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Nobody would deny that culture is a vital element of this community, DefaultCamera. The wonderful thing about the FG scene is that it offers both casual and competitive atmospheres. It encourages players to socialize with one another and enjoy fighting games at a level they are comfortable with, whether that be playing amongst friends and checking out streams from time to time or playing at a tournament-standard level and regularly attending arcades.

There is a solid culture behind this community that has developed over two decades. Gifted players such as Daigo Umehara and Alex Valle are frequently centre-piece of discussion, and I can appreciate that because they are practically celebrities in the FG scene. However, what I cannot appreciate are topics that are completely irrelevant to fighting games. Topics such as “OMG KAYO IS SO KAWAII XD” and “IS RICKY O. GAY?” have no place here, and make the community sound like a bunch of glamour-obsessed divas rather than fighting game enthusiasts.

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I’ve voiced this kind of stuff before…

Last year, when I was talking similar stuff, Kineda told me to chill, because they had stuff in the works… Cool.

They did their thing, where they interviewed a top player everyday, for a week. It was REALLY good… but then that was it. There was pretty much nothing after that.

I’ve written front page articles before, and had them buried immediately by silly posts about whatever… it’s just that the tone being set, is that the kind of shit I’m talking about hardly matters. When the tone is about one thing, and only one thing, you’re not gonna have a bunch of people pumping out content that is meaningful in other ways.

I just think it would be better if the there was SOMETHING in the other lane. Again… a year or so ago, Maj was running the “Strategy Corner”, and people would submit articles, and there were good discussions… That’s gone.

There should be some sort of concerted focus on leveraging SRK’s player base to create content that only SRK can create, which feeds the needs of the group of players that used to be SRK’s target audience. I understand that, at this point, the competitive player is the minority, and so go ahead with the posts about nonsense. Really. I get that… just have something so that the competitive player base isn’t totally alienated.

I mean, hell… a week after AE came out, I made a playlist of a bunch of safe jumps and option selects, and whatever, that I had come up with for Yang. Eventhubs linked to it on the front page, but SRK… nah. Every other silly story that makes Eventhubs gets a repost on SRK, but something useful for the players? Fuck that.

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The problem is that this site seems to be shifted heavily to the casual side of things and less about the fighting games themselves at the moment.

I’m hoping some interviews and Q&A from the devs of various games were done by the community and not just from gamespot/demonoid because they cater to a very broad casual audience, where as we want more detailed and specific info. Think of our demographic as the more knowledgeable consumer who gets more excited about the little details that the average person doesn’t really care for.

Maj’s footsie guide was gdlk. Wow I learnt so much from that.

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Casual side’s where the money is, fellas. People making money out of “this” (whatever this is) would ALWAYS prefer 500 casuals showing up (wherever: tours, forums etc) against 40 hardcore gamers. “Not trying to bash on casual players” should be noted. Before the changes there was the SRK network (where is that btw), that provided articles that were worth reading since they gave insight to games, tournaments, players, mechanics, etc. I used to check the front page frantically for Maj’s new article or an article from “Being a Scrub” (yeah, I enjoyed reading its articles) or even some new interview like the 7 day Pro Player Interview SRK had at somepoint with Bucktooth, Juicebox, Vangief etc (which should have continued).

Now, as the people above me said, it is all about whether Poison’s jo-jo comes out immediately when stepping into American soil or not. I do think the FGC needs and rightly deserves its place on the spotlight, as James Chen has said, or written, in the past. I quote (Spoiler tags cos it’s kinda big):

Spoiler

While the above talks about the different game players, it can also be applied to the proverbial chasm between the casual players and the hardcore players. Hardcore players should help nurture the playerbase in order for some casuals of today to become the hardcores/pros of tomorrow. Casuals themselves should understand they have a lot to learn and heed the (in lack of a better word) veterans’ advice. That is, if they want to get better. But some will want to and I think such a thing is worth (again, in lack of a better word) fighting for. This is how a playerbase is “made”, nurtured and educated well enough to stand toe to toe with the aforementioned vets.

No one has to weed out anything. The awesome thing with fighting games is that you need to have the will to go on, always. It is not like an FPS, where you grab that controller, give it a few hardcore months and become solid. Thus, one can say that the FGC is something like an automated weed remover that can work on itself. That does paint a weird picture.

