You can actually enjoy your work, too 
Still, the situation changes when you’re an actual professional. You can’t just do it for enjoyment, you have a responsibility to the people that are paying you. That’s not always gonna be fun, no matter how much you love what you do.
(double but its different subjects)
The trend now is in general to make things easier and more accessible. Things like the L-M-H-Special button setup (notice how just about all the newer games have that?) and general trends in how things work are changing this a lot.
Fighters are going to by definition have a higher barrier of entry, it’s the nature of the beast. I don’t think anybody’s expecting them to have the appeal of a console FPS or a casual facebook game.
For me this goes back to expectations. If people could go into fighters blind at this point, they could play most if not all of them with no skill to speak of and get a great amount of joy from them. **The issue is that people see these combo videos and finals being streamed at majors, and get beat in the face with how 'wrong' they're playing and how bad they are. **I think this is the thing that was really missing in the 90s, you developed skill locally and judged yourself by the kids at the local 7-11 and eventually by the local arcade. It let people into the fun of the 'get in that guys face and beat the crap out of them' without the constant reminder of what some guy on the internet could do that they couldn't.Hence why certain sponsored players say “SFxT is fun”, or why the play and only play certain games.
The point is that for NONE of those people is it their primary job, at least none that I know of (feel free to correct me).
The best and most respected players have day jobs. Their sponsorships and side money are nice bonuses and cancel out the costs of attending the events, maybe a bit more.
Even the very best of them are doing this as a hobby or avocation.
I bring this up because it ties in to the other line of the conversation…
If you tell people that they have to put in work and treat it like work and not treat it like a game, most of them aren’t gonna bother.
Are fighting games to hard to play for beginners? No. But we make them less accessible than they should be by trying to make them into work.
http://herdingcats.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341ca4d953ef013481cb7b9e970c-800wi
Try playing a simulation racer.
/thread.
I’m surprised so many people are saying no, I for one think they are definitely too hard to play for “casual gamers” There is nothing casual about a good fighter, it takes serious dedication to develop all the muscle memory and situational awareness you need to really start playing the meat of the game. That doesn’t mean you have to be a genius to play them, but once you put in the time, you are anything but casual.
I think anything with a learning curve is too hard to play for a casual gamer, if you were the type of dude to really blow a system open and master it…you probably are not a casual gamer.
Indeed. I was there when SFII was new, and loved the look and feel of it, and we all waited eagerly for any new info in the magazines. As the casuals fell away, I wanted more, and when A2 came out, there was an awesome guide for it.
Arguably now, it’s much easier for people new to fighters to learn the game inside out, with forums like this, and of course the videos. I’m still very new to plenty of characters in VF, but with the info out there, I can pick up effective and competitive strats literally within minutes, then go play other people from across the globe. Unthinkable back in the day, unless you genuinely rolled with arcade pros.
I think part of the problem today is (with the newcomers who came in with the ghastly SFIV), is that they somehow expect to be truly devastating, without perhaps realising that they’re often going to be going up against legit FG scene vets, and overlook the fact that the champs they see in the tourny vids and wish to emulate, have often trained hour after hour in depth for those performances.
You’ve literally just described VF 5 FS, in my eyes, before I downloaded it. But um, now I play it ‘virtually’ every night, for a good 4 hours plus over Live.
I had a bit of SF4AE on earlier, for the first time since I downloaded VF like 3 months ago. Yeah, it’s still ludicrous garbage, but for sure, when SFV rolls around, I will get it and learn it, before I make my final judgement, just like with pretty much every Capcom fighter since the CPSI days.
Watch the guys on something like NeoGaf all crow about it in the weeks before it comes out, then promptly drop it regardless within weeks of release. Hipsters never change their M.O.
Hell no. I’m disabled/can only play one-handed, and they are not hard, even for me.
Yeah, I or anyone can play Pai just stabbing at the 3 GPK buttons while the stick hand sips green tea:
PPPK
PPKK
PK
K (juggles)
KK
P+K
P+G
K+G, K (backturned, juggles)
And on the old one,
KPK!
Honestly, no disrespect to the game or its players, but I don’t care for nor about VF.
