Even that article you linked says that there is a time and a place for swear words. Maybe the title should be “Stop Overusing Fuck.”
We’re not talking about commentators that whisper and players that wear skirts or plaid sweater vests like Tennis or Golf.
We’re talking NFL/NBA/UFC style delivery.
“Fuck” and the whole swear culture announcer style just has to go. It just doesn’t work for either mainstream or serious entertainment.
Players can still swear up a storm in the heat of real emotion and throw sticks during play. Fans can drink beer, hurl obscenities, and get in fights. It’s just the words on mic that need to grow up.
Cursing by young meek nerds on mic is not gonna work for or impress anyone but other young meek nerds. Young nerd rebellion isn’t sexy.
I also say curse words all the time, they are fine when talking to your friends. But I will make this conservative claim: I do not see any advantages in commentators cursing.
Some curse words and expressions are actually quite pointless. “Holy shit,” for instance.
$0.02
“I do not see any advantages in commentators cursing.”
Then you don’t understand life, nor comedy. You only understand business. Which is why business is so goddamn BORING while I’m making a living off of making videos for YouTube. If I went PG, nobody would watch me. If Howard Stern went PG, he’d be shot. Which is why he left terrestrial radio to go to Sirius.
There are two paths:
- Be yourself and be entertaining
- Censor yourself and be “mainstream” for the sake of a buck
I can see arguments on both sides. Some people want SF to become “mainstream” and big league. Others think that censoring the SF community would take all of the fun out of it. I’m not saying that swearing for the sake of swearing is funny - it’s not, but there are times where it’s warranted and adds to a broadcast. As opposed to being put to sleep by the “PG-rated” product that lots of people put out there. This is why so many people mute streams and just watch the footage. Or did you all enjoy Adam Sessler’s amazing commentary at EVO last year?
I can live with either side. But the fact is this: I don’t see anybody getting rich off of the fighting game community, as of yet. So I don’t see any reason, YET, to go either way. The waters are still being tested. Until G4 (no, they have no money so get that idea out of your head) or another gaming-media related company approaches EVO or a major stream production and gives them terms and limitations, this whole discussion is a lame duck.
But was it his cursing, or the commentary itself (knowledge of the game etc.) that wasn’t enjoyed? If he had cursed, it would not have made for any better commentary.
I’d say it’s got some feet, especially since the surge SF4 has given to EVO and other tournaments, that momentum has built up to a point where it’s certainly worth our consideration. Razer is talking about making fighting sticks now, for example.
While sponsors would be more interested and be more willing to get involved if the scene stopped swearing on streams, that’s not the only reason to stop the swearing. It’s not just about the money. If you play fighting games because you like the arts, comedy, and the idea of upsetting mothers, for example, this effort to curb language probably won’t appeal to you very much. If you are into it for more intrinsic reasons, and appreciate the competitive aspects, and will play with or without the big money, then cursing (or Howard Stern) do not help.
Listen, let’s face it: there’s a reason why reality TV is SO immensely popular right now. It’s because it’s so off-the-wall, so zany. Some of the people on those shows are just insane, and we love that aspect of it as a viewing community. And advertisers love the fact that so many people are watching, so the shows just keep getting made.
Now compare that with the SF community. How many unique, interesting personalities are there? I can’t even begin to tell you about how hype some of the early years of the MvC2 competitive movement were - when anybody could win, people went nuts every 5 seconds yelling something insane, the drama was sky high, and Bryheem Keyes nonchalantly told Ricky Ortiz to “suck a dick” during MvC2 losers’ finals at ECC, then proceeded to get the living snot kicked out of him (in the game). EPIC. These are the funny, interesting things that people will want to see.
Now, compare that hype with “censoring” ourselves for the sake of going mainstream. We all sit around in business suits, politely shaking hands before and after matches. There are no real rivalries, we all say please and thank you, we all get along perfectly. Nobody uses language above a PG level, either while playing or on commentary. You know what that would be? BORING.
The fact that we’re censoring ourselves is ridiculous when you pair it with the fact that the vast majority of people you’d be censoring for, don’t even understand what the hell is going on in the match. Do you really think any players get offended if a hype commentator drops a random f-bomb? No, but it’s the mother of the 13 year old watching the stream that does. Guess how much money that mother will put into Street Fighter over the course of her lifetime? Try zero dollars.
If you think that advertisers are going to flock to the competitive fighting game community because we stop having potty mouths, you’ve got another thing coming. If anything, advertisers will see the potential of the HYPE that this community can bring during an amazing match, a very dramatic loss, or an in-your-face rivalry. I personally love it when people talk nasty shit about me - it makes it all the more fun when I beat them in the match and they are standing there with egg on their face. That’s the kind of “reality tv” that will sell Street Fighter and make it popular.