To summarise, we all have to work together. The hardcore players being patient and instructive, some (and I stress that only a few will be interested, but I strongly think it is worth it) casual players will be inquiring and info-hungry, and we will all make it to see our scene getting bigger and even contesting the already big scenes like the FPS or RTS ones. Of course, none of this will be done if SRK, as the current leading FGC doesn’t get a hint and change as well.

tl;dr : Read the post cos I made the effort. ffs.

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Rumour is, btw, that the SRK staff cares a hell of a lot about “beating” EventHubs. SRK dropped the ball really bad when SF4 came out and now a site by some random guy that generates no original content is pulling in (allegedly) thousands per month in ad revenue. The sad thing is, even after all this time EventHubs, which is pretty much a site that caters to casual players and scrubs, does a better job of covering the tournament scene than SRK. You’d think if SRK really cared that much they’d at least have the real-time updating tournament logs that EH does.

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Eventhubs has the top 32 in MvC3 and AE with most of their characters.

Art lied, there wasn’t 13 Fei Longs and 8 Yuns in the Top 32.

http://twitter.com/#!/nycfurby/status/97224868835229697

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No one is weeding out anything.

I said the community will weed itself out naturally, and that’s exactly what it’s going to do.

What happens between now and then is a different story.

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Ill say it again… and again as I did when we had ‘blogs’ on here:

“New age and attention”

Since the spotlight has returned to this scene it has changed the perspective. Someone who has been in the community or scene for years will be treated as if they are “new” to everything. Learning a game is not the same. People don’t look at matches the same either. Let a youtube vid show the art of footsies and mindgames, and people will say its boring and throw the word ‘skill around’

No one plays to win… I believe young devil-jin pointed it out in a post about viscant and people immediately bashed him instead of understanding. everyone wants flash and attention.

Both generations of gamers have lost that ‘grounding’ that makes a great player. Its like everyone wants some sort of attention and have 2-15 cents to put in but as I have said plenty of times before…dont know shyt. Dont know history, gameplay, or the scene as a whole.

im done ranting cause we will revist this again after the next major and someone blows up the spot an gets treat like ‘who is this guy?’ when theyve been around since 02’, lmao.

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As much I have lost the time to grind fighting games like I did a few years ago, it’s really fascinating to see the shift in focus of the community today. It is clear that is more often about flash and flair than it has been in recent years. The thing is, the crowd who enjoys “big explosions” has always been there (Daigo full-parry, JWong comeback vids), but now, SRK is contributing to catering to the masses. It does make me happy to see a thread like this, but until something actually transpires to make the change, we are still going to go down the same road.

It’s really dissapointing to see the community blossom to the size it is now, and have the silliness that pervades the front page and forums. Competitiveness and attention-to-detail in playing fighting games, should be encouraged and not merely be a sideshow to amazing comeback 13240340353 or how some new ninja-girl doesn’t have the same bust size as Taki.

smh.

“Fuudo only did the same thing! Just Rekkas! Doesn’t he know how to do anything else! That is cheap!”

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As an attempt to try and reach out to the people, I think now (with EVO just being finished) would be a better time than ever to conduct some interviews with players who placed very high in the tournaments this past weekend (Viscant in particular) concerning what it takes to be a winner and a what exactly it is to be a top player. Since to the casual crowd they can be seen as the flavor of the month, what better way to try and get out some quality news that hardcore players and the casual fan base can get behind than this?

Who knows, maybe while we’re riding out the storm we can bring some new people who actually wanna play the game to the fold.

91

Very interesting thread.

Let me my most important point out of the way first - to me, the thing that could be most easily added to SRK as a major boost to “serious” content is some sort of series of strategy articles written by one or more high level players.

Mr Agua, it’s interesting that you would say the following (oh and hello, btw - it’s been forever since we played!):

Inspired by some comments made to me by other players as well as statements by people like Alex Valle and Seth Killian in interviews and on streams as well as Seth’s Domination 101 articles and my general philosophy of gaming and LIFE (lolz), I started writing a pretty lengthy article tentatively titled “My Attempt at Domination 101: Thoughts on “Randomness,” Mashing, and High Level Play.” I wrote for like two hours and knew that I wouldn’t have the energy to jazz it up, truncate it, etc., so I put it down but this is the perfect motivation for me to finish it. I’m going to finish it today, post it on its own thread, and then post a link here. If a handful of people like it, then I’d love to write more. Its clear people are hungry for more “serious” writing on SRK, whether it’s on the front page or the forums, and I’d love to contribute to that end.

