JoeMello

Absolutely belated, but figured I'd give it a go.

Sadly, few people showed up, but I felt we all had a good time and I hope I made it worthwhile.  For those of you in Boardcastia who couldn't make it, my goal was to show that making a panel was not that hard at all.  We had a few brainstorming sessions about potential subjects, subtopics, what a panel might need, and what might go wrong.  One of the things I wanted to reinforce was that failure is okay because no matter how lousy the panel is, you decided to help the community by doing that presentation, and you still get your ten bucks (as per Tekko X2 policy).  Things will go wrong, and the best thing you can do is roll with it and be resilient. (And if you saw the Game of Shows, you know how much I relied on resilience from failure ^^)  At worst, you don't get a panel next year.

In the future, thanks to some good questions, I'm thinking of doing a follow-up highlighting the typical structures used to present a panel and some of their strengths and weaknesses.  It seems like a logical progression from this year's panel which was more "What should I make a panel about."  If there's room for a 3rd. I may do one just highlighting what goes wrong, but that's still a ways away.

First off, on behalf of bstyles and myself, I want to thank everyone for coming to our panel. I want to especially thank those who continue to come, year after year. Even though I joined "full-time" in 2007, I think this was the first year I truly realized we had a dedicated fanbase, and that's awesome. You obviously know by now that without the audience, there is no Anime Fight Club, so I thank you for your loyalty, and I hope you continue to support us in the future.

Before I talk about feedback and give some feedback, I have a historical note: Yes, we did have our first legitimate draw in the 200-or-so matches we've done, but oddly enough, that was not the first match that did not yield a winner. Battle 100 between Suiseiseki and Tsuruya ended in the only true way for a fight between memes to end: the admins locked the thread.
Moving right along, feedback. First off, I take full responsibility for the panel running over time for the first time in a good while. The sudden death procedure, however, was also my own creation created on-the-spot, and I think it's a good enough idea to use in the future whenever we need a winner immediately. Granted, this has only been a problem about 1% of the time, but it'll work every time.

Second, one piece of feedback that I keep getting is that we need to take our show on the road. I know we'd both love to do that, but work and money are the two main forces that oppose us from doing that. I can't speak for Brian, but I need just about everything but travel comped these days to justify an out-of-town convention, and if you thought Tekko's reimbursement policies were bad (ftr I don't) you haven't seen what other cons require. That being said, if you know a travel- and panel-friendly convention that you want to see us (read: Brian) take AFC to, feel free to suggest it.

Third is the classic "why didn't you have ____?" critique. The answer is simple: you didn't suggest it. Our anime knowledge is limited and the shows we really know is even more limited. If you've got a fighter or a matchup you want to see, tell us. Frequently.

And now, nearly 400 words into this post, I have my own observations I want to share. Over the years, I've noticed three main strategies that seem to work fairly well. The first is the apples-to-apples stats comparison that you'd expect from a bar-argument debate panel. The second is going for the one-liner, which I think is high-risk, but high-reward. The third, which I'd like to see more off, is someone drawing up an actual play that would happen between the combatants. It's creative, it at least catalyzes the conversation and, at its most effective, has led to some of our more memorable wins.
One other thing I want to point out is that the two things that will never ever work is using rhetorical questions (our new tagline should be “We deal in rhetoric, not the rhetorical”) and trying to leverage your opinion of the show's superiority/inferiority into a functional argument. As much as I despise Code Geass and love Eden of the East, I can't say I'm surprised with the end result (though I'm disappointed no one brought up that jingoist Lelouch is fighting a native whose survival depends on saving Japan, or that Akira might be able to Frank West his opponent into submission). At the end of the day, the most effective argument made is going to win, so next year I encourage you all to relax, open your mind, get creative, and have fun.

So tl;dr thanks for coming, give us more suggestions; and keep being awesome.

The Pitt Gaming Club is hosting an informal Puzzle Strike Tournament Saturday at 2pm on the top floor of the University of Pittsburgh's Posvar Hall.  What's Puzzle Strike?  It's a deck-building board game that takes elements from video games and anime and spins them into a fun and competitive game.  More information on the game can be found here.

The event's Facebook page is here.

Hello.  Chances are I will be doing game shows again this year, one of which would be a brand new game* that requires contestants to guess the answers to some survey questions.  If you'd like to help out, please fill out the survey.  

Even if this doesn't make it to Tekko, I want to use this game sometime down the line, and if you like survey-based games, I might do more in the future if there's enough of a response.  Thank you all so much for your help.

*-not Family Feud, despite what the thread title alludes to.

Say I wanted to upgrade my badge.  Who would I talk to about that, and would that be different if I pre-registered at Sangawa for the ermahgerd rate?