New year, new us. Meet the Victoria Esports Association.
TL;DR – There are a lot of new things with VESA in 2019! An updated theme, updated logo, a new site, a fresh new batch of tournaments, events, and new merch coming soon!
The New VESA Brand Image
We want to 'dis-associate' the Association with being just a club that makes a few tournaments for a handful of members for fun. Instead, we are big on creating a real esports community in Wellington. We want our members to feel like they are a part of something real, so that is why we created a new brand image that players can get behind!
Arguably our best year yet, in 2018 we connected over 200 VESA members to our esports and gaming related activities. These included 3 League tournaments, a League of Legends OPL finals viewing party at the local bar complete with phat yarns and banter, as well as NZ's biggest and best community Smash tournament to date.
VESA Rumble #1:
Our first proper tournament allowing players in and around Wellington to sign up and make teams, we got 9 teams signed up to play for a 77,000 RP total prize pool supported entirely by Riot Games. A total of 60 players were signed to teams for this event and it was a two-month long rumble with an intense 3-game set for the finals between the powerhouse HKC and underdogs TCK with HKC taking the victory with a statement game 3.
Here's a look back at the prizes each team received:
First: HKC 29,000 RP + 5x Triumphant Ryze
Second: TCK 15,000 RP
Third: PengDab 13,500 RP
VESA LoL 1v1:
16 Players signed up for an intense one-day, single elimination 1v1 tournament for a prize pool of $100 to be given away on that evening!
First: SsammyA $50
Second: Xehanort $30
Third: Lopex $20
NZ IUM 2018:
A tournament connecting over 50 university students across New Zealand to play in a two month long rumble. We learnt here that to make matches between teams as fair as possible we departed from the double round robin format in favour of a single round robin format, in which we broke up seeding into two MMR brackets to improve fairness and overall enjoyment for players taking part in the tournament.
First: UoA 29,000 RP + 5x Triumphant Ryze
Second: EZ Clap 15,000 RP
Third: Bigpipe Esports 13,500 RP
Biggie Breezy:
Biggie 2018 was the largest NZ Community Smash Tournament in history with 60 live attendees, over half of which traveled here from all parts of the country ranging from Dunedin to Northland.
This was a tournament that included 3 Smash games: Project M, Smash 4, and Smash Bros Melee.
2018 Totals:
We worked hard to get our VESA members substantial prizes to get them excited and raise the stakes of our community tournaments. Here's a short summary of the prizes given away to the players who proved themselves in our tournaments in 2018.
With Riot Games Sponsorship:
$1480 worth of RP = 154,000rp given away in total
10 Triumphant Ryze skins
And along with all the other events and tournaments:
TOTAL: $2697 given away!
2018 has left us hungry for more, so that's why we're putting our 110% into this years events and tournaments, starting with the Wellington Esports Championship - with a huge $1000 prize pool and top 4 teams get to play on HP OMEN Sponsored PC's in front of a live Armageddon crowd!