41

For fuck’s sake. EVERYONE GETS IT. You don’t like Street Fighter 4. Holy fucking shit when will you get over this? And this false casual/hardcore split in the demographic just so you can have an “other” to bash on. The meaning of casual doesn’t even stay consistent amongst posters (who vociferously agree with each other). How is someone who spends hours on fighting video games casual? I mean sure anyone can have a (colloquially) casual attitude but are you equating these people to the women that play Wii Fit?

2011 Evo was huge and it was hype and the only thing suffering from “degenerating effects” is SRK where people can’t get over the fact their hobby is being invaded by new people and who hate videogames (that aren’t that bad) so much that they post about them for YEARS.

OP is 100% right about how MLG is a dead end compared to Evo, perhaps the tone isn’t the best and perhaps the blustering about streams is undignified but the point is solid.

42

You could cry about semantics and my choice of words all day but the problem is real.

I have no problem with the SF4 crowd at all. The issue is with the rest of us, who know better, being a bunch of weaklings who can’t stand on our own two feet anymore, which is exactly what Pherai described.

43

Semantics are important, definitions are important, but I won’t argue about them. Nevertheless, your attitude is needlessly negative, derogatory and well, unjustified.

44

I’m harsh because I care. What is your solution then?

45

There isn’t one required, there’s barely a problem. Hence the “unjustified”.

46

Some people make it sound like the FGC was a utopia before SF4 :rolleyes:

Sounds like the OP won’t be buying an MLG TE fightstick… Markman won’t be pleased :nono:

And the FGC has already been saved… buy SF4 (obviously not the only factor). It’s not the quality of the game that defines the life of the community (TvC was great IMO but look at it now). What is a community without people?

47

There’s no problem for you. But you don’t represent everyone, because many people are not pleased with this at all.

Where there no tournaments before SF4?
There were and a lot. They were much smaller in scale but still great, still serious business.
Now we are facing a new situation where one game comes in and swoops everything and we still don’t know how do deal with it.

48

Honestly, TvC seems about as questionable a game as MvC3.

They’re both quite good, but certain things within the games make things super silly (such as giants fitting in about as well as MUGEN characters).

49

When did newer games (that were not absolute crap despised universally, which was a rarity in itself) not essentially swoop in and be more popular and played more?
Aside from a couple games like ST in select cases, everything else always stepped aside all these years.

The only difference is the rate with which games come out these days. Perhaps I missed something.

50

It could be worse.

We could literally be playing Smash.

51

Or maybe when they said they liked the game it’s because they actually liked the game, despite its flaws.

That said, one other issue with MLG is sometimes they have really, really stupid rules for fighters- like basing seedings on win streaks- so you can get paid just for scrub-killing and avoiding good players.

52

Maybe you all didn’t notice, but the fighting game community IS dictated by what the bad players want to play. EVO was the biggest tournament EVER this year, the biggest games were SF4 and MvC3, the biggest viewer counts were SF4 and MvC3. Did all those player and stream monsters win? Hell no, all but six of them didn’t even make money. But you know where all that money came from? The shitty players who want to watch what they think their favourite game is.

It doesn’t matter what the best game is, it doesn’t matter what the best players think, this is a majority system and the majority are terrible players who’ve yet to play anything not made by capcom and joined this or last year. If you compound that with what it costs to run a tournament for masses that huge it’s no wonder you see smaller but beloved games like: Guilty Gear, Melty Blood, ST, Fucking Tekken, and Arcana**** getting slowly edged out of big tournaments; they simply don’t generate enough revenue to cover the cost of a venue and other costs like streams. In fact even at big events you’ll notice that these smaller games often don’t get streamed except for, prehaps, grand finals. Because stream monsters won’t watch anything they haven’t played, and all they’ve played are the flavour of the month games for the year.

At this point it’s pretty goddamn impossible to do anything grassroots and get numbers, because the people who care make up a tiny portion of what you need to bring people in.

The main difference between us and MLG is we don’t have sponsers, oh wait, ReveLAtions and EVO WERE sponsered.

