Fighting games are definitely the one game that takes alot of time, patience, practicing, and research in order to improve oneself. I don’t think I’ve ever looked up so many videos with either combos or techniques for any other genre of gaming out there. My friend who’s close to my age has sort of fallen out of fighting games himself because he claims he just never has the time to learn all the techniques.
Bill Cosby and pudding pop approved
If you mean real kids as in under 16, you have to think how their game consoles are locked out/censored, their time online is monitored, and often their gaming connection is some shared wireless garbage that constantly drops out. They would probably be playing with a wireless pad as well, instead of a $300 wired stick. To learn, remember, and perform the moves might be really tricky for them, as well as the match-ups, advanced strat etc.
I have youngsters in my family who play on Live, but they never seem read any kind of gaming forum, so they would be kind of adrift with such complex games like UMvC3 or Soul Calibur. I think school peer pressure commands them into big popular FPS games, or weird Live Arcade stuff they can just kinda mess around on without much brain power or intense gaming activity. They will get called away to do their homework, take showers, or eat.
I think much of the SFIV scene is probably early 20s though, which to me, seems young… enjoy it while it lasts. When you’re 30, you may look and laugh at SFV :wink2:
You have to be dedicated enough not to get bodied constantly. It’s gonna fucking happen.
I played against one of my brother’s friends from HS thinking he was the shit in Soul Calibur 3. Even though I wasn’t good at that game, all I had to do was wait for him to make a mistake while I was blocking. That’s all I did. Watch, block, grab. I lost the first few games but after about half a dozen fights, he couldn’t bring me past half health and started raging -_-
Over the past 10 years with exception of SF4 there hasn’t been a major fighting game title. It’s all been FPS all kicked off by Halo. Go back further you had SF2 and then Mortal Kombat. Plus western culture were exposed to war and guns at a young age (not real guns I mean the vast array of toy guns).
When talking about children of course FGs aren’t too popular. But,as for tweens and teens,then I’d say stuff like MK9 and Tekken get played quite a bit casually. MK because it’s MK and Tekken because casuals think mashing with Eddie Gordo is God tier.
Kids? Like, under 18? No, I don’t think so. I work retail and kids rarely ever ask for fighting games. When I do see them ask for a fighter, I’m usually very surprised - I literally haven’t had a kid ask for a fighting game in at least 6 months.
However, the 18-25 crowd is with it more than you think. More of them still prefer the Call of Duties and such, but a good chunk of them still play fighters casually. I’ve discussed with many ‘college-aged’ and older folks what teams they play and stuff like that.
The last fighter I remember having any impact with kids was Mortal Kombat 9. I bet you can imagine why they played. I had one kid try to convince me he was the best because he knew all the fatalities for every character. I wanted to smash my head on the register.
As long as Capcom makes crossover fighting games with characters in it that people are going to recognise, casuals will play fighting games and hopefully at least some of them will stay on (like I did).
I agree with the part about dedication requirement. If their friends don’t care about leveling up, then there isn’t much incentive to stay hardcore competitive. And mom and dad probably won’t buy them a $150 ‘controller.’ But the skill to execute or react is best learned before your teens, while you’re still able to adapt to different extremes of hand-eye coordination. Little kids used to full-parry my supers for fun, when SF3 and parries were new. I forgot his name but a kid from the Nickel City I went to (CMR) needed a stool while standing up to see the cabinet. He used to wreck at MvC2 and placed in major tournaments 10’ish years ago. If anything, arcades giving access to expensive, high-grade equipment for a dollar or less per credit helped push fighting games to the extremes of dexterity and competitive strategy, instead of casual sessions of you and your friend punching each other back-and-forth. In arcades’ absence, you have to buy the high–grade equipment yourself… which shuts out minors basically.
To answer the OP’s question I don’t think fighters are widely popular across all ages and I think the FG boom will wear off in a couple years. Tekken is a goddamn cockroach though, it’s weathered through every phase of fighting games and has managed to stay consistently popular.
shouldn’t this be in FGD?
Not really, for the last 5 or 6 years I’ve been collecting data on children, aged 12 to 16 and a half. Just by observing them, and the games they play, its obvious that fighting games are a small part of their lives. Occasionally, when I do talk to them and invite them over, they are much more interested in Call of Duty, Halo, Minecraft and Bacardi Breezers. I don’t think its any kind of particular aversion to the game type, its just other activities are much more rewarding in the short term.
