didn’t he say the fighting game division has been temporarily suspended? doesn’t emp have other divisions besides fg’s (i.e. FPS’s)?
That is not sharmell that is shaniqua or something like that. She was the manager of the Basham brothers.
If they do, then majority of us never knew of them. I’ve never heard of empire in any other category other then fighting games.
Meh I used to play a lot of Quake and CS 1.6 other FPS games and knew some “sponsored” players and pro teams. And not for joke money like there is for fighting games but for real money.
You have to be able to sell something, that’s it. And in the PC world of yearly video card upgrades, near constantly mouse and keyboard replacements, there is a lot of room to sell a whole ton of shit from competing companies and it’s constant. It wasn’t uncommon to see people with sponsors from a cpu compnay, a gpu company, a mobo company, a soundcard company, a monitor company, a mouse company, a headset company, it was all pretty nuts.
Most of the more stable, and there really aren’t that many of them, “pro” teams that actually pulled down good cash actually based their business around being able to sell the shit out of computer parts, not about the games. The game “divisions” they had simply consisted of hiring players to build a team around whatever game was hot right then to sell more parts and keep their sponsors happy. Teams that had a die hard love of one game, or even a particular genre of game failed horribly as soon as that game wasn’t the top and most important thing at the time. Teams like SK change up what games and who’s on the roster like crazy.
And that’s really what you need to do to make it work. It can’t be about a game, a player, a genre, you need to give a fuck about all that and concentrate on what’s hot now and how you can sell shit and get sponsors. I’m not shocked that some of the sponsored fighting gamers now are just pat of rosters on teams like EG or CoL which are actually PC gaming teams that move from game to game as it’s hot or not.
However the flip side is that those teams will give two shits about fighters the instant it’s not to their benefit to do so and those deals will dry up the same as every other game did when it slipped out of the spotlight.
Triforce’s entire thing was doomed to fail. It was about the gamers and it was about fighting games, which is a braindead way to go about it. It needs to be about selling shit and you need to adjust the games you play and the gamers on your roster to do that. You can’t just stick with a game because you like it, you need to stop caring about that game and grab something that does sell and kick off dead weight when you can.
Yeah I have to agree with this.
I’m sure fighting games will get bigger, but I still think it’s a giant fad that will wash away in two years time (probably less).
That’s very informative and contain nuggets of truth, but you might cause SRK’s many ‘aspiring pro gamers’ to commit suicides.
Well, thems the dice so to speak. What’s hot changes, you can’t sell PC parts and peripherals if you’re playing a game that isn’t hot and people aren’t paying attention to, that’s all there is to it. And if you can’t sell them, then why the fuck is say intel, nvidia, or razer going to pay your ass to plaster their silly logo’s all over your shit? Go take a look at the “rosters” of top gaming companies/teams, that shit changes almost yearly as different games get the attention. When a new game out is out that’s getting attention you either play that game, or you “retire” “inactive” your ass and the money stops coming. Maybe if a new game in the series comes out a few years later and gets popular you’ll get your ass off the bench and flown out, but if it’s not oh well.
There are some rare games that stick around forever and don’t get killed. Quake, CS, Starcraft all come to mind. But even then since it’s on the PC you can still sell upgrades to them year after year because of the nature of the PC. It’s not like a console where once you buy the console that’s it, can’t sell someone hundreds of dollars worth of console upgrades yearly, and once the console is EOL’d and the next one comes out there is no point in playing on that platform or advertising items for it.
You just have to view it properly. What puts money in the teams pockets? Sponsorships. Why do sponsors pay you? Because you’re winning at a game that is popular at this moment and that enables them to use you to sell shit for them. If you’re game isn’t the shit right now and what the public at large cares about, you aren’t selling shit for them so why in the hell are they going to give you money?
A lot of the most sucessful “pro players” simply played whatever the fuck was popular at that time and moved around from game to game like lunatics. Where as people who were die hards about one game were just screwed when that game took a back seat to another.
Well put and completely on target.
lol no, I completely agree with you. I was just being sarcastic.
I agree with this completely, and it pretty much affirms my belief that we’re just the ‘in thing’ / ‘fad’ that’s fun to fuck around with right now.
I’m not saying that in a pessimistic tone either, like I want this to be over asap, that’s just how I honestly feel.
I love the attention we have. I just want the “super star attitude” and “i gotta get sponsored” notion to stop. Its like no more just having a crew that rep a area or a click…
It’s probably the time for TFGM to go back to school and finish his G.E.D. / 2 year degree in business and marketing.
i can’t wait for fighting games to get pushed by the wayside
people say this is the fighting game revival yet mortal kombat is treated as a serious fighting game. might as well give smash another try at evo. or maybe throw in a wrestling game.