I have found the enemy, and it is us.

53

Streams are for the stream monsters. If you’re there, you’re there.

Ultimately, the games that aren’t mainstream have to make their scene, the same ways scenes were made pre-SF4. It was doable then, it should be doable now.

54

This thread is just filled with rhetoric. Let’s look at the facts:

  1. people cared about Guilty Gear (or whatever game you want to use as an example) prior to SF4
  2. most of these people haven’t quit
  3. SF4 has, no matter how small the percentage is, brought in new players who care about these fighting games

Sure, its going to take effort to set up a community, and they might feel unfair because SF4 and MvC3 just generate their own scenes, but that’s no reason to start getting salty about the games’ existence. Even if the games aren’t streamed, a lot of the time they’re recorded, so you do still get your videos, and because of that you still get your fix of whatever your game is. The point is, there are top players from previous games that enjoy these games (John Choi and Valle for SF4 as said earlier, JWong and fanatiq for MvC3, none of these are exactly small names prior to SF4). I don’t think anyone would really put in enough effort to make top 8 at Evo in a game they didn’t enjoy when you’re not actually getting paid all too much for your efforts, but that’s arguable.

Though I would argue there was never a time when people weren’t trying to edge Melty out of majors anyway. Praise Sp00ky.

55

The “FGC versus eSports” mentality is really stupid. Like, you may disagree with them or whatever, but they’re not trying to *hurt *us.

56

This is a really interesting thread, but it’s all over the place. A lot of valuable insights and a lot of, IMO, misguided bitching.

Regarding the original post, I don’t know a whole lot about “eSports,” but to me isn’t e-sports the same thing as competitive video gaming? There are different organizations out there that have different goals and concepts for what they want to do with competitive gaming, and of course some are better than others. The OP makes a pretty good case for the FGC over MLG (which is “eSports” while the FGC is not?). Someone said that it’s really the games themselves that make the difference, and I think there’s a lot of truth in that. EVO is huge because Capcom fighting games are pretty fucking awesome and they have been for 20 years now. Starcraft is huge because the popular opinion is it’s an amazing game, and from what I know about it, I see the appeal.

(As an aside, I don’t like FPS games at all. I never have. Let’s compare the main actions you take as a player in fighting games compared to FPS: in fighting games, you are pressing buttons which at their most boring directly hit your opponent in the damn face and at best rape him/her in the dark or send them into oblivion with a triumphant, plasma-encrusted uppercut to the sky. In FPS games, the main things you do are… look around? Fucking strafe? Aim crosshairs? Let’s see, I can do a multiple HHS combo with Honda and just bitchslap you in front of everyone for like ten seconds and then taunt you, or I can… strafe around and probably get shot in the back by some turtling bitch with a sniper rifle… hmmm, which sounds more fun…)

Anyway, games that people really enjoy are the bottom line… Korea was lucky to find a game it loved that much and to develop a system that has really worked for players and spectators to get a whole lot of enjoyment out of it. I’d say the FGC and the EVO guys and the new wave of amazing content producers like Team Spooky and the Cross Counter crew are doing pretty darn well themselves. People have different visions for the ideal competitive gaming scene. Some people want a totally grassroots scene driven by local tournaments and arcades or whatever and others want a full on, undisputed top level professional league like an NFL of gaming where there are dozens of full time, paid professional players. Most American adults thought video games were a joke, a fad, a toy for young children until maybe ten years ago, and plenty still do. Think about how long it took for professional sports to develop the way they have. Athletic competitions have been around for God knows how long, but the idea of the “professional athlete” was largely SHUNNED by society in varying degrees until literally a few DECADES ago… Think about that. The idea of amateur athletics (read up on the history of the Olympics, which btw is only like 120 years old, and amateurism in sports if you don’t know much about it) was put on a pedestal as the ideal form of competition for a very long time AND STILL IS in the form of the NCAA etc. etc. Hell, most competitive runners thought that actually training hard for a race meant that you weren’t very talented. They also smoked cigarettes. They were also slow as fuck. I imagine most teenagers these days think the NFL has been huge since the beginning of time. The truth is that college football was muuuuch more important than professional football until the 1950s or arguably even the 1970s. Professional football was seen as almost a sideshow in the first half of the 20th century, like the Harlem Globetrotters or something - a novelty.

