Month: November 2016

Lap Chi Duong is one of the pioneers of running majors in the modern era. His event, Canada Cup, has run annually since 2011, and has seen massive results due to the unique spin that Duong puts on his events. The best-known event in Canada, it has become one of the most popular events on the circuit for FGC members from all over the planet. This year’s event saw players from the USA, Japan, Mexico and a whole host of other nations converge on Canada to fight it out for a coveted CPT Premier Event victory–and plenty of bragging rights.

Before Canada Cup started, I sat down with Lap Chi to discuss the event.

Missing Person: How many Canada Cups is this for you?

Lap Chi Duong: If you’re talking about main Canada Cups, this is my seventh Canada Cup in total.

Missing Person: I remember a few years back you had stated publicly that you were done with organizing Canada Cup. Yet you’re still here. What keeps you doing this?

Lap Chi: You could call me crazy, but there’s something addictive about it. When people start messaging about you, saying, “Hey Lap, when is Canada Cup? I need to schedule the time off,” eight months in advance, and pro players are calling me to say, “Wow, we like what you’re doing, Lap,” and what happens is that we all fall back into doing it. The whole team comes back and says, “If you’re down, we’re down.” So even with all the money we’ve lost and the time and effort we put into it, it’s just addictive. We’re passionate about it, and we want to do a bigger and better event every single year.

Missing Person: And the developers’ support must be helping you out a lot more, as opposed to the years where it wasn’t there, correct?

Lap Chi: Yeah, of course! We were all on our own for the first few years. Almost everything came out of our own pockets. We did have a few big sponsors like MadCatz and Twitch, and if it weren’t for them, the losses would’ve been bigger and we would have had to fold. But everyone, like Capcom, Bandai Namco, and Atlus are coming to me, saying, “Hey, Lap, you throw a great event. We’re looking to do qualifiers.” And I think that’s a great way to promote your game. It is one of the greatest paths to rate of increase is to throw money at these tournaments for the players that support your game, and hold qualifiers to your own tournament series. The amount of marketing you have to put into that isn’t really that much at all.

Missing Person: You’re known for bringing Canada Cup to venues across Canada. Every other major is anchored down in one city. What are the logistical difficulties in doing that?

Lap Chi: Many people may not know that we tried moving to Toronto back in 2012. We had no support from the organizers in Toronto and Montréal. We had to abandon that plan, and move on to Calgary. We did find someone to help out in Vancouver, so we tested it out there and it wasn’t as successful as we thought it would be. That was where we thought, “Well it didn’t work out in Vancouver, so let’s just end it.” But instead, we decided that since we were always testing things out, we decided to run it in Calgary and not run anybody down about the event. If they came, they came, and if they didn’t, they didn’t, but we’re going to have fun. We’re going to entertain the people that show up, and in that year—2014—we didn’t lose any money. That was just from hosting it in Calgary. That’s when I realized that our brand was improving, and people were coming on their own volition. Once I realized that, I wanted to give Toronto another shot. Last year was a pretty big success, and this year doubled last year’s numbers.

Missing Person: Are you thinking that Toronto may be the permanent home for Canada Cup, or are you thinking of heading back to Calgary?

Lap Chi: I could never say that there’s going to be a permanent home for the event. Calgary, however, with the population and demographics being the way they are, is not the ideal place to host the event. We’re considering trying Montréal one day, because everyone always seems to want to visit Montréal.

Missing Person: But of course with that, there’s issues of language barriers in Québec, being a French-speaking province playing host to a mainly English-speaking audience.

Lap Chi: We would definitely have to aim to be bilingual there, but as of now, there are no plans to move out of Toronto. Additionally, DreamHack has already touched base with Montréal, so we may just stick to Toronto. We’ll see.

Missing Person: Excellent. As far as you personally, I’ve known you to travel internationally to play in events, like going to Korea and Singapore for Capcom Pro Tour qualifiers. Are we going to see you doing any of this again?

Lap Chi: When I was doing that, I was still taking competing seriously. I’m terrible at Street Fighter V, so for now, no travel plans. Possibly in the future I’ll start back up.

Missing Person: You have Canada Cup which is a big success. Any other things coming down the pipeline, such as collaborations with Toryuken and MAT?

Lap Chi: We would always love to collaborate with them. I think MAT was a pseudo-qualifier for Canada Cup this year for preferential seeding. There may have been additional prizes such as free venue pass or VIP passes, so we’ve done it before with a lot of events across Canada, so we may try something next year. But I feel like there’s way too many events out there, including not just MAT and Toryuken, but locals, and even the Red Bull events. I look at that and go, “Holy cow. That’s oversaturation.” If it’s going to continue like that, I may just focus on running the one event, and may not even bother with qualifiers, just to prevent people from getting burnt out.

Missing Person: With Canada Cup, you’re always doing something exciting, such as team tournaments and regional battles. What other interesting twists do you have up your sleeve?

Lap Chi: We had a crazy marquee match this year between Lupe Fiasco and Sisqo, but they had conflicting schedules. We tried six months in advance to book this, but it’s really hard to book celebrity matches. We’re going try next year, and see what kind of celebrities we can put together, but definitely something fun and fresh. We all know there’s the regular tournament standard systems, but I think the spectators truly enjoy seeing something new and exciting. We’re always willing to test it.

Missing Person: Other than Street Fighter V, which is the biggest tournament, what games are you looking forward to seeing played?

Lap Chi: I’m definitely looking forward to the 5-on-5, but Melee and Smash 4 are both really big, so I can’t wait to see what kind of hype they can bring to their respective scenes in Canada, and to see if we can build them up.

Missing Person: And you are currently hosting the largest Super Street Fighter II Turbo tournament that the west has seen in a long time. How do you feel knowing that the whole world is coming for this one event?

Lap Chi: It’s a community effort, and the community worked really hard to try to everyone in for this event. I cannot thank them enough for that. They have made Canada Cup hype for Super Turbo, and I for one and am shocked at how big that event became. It was shocking, it was not like that at all last year. This year had tremendous support.