Matters of National Security
No, this entry has nothing to do with outing the identity of covert CIA agents or with vice presidents taking target practice at the head of their hunting companions. What it has to do with is voting results.
Since the day I started in this little hobby, voting results have been treated as absolute secrets. From the time the voting deadline passes until the results are posted, no one is to know the result of any match other than the BC itself. In many matches, this is fine. There is no input necessary to produce the match, and the BC can just write it up to achieve the desired result.
But, on some occasions, there are times when it would be very valuable to have input from the participants as to how they want the match to go.
My question is ... why all the secrecy? Don't we get enough suspense from other avenues in our lives?
Isn't the whole point of this hobby to tell a great story? Why not get some input from the participants on how best to tell their story? I'm not saying to announce the results when the votes are tallied, but it wouldn't hurt to talk with people in a match to see if they have thoughts on it.
These situations come up more often than you might imagine, especially in a vote-based fed like A1E. Nearly every week there is a result that is a surprise and contrary to the intended flow of the storyline. The BC does their best to try to adapt the outcome to give the winner his or her due, but also to not totally give up on the story we're trying to tell. However, this doesn't always come off the way we intend.
Perhaps we'll give the winner a disqualification victory with some outside interference. Or, it will be a screwjob win with the loser's arch-rival costing him the match. Inevitably, the person who actually earned the victory by outpromoing his foe that week will feel slighted because we didn't give him a clean victory. His upset is cheapened by how the write-up is done.
Take this week. My character (Farnswirth) has a match against Jericoholic Anonymous, who is the #1 contender for a World Title shot against Beast. Now, I have seen no votes or any kind of results, so this is entirely speculative. But, it's possible that Farnswirth won the match. If that is the case, how do we treat the result without harming JA's heat going into his title match?
In this case, I have the advantage of being on the BC so I have input into how it will be handled, but not everyone is so lucky. Assuming this were somebody else, how do we give Farnswirth credit for getting a big win without killing off JA? Instead of the BC sticking its neck out to make this call, why not get the two guys involved to give some input?
I look at it like this. Yes, the BC does a lot of the groundwork to make A1E great. But the stories belong to everybody. Why not get input from as many people as possible? I think this would cut down on some of the issues we sometimes have when results get released. I'm not saying we'll always be able to please everyone, but at least they can't say that they had no voice in the process.
posted by BigDaddy @ 9:24 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Well, it's a nice thought to have, but when you take a look at fed participation from an on-card segment standpoint alone the amount of participation by the entire fed as compared to what actually gets put on the cards is low. It's gotten better over the past year, but it's nothing compared to when I first started in the league. A lot of people just show up, RP, and that's it, and it's the BC's job to further everything else along (as you've said.) I think it'd be great if people in A1E took a more active role in the fed. I just don't see it happening.
Took me a week to get to this, but I must say that I totally agree with you. The thing with A1E is that sometimes it's so hard to tell your own story because others are such a big focus. More often than not, Roger did a great job of allowing me or whomever to get in what they wanted for the card. Hell, he even allowed Cloverleaf and I to run an impromptu World Title match just before we left, so I can't slight him in any way there. I just think the main thing is that it's easy for people to get lost in the shuffle sometimes because everyone on the BC runs their own characters so there's not much time to think about others. I know in UCW, we always try to get a good storyline out of whatever we're doing and still try to give whomever won the week the W, and yes, sometimes we do spoil it for the competitors. In the end, they don't really seem to care to know the outcome, so therefore I don't see it as such a big deal to give away the end every once in a while. But like Lindz said, the thing that really hurts A1E is that there's not a lot of OORP communication. I know when Dave and I were fighting for the World title, neither of us really brought it up to the BC that we wanted to do a LMS HIAC match. We just intro'ed it in the RP threads and left it at that. I think that people just need to get on the stick and really start talking with the BC more than guys just like Dan, who I know almost always has something he's bringing up to Fly. And it doesn't even have to be after you know the outcome of the match. Between four of us in EPW, we calculated a scheme the past two weeks without knowing the outcome. In the end, more communication just needs to be pressed.
To be completely honest, I often find it discouraging bringing angles to the BC only to find them completely changed by the time there make it into the results. Almost to the point of completely reversing the intent of what was proposed.
I chalk most of this up to communication and the fact that once an angle is proposed it completely leaves the hands of the person proposing it and eventually ends up with a match writer (who may or may not have a full understanding of the angle) to fit it into a given match result without the writer and the player ever touching base on the specifics of it all.
And - if the player and writer do actually manage to figure things out - you still have to worry about other members of the BC jumping in at the last minute and vetoing either part or the entire thing.
Honestly, I probably submit as many angles to the BC as anyone. And as often as not, issues arise because of it that have - justly or unjustly - stained my opinion of BC and their opinion of me.
A lot of this could probably be avoided if there was better communication between BC and participants during the aftermatch/write-up portion of the card. Plus it would make the non-BC participants feel more involved and help strengthen both the unity and quality of the fed.
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