Japan isn’t on top of the Game industry, fighters are a niche of a niche.
SNK isn’t Fighting Capcom for dominance then making up somehow for Capcom vs SNK and SvC:Chaos, then after that they will not work together since.
Capcom isn’t the EA of fighters anymore with multiple teams creating multiple games and also reinventing the wheel as they learn more about what they can do with 2D engines. Also working on Arcade hardware and the Arcade market first.
Tons of things not aligning ever again to make fighters really mainstream and popular. Game “Reviewers” have all but forgotten how to review them, if they ever even knew at all from being younger generations now. They can’t just do the copout, “Its okay but it doesn’t have multiplayer” they did for yearsss. Adam Sessler says, this game is a 3 out of 5. No adjective in there, >solid< 3 of 5 even? Just bland reviews to keep people happy while they get sponsored to do reviews.
The Problem is that people tend to associate these stereotypes with Fighting Games and this is holding us back from Growth as a scene
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“Fighting games are too hard” - If P4U is a representative of the future of Fighting games, then this will no longer be true.
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" I can’t remember/do all the moves or combos"- In most games, mix-ups, game knowledge, spacing and reading patterns are more important than combos. Combos are fun but they won’t win you a tournament if you can’t set them up right. That’s why some of these Marvel guys with 100 hit combos get blown up by guys who do ABCS and nasty mixups.
3." Fighting games are boring" FG’s and RTS’s suffer from this, they require more tactical thinking and the rewards of one’s clever thinking usually aren’t apparent until later in the game. It also depends on the type of game and how well it is being played.VF being played by scrubs is boring and so are most FG’s, but when people who know what they are doing are playing, things get interesting.
- " I’ll never win, people who play these games are too good"- That’s a loser mentality that holds people back and the simple answer to this problem is to practice.
We also can’t really be too unbiased in our introspection as I assume most us play Fighting Games and what we think is easy is what 90% of other games think is hard. Some people mock SF4 for being too easy/scrubby but if you google SF4, one of the most popular searches is " Why is Street Fighter 4 so hard?".
I think it also depends on people’s tastes in fighting games. Most people wont go outside their comfort zone to try other games. Games like Persona 4 bring in a whole new audience, especially in the Japanese audience, because of the highly successful RPG games. Games like Marvel vs Capcom bring in a bunch of people who are Marvel fans and with movies like Spiderman and the Avengers that came out and further spread that medium, that surely helps it’s cause of getting new players, who may be younger. I think in the end it’s about the staying power of the game. Learning curves in fighting games are pretty big and take practice. That’s also what makes the skill gap and competitive community pretty fierce. In the end it depends how much you want to invest in the game, and most people who invest get more out of it. Younger gamers may not want to invest as much right away, but there will always be newer fighters who are more kin to the genre and want to go more indepth and learn combos, frame data and all that jazz.
Put call of duty on the cover.
INSTANT SALE
Nice, now get it on the front page of Xbox.com
Live stream gameplay footage of a beta, and undercut Max Payne by having some bald bearded dude in your “WORLD PREMIERE COMMERCIALS” during sopme sporting event, forgot what it was. Hmm.
What.
I’m sorry, I didn’t word that properly. Execution wise, many gamers think fighting games are too “Hard”. Persona, with its lack of DP, 360, and half-circle motions, makes this problem much easier.
Not like they were when I was a kid. I think most of that is because there are no arcades and no little shops with an arcade cabinet or 2 in it.
When I was a kid, the amount of time and dedication needed to get better at fighting games didn’t really factor into me being interested in them. I just always had a high interest in seeing shit like kung fu/swordplay/hand to hand combat/brawling/etc. so I gravitated towards the games that showed that off the most and provided the most options to do that (namely beat em ups, games like Shinobi/Comix Zone and FGs). I like seeing gunfights too but, close-up fighting was always cooler and more visually appealing to me.
I didn’t really start caring about technical aspects of games until my late teens anyway (when I met some friends who liked them and wanted to beat them), so “getting better” had very little to do with why I stuck with fighting games on the front end. The thrill of seeing characters do some cool shit to kick each others’ asses was enough. It never gets old to me. Maybe that just isn’t as thrilling to most kids. I definitely remember most of my friends and cousins always preferred sports or skateboarding games which never held my attention for very long. Those games aren’t even hard and I get bodied in them because I’m not interested enough to keep playing and get better. It’s more about what appeals to you going in imo.