Yeah, perhaps you’re both right. To be honest I’m kind of conflicted since he’s never got this heated over these kinds of things before, and he’s certainly never done it for views, just for venting, so I guess it’s just agree to disagree. ;S
My whole thing is where was this guy when fgc blew up in size? i haven’t seen 1 video DEDICATED to the positive light of the fgc yeah he might mention 1-2 things but he bombards you with old or slightly fresh drama. He finally got in tune with the colluding fiasco… i’m not going to say hes wrong on that stuff that happened in the fgc that was bad, BUT for someone to rep Philly so hard and its gaming culture you Haven’t went to at least 1 of 3 Big E’s tournys? since 07? I don’t even care if he enter the tourny or not, if he’s there hes supporting Philly. I don’t care if he was playing Semi competitively 20 years ago. Fgc wasn’t that huge back then. We needed leaders and old heads back in 07 to usher in the new guys and help steer the scene in the right direction. He would rather report the negative and have the most pessimistic views on gaming community than bombard the gaming community with positive issues.
Actually…now that you mention it, you have a point, the best way to change things is to be a leader and you can’t be a leader if your not even known on a local level, let alone have a extended drought when it comes to one’s own local arcade, get involved in more events and come back with an open hand and not a closed fist for both sides
adding @BOLTSTRYKE
Know what I will bite cause I have tried to point out something to Event. I have no issue and I find it completely ignorant if you take typed words and try to turn it physical.
When most that deal with things in this community ask you to come out… or ask you have you been to tournaments, it is to simply prepare you for what you will learn, gives a different view, and when explaining things you know like a regular convo when you give example you know what theyre talking about. NOT to validate whom you are. I know people that came out for the first time and after that their whole view changed. I just smh at folks that have so much to say but when you ask what events within the fighting game community, that consist of competitive play with organized events noted by numerous fighting game associated sites… they cant mention any. Nor can they mention anyone they know or have gotten to know to help give them history, knowledge…etc. Not gossip.
I asked Mr. Event to come out to our tournaments… he said he has and mentioned Otakon (which is not within the FGC noted tournament lineup nor advertised being, that’s a different animal). He was quick to mention his length of time in the arcades…etc. Thats nice but Ive played since early nineties but I didn’t GET COMPETITIVELY SERIOUS until late 1998. The point in asking is to show that what he gripes on and issues can be seen as honestly small, fixable, and not that serious. We need resolution and resolve. An like the news when when you report FROM the scene it helps with your point of view/issue
When you are in the FGC and have supported the scene you get a better view. Every vid he post at a tournament I would like to know where you there…or are you reporting from the outside. Things look real harsh when reporting from the outside. He has a distaste for F.Champ… cool. I don’t knock any man for disliking someone but when you try to validate it the way he did it shows you just picked a vid and ran with it. One is of the curly mustache series. Those in this community know they’re rivals and F.Champ has a few. He trash talks in the nature of competition… you want to shut Champ up. Beat him… that simple. As I stated on his Youtube channel…what happens outside of the competitive nature thats on you and whomever else. I dont defend that but I will defend someone who can say… yo im better than you if you feel differently beat me [in said game]. Does some trash talk need to be cleaned up… sure. YET again if you’re at a tourney you will be amazed at how it is really not that much unless a grudge match or rivalry is occurring.
He also states during the arcade days in Philly it was never like so. No trash talking…etc. I beg to differ. UP (40th street) was go hard BUT… just like now if you actually come out to events… POST tourney things are all good. People are breaking bread and enjoying themselves. I could go word for word with the Philly crew but it was on the gameplay… an we could all step outside afterwards and LAUGH.
I actually respect his vids and his perspective. Yet I honestly believe that if he came out to tourneys… his view would alter greatly. Otakon doesnt count… local venue doesn’t count. Come out to where we are in MASS (essentially where he gets his media sources from).
Norcal, Socal, UFGT, Civil War, FINAL Round, CEO, Summer Jam, Winter Brawl, NEC an coming soon TFC (im not forgetting others like Canada Cup, Texas Showdown, or Curleh Mustache…etc. Just the big boys)
Where when we have issues most things are hashed out over drinks, laughs, and stories. We ALL know the FGC needs to be fixed and we are on that path but any LITTLE negativity is magnified by folks that are on the outside making things more than they are. On top of that when things may go wrong its quick to be noted (regardless if you say not the whole but just a few) that the whole FGC is to blame. It is not… a resolve would be to point out the culprits and thats that.