I look at today like the 80’s, 90’s arcade boom…and we all know what happened with that don’t we? Honestly imma be reaching right here with what I’ll say probably but…I had a lot more fun from 1999-2008 than I do now. I swear, people have missed the point of gaming, It saddens me when I go somewhere and I see someone stressed out worried about match-ups etc etc, trying to get big off of a fighting game. It pisses me off when I hear the word “pro”…wtf?
Yeah, I feel you. I know several people with that mentality too.
Ah well~
I want us to not be pushed to the wayside or used incorrectly. I just think this community has lost the core notion of whom an what we are. Ive said it before sponsorship should go to the TOURNAMENTS before you try to yank up players. Tournaments like MWC, NCR, SOcal, FR, NEC…etc. Should have the sponsors. Ive voiced earlier how this would change (ask keits for the interview cause I cant find it anymore) cause people would lose all focus and we will be left again. an ultimately i dont think a lot of folks understand how income must be generated in order for you to maintain ‘sponsorship’… thus look at our scene seriously…
In regards to triforce he didnt sponsor his players… he sponsored empire/triforce. his company. his life (bills, etc.). Its amazing how everyone that has removed themselves look so alive and ‘better’ off.
i was partially trolling, but the way i look at it is the type of people who make sf fun and cool (serious players who try to get good) aren’t in big enough numbers to make a market for there to be pro players, so we need to include a buncha dipshit fanboys for the sake of a small small percentage of players who could possibly make a living off this game by repping products that the fanboys will buy. cant have 1 without the other so id rather sf just stay small. tournament attendance is way up but skill level of your average player is down in the pitt with all the idiots who got fatalitied at evo
I’m totally with this. The “scene” has gotten so much lamer since people decided to go for lowest common denominator bullshit. Yeah, we have more people involved, but these people suck.
RE sponsoring tournaments.
You have to keep in mind sponsors want to sell things. When you look at the PC side of things, which is honestly the best place to start as it’s really the only healthy e-sports community out there, the same companies that sponsor teams do sponsor events to often insane levels of cash. But… and here is the kicker… they will sponsor events for games that work for them, not games that the players want. Intel and nvidia will sponsor a LAN or an event easily enough, but it has to help their bottom line.
In the PC world you can do this by having a hardware company show up with a ton of PCs kitted out how they want for people to game on and show off their technology. The end idea is, in the case of LANS, that someone sits down at an nvidia/asus/dangerden station and says holy shit this is cool. Then after that they drop $$$ on some triple monitor, SLI, 3d gaming monster rig that’s insanely expensive. Or maybe they decide to spend 400 bucks or so liquid cool their system so it doesn’t sound like dust buster. Or maybe nvidia can stand on stage and show off hardware that comes out soon and you decide you’re going to buy a 500 buck video card when it comes out next month.
But it’s not about the game and it’s not about the players. It’s about them being able to push something and since the upgrade cycle is constant it’s very much in their best interest to be out there hawking their shit. And a chance to play on it and get people talking about it on forums about how great it was is stellar marketing compared to taking out an ad or getting a review in a gaming magazine.
However you’re a fool if you think they don’t get to dictate games because of this. They’ll push for whatever game shows off their hardware the best, and the other tournament games are based off what’s popular at that point, which again changes at a pretty rapid rate.
There has always been the issue with these things that what the gamers want and the sponsors want don’t always add up. Gamers want to play the games they like, sponsors want to sell shit and need the best vehicle to do so. If you want those big sponsors, you’re going to need to play what helps them. If your game isn’t one of the hot things that garners interest or there isn’t a way for them to convince people to spend hundreds of dollar or more within the next year on your products what incentive do they have to throw money at your event.
You can either play what you want to play and hope that it catches on for a bit and there is a way to monetize it and pick up a sponsor. Or you can go straight after the money and realize that you might not get to play exactly what you want.
That’s why top gaming teams rotate games, you have to be willing to play what people will pay for. You can’t just play what you want and hope the cash runs in.
I’m just not pleased with the advent of gamer glorification culture, not just fighting games in particular. I always believed video games are just video games, an niche recreational hobby - and should remain that way. Fighting game players have always talked about ‘playing for money’ for years, but that was only to an marginal extent. But since 2009, people have literally been PLAYING FOR THE MONEY and it has changed the ways players approach games and how tournaments are organized in the U.S. forever.