Unless, that is, you want fighting games to become golf. Shit, take a look at golf - Tiger Woods, despite playing horribly last year, is still by far the most popular player. Why? Because he swears when he fucks up, he bangs dozens of supermodels at once outside of his marriage, and he doesn’t play by the rules. THAT’S what sells; more people than ever are aware of golf and who Tiger Woods is, despite the fact that most of them have no fucking idea how the sport is even played. And it’s going to be exactly the same with Street Fighter - nobody will understand the game, but they’ll come for the outrageous personalities.
SF without beef and shit talking would be extremely boring, hell fighting games in general.
I do not see how telling another player to suck a dick builds anything. I don’t see why some nationalist kid cursing Daigo like his life depends on it adds any hype or whatever. Perhaps cos I refuse to worry about this “fight/match selling” from Boxe and MMA for quite some time. Anyway, I find the Japanese videos NH2 posts quite interesting, and I can barely understand what they say. By now I only know “nageru” means throwing and “kara” means canceling. I do not give a shit about what cards Shaeffer or Watson would say, in fact I think such shit-talking might even scare new players. And against the good players, when the matches are interesting, people would often not talk shit.
I only do not want retarded stuff like that idiot who imitates ultra animations in SF4. That makes the community as a whole look weak, immature and “bully-worthy.”
? or ‘kara’ actually means ‘empty’ and not ‘canceling’. ‘Karaoke’ basically is short for ‘empty orchestra’ which is where that word comes from. So when you hear the Japanese say ‘kara’ in a match it usually means something happened with no immediately preceding move. So if a Hawk player jumps forward, and does a 720 from that jump, it is a kara jump into 720. You hear ‘kara jumpu’ in Japanese 3S matches quite often because that is a legitimate and frequent tactic.
For some reason in the US fighting game scene ‘kara’ usually means canceling a normal before it goes into active frames. So we have things like ‘kara throw’ or ‘kara cancel’ that really don’t line up with how the Japanese use them. We say ‘kara throw’ in 3S but the Japanese say ‘idou nage’. They don’t say ‘kara nage’ for ‘kara throw’. Sometimes for ‘cancel’ the Japanese will simply say ‘canseru’ (can-cel -> can-se-ru) instead of using a Japanese word.
[Kara Cancel (???, Idou Waza)
Kara Throw (???, Idou Nage)](http://www.versuscity.net/japanese-arcade-lexicon/)
Sometime this year I’ll make a thread that lists Japanese ST terms and general FG terms in both English and Japanese and see how many we can come up with.
Tiger Woods? Tiger Woods is a CHUMP of his former self. From, you know. Before the fiasco. Congratulations on tieing for 28th place Mr. Woods. But whatever, that guy plays the game- I’m just talking about the announcers. The people speaking into the mics of the streams. Nobody else has to don suits and ties.
But I tell you what, I’d be willing to even play in a suit and tie, for one. You know, just to really stand out in the crowd and like, maybe take myself and dedication to the game a little seriously. What’s the worst that could happen? The more you stick around and play a competitive game at a high level, whether it’s golf or ST, you begin to appreciate and value not hate, but the competition itself. You get to a point where it eventually dawns on you that, without your opponent, you don’t have the competition. Because I value competition, I often say a phrase to my opponent after a set that may seem odd:
“Thank you for the games.”
Not just, “ggs”, there’s no need to abbreviate it. I’m grateful for the fact that I have competition to play against. He doesn’t have to be some great player, but if he’s got the drive and motivation to play well, that alone is enough for me to be thankful. It might not make Howard Stern proud, but what’s Howard ever done for us anyway? And I highly recommend that you do not ask him to- if he ever commented an EVO, though it would certainly get us exposure, you and I would get derided, pure and simple. Oh sure we’d be “interesting personalities”, you can bet. Otherwise, his show would be, how did you put it? Oh yeah: “BORING”. But some of us come more for the competition; some of us take it all a little bit more seriously.
Mothers, putting zero dollars into Street Fighter, are you kidding? Let’s see, I guess her 13 year old might have a paper route, but otherwise where do you think his habit gets funded, who is his first sponsor on his way to EVO? I notice you sell underwear with your name and logo emblazoned all over it. Allow me to offer you some free marketing advice. Do you realize the biggest demographic of underwear purchasers of all? Might want to look into that.
Advertisers may not “flock” to us if we clean up our language, but it is practically guaranteed they will stay clear away if we don’t. This is basic.
btw, “reality TV” is a complete misnomer for what are really non-scripted TV shows. They are not “keeping it real”. They are acting for the camera just like any other show. The popularity initially had as much to do with writer strikes as any of the “zany” people you see on there. But even if you wanted to portray us on some kind of “reality tv” show, you cannot escape this basic principle: the quality all depends on the editing process. There simply is no show to show without some good, polished, solid fundamental edits. e.g. “ok and let’s cut from bikini girl posing, straight to Paula Abdul’s footage from three days ago, the shot right before her medication kicks in where she’s all crazy.” Did you ever hear that Paula Abdul caused an automobile accident, then fled the scene? The victim took a picture of her Mercedes’ license plate as she drove off. Straight up baby tell me now do you really want to hit and run? Her employer sure doesn’t. Never mentioned that “interesting” tidbit on her “reality” show either, gee I wonder why.
