It wasn’t really flamebait, just saing what I thought. The scene is actually flrosihing without capcom making any new games.
And the entire company of capcom is only half of my dick.
and now Arc Sys is making a 3d action game for the 360
that’s so obviously aimed at a western audience its like they’re using a damn laser pointer
who needs console ports in japan really?!
I don’t see why you’re even posting in this thread. It’s quite obvious we are talking about the American market of fighting games, because the future of 2D in Japan seems pretty solid.
My main point was your general attitude that its up to the players to tune their likings to what games are given to them, as opposed to developers making games for the players. The fact the GG is successful in Japan among a much higher level of fg competition, and much less successful in other countries supports the OP. GG is great, but is difficult to get into, and unless you are in Japan where there are tons of players, you are kind of SOL if you want to learn it. That is the inherent problem with making fg’s more and more complex. The responsibility isn’t solely on the player to adjust to the new games.
personally got the new guilty gear and honestly fail to see so many releases of this series, the new system made me want to get it, but the learning curve made me put it away, not everyone has 4 hours free a day. I rather pick up something and play , read some sort of short strat. Not adapt to a new dimension. I just think guilty is made to look over complex. In comparison i like stull like rumble fish, its hardly simple but yet easy to grasp, concept wise. just an opinion on the whole GG argument.
This man speaks truth. It’s sad how things are right now, and you hit it right on the fucking noggin’.
hey i hate anime but i like anime fighting games like iamp and efz
I wish everyone would stop saying Sammy…their name hasn’t been on a guilty gear title in a long time.
Arc System Works develops guilty gear.
I just like games where I can walk back and forth as the better part of my gameplan. Where I don’t have to muscle memory long combos. Where I’m not in the air half of the game. And where I’m not constantly guessing high or low or throw.
There is no future for 2D fighting games in America. When street fighter came out it was graphically impressive, and “realistic.” It presented a graphically stunning, simulated fantastical street fighting experience unlike anything ever experienced before. Virtua fighter either didn’t exist or looked like a steaming pile of polygonal shit that only the truest of geeks could possibly appreciate. The gameplay itself was completely new and well executed also.
So for 2D fighting games to make a comeback you have to piggy back on some kind of cultural phenomenon or gimmick like how everyone was into Karate kid and jean claude van damme martial arts movies during the street fighter era. The Naruto fighting games are a possibility since a large part of the appeal of naruto is a one-on-one ninja duel, much like the appeal of karate kid was a one-on-one duel. I’m not sure if kids are going to idolize the ninjas in Naruto more than master chief though because in this day and age it’s a little unrealistic for a kid to idolize a martial artist. In the 90s kids could still fantasize that martial arts was something that could make you heroic in real life, but now kids bring guns to school and massacre their schoolmates so someone like master chief is more appealing as a hero or escapist adventure
So basically, someone needs to beat the living shit out people with martial arts, then that story has to make it to the news, and then we’ll see a resurgence in the 2d fighting scene in america?
I think your missing the point cain[e]. Martial arts isn’t as cool and popular as it once was. Back late 80s to mid 90s, it was all about going to the arcade to play your favorite shooters and beat’em ups, then abit later, fighters. Now its all about going online and playing your favorite mmorpg, fps and rts.
Hmm I’ve seen some very good points raised here. The true answer lies somewhere in between. Here’s my two cents:
- Dumbing down the games won’t help anything. This is a re-occuring theme, I’ve noticed among the newer generation of gamers (and american’s in general). Short attention spans and even smaller desire for a challenge.
At one point ALL OF US didn’t know how to play a particular game. What did we do? WE LEARNED. In the age of FAQs and gamesharks (or whatever you use) gamers have forgotten the lost art of LEARNING AND FIGURING A GAME OUT. Gamers want to be able to do the best, flashiest combo/moves, get the most frags, and wins without putting in the work to LEARN how to do them.