In regards to casual sets heres an example from my experiance. I met some guys and we play every so oftenh. There are four of us and of the four of us me and one other play fighting games daily/weekly. The other two only play when we get together. So when we get together me and the other guy will random or sandbag when we play the other two so that we don’t discourage the other two players who quite frankly play like mega man bosses or as we call it mega man syndrome. Now they get up set when they lose becauese they are generally trying so when they give it their all in the match they feel it was close. However when me and the other guy come up against one another if one of us is running the board sandbagging is gone and teams are picked. In both cases it’s fun and sometimes we have a you lose you take a shot or between me and the other guy it’s you do something dumb and you take a shot. In all cases it’s fun. Are fighting games hard? No but you get what you put into it and you can have fun either way, it all depends on personal commitment.
I think it takes a lot of work and practice to be not truly horrible at fighting games, let alone any good. I have been unsuccessfully attempting to get my friends into fighters. It never works… Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is the closest thing 
No one wants to put in the practice time if they’re not completely enthralled with the game.
Here’s an interesting excerpt from a recent fighting game review that may shed some light on the subject
The game being reviewed? PS ALL-STARS.
There’s no way I’m gonna read through this whole thread, so I’ll just offer the following:
YES fighting games are hard. I don’t even know why people argue this. The only question should be whether or not they’re unreasonably hard, and the answer is of course no.
Fighting games are hard if for no other reason than they’re so very different from every other game. Let’s take a look at a few popular console titles:
Madden
Assassin’s Creed
Call of Duty
Ninja Gaiden
Grand Theft Auto
If you look at all of these titles they’re somewhat similar. Left stick movement, buttons do various tasks, and some even use the right analog for looking around. When people jump from one game to the other there’s not a huge paradigm shift. Fighting games on the other hand are much different. You do special moves with the same stick you use to move. If your stick movements aren’t tight you don’t just go a few degrees in a different direction you jump (or duck). While rolling out and throwing a pass in Madden is a combination of buttons, what you see matches what needs to be done, and the timing is hardly as frame tight as it is in fighting games. Jump in fierce, low forward into Hadouken is not NEARLY as intuitive as running away from a lineman that’s chasing you, hitting a button to pass, and then hitting a button to catch when the pass is in range, if for no other reason than the concept itself is esoteric. Football is a “real” thing, same goes for sneaking up on guards in Assassin’s creed or escaping the police in GTA. It makes sense because you’re controlling people that are making familiar movements.
Furthermore “success” in other games is not the same as it is in a fighter. A person can go 4-10 in a round of COD, know they suck, but they were still successful 4 times. If a person is that bad and plays a FG against a superior opponent they’re not gonna go 4-10, and I’ve never met anyone who thinks that taking a round or knocking out a character is a success.
Finally fighting game mastery depends on a meta game which is also not intuitive. Every other game teaches get the best weapon, attack hard, win. This is why so many novices are always trying to jump in for a combo. What video game analog is there for spacing and footsies? Other than stealth when is patience ever a virtue when playing other video games?
.
There’s not a single game reviewer on the planet who’s even half-way decent at fighting games. Any fighting game, to them, will always have a high learning curve.
The way you teach new players who hold even half an interest in fighting games, is to start with basic fundamental skill, and supplement that with a single tactic that is initially easy to perform, and difficult to stop. This helps to reinforce the basics of how they should be fighting their matchups, as well as showing them a basic skill that they can learn and apply to gain wins at the early stage.
A good way to do this is to teach the newbie player not to jump unless the opponent is stunned or knocked down. Getting rid of this tendency early on will force them to rely on the core concepts of spacing, the ground game, and defense, while starting to help develop their sense of game momentum and opportunities. Showing them how to do cross-ups and tick throws is something that can be done in less than a hour, but can be extremely effective in racking up wins early on against newer opponents.
You won’t get far as long as you don’t define what exactly is “hard”? Anyone can play the games. All it needs is 2 working hands capable of pressing buttons and moving joysticks. But can anyone “win”? Of course not… As it should be with deep games. So what’s the problem exactly? If someone can’t be bothered to improve at something, it’s because he doesn’t even like it. So not many people like fighting games, deal with it.
BrolyLegs and OneHandedTerror would like to have a word with you.
Let’s remember 80% of fighting games have a Arcade/Amusement Center base or business planning.
So you lose and learn lose and learn thus pay more and game makes money.
Now also it is a PvP game (generally) which means you can fight someone who has invested more time than you.
On my best day I don’t think I could beat some one who plays Karate Champ everyday, game not too hard I’m just ass.
Back in 2007 there were so many things I had trouble with like just frames and IADs and I learned casually over time just playing.
Don’t worry about whether FG are too hard or easy but look for goal where the character becomes a toolset you can use to win.
Fighting games are only hard when you want to win.
You say it like it doesn’t prove my point even further… lol