Announcing a strategic delay.

Since the recent TIPGC 2013 Summer Update and our AllPlay venue going out of business earlier this year, Jet Set Studio has been actively considering realistic ways to squeeze in one more edition of TIPGC before the next generation consoles are released in November.

As Tournament Seeker highlighted in a “Next Generation Video Game Tournament” article, the eSports landscape may dramatically change in 2014.  With brand new (and expensive) consoles coupled with all-new games coming down the pipe, all available resources need to be committed to securing TIPGC for years to come.

If these industry-related issues weren’t challenging enough, a knock-out punch came in the form of lacking support by our host city.  In a heart-felt letter called Dear Des Moines, TIPGC Tournament Director, Ben McDougal attempted to rally local support as he shared the unique opportunities that TIPGC brings to Iowa.  Unfortunately, there has been no meaningful response from area businesses or community organizations.  TIPGC takes a substantial amount of time and money to produce and as committed as Jet Set Studio is to bringing the Midwest community together through great video game tournaments, we are not in business to lose money in our own backyard, when we are building other great events around North America.

Jet Set Studio will continue to work towards opening new doors (please contact us if you have ideas!), but with limited support at this time and FPS game titles that are coming towards the end of their competitive life cycles, the risk of hosting TIPGC this Fall is simply not worth the reward at this time.

This TIPGC website, Facebook page, and Twitter account will remain active and we do plan to attentively listen to the community’s response.  Keep an eye out for TIPGC updates in the coming months, but baring a true TIPGC miracle (see contest below!), at this time we are “pressing pause” on this video game event.

TIPGC is officially on hold.