Sorry if this is the wrong place for this(if it is please move it), but something that bothers me is the extent that whenever a new game comes out there is a rush of players who like the new game who will trash the old games and people who don’t want to lose players to the new games will trash the new game. If you look at the amount of sales for any of these games and compare those numbers to the amount of people who enter majors plus the stream monsters at home, we in the FGC are a small minority of the people who buy and play the games. An example that comes to mind, durring the SFxT Rolento glitch, I would come across people playing Rolento online and would send them a message about it. They would message back that they never heard of it or never heard of SRK. What I think would help the community at large is instead of fighting over the limited amount of SRK members to play your favorite game, why not introduce people who are already playing the game that you like to SRK and grow the community. If the members of the SFxT hit squad would spend half the time they spend trying to trash a game they don’t like, instead playing their favorite game online then messaging the opponent after the match directing them to this website, imagine how much larger the FGC could be. Not only will this grow each game community, but someone who finds out about this site because of game X will see videos of other games that they will want to buy and grow the community as a whole. What do you think are some other ways we can grow instead being assholes to each other?
But… but I like SFxT! Poison is my favorite. I wasn’t too in love with Battle Fantasia though… nope…
This requires a certain level of maturity from the community at large, a level of maturity which simply does not exist in great numbers. No matter what you do, casual players, trolls, stream monsters, fan boys, and idiots, will always outnumber those that are truly willing to help and grow the community, and just not bitch about it.
It begins by a) encouraging and fostering new players to get into the scene, and b) showing up and supporting offline events and getting to know one another. This can help alleviate the problem of fighting games having such a high learning curve in comparison to other game genre, as well as developing an honest sense of community and social connections between one another.
The way groups work, they operate on the lowest common denominator of intelligence and decency. This is why 50 viewer streams’ chats are generally amazing, 250 viewer chats answer questions sometimes and troll sometimes, and 2500 viewer chats are more or less worthless.
Basically, working from a more decentralized local level will help a ton. Go to midnight releases if they happen, and if you can establish a good relationship with your local games store, you might even be able to leave fliers for your gatherings on their counter. Gamestop stores might not be technically allowed to do this, but many will give out your fliers anyways if you help them out. After all, having more people playing X game means more sales for them in the end.
Getting out the word is far and away the hardest part. There are many more people who play fighting games than people involved in serious competitive play. Due to the nature of the genre, I would suspect that many of these casual players are also interested in improving. If they have some scrubby views like “spamming is cheap”, don’t put them down, just tell them they’re wrong and show them the light. Some may quit, but many will come around, and your local scene will grow. You can’t expect to draw a ton of new people in overnight and have them all stick around. Slow and steady wins the race, just keep at it.
You presented all of the points of a much larger problem without mentioning or possibly noticing the problem.
Players who know what they are talking about are by far the minority when you look at fighting game players as a whole, and are out numbered by both unskilled players and scrubs, which mean when a new person in general asks someone for help with a fighting game they more often than not get incorrect or bad advice than good advice.
Everyone who thinks fireballs are cheap didn’t start out that way, some where just beginners looking for help and the first person who got to them explained to them that you shouldn’t throw fireballs, or grab or use combos or use the same move too many times because it is cheap, despised and unfair. By not trying to get to new players sooner you leave them as fair game for the legions of scrubs roaming the internet and beyond.
Im pretty sure more people quit fighting games after coming to SRK.
You only have direct control over your own behavior. Just stick with people who play games for the right reason (they’re fun and fill the competitive urge) and accept that people are going to be immature. Not that you shouldn’t call them out over it, but just be realistic.
However I think I’m totally in my rights to hate any game and state my opinion when it’s relevant. It doesn’t mean I tell every new player how they shouldn’t play SFxT because I don’t like it. But if someone asks me whether they should play SF4 or SFxT, of course I’m going to say the game I want to play because I’m biased and I want competition.
Any online forum without dictatorial moderation always requires a thick skin from its users. Stop worrying about what other people think, focus on the people that matter. You don’t have to defend what you like to anyone. For example I know 3rd Strike players, as a general rule, hate SF4. I don’t need to explain to them why I like SF4, and I don’t care whether they make fun of the game or me for playing the game. Stop worrying about people hating SFxT and, like you said, just play the game if you like it.
There are myriad satellite sites that deal with fighting games. Gamefaqs, 4chan, eventhubs, youtube, etcetera all have people who only go to their sites to talk about fighting games. My own local scene only uses Facebook for local stuff nowadays. Just because someone doesn’t frequent SRK doesn’t mean they aren’t in the know, even if the knowledge originated on SRK.
It’s nobody’s responsibility to cater to new players, it’s their responsibility to make the effort to integrate into the existing community (or not). All you can hope is that new players like the games that you like and that you can play together.
This is one change I’ve been making lately, in UMvC3 I play a heavy zoning team, so I get a large number of rage quitters and hate mail after matches. Instead of the usual taunting afterwords I’ve been messaging them and telling them what they could had done to beat my Zoning offence.