Locals are where fighting game friendships and rivalries are forged for years to come. This comradery helps the community thrive well after developers stop supporting their titles. Whether you stick around for the highlights, strive for improvement, or just want to grow the community, you might be less familiar with the people on the other side of those events.
Victor “Sp00ky” Fontanez has been the driving force behind New York City’s local scene for over a decade. TeamSp00ky runs Next Level Battle Circuit (NLBC), a weekly tournament series featuring games like Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear: Strive, and SoulCalibur 6. Sp00ky took some time away from his busy schedule to talk about event logistics, online versus offline tournament organization, and advice for running locals.
Have you always been the main person running NLBC?
Yeah, pretty much, as far as TeamSpooky goes. It’s not like it was only my idea to do a tournament, that’s usually a general community idea.
Can you speak to some of the team’s behind the scenes efforts that might go unnoticed?
The thing is when I run the event, I’m the person that’s forward-facing. So I get all the credit and people say that Spooky did everything. But obviously, I can’t broadcast a tournament, do commentary, and everything else all by myself.
We have Arturo “Sabin” Sanchez, who helps out our crowd-funding tremendously, which is really important for tournament prize pools. He’s also a big competitor, provides commentary, streams, and supports our sponsors as well.
NLBC Online Edition #81 #SFV Results
— Team Spooky (@teamspooky) September 30, 2021
1 @nycfurby (DH)
2 @PunkDaGod (KG)
3 @Shine_NYC (CO)
4 @whatiskami (AKR)
5 @StackBradford (AKM)
5 @Moikislaw (AKM/BA)
7 @Dual_Kevin (RA/G)
7 @RICHyaHEARD (MI)
Bracket https://t.co/xmCgHHlGMr
VOD https://t.co/ga08VoGfNf pic.twitter.com/cTHQIDsUyq
We also have the Admin. He doesn’t like when I talk about him too much, so I’ll just call him the Admin. And without the Admin, there’s no way I could do any of the organizational parts of a tournament. He keeps everything on the Smash.gg page so organized and the rules are clearly laid out.
When you see everything is written out so well and the Tweet has everyone’s name with their Twitter tag, the Admin is the one that makes sure all that happens! He doesn’t like it when I mention him too much but I’ll just tell you that he’s an important part of it.
And we have some others that help out from the community, but not officially Team Spooky. They don’t work for me but I might throw them a few bucks to help me run a bracket or do commentary.
Walk me through a typical event for your team from setup to execution and aftermath.
At a typical offline event I come to Next Level maybe four or five hours early. I go into the basement and set up all my equipment: about three cameras, all the tripods, and the gear for everything. I check with Henry on how many sign ups there are at that time. Then once the broadcast is set up, I check in with whoever’s scheduled to be on the mic with me about their responsibilities for the evening and make sure they know what to talk about on the microphone.
Next, we start the show, more or less how it happens on the broadcast. We run the whole tournament and after it's all over it probably takes me another one to two hours to pack everything up again.
How has that changed in the online era?
With the online events, it’s a little more convenient. I created my own custom setup with a green screen and some nice lighting. The only thing I need to change is the console. I have a mixer with multiple outputs so I can take multiple Discord calls. Once the setup’s all good the broadcast runs very similar to offline.
You mentioned Next Level several times earlier. What might people not realize about the importance of quality venues?
There are not too many places around where you can say “Hey you got 20 PlayStations around so we can have a tournament?” They’re not really going to understand what you’re trying to do. You need a spot that can handle what you’re trying to do and understand the business of fighting games.
Let’s talk about challenges. When did you decide to move NLBC online?
I warmed up to the idea partly thanks to Next Level themselves. They really wanted things to happen and the Admin and Arturo helped convince me. So we started doing the NLBC Online Edition just for fun. I guess they’re going okay, but since we don’t have rollback netcode with every game, some that should have been supported are still hard for me to host. If you look at when Strive came out, it was killing the charts everywhere. A big part of it was even if you didn’t love Strive as much as other games, the netcode’s better.
What do you miss the most about running consistent offline weeklies?
You don’t see anybody. Even when you do go to something offline now everybody’s got a mask on because it's a requirement. Nobody wants to get sick of course. But it's not the same feeling as walking up to somebody and saying “How are you doing?”
Tell me something about running a scene that no one talks about.
When you’re the average tournament organizer-- and I would put myself in that category even though we’re so well-known-- it’s pretty much a grind. Oftentimes you become a content creator on the side because you gotta put the VODs out there and promote it on social media. Then at the same time you have to get ready for the next week.
That grind becomes more than a full-time job. It’s a job that takes two or three people to handle, just like the tournament itself.
What’s the biggest consequence of that grind?
I’m telling you I’ve seen people do some weird stuff when they get sleep deprived and that happens a lot in this type of business. When you’re running tournaments all the time and you’re always streaming, sometimes you just forget to sleep, and your body doesn’t react well afterward. Nobody talks about sleep deprivation.
What’s the best advice you’ve given, but also the hardest to follow?
By far the hardest advice to follow is staying consistent. You know that if all you do is get up in the morning, put out a video, get your tournament ready, stream, eat, and go to sleep the same way every time then you’re gonna get somewhere. But guess what, it’s hard to stick to a schedule!
Sometimes you might want to go to a movie or event, and you lose 100 subscribers because you were away for a while. It is true that being consistent is good but I do think people take that too far, so you have to be able to balance it just right.
I can say with Team Spooky we’re not always putting out VODs the day it's supposed to and don’t always hit every event perfectly but we try to be as consistent as possible without driving ourselves crazy. It’s really hard to follow right, but the most important thing is to stay consistent and not give up. It’s funny how the most basic advice is the stuff that really matters.
Team Spooky and NLBC currently host weekly online tournaments for Street Fighter V, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Guilty Gear Strive. Follow @teamspooky on Twitter to find out more about weekly sign-ups. You can also watch every NLBC Online live on twitch.tv/teamsp00ky.