The Competitive MetaZoo Community

The Competitive MetaZoo Community

Hello friends, Doulgas “DiRTy” Haas back again, this time with something a little different then my usual gameplay content. Today I wanted to talk about the MetaZoo Competitive Community. You know, it’s hard sometimes to zoom out and realize that since MetaZoo’s first set it has only been a little over a year.

Being a player from other card games since their introduction here in America I remember how hard it is to get a competitive scene going. I started in TCG’s with Pokémon Base Set, my second game was Yu-Gi-Oh during Legend of Blue Eyes. It was a very different time, although it wasn’t that long ago, we didn’t all carry the world in our pockets, endless information at our fingertips, and most of our information spread from word of mouth and magazines. So let me take you on a little trip to my childhood and the history of the competitive scene from my perspective for some of the most popular TCG’s to date.

When Pokémon first released its TCG it was just another product in a long line of products being released by the Pokémon Company in attempt to make money off their incredibly popular TV show. Local tournaments started popping up a few months later, but nothing was being organized by the company itself, it was all grassroots initiatives that were being held by local game stores because the fans were begging for it. I was one of those fans. What started as just a few kids grew rather rapidly into huge tournaments at my local mall, but it was our passion to play that grew that to what it was. We told our friends who in turn told their friends and we grew something that was beautiful. It wasn’t until many years later that the Pokémon company stepped in and provided us with real prize support and tournament structure. For Yu-Gi-Oh it wasn’t much different, it was only a few years after the Pokémon TCG that it came on to the market. Being a show based on a card game it was a quicker transition for the cards to be adopted by the fan base, but it still took many years before we had more then just a grassroots local scene. Of course, these companies held World Championships, but they were not representative of the fan base and usually just consisted of players from the local area and maybe some die hard fans who took the time and money to travel there on their own.

So, what does this have to do with MetaZoo? By looking at our TCG past we can better understand our future. MetaZoo, although being a company I love and one that has changed my life in a very profound way, is still a relatively small company with a whole lot of growing to do. To imagine they could tackle everything at once would be naive of us. They have done a lot of things right, but they have also made mistakes. The point is though, they have at every turn learned from these mistakes and made huge strides toward making the game a better experience for everyone involved. But, seeing as its still a small company compared to the other major TCG’s on the market, there is no way they can organize events everywhere, for everybody, all the time. That’s were we come in, the fans of this game. It’s fun to play our friends, but a lot of us want to test our skills against lots of people in a tournament setting, and we don’t want to do that once a year. We want it to be a regular thing, but if that is what we want then we must be the change we wish to see. We must get out there and support our local game stores that are hosting these events, bringing our friends into the game, and sharing these events with as many people as possible.

One thing that has changed since the creation of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh is social media, as I said before, the world at our fingertips. We now have the means to support the people trying to make a difference in the competitive community at the click of a button, a like, a share, sometimes is all we can do, but it means a lot in the grand scheme of things, getting these events into the eyes of more fans and getting them to do the same.

We as a community have a duty to help grow this game if we want it to be a game we can play on a regular basis. Taking a few minutes out of our days to help share these events with fans that may not know about them, taking an hour out of our week to teach a new player, these are the things that are going to grow our community. There are a lot of unsung heroes out there in the MetaZoo community, the game store owners who took the risk to carry MetaZoo product, the fans who took the time to become judges, the many content creators who spend hours a week putting together content for us to enjoy and learn from, the tournament organizers who are doing their very best to put together tournaments for us to play in and often times putting up incredible prizes for us to win. These are the people that deserve our support. These are the people we must support to grow our community and make competitive MetaZoo an endeavor more people are willing to take the risk to organize for us.

So, if you’re a fan like I am a fan, if you love playing the game or want to learn to play the game, it starts with supporting the people in the best position to put these events together for us to play in. I am currently writing this article for one such organization, Caster Society, but they are only one cog, one piece of the puzzle, there are so many more out there. So, from one MetaZoo fan to another I implore you, go out there and push your local game store to hold weekly or monthly local tournaments, invite your friends, teach new players, like and share events you see online because a little bit of effort can go a long way.

I see a lot of people online asking about when events will be announced and when we will have the opportunity to play in large events like Caster Cup again, well, it starts with us. That is all for this weeks article, as I said, a little different then what I usually write and what I will write in the future, but as a competitive player myself and someone who want to see this game grow I felt I wanted to get this out there so that more people could see what I see.

Grassroots MetaZoo is where it starts. Support and share this game and the people who are doing the same, maybe start and Instagram or Facebook page with the fun you are having, send me your events and pictures at my Instagram handle located at the bottom of this page and I will be happy to share it. I know we are once again on the precipice of something beautiful and its going to take us all to make that happen.

Until next time casters, this is your Douglas “DiRTy” Haas signing off!!! I love you all!!!

Instagram – @ Lord__DiRTy