I once organized a fighting tourney at my then job. The two games proposed were GGX2 and Tekken 5. I brought the games in and showed everyone the basics (the tourny was really just for fun anyway and quite a few of them were good at tekken 5) and let them pick which game would be the tourny game. of course everyone picked T5. Their reason?
"Tekkens cooler, it’s got better graphics and it’s easy."
Yup they loved the fact that you could pick up a controller and mash with some characters (notably christie) and win. And they continued to love it during our practice games. Cut forward two weeks and to the beginning of our tourny, all bets are off and money is on the line. The players who knew what they were doing (or who bothered to buy the game or boro it from me to practice) owned all the other players. Soon after no one in the office wanted to play T5 at all. Why?
"It’s too hard"
All of a sudden because people LEARNED how to use certain characters and LEARNED the weakness’s of their opponents, the game became “too hard.”
- Neo gamers have a really hard time figuring out why THEY want. Mainly because they are so used to having websites/messageboards/magazines TELL THEM. I remember when Guilty Gear came out (not GGX, i’m talking about the original japanese playstation one game). There was next to no buzz about it. even after it got a US release.
Cut forward to GGX with it’s anime graphics and boom, everyone and their brother loves GG. Do you think its a coincidence that more anime/manga websites and magazines started promoting the game around the same time that GGX blew up in the states? (and I was playing GGX before it got a US realese, there was a huge change and increase in players after the otaku media got a wiff of it)
I’m not faulting anime fans who are into guilty gear (SH@# they may have single handedly saved/enlagered the U.S. GG scene), just making a point.
Why did some of these fans have to wait for the media to tell them about the game, before they decided to play it.
I came across the game because i’m always looking for new and interesting games and i think most older gamers are of the same breed, it’s just a part of the way we are. Because back in the day you had three sources for gaming info: Your friends, Your self and Gamepro (and that wasn’t even an option for some).
OG gamers need to school this younger gen basically. Don’t cater to the lazy.
Instead, OG’s and all around good players, should take a little time to show the new gamers how the games work and give um a few examples. I’ve managed to get people into fighters like GG and MVC2 by telling um the basics and then going a few rounds with a skilled player, letting them watch. When people can see whats possible, they have a goal to work towards and dive right into the game…either that or they walk away because it’s “too hard”.
In which case i say screw um, go play some braindead FPS # 671.
Lets start by beating the shit out of magdalenarules. That’s gotta be the most out there theory so far.
Actually, to an extent the guy’s got a point. Fighting games were more or less a passing fad really, and in Japan they can still be seen as that. Right now the fad is games akin to GG and less to SF. In America (at least) FPS titles are the fad while other genres take a backseat more or less.
I don’t think we’ll ever see a revival, but I don’t see the genre going extinct anytime soon either.
Let me introduce a few terms that will help this discussion.
Barrier to entry
This is how much knowledge is required to just start playing the game. GG and MvC2 have a high barrier to entry. You need to know a lot of stuff before even starting the game. Tekken 5 has a low barrier to entry. Anyone can just pick eddie and mash. Doesn’t mean they are good, but they can start playing.
Depth
This is how much complexity exists in the game. If you can win with one character doing one move, it’s not very deep, even if the game has a high barrier to entry. A game with a lot of depth with rewards players that invest time in learning it.
So what people want is a game with low barrier to entry and high depth. One reason ST is popular is that it fits reasonably well in this category. The game is relatively simple to learn the mechanics of, but there is a lot of depth (Yes, I know that O Sagat and Claw reduce the depth somewhat).
A big problem with fighting games today is that the barrier to entry keeps getting higher and higher. GG series is a great example of this. It’s very very hard for someone that has never played a fighting game to pick it up. This is a problem that the console market has had too. The Xbox360 and Ps3 controllers have in themselves a high barrier to entry. Wii did a great job coming up with a product that was low barrier to entry. I have no doubt that Smash Bros for the Wii will have a low barrier to entry too.
There’s no reason capcom or any other company can’t release a game with low barrier to entry and high depth. They could make ST v 2.0. They could go in the Smash Bros line of fighters. they could make a beautiful game of the GG style with a much lower barrier to entry (Sammy should do this imo). They could make something totally original.
