Long-time writer and Playing With Purpose mentor Ronald Gordon attended Flame Con over the weekend. This is the first of a four-part series featuring his perspective and interviews.

By Ronald Gordon

2024 was officially Flame Con’s 10th anniversary. For a whole decade members of the LGBTQAI+ have had a place where artists, cosplayers, and other creatives could come together and uplift one another. Last year, my fellow writer Jade Entien had the pleasure of documenting their first experience at Flame Con 2023, and while they missed out on this chance, I stepped up to see what kind of fun the con could bring. Little did I know that this would simultaneously be one of the best cons I had ever seen. It was also one of the hardest to write about because of how lost I became. 

I showed up within the first hour on both days, and tried my best to see as much  as I could in the time I had. Some of my close friends, members of a group called Cosplay Hollow, were there to have fun and cosplay, as well as one, who goes by the title of SinSin’s Art Stuff, an exhibitor selling all sorts of pins and charms. They made my Saturday great, and I discovered lots of awesome art pieces and merchandise from some of my favorite facets of Pop Culture, that being Ace Attorney, D&D, and much more! 

Yet as I experienced the convention and what it had to offer, I found myself stumped on what to pursue in order to craft this article. When it comes to such big spaces like this one, I often end up as a fly on the wall unless I find a way into a scenario where I can chat with someone. Not only that but I’m only really an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community with no real experience as to the history or impact such a convention could have. The real perspective on that would’ve come from Jade, who was heading back to college during Flame Con. But while I don’t have a macro-outlook based in history, I do have an observer’s view about what it felt like to be around fellow creatives and lovers of pop culture. 

From developing a card game to Drag Queens as anime fans, here’s a look at the various names and faces I met at Flame Con 2024, and the stories they could tell me. 

Tournament Arc 

Tournament Arc, developed by Little Creature, is a party card game, heading to Kickstarter, that takes inspiration from all the comedic tropes in anime. You play as a coach who trains a kid to be an athlete and compete in a sport chosen at the end, encountering crazy situations as the rounds continue. The game is all about the journey of gaining skill points through scenario cards and the end goal is to have the best kid after a set number of rounds. Such a simple concept is fraught with funny scenarios such as two different types of lightning strikes (one good, one bad), someone’s nameless dad as a “kid”, and tons more! When interviewing the co-creators of the game, Nile Matsuda & Skyler Badalament-Tirrell, here’s what they had to say about it. 

Nile Matsuda, Co-Creator

Ronald: Can you just give me a brief rundown of Tournament Arc? 

Nile: In a nutshell, Tournament arc is a game where you take on the roll as a coach, coaching teams of student athletes to participate in the ultimate sports tournament. But sport is kind of a loose term, it can be a lot of different things. The training is done through episodes, like you have episodes in anime or in any show, so it can be a wide variety of stuff like regular athletic stuff, school stuff, or who knows? If you play the game you’ll definitely see the wide variety there. 

Ronald: How long has it taken to create Tournament Arc? 

Nile: Good question! Sky, may partner for both business and life, he came up with the idea years ago. Most recent information is that we’ve been working on this full time since 2023, so the gameplay itself has been done for a while, we’re just doing some small refinements, the biggest thing is the artwork. As you can see it’s 150 cards, full color, just custom art from Sky so it takes a little bit of time because it’s a lot of love that goes into all of them. So that’s why we’re hoping to start a Kickstarter in early 2025.

Ronald: So you have a Kickstarter going up in 2025, what’s the goal for getting Tournament Arc published? 

Nile: That’s a good question! We’re still crunching the numbers and figuring it out but we’ve been in contact with different manufacturers to see what is necessary to produce the amounts necessary to get out to a lot of people. We’re hoping probably around $10,000 is our goal, that might change but we’re hoping for at least that much so people can actually get the game and we’ll actually ship it out.  

Ronald: What’s the weirdest aspect of Tournament Arc? 

Nile: Oh let’s see, weirdest aspect? I don’t know about weirdest but I think there’s a lot of potential for really funny storytelling. We’ve seen in previous playtests as well where people will come up with really wild funny backstories for characters or things that happen through the episodes, and that sometimes carries over. So people will come and play multiple times, and they’ll remember a certain character did a certain thing one round and they’ll just latch onto it like “Oh, this guy: The Cheater. This terrible cheater” and they’ll just keep on ragging on it. I think that’s one of the most fun aspects of it in my opinion. 

Skyler Badalament-Tirrell

Ronald: I heard about it from your partner, now I’d like to hear it from you. What do you feel Tournament Arc is About? 

Skyler: I guess on the absolute surface it is just a sports anime simulator. Where the players are different coaches coaching different student athletes. The idea is to simulate a season of a sports anime, where everyone’s training up, there’s a big tournament, and there’s a winner. I think to call it a simulator is a little reductive because it’s very much an interactive game. You can play it super strategically; you can just focus on the numbers, you can play to win, or (and this is how we’ve seen most people play it) you can just play it by the vibes, choose the characters you like, play the cards you think are funniest, and see who wins at the end. Either way it works out really well and we’re really happy with how it’s come about. 

Ronald: You’re the one behind the 40 diverse original characters, right? 

Skyler: Yes! So I’m still working on the art right now, which is why the game isn’t out yet, but it’s 40 characters, 80 episodes, 6 regions and some amount of sports happening and I’m doing all the art for it, yes. I wanted to have my personal touch to it, I wanted to be able to really have full control over it, but it’s the first game I’m publishing and I want to make sure it’s something I feel really proud of at the end. 

Ronald: What is your dream for Tournament Arc? 

Skyler: I’d love to see it in stores, I’d love to see it at Barnes & Noble or whatever, in little card game shops across the country ideally. I think my dream for Tournament Arc is that it does well enough that say a group of friends who are cosplaying at the convention go back to the hotel at the end of the day and break it out to play a few rounds. That’ll be a dream come true. I don’t know how big it’ll get, I don’t know if it’ll be successful or not but if we can get to a point where there are fans who have favorite characters or if we get any amount of fan art I will feel like a massive success personally.  

Ronald: What do you feel has been the weirdest part of Tournament Arc? 

Skyler: That’s a good question, I think the weirdest part for it has been that it’s happening at all honestly. I started with the idea back in 2016 or so. I wrote it down and didn’t do anything with it so the fact that we’re doing this at all feels super surreal to me. Because I’ve had a lot of other ideas in the meantime, I’ve had a lot of other projects I’ve worked on and at the start of 2023 I showed the idea to my partner Nile and some of my family members and they loved it and said “Let’s pursue this, let’s pursue this!” And I thought “Oh it’d be funny if it happened.” The weird thing is having a partner who’s so good at making things happen that all of a sudden, I AM making a board game, it is happening, I have a physical game in my hand. I never thought that I would do that, I always thought I’d be working on someone else’s project, getting what art jobs I can. But now I’m making a game that I thought of when I was younger and it’s a dream come true. But that is weird.

*****

Tournament Arc sounds like a fantastic game, and I can’t wait for the Kickstarter to go out! Someday, I hope to find it at a Barnes & Nobles or other retailer and play it with my friends to show them the wonderful art and hilarious antics!

Ronald Gordon is a New York Videogame Critics Circle Member & Mentor. He was the first of our writers – or any intern anywhere – to complete an internship at Rockstar Games.

---