Who knows what’s going to happen with competitive gaming? It’s great that people are passionate about shaping its future, but competitive gaming not even in its infancy, it’s still way up IN THERE in a bunch of amniotic fluid…

Another topic I’ll touch on is the anti-SF4 stuff (note this is not at all directed at any particular person). It’s totally valid to have issues with the game or with any game for that matter. But a lot of the bitching is really annoying. I know it’s been said a thousand times, but you seriously don’t have to play it. Seriously. There are a lot of games that I don’t play. You could apply that same approach to SF4. I really just don’t get it. And I can’t get a handle on what exactly people have a problem with. Everyone has different problems, it seems. For some, it’s the input shortcuts/easy reversals (complaints I don’t fully understand unless you play Seth and get random SPDs all the time… and is it really a problem that people can wake up with the moves they want? For the competition to be more based on decision making than on the ability to consistently hit a one frame reversal window sounds more interesting to me, but hey. And of course there are no execution challenges in SF4 - I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone drop a combo or fail to tech a throw properly). Others say Ultras ruin the game. Infinites in MvC3 and ToD combos in the SF2 games are the stuff of legend, but Ultras make SF4 shit (yes I realize that the older examples are more difficult, but they’re also much more powerful). Capcom toned the damage down, but now the game is way too defensive. Except for Yun and Yang and Rufus and the fact that divekick characters dominate the game. Some say all of the characters suck, some say they’re all broken. Man, if only everyone could love SF4 just like everyone loved Marvel 2 and Third Strike… oh… wait… I… I just remembered that… A TON OF GREAT PLAYERS THINK THOSE GAMES ARE FUCKING ASS.

So much of it is the “Other” thing. That comment was spot on. Again, if SF4 just isn’t your thing, then I totally respect that. But I just cannot agree with the idea that it’s ruining the scene. Yeah, there are more casual fans now. There are stream monsters. It isn’t nearly as much your own special club anymore. But there are a lot of people who started with SF4 who are every bit as passionate as the hardcore players of 1997 or 2004. There are brilliant players who work hard at it, share their love for the game, and bring their own new styles to the FGC… There are plenty of 09ers who have explored other games - ST, 3S, Marvel, Blazblue, KoF, Street Fighter: The Movie - and are looking forward to the next wave (first MvC3 and soon SFXT)… they just HAPPENED to start with SF4.

The vast majority of people who play football do it to fit in at school or to get chicks or because their dads would call them sissies if they didn’t. That doesn’t make them FOOTBALL PLAYERS. Most people who watch football can’t name two defensive players on each team in the league. They aren’t serious fans. When things are popular, they get watered down by bandwagoners, but the people who really love whatever it is can tell the difference between a poser and his true peers instantly. As I see it, your two choices are to play the games you like, whether they are new or old, as much as you want to play them, come chat about said games here on SRK, come to Next Level and most likely find an enthusiastic challenger in any fighting game you can come up with, and go to tourneys and hopefully scream your head off at EVO, or you can invite your three hardcore OH GEE fighting game friends over and play SF3: Second Impact and some Japanese-only anime fighter on a supergun and boast about how authentic and non-scrubby you are and laugh at all of us who are enjoying the HELL out of this community right now.

57

Not going to hate on lazy asses playing video games for a living, but that’s what they are. In no ways does being good at a video game translate to skills in real life.

Timmy’s raking in money in Guitar Hero contest, but what’s he doing for a career path, what kind of social skills is he developing.

It’s like those dudes playing FPS for a living, if they do win like 50g for playing a game good for them, but i don’t see how anybody gets personal growth from playing video games.

I mean we all have day jobs right? I mean Daigo is a nurse at a convalescent home.