It’s time for fighters to get rid of the 18 different meters, gauges, buttons, combos, etc. A character doesn’t need 180 special moves (VF5) to be deep. Guile has 2 specials and he’s incredibly deep. Game studios are confusing complexity with fun. They need to learn a lesson from nintendo and rethink their assumptions.
That has absolutely nothing to do with people having a hard time figuring out what they want. Its all about advertising, people didn’t know about GG during the PS1 days, it was all about Final Fantasy 7. The majority of PS1 games didn’t have anywhere NEAR decent marketing practices as that game alone. Add to that GG was the new kid on the block and usually those titles which are brand new have no chance without at least some damn good marketing. GG hardly had any ads for it because no one cared.
But GG never even got the time of day. Do you know for a fact that none of them continued to play T5? Either way, it got a chance because people could feel like they were speaking the language of Tekken without having to learn rc’s and a bunch of other nonsense. I’d say your example really just points out how few people are interested in competitive gaming. People who aren’t interested in playing competitively don’t like losing.
What boom are you talking about? The playerbase of GG is still much smaller than the older Capcom games. It’s no secret that marketing will increase a games sales.
We keep talking about everyone else, but what about ourselves? I will not pick up GG because I know it will take me an enormous amount of time to learn. I already play 3s, and am trying to get better at MB, so I don’t really have an extra 2-3 hours a day to learn the most complex 2d fg around, and I know I’m not the only one. This is the problem. The more difficult it is to step up from nooby to intermediate level competition the closer you are to unnecessarily complicated. Melty Blood does a much better job of making the introduction to a deep game easy than GG does. Too bad its all little girls :sad:
Some very good points here:
this is so true.
exactly. on a similar note, probably the most popular game genre in america today is FPSs. why? very low barrier to entry. if youve played one FPS, you will also know how to move in and play all the others. there is minimal adjusting to each FPS game engine, but the core remains the same.
conversely, fighters are vastly different from one another. it takes much time to learn how to be skilled at multiple fighting games. it takes even more time to be proficient at different 2D and 3D fighting games. props to ppl who can do that. of course, picking top tier characters shorten this time.
I dont think this is necesarily true. i just think gamers nowadays are spoiled, especially GRAPHICS-wise. simply put, take the very low barrier to entry and depth to FPS, coupled with the emphasis of graphics in that genre, and you get something that appeals to a wide range of ppl.
growing up in an age of 8/16-bit graphics and a lack of game help from guides/internet, those gamers learned how to appreciate great gameplay, and put in the time to learn the game. now im not saying that graphics are everything, but they do matter a lot. additionally, great story sets apart all the very pretty FPSs.
multiplayer helps too. big worlds where 16+ real ppl can jump in and frag each other to death is a lot of fun. 1v1 fighting game, yeah its fun, but thats 2 ppl playing while the rest are watching. sure, you will get a turn if you WAIT.
but i love fighting games, and i love playing street fighter. call me crazy, but if there was only one game i could play for the rest of my life, it would be Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight for the FUTURE!!!
FPS are also helped by team gameplay. You don’t just have 16+ people jumping in and fragging each other to death. You as often have two 8-person teams fragging each other, or playing capture the flag, or whatever other strategic game option is available. People are actively working together, doing different jobs, finding their preferred tasks, coordinating assaults, and the like.
Most fighters just don’t offer that. Even tag systems where the active player switches isn’t the same, as you are still waiting your turn. Of course, if you have more than two active players, it is suddenly classed a brawler or beat-em’up anyway. The more you add, the harder it may become to justify it as a fighter. In the case of a 2D fighter, it may also become harder to even see what is going on.
It may offer an idea for a possible future 3D fighter though. Team (and free-for-all) based large scale battles could be an interesting concept, if a decent camera angle could be found and kept for each player. (Close side view would cause a blind side, back view can obscure the person directly in front of you, and either a far or a more overhead camera makes it harder to see what your opponents are doing.)