lol @ the Call of duty comment. MLG had call of duty at their final event and got at least 100,000 viewers consistently. Maybe because of better advertising?
Imo fighters are a lot about muscle memory and reflexes. You don’t have much time to think strategy. In that way it’s more physical than RTS’s and could be considered a sport…
Yeah, fighters also have mindgames but don’t come here and tell me that Daigo uses his brain as much as the top Starcraft players.
Yeah…between SC2 and Diablo3 coming out in the not too distant future…I know I have certain friends that I will not see for the next three to five years once those games are out.
Too bad I have NO close friends who play SF.
apples and oranges my friends. obviously your not gonna enjoy watching competitive starcraft or quake if you aren’t REALLY into those games.
anything is exciting if you have a passion for it. my friends think watching track and field on tv is mad boring but i get hype as fucking shit everytime it comes on tv, even for the longer events like 5000m or 10000m that take 13mins to 28mins to complete respectively.
no one is gonna give a fuck about street fighter on tv if only 4000 people in all of america are passionate about it. poker’s premiere event has 6000 people entering on avereage for the last 5 years and niggas have to pay 10k to enter that shit. (yeah yeah i know a lot of people get in due to satellite tournies but thats not the point). MILLIONS watch it on tv afterward.
6000 people for just one event that’ll set you back 10 g’s to enter? THATS hype. THATS dedication.
we’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting close
Call of duty is now the most popular fps franchise on the planet. :shy:
Call of duty 4 alone sold as much as every version of street fighter 2 combined at the peak of it’s popularity.Think it’s around 13 million copies sold by now,which just prove how popular fps are.
10 g’s to enter a street fighter tournament at the chance for millions (even hundred thousands if you place)
sign me up
lets make that shit happen haha
Fighting games have some catching up to do,especially with Capcom waiting for years before releasing SF IV or Namco experiencing a massive drop of popularity since Tekken 3(Tekken 4 didn’t help).
One of the biggest things that holds fighting games back is a massive lack of advertising for tournaments. MLG gets pretty much free publicity to all of the XBL network. If you had advertising of that scale, proclaming Evo as the tournament of tournaments for fighting games, you would have probably seen a larger number of people watching the finals at least.
Don’t forget that, if you were watching a FPS, its really really easy to tell what’s going on. Watching fighting games at the highest level is a lot of people dancing back and forth just outside each other’s range followed by a beastly sick combo (or in some cases just a poke). That’s not exactly viewer friendly without a hell of a lot of hype and narration to explain what’s going on.
Here is my thought on the popularity of FPS games: The learning curve.
I play a lot of FPS games, so I feel my opinion is valid on this…the fact about FPS games is that once you become fluent with one…you can take those skills and transfer them DIRECTLY into damn near any other FPS game on the planet.
Where the learning comes in, is knowing the multiplayer levels, knowing the traps, knowing where to camp, and learning how to communicate with a team.
But if you put the time into Halo3…you can take damn near all of that skill and bring it into COD3/4 with very little re-learning (outside of the maps of course).
Fighting games on the other hand…not so much. Even the transition from similar games can be harsh…like the transition from ST to SF4…or from 3S to SF4. Or from ST to 3S.
Or in a larger jump…any Capcom to any Arksys game.
Shit just doesn’t really translate…the timing differences, speed differences, input leniency differences, all the details of the matchups…the transition from one fighter to another is MUCH more harsh than from one FPS to another.
I believe that is why the FPS is so popular…if you are good at one, you will be able to pick up another and operate at a MUCH higher level than you would in the transition from one fighting game to another.
People today are all about instant gratification. Many players would prefer to START at an expert level instead of work their way up to the expert level…and the universality of the FPS makes the FPS a really attractive choice.
and your point is?
Lol, SFIV is a video game. Paint it whatever color you want but it will always be nothing more than a video game.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, video games are awesome!
I think people just have to understand and relate to something for it to be entertaining to watch. Just like how soccer is a second rate sport in the US but for the rest of the world it’s basically crack. I think fighting games just have a nice crutch for spectating purposes where u just see someone clearly getting the crap beat out of them and that’s just human nature to have a good time watching that. I was always a fan of martial arts growing up and was fascinated as a young kid to see it portrayed so beautifully at the time in SF2 and other fighting games.
For me a game has to be stylish for me to enjoy watching it competitively and fighting games fit the bill. It’s not just the competitiveness…it’s the art in motion that I see when 2 people are squaring off and you see the characters and personalities come alive. SFIV does this extremely well when it comes to the minor things even. Like how a character goes into an awestruck face in the middle of a move if someone starts an Ultra. It’s just those things that make fighting games that much more exciting to watch. It’s not a bunch of teeny little humans and creatures running around a map or someone just blasting their gun for 3080342 time. It’s a stylistic battle of wits and even if you don’t see that you can definitely see that someone is getting their ass beat. :nunchuck:
These threads make me angry.
