Can this be nominated for use on the Front Page please? It’d be a nice change of pace and it’d mix things up a bit, get people talking, ect…
I remember the first thing I ever read on SRK, it was on the front page, which looked FAR different then it does now. There was front page post about people thinking they were good because they got top 8 at a tournament. The post went on to say that top 8 didn’t matter because if went to enough tournaments you would probably get top 8 eventually. Then he gave an excerpt from an irc chat he had with a player named calipower (I had no idea who this was at the time but I still thought what he said was awesome) I remember it almost exactly:
calipower: back in the day
calipower:if you weren’t top 3
calipower: who the fuck are you
That was my first impression of SRK. Serious, hardcore, fighting game community.
Coming from the scene in the 90s everyone would save their best tech and would refuse to talk about it. There was even a saying about it, STSFN or (Save That Shit For Nationals). Any time people would start talking game strategy someone authoritative would step and in and be like “nah come on man STSFN”. It just always bugged me because I wanted to learn about games as someone new to the scene and it was harder with everyone saving their tech.
So if I ever find something I’ll talk about it, it’s not like it’s even a big deal now anyways with youtube and streams. Nobody can keep anything a secret for that long. Besides when you post up stuff you get way more back than you give. Like if you look in the Wesker reset thread there’s talk about the gun loop (that people thought was new in Ultimate; it’s not), Renegade posted a bunch of strats about Wesker/Tron, NissanZaxima made videos, someone has a huge post in there about Wesker/Haggar, including some stuff I didn’t know yet. That post probably helped me out as much as it helped anyone else to help me understand my character a little better. That’s the best part of SRK and the FGC to me, people being open and helping everyone out.
My opinion is that you can still find that hardcore on srk who wants to level up and be the best, but the thing is now that SRK has exploded in popularity there are now people on here who are not actively in the tournament scene (They may watch, but don’t participate for whatever reasons.) I believe that is why you see the crying about characters and all the gossip crap.
There is a key difference: the FGC is trying to get as many people playing in their tourneys as possible. Why do you think Final Round was a clusterfuck and everything was running late? Because they took on far more people than they can manage. ShinBlanka said before that streams were a tool to promote tourneys, to get people feeling the hype so that they will want to come down next year. While MLG wants people to come to their tourneys to watch and not play, they want to put caps in their tourneys and according to them they are entitled to fill their streams with ads due to the big prize pool they are giving. This is a vastly different model from what the FGC is trying to do, and had they followed the MLG model you can be sure the events wouldn’t have doubled in size every year.
We’ll see what happens for the next MLG. If they are keeping the same lineup I will be very surprised if the MK9 numbers rise, considering how the player base for that game in the West Coast is much smaller than that in the East Coast. The same could be said to a lesser extent for SCV. KOFXIII should be a lot more popular in the West Coast, but will they keep that game in the lineup?
This is actually really big, this is something the FGC isn’t used to at all and the opposite is very core to how things have been done.
In order for people to “make a living” off of this you have to give them an up front guaranteed amount of what they will receive you know, kind of like your job does for you every, week or two weeks or month. But Fighting game tournaments generally pay out according to attendance and and therefore don’t get into the sticky subject of having to borrow money to pay people or owing more money in prizes than what was brought in, also for MLG there is the issue of staff, directors, etc.
If you look at it in the sense of owing money of course you’re going to do whatever you can to try to maximize the money you bring.
But when you look at it from a “cash community” perspective the idea of borrowing money to finance guaranteed pay/payout seem absurd, especially since anyone here who has run regular fighting game tournaments has had to cancel one due to turnout.
I stopped running tournaments due to the horrible fallout of a prize pool that was provided separate from the player pool. When the money comes from a source outside of the players shit can get fucked up really quickly.
The biggest resource, for MLG’s learning purposes, of this community being so separate and so local for so long is that there are literally hundreds of people with tournament running experience on SRK. Theres dozen upon dozen of people who would tell you that running a whole round at once with an hour and a half to get done is not the best way to do things. People are skeptical but alot of them aren’t flat out routing for this to fail, use your resources people.
Had to have this talk with someone this weekend on the empty crowd issue, Its seems like a simple thing but I guess it didn’t get enough exposure beforehand.
When you see those large crowds at Fighting game tournaments, those are all fighitng game players (well about 95% of them). Who goes to a tournaments to watch? Watching is at best a far third to competing and hanging out with people as a reason to go to a fighting game tournament. I may occasionally stop by a UP tournament to watch, but that place is 10 minutes from my house. I’m not driving and damn sure not buying a ticket to go down to a place and WATCH a fighting game event. If MLG wants to use that model they are going to have to build it from the ground up because even after 20 something years it still doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t come up too often on stream for obvious reasons, but tournament player respect for non player spectators is still pretty low.
The fact that people like Hav antagonize this perspective nonplusses me. Admittedly, a lot of what he’s saying outside “The good-ole’ days” angle is surprisingly insightful, but this advocation of antisocial micropolitics to “harden” players and make them better is so myopic and is fueled purely by 90’s-arcade-era nostalgia that saw some residue in the early 00’s console transition.
Yes, Alex Valle isn’t an asshole to newcomers because the entire scene has gone soft, not because he - and a lot of players still in the scene from that era, actually matured into somewhat well-adjusted adults, with a mind for social cohesion. [/sarcasm]
Competition can be honest without hostility. Hostility is just a dynamic element tossed in that makes competition more interesting for spectators. If you care for honest competition, you can go without it. I don’t need hostility to motivate me to win. I’m not 13 anymore.