If Event had time to make a vid ‘waiting’ to face to face a man over typed words he could of just drove up to Island ave. Came to Summer Jam and resolved whatever issue he [they] had AND saw a great view of the FGC tournament series. Shinobi was there… well known players were there. Just like his report of his otakon experience… he could of gotten a serious tournament experience and reported on it… good and bad. THAT is what helps us grow and learn.
I can defend and scold this community cause I have been in it. I welcome Event as a media outlet. Hopefully I will get to see him at future events and see if a “invite challenge” will be accept to partake in serious FGC events that get reported on once a month damn near.
Good evening ladies and gentleman this is my first action as a member of the SRK forums. Now I personally have had my back in forths in agreement/debate with Event in the past. I consider him a stand up guy and I talk to the man on the regular. All that aside I’m not justifying what it is that he did nor do I even like it. However moving forward even though people may claim he’s not part of the FGC but does that change the validity of the evidence he pushed forward? I made a similar video with my thoughts on the FGC at that time and I know it has a lot of plusses, but some of its minuses are a bit unnerving. I know most gaming communities have their dark side but the key differences are that you have to be deeply rooted in those communities to normally find them. With the FGC a lot of our negatives our worn on the communities sleeves and in practice can drive folks away which is counter productive to the growth that we seek for our aforementioned community.
(MY Video Here) (I’m aware about UmVC3 having more views but coupling it with nicovideo smash had more)
Cliff Note Issues: Game Division which presses a lack of unity and in sometimes really unnecessary friction that stalls growth. Collusion. Widespread Bullying within the community some even spreading out to events. Theft (which happens in a lot of communities but it is still something that happens). Thought it would be important to acknowledge.
Now some people here believe Event to be a Button Mashing Scrub, now lets say the he was. Does a scrubs opinion not matter if it is something that effects those members as a whole? When they make a true statement is it completely overlooked because they aren’t a top player even if they bring up facts to represent their proposals? I think the level of skill in a game is completely irrelevant in terms of bringing a community together. Since all skill levels make the infrastructure of all gaming/hobby communities.
Now before people jump on me for being another random (which shouldn’t matter if I am). I’m an Atlanta native and I do go to tournaments like Battle & Brew and some of the weeklies hosted for the MK/Injustice community for those are the games that I like to play. My first appearance on the invite only Atlanta Kombat Streamed Tournament. I’m low tier hero’ing with Bane TIMESTAMP: 16:09. But my point here is that the FGC has its faults that hinder it from reaching where FPS & RTS games are right now. And a lot of of it does stem from the community relations and Community to Tourney Organizer relations. Some of it has more to do with the niche market that fighting games commit to. MK9 and Injustice are the first 2 fighting games I even bothered to attempt to play at a competitive level and for the longest time I was hesitant to do so given what I’ve seen and heard in the community. I only caved in after getting to know people like Reno_Racks and Pig Of the Hut a but before making that jump. But that’s the thing I only decided to make that jump due to “top players” in that respective community asking me up to the AK events through a few YouTube videos I made. Which let’s be honest (isn’t a common occurrence). Yet in and of the same breath I see people outside the community get shot down on their first attempt to join. Like a lot of those (introduction threads) that a lot of forums have where new members are inclined to make their first post. If that user says anything that hints to them being a casual fighter, the get so much flack its ridiculous.
Another thing I think held the growth back a bit is the fact that in most other genre’s there is no doubt that the better player takes it. In the Fighting Game genre character MUs can play a big roll and can alter a lot of the “better player” aspect especially in 3 to 5’s. A few of my friends who play Shooter’s said they like games like BlazBlue and Street Fighter but a turn-off is the simple fact that some matches have a handicap right out of the gate and a few others are turned off at the glorification of some of the antics within the FGC. Also (Did not see it due to work), but someone told me that during UMvC3’s team tournament there was a team allowed to be called “Real Fuc*in Ni**as”. And if that’s the case that can speak volumes about some of the maturity out there. In closing I’m just saying there is a lot out there that could be better in the FGC and the self imploding elements play quite the part in it and I came here to see what you guys are doing or will do about it.
