A recap of Domics Atomic Arena — a fun, change of pace online Smash Ultimate event

On June 19–21st, YouTube personality Domics collaborated with tournament organizer Greater Gaming to host his first ever online Smash Ultimate tournament. The free-to-enter event, backed by a $4,000 prize pool, exceeded signup expectations and received rave reviews thanks to a creative event format and Smash.gg tools that made it possible at scale.

Domics Atomic Arena is an excellent example of a non-endemic personality using online tournaments as a novel and fun way to create content and engage with an audience. This article provides a summary of the event and the work involved in running an event of this size.

Figure 1: the Domics Atomic Arena tournament page on Smash.gg

The event quickly reached its player limit of 4,092. With such strong demand, the organizers opted to increase the cap, allowing a total of 5,605 players to register.

Figure 2: player registrations per day; event cap reached June 9

In addition to the 2,400 existing Ultimate players who signed up, 56% of the event’s participants were first time players on Smash.gg, drawn in by the prospect of playing in a creative event format hosted by one of their favorite creators.

Figure 3: breakdown of player tenure on the Domics Atomic Arena event

Fresh & Exciting Tournament Twists

Domics Atomic Arena was designed to offer a contrast to the standard competitive event format. Several wrinkles were introduced to make this a fun, non-standard event. First, in the lead-up to the event, players and fans were able to vote to ban four Smash Ultimate characters from being used in the competition. Oftentimes, the competitive community considers a character overpowered or boring to play against. With the ability to vote characters ineligible, players could impact the competition in a unique way.

To execute the ban concept, Greater Gaming turned to Smash.gg’s voting goal feature. Introduced as a crowdfunding mechanic, the voting goal feature was adapted to let players earn votes as they made purchases in the corresponding tournament shop, and then use those votes to ban the characters they didn’t want to see used in gameplay.

Figure 4: community voting on character bans via the Smash.gg shop page

Another creative addition was the “Creator Clash”, which featured Domics playing 1v1 against other creators, streamers, and YouTube personalities. These fun exhibition matches were a way for Domics to break up the long event weekend with interesting content, while providing an opportunity to be front-and-center for his followers.

Running the Event

With 5,605 players registered, more than 15,000 matches were to be played over the weekend of the event. To run an event of this scale required both planning and Smash.gg’s tooling.

Organizers start by breaking players into groups who play their matches in phases, lessening the number of concurrent matches and admins needed. Pre-set start timers begin matches automatically and disqualify players that do not check in. Players self-report matches and can call moderators if a dispute arises. Finally, the match dashboard provides admins with an overview of matches in progress, and flags moderator requests and other matches worth checking on.

Figure 5: the match dashboard shows all sets in progress

Conclusion

Domics Atomic Arena provided another illustration of the use of tournaments as a novel way for creators and streamers to engage with their audience.

Figure 6: survey responses showing the desire for additional Domics tournaments

The event was seen as a major success by Domics and Greater Gaming, exceeding their player participation expectations and running seamlessly via Greater Gaming and Smash.gg. Future events are being planned to continue to offer fun, offbeat competitions to Domics’ fanbase and other players.