Good info, VF4- I always avoid that term and many others myself for exactly the confusion you described.
Pasky, didn’t you catch my post?:
“Young nerd rebellion isn’t sexy.”
Stick with the “Keep Out” sign on your defiantly closed bedroom door. I’m sure your Mom appreciates your rebel side more than we do.
My $0.02:
If an announcer/commentator cannot capture the audience’s attention or describe the action without having to resort to foul language, then perhaps they need to go back to school and get a better command of the English language.
Or they just need to learn some manners…
Dem jokes. It’s always cute when you see someone who frequents a message board for fighting games call someone else a nerd.
Very true. “The limits of your language create the limits of your world.” Swearing has it’s place but people who swear excessively usually don’t have much else to say.
You’ve completely missed the point. Tiger Woods is playing like shit but he’s more popular than EVER because of the “fiasco.”
Please post proof of mothers funding trips to EVO, and this being a major force of attendance. Because it isn’t. This is a stupid argument.
Sure do, it’s women. And a few women actually bought those underwear (to my surprise). And guess how many of them play SF? Zero.
yes, just like advertisers run from Howard Stern, Family Guy, South Park, anything with Gordon Ramsay, reality shows, and anything else considered “racy.” In what decade exactly were you born?
I completely agree. So let’s get Adam Sessler OFF the goddamn mic and replace him with someone who’s hype, entertaining, and not afraid to be real. That’s more than enough editing for me.
I fail to see any counter-arguments that can convince me that open censorship of commentary is needed. Then I see this:
"If an announcer/commentator cannot capture the audience’s attention or describe the action without having to resort to foul language, then perhaps they need to go back to school and get a better command of the English language.
Or they just need to learn some manners… "
What are we, five? No, every other word shouldn’t be an f-bomb, but if in the heat of the moment an announcer gets excited…or if he/she tries to turn an otherwise boring matchup into something entertaining with colorful commentary…then there’s a time and a place for it. Give me a break.
Family Guy and the rest are already at the top of the mountain.
The question is: is it more difficult or less difficult to climb the mountain and grow with swearing on the stream or not. You’d have to make the argument that the experience of watching the stream was so diminished by not having swearing that it ruined the experience, which is not true since a lot of people don’t listen to any commentary at all.
I believe (I might be wrong) that Evo have made the decision to not show MK fatalities on the stream - why did they do that? Because they want to grow.
The problem with his commentary at EVO, wasn’t that he wasn’t “hype” or “afraid to be real”. The problem was that he had no clue about Street Fighter, especially high level play and therefore he had no insight at all or anything worthwhile to contribute to the commentary.
So “colorful commentary” = entertainment. Gotcha.
How do people stay awake watching NFL, UFC, NBA, etc. ? I mean, it doesn’t have any “colorful commentary”.
Yeah. Give me a break, indeed.
Having a sea of EVO Pimps at a tourney would be kinda funny to see.
Family Guy debuted on Fox and despite moderate ratings (and some actual complaints about adult content), was canceled after only 2 1/2 short (not full-run) seasons. It then went into syndication on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and found it’s real audience - which, in reality, is the majority of the audience of the Street Fighter community as well. Ratings skyrocketed and so did DVD sales - so much so, that Fox realized what a moronic mistake they made, and they renewed the show - to huge ratings and several more seasons; it’s still going strong. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane went on to create two other hit shows on Fox (American Dad and the Cleveland Show) and is now rolling in money.
So no, Family Guy didn’t “start on top.” It stayed true to what it was, got canceled, was finally found by its real audience, and now it’s HUGE. The cartoon is the storybook case for something that initially can’t find the right audience but sticks to its guns, and then makes it big.
This decision hadn’t been made the last time I checked the thread, which was about 2 days ago when Wizard posted “we haven’t made any official decisions yet.” IMO I think a cool thing to do, would only allow people do perform fatalities if that person was being eliminated from the tournament with that loss - so it would be like you are really “killing them” and they can’t play in the tournament. But to completely censor Fatalities…yes, it would be foolish and censorship, but I don’t think it would take much entertainment value out of EVO either. Let’s face it, once you see the Fatalities a couple of times, they get boring and repetitive anyway.
And no, it’s not because “they want to grow,” it would be because they’re afraid of the complaint from the 13-year-old’s mom who stumbles into his bedroom while he’s watching a stream and sees someones virtual spine being pulled out.
I didn’t say Family Guy started on top, I simply said they are there now. And having a huge audience today allows them to bend the rules a little. For most shows / organizations, coming up probably requires them to be a little more circumspect unless they are specifically targeting that “edgy” demographic. Otherwise you drive away sponsors, prospective investors, and even participants.
The fact of the matter is that the folks who run/own Evo do want it to grow, and I’d be amazed if they thought that swearing was somehow the magical path to growth.