Why We Built Challonge Communities

Here is why we launched Challonge Communities, which you can learn more about at https://challonge.com/communities/about.

Challonge was created to make tournament management simpler for all (and way easier on the organizer). We set out to build an easy-to-use system for generating tournament brackets no matter the tournament size, sport, esport, tabletop game or activity.

As a team, we developed a framework for both participants and tournament organizers, which looked something like this:

1. Love The Game – The participant and organizer both love the sport, esport, tabletop game, or activity and want to dedicate more time to the game’s proliferation among players.
2. Develop Skills – Players of the game hone their skills and determine if the game is something they want to continue playing casually, competitively, or neither. Organizers look for inspiration among others and determine how they would improve tournament organizing for their own needs.
3. Find (or Create) a Community – Players are looking to further their investment in the game and apply their refined skills, so they seek out a community of casual or competitive players to join. Organizers identify a gap in the current, established community offerings and create a community to connect a group of players for their own unique, personal motivations.
4. Join (or Host) Formal Competition – Players ready to measure their developed skills join formal competitions, which can vary in size and structure. Tournament Organizers work to connect people through the game they love and create an atmosphere for achieving individualized goals through competition. *This is the piece that Challonge has always helped with.*
5. Was It Rewarding? – Both players and tournament organizers reflect on their experiences and determine if the effort they put forth in the competition was personally rewarding. If so, they’re likely to improve their skills (as a player or organizers) and do it again, but if not many organizers and players stop. Primary reward-driving factors for both players and organizers are:
   1. Socialize / Fun – Was it fun to participate and/or organize? Did I get to socialize and interact enough with the people that share an interest in this particular game I love?
   2. Effort Expectations – Did the effort I put forth meet my expectations? As an organizer, did I have to do way more with organization, registration, set-up, and progression than I anticipated? As a participant, did I have to adjust my schedule, travel, practice, or pay more than I anticipated?
   3. Make Money – One rewarding piece of competition is to earn money as a top finisher or tournament organizer and in many cases this is hard to do. Also, in many cases, this is not a primary driver. That said, both participants and organizers can ask if this competition provided me with an avenue to monetize my efforts now or in the future?
   4. Build & Grow – Did this formal competition assist me in building my skill set, growing a following, increasing the awareness of the game I love, attracting more people to become interested, or help me progress my own interests?

This framework for competition helped us realize what we were doing well and how we could grow. Since the beginning we’ve helped tournament organizers no matter the size (basement to world stage) connect with and organize players, but until now we’ve had limited opportunities to empower those connections for continued interaction and simplify the process of re-organizing and mobilizing a community of players.

Challonge Communities is designed to empower the millions of Challonge users working on their own grassroots efforts to help connect and organize like-minded players.

We decided to focus on helping people Find or Create a Community which helped us launch Challonge Communities, a discoverable hub for loyal members to join your tournaments and events. Now, the framework for competition on Challonge looks like this:

Here’s what a few are saying about Challonge Communities so far:

“Community is a place to have a history of past events for our group and it serves as a portfolio of previous work, to show to possible sponsors how many participants we had in every event. Now we can link our page on the other websites and social media to gain extra visibility for participants. Participants can follow us and get updates for incoming tournaments. Another way for them to know about our events.”

Eduardo S. of Legion Gamer Galicia at https://legiongamergalicia.challonge.com/

“Challonge Community provides a platform where we can easily organize recurring online tournaments for various video game titles in the Fighting Game genre. It allows multiple tournament organizers to run their own events independently but still remain under the Australian Anime Fighting Game Community banner. Each tournament has its own page with customizable text and tournament format (Double Elimination, Round Robin, etc) which is fantastic when multiple titles are being run. I like the well-featured layout which allows a community to make a good looking landing page with useful information about the community and what games are played.”

HybriDefiant of Australian Anime Fighting Game at https://ausanime.challonge.com/

“I find Challonge Communities VERY promising as a tournament organizer to increase collaboration with my players, distribute information, and engage followers. Knowing my tournament participants will be exposed to pushed announcements, this will be great to remind participants and help new players get the hang of things without having to muster up courage to ask newbie questions.”

Karl W. of Stadium Arkadeum at https://arkadeum.challonge.com/

There are a ton of additional features coming to Communities this year that all contribute directly to making tournament organizing and participating more rewarding for all. Thank you in advance for reviewing it yourself and letting us know what you think at https://challonge.com/communities/about.