#PastebinMonday 06/10/2024 CTWC Pilled Edition

'Sup, doods!

I've been trying to do some work for the monthly Tetris Attack tournament in two weeks. I've been figuring out how to make a spreadsheet evaluate head-to-head records. I'm also trying to make the entering of results less manual between matches. I should be in position to give a better live presentation on the 22nd.

The key word in that last paragraph, doods, is “trying” because this past weekend was filled with hours upon hours of Classic Tetris World Championship action. My eyes have been glued to all of it... and I mean the qualifying and ALL three brackets of the championship. The MultiTwitch was in full force watching not only the two views of the Gold bracket matches happening at once, but also the Silver and Bronze brackets happening at the same time. I was extremely distracted the entire time. CTWC was an inspiration for me on how I wanted to organize tournaments so my eyes are going to be glued on it every year. In fact, I also had a watch-along on in the background. Should I do a watch-along for next year?

I'm going to say something controversial about the tournament presentation, doods, as someone who has tasked themselves with putting an increasing amount of care into puzzle tournament presentation in recent years. Before that, to the Tetris Company: you need to vet your sponsors better. To CTWC: you need to put your foot down with what the Tetris Company insists on putting onto your tournament if they are not going to directly sponsor the event for a greater amount than a single contributor. WHAT THE FUCK WAS LOGAN PAUL DOING THERE?! His presence there could not have been anything but a net negative on the event. If he put an earnest effort into qualifying for the main event, he would have been ultimately welcomed. Whatever that sponsored tournament was supposed to be was not it, chief. The Tetris Company should distance themselves from ModRetro as soon as possible. That presentation was laughable. To Logan's credit, he did put more effort into playing in that event than... the Bill Clinton kid?... did in tournament qualifying. Was ModRetro responsible for that, too? Net negative on the event as a whole. CTWC needs to stop being, as one Tetris community member put it, “the Tetris Company's bitch” and exert some quality control over the sponsors. The Tetris community does not need the Tetris Company's support if they are going to offer so little.

But no, doods, the actual controversial statement has to do with the commentary for the events. The people who should be on commentary for these tournaments have to be up to date with the people participating in them and not let so many of their intrusive thoughts through. You can alienate audiences with making serious talk over fluff that brings no value to the commentary. Less Chris Tang. Less BirbWizard. Less Kingsman. More Chris Bidwell. More Sharky. More Roncli—didn't know he was going to be there. Pleasant surprise.

This brings me to my question, as someone who has watched every CTWC main event since 2018: why was James Chen there in the first place? He brings historical knowledge and appropriate hype to fighting game events, but he's not involved with the month-to-month flow of the current Classic Tetris events and has always felt out of place in every Tetris event I have seen him in. He's too easily wowed by commonplace events in the top-tier matches and, I swear to Arceus, doods, my urges to watch the stream and leave the stream will be fighting with each other if I hear the term “Tetris rate” be glorified ever again. Tetris rate hasn't been relevant since the rolling grip was being developed in 2020. My life would be better off without hearing the term “Tetris rate” being taken seriously ever again.

Get James Chen out of there. He no longer has a place in Tetris commentary. I'm not sure he had a place in Tetris commentary to begin with. Until that happens, I will continue to cringe at every little thing he says. (And also at every cowbell rung during the matches. No point to them when they're being rung twice every game.)

By the way, doods, I used my expiring Google Rewards points to buy Dicey Dungeons on mobile and I've spent a tiny amount of time playing that. I do enjoy that kind of gameplay loop. I am not having a good time playing as the Witch, however. I can't even clear the first episode. I had no trouble clearing everyone else's first episode, but I have yet to reach the Witch's boss floor. I'm not focusing enough on defense, I suppose.


Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:


Goal #5b: finalize the tournament layout once and for all in a way that I can adapt for the Pokemon Puzzle League tournaments. This will be much easier to focus on after the monthly Tetris Attack tournament in a few weeks.
Goal #6: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts left to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. Getting back to this will be easier once the workflow for the monthly tournaments is finalized.
Goal #7a: clean up my own stream layout. Most of the framework necessary for a semi-proper stream is done now thanks to streaming the process, though I'm not currently motivated to stream any other part of it at the moment. This is the easiest to tinker with on the day-to-day. Next major objective is to make transitions and alerts. This will be a lot easier to work on in July during SGDQ, which I have another week off from my day job for.
Goal #7b: catch up on video archives that I have yet to upload since I restarted streaming.
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

This week's schedule:

Wednesday & 8pm-10pm ET – Wild Cards Wednesday: Qualifying for the Bumpty Open Edition, Doods!
Friday @ 9pm-1am ET – Friday Night Salt Mines: Attempting to Channel Alex Thach Energy Edition, Doods!
So yeah, doods, there will be a Wednesday session for sure. Thursday? Not sure yet.


That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, be decent to each other. Later, doods!

--Cards