About “easy to play” scrubby game like MVC3, Jeebs, it’s like everybody played Fatal Fury 3, Primal Rage, and AOF with those fucked up move inputs.

If you think MVC3 is scrubby, than i guess SF2 is scrubby, one mistake=killed,dead,gone, which is what ST, CVS2, Mk9, and the KOF games are all about. SFIV is an ok game, and lots of people play it. So what? play the games you like and fuck he haters.

Which is why I am all for it.

58

One mistake is not death in SF2/ST. One gigantic mistake that leads to a combo by some characters is death. Layers of other decisions precede this stuff. I don’t follow or play MvC3 but it’s never struck me as being a game like that. It may be exciting sure, but any degree of mistake seems to lead to the same kind of complete beatdown. If you enjoy that, I respect it, but it doesn’t compare to ST.

59

…What???

60

I think something needs to be cleared:

MLG is not esports. LoL is not esports ( whichever fucktard said this is really, really confused, or just a huge fanboy). FGC is not esports. And while the definition of esports is “competitive gaming”, let’s be honest, here. Esports= Starcraft. Starcraft started esports, it was esports, it is esports, and it WILL be esports. You could list every single competetive game, rank them on a bar graph in terms of how big they are in a competitive community, and then sort them by genre, with starcraft being it’s own genre: Starcraft would be larger then the rest combined. Starcraft is international. ENORMOUS corporate giants sponser BROOD WAR teams in korea, and Kespa makes whoever runs MLG and whoever runs EVO look like a bunch of kids organisizing a game of pinball at the local pizza parlor after school. Once Kespa switches to SC2, as do all the players, it will be even BIGGER. Hwasung OZ will be responsored, with more players, more money, and more fans. And that’s just Korea. The International starcraft scene is now so huge, It ALONE dwarfs every other community. Team Liquid is the biggest competetive fighting game site ever, sans another starcraft site in china. China. Not even korea, fucking china. IEM, Dreamhack, MLG (which, lets face it, in a year will be the MLG star league, who watched the other games?) the TSL, GSL, MSL, OSL, and proleague ALL dwarf anything else fighitng game communities have to offer. If you compare how many koreans and international people watch the starleagues and compare it to evo, starleagues win (if you collect all the numbers; it’s bigger in korea where it’s not on at 2:30) and the number of entries is far greater: B league, A league, S league, and qualafiers all have enormous amounts of people in them. Most people who play the game competitively don’t even try out, because the skill ceiling is so high (even in SC2 LOL) that it would be a wast of money. But if you count them too, all the diamon and up leaguers, you have WAY more competetive players then any other game. WAY more money, WAY more fans, WAY more sponsers, WAY more tournaments, and WAY more people. And that’s just starcraft 2, BW is even bigger (though declining, because of SC2).

SC2 is still synonymous with esports, and esports would be nothing like SC. So the openings rants against MLG saving FGC/being esports don’t even make sense, since MLG is a fraction of esports, esports being starcraft. I honestly didn’t even get his point: is he mad cause people think MLG is esports and FGC isn’t when EVo was bigger then MLG? MLG is the bottom rung on the REAL esports ladder, starcraft. Which MLG halo fanboy insulted you by saying your game was smaller?

FGC is a large fighting game community, but, if you crunch the numbers that matter, MLG was still arguably bigger. And any sort of rivalry FGC had with MLG doesn’t matter, MLG is GSL’s bitch which is soon to be Kespa’s bitch. Your arguing with a bitches bitch because your tired of that double bitch calling your community small and inferior, even though it was equal to the double bitch this year. Also, keep in mind, MLG final event still hasn’t happened… So your mad at a bitches bitches bitch, over something like stream veiwers and how your community is better and should be part of esports. MLG isn’t esports, it’s esports/starcraft’s bitch, stop competeting with it or getting mad at it. It really doesn’t matter if EVO was bigger, EVO is the ant to starcraft’s dinasour. Argument doesn’t even make sense.

ALSO LOL AT WHEOVER SAID LoL WAS ESPORTS WTF ARE YOU SWEDISH?