I don't doubt that for a moment. In fact, it took several of us here in the Bay Area months to get any sort of real information after Innovation Gaming was removed as the PTO for northern California. (For reference, in the 'dead period', it would take at least 5 hours to travel to the nearest Preview, and 8 to get to a PCQ.)

What I'd noticed is that the general pattern for answering e-mails is that if you don't have the exact and correct address for the person you need to contact, it's essentially a crapshoot as to whether the person who checks e-mail at a given time will respond to or redirect any given e-mail. I'd suggest sending copies of the e-mails every week or so, at different days & times, with different headers. It'll eventually crack through. *shrug*

What I meant was, that there are not 100 players here in germany that buy 6,5 of each expansion. I guess we have about 50-60 players who are really dedicated any buy about 2 - 3 displays from some expansions but not all and then they try to get the missing cards by trading. Only very few players buy more then that and not much.

If there is a PCQ in LA with 30 participants and a month later one in San Fransico with 30 participants it is most likely that only few people have attended both PCQ's.

If you take two PCQ's in germany with the same number of participants you will have a higher number of people who played in both.

So all in all, what UDE is doing now is exactly what I would be doing from a business standpoint. They tried to promoted the game with pricemoney but it didn't work out here in europe and now they cut their losses and don't continue to throw good money after bad one.

I hope there are enought players left how actually play the game for fun and not for money, I for one will continue to play.

There are more than 100 player in germany. Just becauce there are so few on the PCQs dont mean that there are so few at all. There are some who only play for fun. This number is just alot less than in USA, where are some who only collect.

UDE and UDE Europe don't really have anything to do with other. If UDE Europe needs something then they need to get it.

As much as I agree with you the parent company is Upperdeck (no entertainment) right?

There's definately potential in Europe but it's dissapearing.
It was great that UDE had paid for Amsterdam and the short term interest then was amazing and it looked good for the longterm. This was not followed up on by UDE-E and now we have all of these topics.

You surely understand what CraigShaw is talking about right?

That being said I'd normally be against such "get out of jail free" senarios but I do have less and less faith in UDE-E as time goes on

Just to set the record straight: I didn't say that the gane would DIE in NOrtha America without Europes, but it is certainly much healthier with a happy Europe in the mix. A CCG of this scale, with such global interests, needs all of the global hotspots to remain healthy and happy - which includes Europe, Australia, Japan and Southeast Asia. (South America? I don't now enough about the situation there, but it never seemed to take off there like it has in other places - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

Europe is a major goldmine. And frankly, it saddens me that the situation there has degraded into the mess it's in now. When you have such a vibrant community there, with the available money and obvious interest in the game, one should chase it down and put an effort into catching that spark. And these new tournaments don't seem to be a solution, just a stopgap. A bandaid.

If Europe goes, it will not kill the game off in the US. But it will hurt it. It is already doing damage to the game's global reputation, which does not help the game at all. The game will go on, but will be like a wounded puppy - it can function as it has to but that energy that was there yesterday is missing.

The UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are gaming hotspots. They should be embraced, not neglected. Period.

My new favourite person! :)

bu the way kergillian....you are somehow connected with ude america as i know, so do you know what ude america is planning to do with the european situation?
maybe i am wrong but seems to me that ude america is the more important and leading of the two companies so they might get the final word about OP in europe.

While I do some freelance and contract work for UDE it's all from home - I don't work in the UDE office and have no say on their official policies, nor do I hear about them. My work is limited to the cards and the sets, and even then from only an aesthetic standpoint, not even from and R&D perspective.

So, long story short: no, I have no clue =)

Here's the thing …_I'm in a location that has recieved far less support for Vs. than Western Europe.

I spent most of a year commuting seven hours each way just to get to a tournament of any kind.

PCQs? There have been six of them *ever* within a 12-hour-drive of Edmonton (where I play tournaments). 10Ks? There has been one in Seattle, which is about 13 hours drive —_each way.

So when I hear people whingeing about lack of tournament support, I get a little frustrated.

Frankly, players in my home province of Alberta would probably be thrilled to have tournament support as good as what they're proposing for Western Europe.