Mostly the people who know absolutely nothing about other genres but feel the need to talk down about them. Gootecks did this in an interview, even though he admitted not playing any other type of video game in “I Got Next”.
The other thing is, people who equate Halo and CoD to FPS immediately. How would you feel if everyone who thought about fighting games said they were bad and then made examples of the whole genre by talking about Smash and Capcom Fighting Jam?
Just keep the skill comments and how “easy” some other genre is towhat you prefer out of the conversation.
Ignoring all of that other bullshit. The last I checked Madden tournaments were the second biggest to Starcraft. It sounds weird I know, and I was a little surprised to. I’m still somewhat in disbelief, but apparently there is an overwhelming amount of money matches and illegal betting going on with this game. I don’t really play Madden but maybe someone can provide some insight into this.
Madden is the video game version of the BIGGEST sport period in America. We just don’t see it because the whole reason we’re on this website in the first place is to get away from the video game version of what everyone already invests way too much time into.
Madden is crack in the US and it sells like hotcakes every year just because it’s Madden. People just easily relate to something that can change their entire lives and football is that thing that many people in America wish they could be top in. When there’s a video game version of that it just translates into sales and more competition.
Precisely. I personally hate watching Tennis/Basketball, although I understand it. But thats just my nature. The majority of the guys I know watch Football and Basketball.
And I agree with Parabellum said before about RTS. I was watching iamgrunt vs Parfait on the Age of Empires III finals, and the shit was so intense, due to the commentator. The commentator was actually a pro at the game, so he knew exactly what was up, and made me able to comprehend what was going on.
EDIT: Oh yeah. (Competitive) Video games is not a sport. That is all.
I can tell you have strong feelings about this, and I definitely do not want to argue with you…but I’m a little confused by your comparison above.
By sales figures, the COD and Halo franchises were easily the top two most popular FPS games out there. Personally I prefer Bioshock to any of its peers, but that is way outside the point.
So…isn’t using those two as a typical representation of an FPS fair?
And wouldn’t it be more like using Street Fighter and Tekken to talk about fighting games?
Here is the data for 2007 and the reason that I used COD and Halo as two games to typify the FPS genre:
- Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - 4,820,000
- Wii Play with Remote (Wii) - 4,120,000
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) - 3,040,000
- Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2) - 2,720,000
- Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - 2,520,000
- Pokemon Diamond (DS) - 2,480,000
- Madden NFL 08 (PS2) - 1,900,000
- Guitar Hero II (PS2) - 1,890,000
- Assassin?s Creed (Xbox 360) - 1,870,000
- Mario Party 8 (Wii) - 1,820,000
(http://www.1pstart.com/category/industry/sales-figures/)
Also:
The Top Ten PC Games Sales For 2007 In The US:
- World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Vivendi) - 2.25 million
- World Of Warcraft (Vivendi) - 914,000
- The Sims 2: Seasons Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - 433,000
- Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision) - 383,000
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (Electronic Arts) - 343,000
- Sim City 4 Deluxe (Electronic Arts) - 284,000
- The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts) - 281,000
- The Sims 2: Bon Voyage Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - 271,000
- Age Of Empires III (Microsoft) - 259,000
- The Sims 2: Pets Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts) - 236,000
I’m not comparing them by sales nor popularity.
Yeah, I can see that. Its just hard to believe because the tournaments themselves aren’t publicized much and at the same time I’m not really looking for it. Seems very underground but out of necessity because of illegal bets and what not.
Madden is probably one of the hardest games I can think of to get into. Especially if you know absolutely nothing about the gridiron.
Yeah I think it’s one of those things where the competitiveness of Madden has reached its peak and those that want to go to tourneys know what to do to enter and everyone else just plays it for fun. We’ll see what happens with SFIV but I don’t expect it to be the first competitive game to be broadcast regularly on ESPN.
that won’t happen
the fighting genre died a long time ago thanks to sf4 its a bit more popular now but nothing close to … hell I hate to say it something like halo ( i hate that retarded game but anyway).
Problem with something like Sf4 is that its really hard for new ppl to get in (I know what I’m talking about) most of you guys have been playing the ip for over a decade so when you get online and you need to play 500 match before winning 1 the “casual” dont stick around very long.
Hell if I didnt spend 300$ on two stick I dont think I would still be here. You need a lot of dedication to enjoy the game.