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Basically, the point of the story is that not everyone grew up with this shit and while we can be elitist dicks, and probably will anyway, the genre will thrive longer if it’s made easier to get into.

Doesn’t mean the games need to be dumbed down (though that’s often a consequence of making them accessible) but the developers could probably explain them a bit better to their audience so they understand a few of the less straight forward mechanics.

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The game’s design is the game’s design. How much money it makes and who plays it are two different things entirely and the experience I get playing the game is, taken the way you use that phrase, metaphysical.

Use your brain “pony avatar and fantasy author sig quote guy”. Why can’t you divorce the game’s basic mechanical design from things extraneous to it?

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What does that even mean?

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he possibly suffers from synesthesia, a rare condition that is a necessary prerequisite for the rigorous creative process involved in properly designing a game

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I don’t know. It could be that I don’t have the advanced machinery necessary to detect the quality of “design-ness.” Or it could be that that still isn’t what I’m getting at.

And the game is the game. No part of it is more game. So the design of any part of it is a part of the game’s design. If you think, say, sound isn’t important to a game’s design, then I don’t know what to say. Have you even played a game before? In a multiplayer game, you don’t literally have control over who plays it, but you do need to care about how the people that do play it interact, and influence that to try to make the game better, however you want to define that. I’d call what I think you’re describing “systems design,” but this isn’t really pertinent to, well, reality.

My point to Tataki was that while the experience you have playing the game, and if you like it, is the interaction of the game with your brain, your brain is already significantly influenced by your environment, so the game has the upper hand there. It’s the designer’s responsibility not to use this power make something like Farmville, which is extremely compelling but also a truly terrible game. Rather, what I’m proposing is that small additions to fighting games could motivate players who otherwise wouldn’t care to discover that they really do enjoy playing the game competitively, which is a win for everyone.

Also,

Do you actually have some objective way of measuring the quality of a game? I really wish you would share.

And supposing I actually did think that the amount of people playing were objective merit, why would I preference the immediate present without justification? All-time seems like the better one to look at.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have synesthesia. At least not any more than every person does

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As someone who actually designs video games this thread is hysterical to read.

It’s like people took a pile of buzzwords and threw them into their posts.

Edit: This thread gave me a headache. Like an actual honest to god pain in my head. What are you all even talking about haha.

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So I skimmed over the thread and it gave me a headache but here’s a lot of what’s commonly wrong with fighting games:

“A pile of things” syndrome. I think this is mostly attributed to the amateurish marriage of ideas to the owner. Too many bad designers (EVEN CAPCOM) fall too in love with their ideas and don’t cut them when they don’t really work out well. Mechanic synergy is pretty awesome and what makes really cool games memorable, fun and easy to pick up but actually hard to master. Things like Chess, Dominion and even the original Street Fighter 2 series have simple concepts but when placed together they interact in so many ways that the game never feels the same. This is wholly the strongest kind of design a game can have. Simple parts, complex interactions. This is fundamentally what makes most good competitive games. Now, adding more mechanics isn’t really “bad” if the mechanic is novel and adds something refreshing or is at least very satisfying but shallow while detracting little to nothing from the game. The problem is when designers go “wouldn’t it be cool if…” and then you end up with Street Fighter X Tekken if you happen to have millions of dollars. I’m not going to attribute any design flaws of Capcom games to any one specific person, no one knows the internal politics of Capcom. It could be Ono, it could be some guy. Although we can probably guess Seth Killian now cries himself to sleep because he has to try and talk his way into making people not hate the things he’s selling.

**Complex games/“babbified” games do not correlate to quality. **A game can be deep and complex, a game can be deep and be simple. There really isn’t any direct relationship here. People cry about the simplification of fighting games or appealing to a certain crowd and how it’s ruining high level play. This is hardly the case, the problem is the designers of these games just aren’t very good. Blatantly. Capcom has absolutely baffling design choices and it has nothing to do with the audience they are trying to hit. Input simplification strikes me as something that really makes people on SRK pound their chest with some sort of masculine pride because how dare that guy be able to do a thing. They also seem to think that these ideas detract from the gameplay. In reality, when you subtract from entry level complexity, there are things you can do to add depth to a game. Remember Chess? Remember ST? Those are pretty good games yet they don’t have complex mechanics. What happens if you subtract input complexity in an ST style game, then add in a few more gameplay mechanics that are tightly knit and interesting? You might very well get a better game than ST ever was and more people playing it. Win/win. Of course, people cry foul at the very idea that removing apparent complexity is bad because they somehow think that’s the only kind of complexity or depth a game can have. Then of course, in contrast to that, it strikes me that Capcom is currently attempting to add more complex mechanics to appeal to entry level players (???).

