reality. and for many players, myself included, this has become the main driving force of still playing this game. the idea of people thinking you're the best in the world at something is euphoric, no matter how small that community is. people cheering you on, bolding your name in prediction posts, hell, even just congratulating you on your win is something that the majority of us cannot get anywhere else. it has become so important that we win not for the integrity of ourselves, or the tournament, but the cult.

sorry to be patronizing to some parts of the site, but for the friends i do have that are in qc, in tutoring, in whatever other area, i have voiced this opinion to you all before. i say this as a "top player" who has been on this site for long enough to watch this evolve into what it has become today.