I am largely making this thread in response to Gamespot Thinks A New Standard Must Be Set To Fix The Fighting Game Genre, sans the pseudo-journalism.
In recent days, I had been thinking about the likelihood of the Fighting Game genre shooting itself in the foot and entering another Capcom `dark age’ if recent trends continue. Think about it: the companies do not develop these games to make the tournament players happy, nor do they care how much hype we have for any particular game. The bottom line is all that matters. If, hypothetically, Marvel vs Capcom 3 had bombed (clearly it did not, but stay with me), it would not matter how many of us grew curly mustaches and cried ``But… it’s Marvel, baby!’’, the guys at the top would have cut future support and any possible future development.
To use a more realistic example, Soul Calibur V. The Soul series has never been a huge draw (beats me why), and Namco had originally planned to scrap it after SCIV. Due to an overwhelming community demand for a new game, they greenlit a sequel… which was met with a lukewarm (at best) critical response and seems to be a commercial failure. The tournament players seem pretty happy with it, having finally got the technical game they wanted back, but with the cost being poor sales they may have planted the hatchet on the series.
Whether you want to admit it or not, the casual crowd is important. They will never attend a tournament, they are unlikely to be a meaningful match online (if they play online at all), but they make up the majority of the sales. If Capcom, Namco, SNK, etc continue to ignore the casual crowd, I believe the genre’s days are numbered. The tricky thing is how to capture the casuals without alienating the hardcore audience. In honesty, I suspect it is not that difficult, and Gamespot’s article hit on one of the critical aspects: rewards. Soul Calibur V was heavily criticised for its lack of endings in Arcade Mode, a genre standard that acts as the absolute most basic reward necessary for casuals.
If I pick up a new fighting game, the first thing I do is try all the characters, decide on a main and begin working on combos and game-plans. I am sure the story is not too different for most people here. The reward for playing is getting better. I guarantee you there is not a single potential-casual-customer who gives two hoots about that. In fact, that is the very opposite of rewarding for them. Until very recently, Fighting Games always had a critical feature that is sure to interest casuals: Gallery Mode. By playing the game, you unlock things. With a little tweaking, there can be some fantastic unlockables. I remember one of the Soul Calibur III unlockables was a video of people doing crazy things (eg a Seong Mi-na player repeatedly using Taunt to dodge attacks). As the article writer said, making the SFxT free DLC into unlockables rather than downloadable would have made casuals AND the hardcore happier (I bet most of us wish they had more colours to choose from), and I believe Blazblue has colours unlockable from the Gallery Mode (correct me if I am wrong) which demonstrates it is not so alien an idea.
The other critical component missing is a bridge between casuals and competitive gamers. This lack of a bridge means most casuals end up as scrubs, something none of us like. The games do not teach new(er) players how to play. The basic game Tutorials only teach you unique systems, but neglect to teach you fundamentals such as linking or advantage/disadvantage. Mission Mode is utterly pointless in every game I have tried it in. It surely would not be hard to replace these pointless missions with proper BnBs, so as to teach new players practical combos they WILL use online. If the games made any effort to teach the casuals, we may see the community grow, and the proportion of scrubs decrease. That is a win-win situation no matter how you look at it.
However, the responses to the linked page show the Fighting Game Community is hostile to the prospect of casuals invading their territory. This attitude could very well prove malignant and lead to the slow and painful death of the community. We where already given a second chance with this recent rush of new games, so it is our opportunity to invest' in the future of our games. I am not suggesting you go out andadopt a newbie’ — feel free to, if you want — but merely to be open to new ideas and the possibility of sharing the games we all love, rather than turtling until the timer runs out.