I got into CCGs in March of 1994, not because there were cash tournaments (there weren't), but because it was a bit of a lark.

At least in Alberta, that's still the only reason to play most games. The PCQs we've had are fun enough, but seriously are the big tournaments the only reason people are playing this game?

-- Olav

[Olav_Rokne]So when I hear people whingeing about lack of tournament support, I get a little frustrated. [Olav_Rokne]

canda isnt europe is it.

canada 828 registered players,
europe 5255.

you can see why this is a little bigger than the situatioin there and deservers more high profile tourneyments than there not that the fact you dont get any love doesnt suck either.

ok....first off I agree with everything that kergillian has said on this topic.

Now to address the "relationship" of ude "america" and UDE-e, I offer this analogy:

You run a successful buisness. So successful that you decide to open up another location, far enough away that it doesn't effect your sales. Your brother, knowing you are about to expand, offers to manage this new branch of your buisness, and you accept. You trust him enough that you make it so that to all intents and purposes there are two seperate buisness, but that brother pays you what amounts to a licensing fee for using your name and having you set the whole thing up and front the money for the initial opening. In fact, you go so far as to have a huge grand opening event. This event is something that you run on a regular basis at your own store and it generates a huge amount of advertising and profit. It does the same for the new store.

Later in the year when you get the report from your brother about how the buisness is doing, you find that it is no where near being as profitable as your own buisness. When you inquire, you find that your brother has done nothing but run the buisness. he hasn't been using the huge event thing that has generated so much benefit for your location. His reason, is that you never came back and did it again, and he never had the profits to put one together. His buisness now is still profitable, but slowly declining. You could run another of the events for him, but you fear that he will continue to drain profits from your own buisness for not as much gain in his. so you essentially cut him loose to rise or fall on his own.

I think this is an accurate parable for the UDE family.

I don't think that's quite it. It's not nearly as simple as that, for one, and the effect it has on the parent business and its reputation is also more complicated.

Also, Olav: I'm about to piss you off, so you may not want to read this, but I hardly think Edmonton is comparable to the European marketplace. How many people live and play in London? Berlin? Paris? Madrid? Rome? And those are just the CAPITALS. I don't know about Vancouver, but Toronto and Montreal, even Ottawa, have MUCH better support that Europe does, and with a smaller population - and even more important, a smaller SURROUNDING population. Canada is a HUGE country with a miniscule population compared to other countries that are a fifth of our size. Alberta is fairly remote and rural in comparison to the sprawling metropoli of Europe.

And, last time I checked, it's remarkaably cheaper for us to get to a PC. I'm still seething at the cost of the flight you got, less than half the cost of my flight, which is, in turn, likely less than half the cost of a Euro flight.

I'm not saying your situation doesn't suck for you, nor that Canada should lose the great support we have, but our situation is hardly comparable.

How about a father with two sons. He gives each son some starting capital and a market to sell the family product in. He lets his oldest son set up business in the larger market, and with a larger starting capital than the younger son. The older son uses this excess capital to sell his product at a loss to improve his reputation and create himself more customers and future potential profit. The younger son cannot afford this and so has to sell product at a higher price. The customers in the younger sons catchment area purchase their product from the older son as a result as it is cheaper even after extra delivery charges are paid and the younger son goes bankrupt.

Both analogies are silly but mine is at least as accurate as yours and probably more so.

Olav: I sympathise with anyone who is getting a lower standard of OP than that of the area with the best (Currently most of the US), but as Kergillian stated, Canada has a population (33 million?) half that of the UK (67 million) and a fraction that of Europe (EU 450 million) spread over a land mass more than double the size. Europe is the ideal place to have OP. It has a huge (largely wealthy) population. You can get from one side of the EU to the other in under 3 hours.

Even compared to the US Europe comes out on top. The US has 2/3 the population spread over a landmass similar to Canadas.

*Rant over*

Not knowing how things are set up and why is a bit of a downer but it sounds to me like whats needed is for UDE (or parent company) to set up the OP program as a seperate centralised entity which then does its thing. Just sounds sensible to me if you want to promote a global tournament structure have it as a global structure run from the same point.