**There’s no mechanical experimentation. **To put it bluntly, I feel that there are plenty of interesting experiments to fighting games (a lot of them using cross-genre mechanics or complete control revamps) that have yet to be attempted. We’re still stuck in the era of “well this is how old games did it but man old games didn’t appeal to more people so we’d better do the same thing but different”. There have been experiments that have been close but failed. Where are the Smash Bros clones that look at Melee for inspiration? Where are global cooldown mechanics? Metagame customization elements? 2D games with 3D style controls? Item systems? No one’s really doing anything but giving these ideas gentle nudges and when they fail because the game was poorly made, no one really revisits them and pushes them to the most natural and interesting implementations.

Fighting games are mostly made by dudes who don’t understand fighting games. I know of two fighting games. TWO, made by people who I think have critical understanding of fighting games. Maybe three, but I’m still wary of the third. This is incredibly depressing. Most games developed in America are handled by people with years of understanding and often competitive background in their respective genre. You don’t need to be amazing at these games to have really strong understanding of them, but that’s really not the hint I’m getting from these companies other than the few I listed. I’m being intentionally vague here so people don’t attack the examples. I also think hiring into design from the community is generally one of the best ways of making quality games, and has worked INCREDIBLY well for the PC industry. Yet, I see almost none of that going on in fighting games. Ultimately I think this is the biggest problem, and also a critical failure with what I understand of the Japanese games industry in general. There’s no weeding out, no “failures”. It’s an industry that allows you to fail on a design level as long as your marketing budget allows you to make enough money back. This kind of feeds back into the other 3 points.

Those are just some things. I’m too lazy to write more. Also I didn’t read that guys blog because it feels like a cheap attempt at gathering hits. I have never written anything like this on my blog or anything! This post was lovingly crafted for you Shoryuken.com

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Find VF4 EVO

Unlockable backgrounds for main menu
Unlockable game modes
Dan system (ranking up) unlock new outfit colors on your way up
Currency to buy items for customizing
Tekken’s is actually borrowed from VF, they designed Brad and Goh as gifts to thank Sega for letting them use it
Tutorials/challenges rewarded with currency and/or items
In match challenges (throw X times, block X times, win by timeout, etc.) gave rewards
Orbs and stickers rewarded for beating the opponent that owned them

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I agree with you in many ways except the last part, WoW is accesible because of the insane ammount of dumbed down content and mechanics, is incredibly easy to pick up and play, and they want to reward players with a false sense of achievement, the tutorials in game are really basic because the game wants “first time” gamers, in that sense this is nice but remember that the game has a simple background for that, FG like Blaz Blue and VF4 have great tutorials but people just ignore that and they want to do the complicated stuff since the beggining.

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Yet even though WoW is so accessible and dumbed down it still has plenty for experienced players in heroic raids and arenas. I really hope people understand that, you can make something accessible without killing the soul of it. While it is possible to make something accessible AND kill the soul of it (battle fantasia in the fighting community) people just need to trust the developers to do what’s best and listen to the community. Ultimately they’re the ones making it and if you’re not happy with the latest the greatest, well that’s why there is such a large retro community.

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Wow, I understand even more now. The objective merit of a game’s design includes not only the current player base and their metaphysical experiences with the game, but those of the past as well. Thank you Ghost of Tomo, SF2 is still kicking ass today!

To put it into a frame of reference that I can understand, I thought about my last experience playing Chess. There wasn’t a really good tutorial on the game board so I got a little frustrated and started throwing the pieces around my house as hard as I could. I had a panic attack after this because never, ever before have I played a game that communicated to me so poorly how to play it. The experience I had is part of Chess’ design. It’s part of the collective gaming unconscious. The important thing here though is that my experience was facilitated by the game’s metaphysical qualities that were imbued into the chess board and pieces by the Chess development team.

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No, fighting games cannot “do that”.
Millions are playing WoW exactly BECAUSE its mechanics.
Those millions would rather have a game where you can’t really lose, a game based on grinding and a shallow (false, even) sense of progress (seeing numbers going up) rather than a game based on skill and direct confrontations with others.
A great fighting game will never be as popular exactly because what’s better for us (what we describe with words like “serious”, “deep”, “competititve”) isn’t better for most people.
One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure and vice versa.