On which forum do y’all think I should post my article? The Domination 101 board is locked as far as new threads go, which is understandable. There’s “General Fighting Game Discussion,” but I know a lot more people would read it on the AE board, and technically the article will be about AE as that is the game I have most of my experience in and the game that the anecdotes, etc. in the article pertain to. I would hate to get infracted, though, if a mod were to feel like it’s not SF4-specific enough.

A few other points about the thread…

  1. I do think that there could be more “real”/“hardcore” stuff on the SRK front page. That said, as others have already pointed out, someone needs to define what kind of stuff is needed. Obviously, more in-depth strategy stuff is at the top of the list. More coverage of the Japanese scene is at the top of the list. If someone could find a Japanese player or two who can write well in English (and by well I mean in a manner that is comprehensible after editing by a high level English writer if the Japanese player is not one). Even just a weekly report on who’s been doing well at the Big Box each week or whatever would be gobbled up by many, I’m sure. As much as communication and the sharing of info and content has developed in the FGC, the Japanese scene is still somewhat of a mystery, at least for me. Sabin’s amazing thread from his trip to Japan should have been a series of front page articles. That was a gold mine (thank you, Sabin).

The thing is, there are people trying to produce decent strategy videos, articles, etc. Sure, there could be more, but it’s not like there’s nothing. I haven’t gotten far into it, but I was amazed to see that the Cross Counter Yun tutorial with Xian is a freaking hour and a half long. I was expecting fifteen minutes. Also, to give SRK itself some credit, I love Wake Up SRK. Of course it has its “casual” moments, but It takes takes work, of course, to make this stuff, and a barrier that HAV mentioned is that there’s so much negativity on the internet that it’s easy to be deterred from producing content because of all the criticism/predictable hate trolling you’re gonna get in return. My biggest concern about posting my article has been, from the beginning, that a lot of people will discredit it or hate on me because I’m not as famous as Mike Ross or Sanford and therefore I can’t be good at the game or have any insight about it worth reading, but at the end of the day, who cares . Those people aren’t my audience. All of us who care about in-depth content need to be sure to give our thanks to those who produce it, because there aren’t a ton of people who will appreciate it and every positive comment really counts.

  1. People who are calling for more competitive, in-depth stuff on the front page and for a general shift towards that on the SRK boards and everything need to understand that when something gets more popular, there are going to be more casual fans/players. That’s just the nature of things. I was a track and cross country athlete in high school, and I can assure you that niche sports have a much higher percentage of “hardcore” fans than the more popular sports. Almost everybody in America knows who Peyton Manning is, but what percent of those people know what a cloud defense is? Or even the primary responsibilities of the “more obscure” positions such as free safety or offensive guard? Not many.

If you are really annoyed by more “casual” articles and by scrubs whining and asking simple questions over and over, then this is going to be a downside of the growth of the FGC. I have to question, though, how much of a downside it really is. So what if there are plenty of people who aren’t as hardcore as you? I see how it can be annoying. I know that my skin crawls whenever I have to discuss something that I’m an expert in with someone who doesn’t know much about it, unless that person is genuinely curious for the right reasons and the respect is there… BUT, with all of these casual players, we get $12,000 first place prizes at EVO, we get sponsored players like Poongko and Momochi coming over to EVO who otherwise might not have. It’s a trade off, but I think it’s more than worth it. You just have to realize that not everyone is going to be as competitive and as interested in in-depth match analysis and coverage of the non-Daigo/Tokido/Sako Japanese scene. And I don’t think that has to be a terrible thing. The serious, competitive players are still the heart and soul of the FGC, and they always will be as long as you don’t let an influx of n00bs trick you into thinking it’s not.

  1. I do get annoyed at the anti-players-who-started-with-SF4 sentiments. Yes, the SRK boards are less exclusive now than they were when the top games at EVO were 8+ years old… but there are plenty of “09ers” who were and are here for the right reasons. I know there are older players who are not in love with the SF4 series and or MvC3, but is that the fault of those who recently came on board? I do like SF4 a lot, but I am playing SF4 because it is really the ONLY non-“vs” Capcom 2D fighting game being at the highest competitive levels right now. What were we supposed to do, go back and start learning CvS2? I bought HDR and love it. I might even prefer ST/HDR to SF4, but guess what? No one is playing that game at tournaments anymore. I’m going to give 3SOE a good shot, but who knows if that’ll take off.