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WTF is wrong with this edit function? I’ve edited in the word “nostalgia” after the “arcade-era” four times and it disappears after I refresh the page. That’s just one example.
I don’t agree with a lot of this (I don’t think SF4 is shitty, though it has flaws just like every fighting game in the universe), but you did bring up CFJ, which is something I actually was thinking of myself. People these days play games because “everybody plays them,” all while hating on the games for being stupid and scrubby. Even top players do that. Meanwhile, many of them shit on other games that they don’t play because they have smaller scenes. I sometimes wonder if the scene as it exists has the balls to CFJ or SVC a game that is new but not up to snuff, or if everybody will just go on playing a bad game they hate just because there’s money being thrown at it. I know a lot of players wouldn’t.
This is why I’m on SRK in the end, and why I feel things can’t go completely down the shitter. People still help and work with each other, and there’s massive amounts of info for you to learn from if you’re willing and are driven enough to do so. I just wish I was clever enough to find out a tenth the things people on SRK do
The perception didn’t change, the numbers did.
Due to all type of real world factors there are less active old school players, Jobs, kids, family stuff, lack of jobs, drop off due to lack of interest during the last 5 -7 years, people growing tired of community nonsense.
To use super simplified numbers
If there were a 1,000 people in the community when CFJ came out 800 thought the game was crap, back then that 800 was huge because it was 80% of the community
When SF4 hit the scene got a new 1000+ players who really didn’t know shit about fuck but they:
A) had enough numbers to outvote the people who had been keeping things going
and
B) Thought SF4 was the greatest thing ever put on the earth
If capcom came out with CFJ today the same 800 out of that original thousand would still think it was ass, but the 1,000+ new people would still love it, add on the original 200 that thought the game was good and you have a solid lead in popularity even though the game didn’t get and better.
And I’ll take it one step further, because these new people seem to designate what shows on the stream and we have a number of top players who want to get there name out what you get is another 50 or so of that 1,000 playing the game just to keep their name out there and on streams and not fade into obscurity.
So now were at 1250 to 750 for/against for anyone keeping count on a games that used to be 200/800.
Now a good amount of stream monsters, Capcom of course, and a good number of top players start playing this game and it gets announced for EVO, well like it or not this game is here to stay, its what people are playing in tournaments you go over someone’s house and people are playing it in causals, while openly admitting the game sucks, and you get another shift of players who just give in and start playing because everyone else is.
The math I used is fairly fictional but it follows real patterns if you look at SF4, MVC3 and SFxT.
Once again, blame it on the extremely poor choice of release date and also on SNK’s past failures causing people not to have a positive impression on games made by that company. If they are to release a KOFXIV and not screw up that game I’ll imagine it will have a much better reception than KOFXIII…
Why would MLG be another open lane to get there? It’s not like no one has seen Bala, Romance, Mr KOF or Reynald play before.
This is why MLG can supplement the FGC, but it won’t be able to replace the FGC.
The role I see for esports is high rollers events, high entry fees, low bracket sizes, high payouts. Traditional tournies are more like the WSOP- you enter, sign your name, and if you get lucky, you get to face a Justin or another name, and you get a chance to make yourself famous.
The FGC and MLG can each survive without each other, so there’s really no reason for either side to compromise.
I don’t antagonize that viewpoint at all. I have consistently been in favor of the sharing of information. I have personally created multiple THOROUGH match-up threads, I have one YouTube channel specifically devoted to sharing technology that I develop myself. I was involved with another channel where I would post match videos, after scouring leadrboards for hours at a time, to find matches. I have always believed in sharing info, and my actions have always backed that.
What I don’t particularly like, is how the scene has lost its strict focus on competition, and has adopted a new softer approach to everything. Competition used to be the #1 focus, and plenty of strong friendships were forged on that principle. Now, the #1 focus is being nice and accessible, for all the kids that are too scared of pure competition, since they played in Little Leagues that didn’t keep score.
There used to be a commonailty amongst all players, which was that everyone playing jumped into what was clearly a cutthroat environment, because they craved the pure competition. Once you showed yourself willing to do that, most people were friendly, and information would spread… but you first had to show your own initiative, and your own will and desire. Now, everything is focused on making everything easily accessible for the generation that can never be made to overcome any entrance barrier to anythigg, since they’re entire lives have been designed to avoid anything of the sort.
There is no longer the same kind of comradery in the scene, and I miss that. There is value in being hardened. There is a mutual respect earned when you know everybody around you had to jump into something tough, and they did it anyway. Again, friendships have been forged out of that competitive environment, because it was hard NOT to develop respect for the guys you competed with. You don’t have to pass out cookies at the door to create an environment conducive to producing friendships. The TIGHTEST relationships ivee scene develop in this scene have all come out of competition. I think a scene based on 1-on-1 competition should relish that, not shy away, so people that are scared can feel more comfortable. Now in the scene, there isntt that automatic granting of some sort of respect, because it doesn’t mean anythigg anymore, to just be there.
Because due to how bad the netcode is, it might as well not have an online mode = no “casual” players/interest. Tournament hype alone can’t make a game the main event these days.
Tournament organizers don’t care about a game’s online scene (if i am wrong, please correct me TOs). It’s all about how many people show up to the tournaments. If KOF is not getting people to show up, that’s what is making it not be a main event, not the netcode
I can say I made an enemy into a friend through playing Alpha 1 in the arcades. So I can see where HAV is coming from with whole fostering competition.