I AM ARCADE // FGC CHANGES 2025
Hello all! We’re at an impasse on all things FGC and Smash (SSBU is a matter for someone else to handle!) where we’re making some changes. Running 2-3 tournaments/streams a week for myself has become a big contributor to personal burnout, and we’re not sure how viable this is for Meltdown as a business.
For 2025, we’ll be making two big changes to our FGC events.
Firstly, we’ll be moving Street Fighter and Tekken 8 to bi-weekly schedules. They’ll both be on Tuesday night, alternating weeks, 7PM. This is to reduce the stress on myself, help make each one a more important event, which should help improve numbers, average spend and general excitement for them. This might be a bit disappointing to those of you who’ve come to enjoy the weeklies, but it’s just a little too much for me and hasn’t worked for myself or from the business perspective.
Hopefully however we’ll see more people come down each Tuesday thanks for it being a consistent day, and you can always come by for casuals on the setups after the bracket moves into Top 8.
We’ll also be aiming to do a side tournament each week for a guest game! This’ll be announced in advance. Think Hunter X Hunter, Dragon Ball Fighterz, UMVC3, Nidhogg, Footsies, etc. Anything and everything under the sun will be considered, and we’ll be posting a monthly schedule well in advance so you know in good time what the bonus bracket will be! We will also be trailing some retro tournaments now and then too!
The second major change will be all our Tuesday tournaments being free to enter. For Meltdown, even with us bringing in food, sales just don’t make it worthwhile right now. Some might say increase the entry fee, or charge a venue fee, but we don’t want to go that route. Instead we want to encourage everyone to support the venue, and broaden our appeal in general. We feel making tournaments essentially free to enter is a step in the right direction. You’ll of course have to make a purchase to enter still, but that should be common courtesy at this point…
This will leave those players who consistently place 1st/2nd slightly out of pocket, but for the health of the scene this is a step we have to take. For 95% of entrants, those who don’t make 1st or 2nd place each week, you’ll have more money in your pocket, and a broader range of players at these events. You’ll also no longer need to pay in cash, so the local ATMs can take a break from being harassed by local fighting game players constantly.
We’ll also be trialling open DJ decks at our weekly events, so if you’re looking to play some tunes and test your audio mixes, you’ll be able to jump on and have some fun. This is also part of making the venue less challenging for new players to come into. We want to give something to everyone and make our Tuesdays more of a fun event for everyone. We may also move our commentary from the sofas to make sure the space is welcoming for those from a non-FGC background.
Essentially the subtext of this is that FGC doesn’t pay the bills. There’s been a few times where we’ve lost money on a night even with a pretty full bracket. If we’d be better off being closed, well I wouldn’t mind an extra day off, but really I want to see the FGC thrive and make sure that even if we’re cutting back, we still have a place where you can meet people, play casuals, play competitively, and just have a bit more fun. I do think everything’s a little fucked at the moment (economically speaking), so I understand things are tight, but for the love of god if you want to see offline thrive, support your venues where you can.
Anyway! From January, our weekly will be known as I AM ARCADE.
Now we get a little history lesson. The Fight Lab’s first events were hosted down in Brighton at a place called Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar on middle street. A dive bar which generously let the founders of Fight Lab, Robby Gee (Vanity Angel, if you were part of the Melee scene you might remember that name) and Sam Schiefe (check out his latest indie release here!), these two hauled in monitors, consoles, DJ equipment and more to make a really friendly and accessible event. Said event being I AM ARCADE. There would be SFIV, UMVC3, Smash, and a bonus game each week. It was fun, casual, and successful. These were the events that first lit that FGC fire for me and really I want to get back to those roots.
We’ve got good setups, we’ve got good audio, we’ve got streaming down and great people. Now I want to push it further to be more of an event and be for a broader audience.
I’ll also be taking more photos, more content and more video to let everyone see what they’re missing. I’m really excited to step away from being just a TO (hell, after WR1/LR1 I’m letting everyone decide for themselves where they play their games and you can report your own score). I want it to be informal, I want it to be slightly rough around the edges, just like some of the best nights of my first steps into the FGC. I’m really excited, and I hope you are too.
There’s still gonna be a ton of setups, but there’s going to be more for everyone. Each week’s an event and we’re going to be a livelier, more welcoming scene because of it. As always, we’re going to keep evolving and pushing the envelope on what we can achieve at Meltdown. I really hope you can all put your trust in the process!
For the first two months, here’s the schedule:
07.01 - SF6 / UMVC3 / Point Blank
14.01 - T8 / SCVI / Secret Game
21.01 - SF6 / KOF XV / FIFA 99
28.01 - T8 / DBFZ / Soul Calibur II
04.02 - SF6 / BlazBlue / THPS3
11.02 - T8 / MK1 / Mario Kart Double Dash
18.02 - SF6 / Granblue / Mario Kart Double Dash
25.02 - T8 / Skullgirls / Burnout 2
Yep, that’s a hell of a mix. As always things can change but we’re going to try this for a couple of months and see how it goes! If you know people from the communities for these games, please let them know what’s going on! Thank you all!
