An article about Capcom's role in the FGC

[King9999]

Penny Arcade Report has an interesting article: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/as-esports-booms-capcom-struggles-to-lead-fighting-games

“Last year, we created and ran the 25th anniversary tournament series as a special campaign to give back to the community and our fans,” said Capcom’s Peter “Combofiend” Rosas, senior community specialist, world class fighting game competitor, and one of the people who replaced Killian. “During that series, we gave away over $500k in prizes and amenities as well as a Street Fighter branded car.”

There was a problem with that tournament though.

“It didn’t make any money,” said eSports journalist Rod Breslau of GameSpot. “It just was not profitable, and for a company like Capcom…they are not Blizzard, they are not Valve, and they are not Riot. They do not have the leeway to go out there and spend this kind of money willy-nilly.”

The failure of the IPL deal may have been a positive experience though, despite all of the wasted time. Capcom finally learned to trust an outside company, and they’re now warming to the idea of working with other partners as well.

“While Capcom has traditionally been against partnerships with corporations who are running tournaments for profit,” said Rosas about Capcom’s former policy of refusing to work with tournaments like MLG. “We now believe that if headed by the right people, it can lead to better looking events, at grander venues, with larger payouts and sponsorships. These are all good things for the scene, and can lead to more opportunities for players and organizers.”

Despite their struggles in the last twelve months, Capcom seems to be learning from these experiences and is attempting to figure out how they can be of use to a community that doesn’t need their help to survive, but desperately needs their help to thrive.

[Louiscipher]

The Capcom dick-sucking is loud and obnoxious in that article.

[tataki]

Fuck that esports mentality that measures everything in this hobby with money. A company supporting a game does not mean giving away cash and cars to tournament winners, but to produce more complex, more fun games for all to experience.
Capcom not doing an official UMVC3 championship isn’t a problem. Capcom not trusting their own title enough to make an Arcade version and to continue developing it instead of disbanding the team is a problem.

[pherai]

was the 25th anniversary tournament even supposed to make money? I don’t remember there being any avenue for revenue from those tournaments.

[Negative-Zer0]

Fuck that esports mentality that measures everything in this hobby with money. A company supporting a game does not mean giving away cash and cars to tournament winners, but to produce more complex, more fun games for all to experience.
Capcom not doing an official UMVC3 championship isn’t a problem. Capcom not trusting their own title enough to make an Arcade version and to continue developing it instead of disbanding the team is a problem.

I mean they did make mvc3.

[ironboy89]

The comment are just as annoying as far as people acting like FGC is in deep shit for noting having esports money.

[ihira]

What move is that Adon doing to Sagat. Looks like Guiles close hk.

[Icy_Black_Deep]

in reality this ended up being one of Capcom’s best moments of the last year as they opted to replace Killian with two high-profile personalities plucked directly from the community, assauging the fears of many.

BWAHAAHAHAHA
My fears are assuaged every time Combofiend posts “I’ll send this to the guys in Japan” on Unity. (And my heart is warmed every time EventHubs posts that he posted on Unity.)

Rather than working through established community websites and streams, they tried to go through a major gaming outlet to gain more exposure, but it backfired when even the community barely knew it existed.

That doesn’t even make sense. You don’t expand your audience by targeting the existing audience.

How about when SF4 AE’s producer announced that making the game imbalanced made it more fun? How was that for helping put fighting games on the world stage?
How about when talking about the partnership with IPL, Capcom’s spokesman took cheap shots at MLG? That’s some professional shit right there, right?
How about SFxT?

I can’t blame Capcom for not championing eSports, there’s really not any money in it for them. But they’re not doing much good to anyone here. (Except the 25th anniversary tournament; I dig my t-shirt from that.)

[pherai]

I can’t blame Capcom for not championing eSports, there’s really not any money in it for them. But they’re not doing much good to anyone here. (Except the 25th anniversary tournament; I dig my t-shirt from that.)

I dunno about that. Not saying I want Capcom to get behind pushing SF in a more esports direction, but a vibrant competitive community sustains interest in the game.

[MotM]

How does a business make a vibrant community, though? Only real way I see Capcom or any company having a positive effect on a competitive community is to just make video games. I do not see any other positive effects in any games. As said earlier, there’s a reason Capcom doesn’t seem to be making money from all these majors happening left and right, there isn’t really a business in this stuff. The only esports scene that seems to be massively profitable is LoL, and that’s only because it encourages people to buy stuff from Riot. That’s pretty damn different from traditional for-profit competitive organizations, nobody puts baseball on TV to get people to play baseball.

[BlackShinobi]

That article completely misses a main reason why Fighting games are much smaller.
How is capcom throwing more money at anyone going to change that fact that this genre can only be taken seriously offline at this time. Some of it is the state of the internet, some of it is the the level of internet connection speed of the individual player and some of it is TV choice, but there are currently too many factors that counter the credibility of online fighting game results.

The article is focused on viewership, but the FGC is more concerned with player base; as it stands now you still need to live in or frequent one of about 10 locations in the US to be a top Fighting game player. Until that playing field of where people can get good becomes level it is no surprise that the numbers between the fighting games and traditional esports games are not even close. As long as online is not credible the much slower path of helping to create and grow local communities is the best choice; I just wish anyone writing an article from this perspective ever realized that.