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Why are you applying such a black and white mentality to such a gray area subject? Why is this such an “us vs them” mentality you’re forcing on something that can appeal to both groups on both none or multiple levels?

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It’s just a form of expression. One can only speak for himself anyway.
And games can never appeal to the highest man in the same way the appeal to the lowest. If both happen to like the same game, it’s never for the same reasons. That’s why accepting compromise on mechanics in order to “be more popular” is a horrible approach. Instead of dumbing down the game for the people, we should elevate the people to the level of the game.

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I don’t agree at all that fighting games need to change, what is called a flaw seems to be what is the appeal of the genre in the first place.

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WoW has quite deep mechanics, it’s a different sort of deep to a fighting game but timing GCD, dealing with CC chains, interupt strings, stun DR and a hundred other things takes a lot of skill. Anyone that claims otherwise obviously hasn’t played Arenas at a high level.

Raiding is similar in a way, though it comes down to boss mechanics and all the indepth strategies/number crunching/rotations that go into beating that successfully, it’s probably most comparable to Monster Hunter though that reference tends to be foreign to most Western audiences, especially ones that don’t understand WoW.

So please don’t make baseless accusations and believe that one genre is far deeper than another, all competitive games have depth, if they didn’t they wouldn’t be competitive.

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Counterpoint: SFxT is being played at Evo

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You do realize that, before the announcement of gems, alot of folk who played the game were pretty enthusiastic about the system behind it.

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… and I’m sure it will be deep enough to provide competition, if not, it will get dropped from the circuit.

Starcraft II is the most popular E-sport, Halo and Call of Duty are popular E-sports, WoW is played competitively, a lot of different genres of games have competitive scenes.

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What? High-Tier MvC2? Arcana Heart 3? Guilty Gear Accent Core? Third Strike? Virtua Fighter? Tekken?
These have some of the most unnecessary complications I’ve seen in fighters. AH3 alone has some factors that require algebra to figure out.

In what context? Controls? The variables in a match due to the mechanics? The movesets? The variety of characters?
What? Are we talking about the fighting game genre or just the most popular ones, because SF2 and SFIV as a whole are about the slowest and most methodical series that’s still popular.

Oh boy, here we go.

Kinda dead on arrival since you couldn’t promote a Melee clone over Melee/Brawl with a straight face. Not that it isn’t impossible,
its just highly impractical despite the possible fun factor, and no one is Blizzard where they can waste money on a creativity project, but they just don’t.
Even games like the PS2 Naruto series and Jump Stars/One Piece Giant Battle had brand name interest to support them.

MMO fighters like DFO, Elsword, and Lost Saga for three. Dissidia, the Touhou fighters, and Melee/Brawl for another three.
The problem is that only the Touhou fighters are meant to competitively sound, their makers is an indie group that cannot internationally promote itself, and the lack of familiarity actually distracts attention to a mainstream audience.
Seriously, if you can guess exactly the mechanics of the game on one match, you’re better than most of Earth’s population.
[media=youtube]uzMhsNNu6AA[/media]
I can see the arena fighters (GvG, Virtual On) catching on, but one is licensing hell and the other requires a completely new engine to appeal to people.
Anarchy Reigns is a new chance but Sega is most of the blatant companies for not promoting their innovative titles (and consoles) enough.

That’s pure aesthetics for the most part unless you’re considering aspects that can only happen in 2D at this point.
But the problem is that a non-indie team is taking a load of risk with how wrong that can turn out.

Samurai Shodown, the mmo fighter hybrids again, Dissidia, Touhou : UNL/SWR, and Smash and its clones again.

Or they don’t sell well, get typecast as crap, and require dedicated development and promotion to do otherwise.
The arcade age is over, outside indie devs and hoping for incredible word of mouth, people don’t have the leeway for that.

This goes for almost every large-team made game in existence in any genre.

Because the Western PC community was out of mainstream relevance as well until very recently.
Even there, you’re not going to see stuff like another Ultima outside a freak accident.
Only in recent years could you even MAKE that argument.
Fighting games are like any other niche and dedicated form of a media.
A good chunk of the blame is the community itself being either too jaded or too scared to do anything new, and personally its getting to the point where a few losing streaks is bad to people.
I want the level of attention that VF4EVO has, but if the game is accessible as is, it shouldn’t be seen as required as the fanbase already supplies information itself. Its not as bad as DERPAHERP HOW DO I CHARGE BUSTER, where the feeling of difficulty and discovery can be completely thwarted, but I don’t wanna get close.