Madden tournaments are run using a bracket. Head to head competition, using single or double elimination, until a winner is crowned.
The tournament can be run purely online, with each participant in their own home. This has a few problems, though:
- It’s not really a “party,” and this blog is about Video Game PARTIES. I mean, who serves the drinks and chips?
- You’ve got to plan ahead and make sure everyone is “friends” with everyone else to start.
- Cheating is easier to accomplish.
The alternative is to either go slow, using however many game consoles you can set up in one house, and cycle people through. You really only need one, since you can play on same console. Two is better because you can play head to head without the other person seeing which plays you are picking.
You can also find a location where you can rent a setup, like a PLAYlive Nation (discussed here). They’ve got plenty of game consoles all set up and ready to play.
The real trick with any head to head tournament, is to get to a power of 2 quickly. Say, you have 10 people that want to participate. If you have 5 head-to-head games and eliminate the losers you’ve got…5 people left. Now one person has nobody to play against, and even if you give one person a bye at that point, after 2 more eliminations you are down to 3. Getting a bye at that point is just extremely unfair.
It is more fair to eliminate 2 players early. Take your 4 lowest ranked players (in the case you have 10 people) and have them “play in”. Lowest rank may simply mean the people that were the last to arrive. Hey, be on time next time! Eliminate 2 people and now you have 8, a nice number to play with.
The site challonge.com can help you create a bracket. And, yes, that is challOnge with an O. I don’t know why.
FIFA can be played much the same way. Madden can work great with one person per console, but with FIFA you want two people playing on the same console and screen.