I think that constantly updating games is an issue for consistency in the FGC. If the rules of chess changed every 6-18 months, it would probably not have endured . That said, some updating has to be done. My biggest wish is that Capcom could be more up front about it instead of this constant teasing. If there were going to be two updates to the game, like SF4, SF4 2010 and SF4 2012, and then that was it, that would IMO be much better than “Super is the last one and not coming out in arcades” “oh wait neither of our previous statements is true, and AE may or may not come out on console” “AE is coming out on console and is definitely the last version” “PSYYYYYCH we’re rebalancing AGAIN!”

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The biggest difference is that pre-game and post-game in sports generally focuses on the matchups. You’ll see statistical breakdowns of different player matchups, with video clips of examples. It might be a spectacle for the most part, but it does a few things that are important. A) It introduces the viewer to the players. B) it gives you some sense of how this might go including examples and reasoning why, no one cares if the analysts are wrong, it’s just fun to speculate. C) It talks about strategy. Team 1 needs to stop team two’s rushing game, and if they don’t they are going to have the clock worn down and not win the time of possession battle, etc.

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This site needs Nominate for Article back something fierce.

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As well as the SRK Network article stream.

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I remember when we didn’t have a front page and when we finally had it nobody visited it, then keits or someone else made the announcement to support and visit the front page and now look what happened.

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Most of you don’t even know VF5 exists. Fuudo is one of the top VF5 players in all of Japan. The more you know.

I’m just waiting for “What is a D44 Bas? Is that a German car?”

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I think this just shows how great the divide is in the maturity level of the players. A lot of the younger players are going to get caught up in silly discussions that have no real merit while the older players who have a lot less free time on their hands will only focus on discussions that matter.

I think the fighting game scene is going to have to learn how to deal with its new mainstream popularity. As an older player myself, I can appreciate the silliness of some of the posts on SRKs homepage but at the same time, I too wish there were more posts like “Super Turbo Saturdays.”

Nevertheless, I still remember the days when SRKs front page was completely dead and devoid of any updates. At least there is something. SRK’s homepage should be divided up between fluff news and strategy/interview news. That would help with the real estate problem.

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It surely can: you can go read a book or watch a good movie any time you want. Now if you wanna talk about FG storyline, transgenders, “Is it cannon that Ken dyes his hair” and that sort of shit, that FFS is not culture. That’s entertainment content, at best, and bad quality entertainment. People gotta man up. Centuries ago, we had great minds changing things cos the nerds back then would read classics about philosophy and math. Now we have legions of nerds watching and reading trash. To make matters worse, we actually have people who look like nerds, play sports like nerds, but when we go check their grades, they fucking suck! Seriously, what can one do with this kind of people?

Well, most new players have a really really hard time beating the competition found in GGPO, which is about average (myself included) in the grand scheme of things. Can you do that? I can respect playing SF4 if you frequently go to tournaments, though. I suppose you do, then.

As I have previously stated, James’s thoughts have not been proven to be accurate. I know of no FG community who got more players than lost with the release of SF4. SF4 will not help any other game, really, it will just want to draw more and more players to it. Ask any person who still played MvC2 or 3rd Strike if the numbers increased after MvC3 and SF4 were released.

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I’m pretty sure that’s Master Chibi’s point. Hardly any of the retarded comments posted in this site come from 09ers at this point. Most of them either moved on to the next Flavor of the Month game and never posted again, or they stayed because they were either here for the right reasons or wised up during their stay (not to say there still aren’t a bunch of stupid ones). The same thing “should” happen with the 2010 and 2011 members. The problem that HAV is pointing out, though, is that SRK has been drifting away from creating an environment that sends the new members in the right direction since February 2009. Instead, it just panders to their childish attitudes because it’s bad for business not to give them what they want (gossip, sensationalism, etc.). Five years from now, we could still have 2010 members calling everything cheap and crying for patches if we keep this up.

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I’m gonna be honest: I am quite ignorant to actual players as when I go look up matches on youtube, I do so with the intention of seeing specific character matchups and what players who are better than I am do to overcome them (as a Cody, Vega, and Dan player, for example, I’ll type in the name of my character and the name of the character that’s giving me problems and search from there). I had heard of Fuudo before but never watched any of his matches because I don’t play Fei-Long and neither do any of my friends. That being said, he is amazing and he definitely deserved his victory.