This page is like trying to read a novel…
This post is for people who came to this thread after watching event Status’ video on youtube.
Okay I’m done replying to him, but I wanted to make one more post on this for this for two reasons.
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Because people have asked me why I bothered with any of this, which I meant to put in the original post but was so tired I forgot until the next day.
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To reaffirm some things that Koop posted
How this originally started was that someone posted Darkguyver’s video of facebook, for anyone who hasn’t seen it Darkguyver had a pretty odd/bad experience at EVO this year and he did a video about it after he got home. Darkguyver said that he was new to the FGC and he got his information from people in the community like Maximillian, Gootecks and Event Status. And in my head when I heard those three names I went okay…okay…WHO? and and later on he mentions those names again. Darkguyver doesn’t mention the people who ruined his EVO experience in his original video but then he says that he will give the names of the people involved to event status. Which is the first time I have ever seen a video of this guy. I watched video, which is apparently gone now, and the one before it and both of them contain a lot of misleading information and incorrect context, but at the time I didn’t know if this was intentional or not. So I wrote him a message saying are you interested in me giving you a full write up of everything that was incorrect in your last two videos? I asked him if he was serious about helping because the two videos combined were almost two hours long and I wasn’t going to sit through those two hours of video again if he wasn’t even going to read what I was going to write. I didn’t get a reply so I check in and asked again the next day, and this is when he replied that I needed to get my head out of my ass, and I was the one who wasn’t interested in helping. It wasn’t until after I had read the comments when I checked back in that I saw someone mention that he was from Philly, because as I have said multiple times I have never seen him before that video a few weeks ago.
The fact that he is misrepresenting himself as part of the community in my city is secondary, what got under my skin was the fact that there are people who are new to the community who believe that he has some level of credibility and/or authority in this community so they are taking his words as truth. That is the reason that I wrote this stuff, because there are people watching his videos who are too new to or unfamiliar with the community and when this guy tells them that he is a credible source of FGC information they believe him. By the way he doesn’t want you to find any of this out which is why he blocked me from replying to both of the videos where he calls me out.
- There are two things that Koop said today are correct and I just wanted to repeat them because I have seen people use them to add to his credibilty. The first is that not every idea he has is a bad idea, some of the things he says about how the community are true and like I said at the beginning of the article at the start of this thread I have no intention of defending acts of stupidity caught on tape; however the second thing that I need to mention is those videos.
As Koop mentioned how much you know of the story plays a large role in how you react to videos and since you are already in this thread I can show you an example that he doesn’t want you to notice. Yes, event status provides you with videos to add credibilty to what he is saying; however in his videos you are receiving all of your information on those videos from him. He often provides slanted context and leaves out critical information so that what you see in see in the video matches up to what he wants to see so that you agree with him.
**and now I have an example of this for is anyone is interested in seeing this in action. **
- Go back to the and read my posts from last week.
- On Friday I mentioned that I would be at Summer Jam for the entire weekend and invited him to come down to the hotel and talk to me.
- Also keep in mind that Sunday is Finals day at every fighting game major. (and in fairness I will point out that he may not have know that I was an actual photographer for the event since I didn’t mention that)
- Now (and I don’t like giving him more views) but go back and watch the video where he challenges me again.
He knows exactly where I will be all weekend, but watch how he presents the information. Notice how many times he says “meet me for a face to face” without mentioning that I said meet me to talk. If you haven’t read the thread it looks like I called him out to a fight, and thats exactly what he wants you to think happened. Next he mentions that I don’t know Philly, but here is something you probably don’t know about Philly if you don’t live here. Broad and Walnut, the place where he offered to meet me is two blocks away from the 36 trolley and the end of the line for the 36 trolley is 3 blocks away from the Sheraton. In the time of the second video he could have walked from where he was to a trolley that would have taken him to the Sheraton…but back to the first video. Then he mentions that I said “I am walking around the Sheraton” without mentioning to the people watching that he is fully aware that I am at the Sheraton because Summer Jam is going on this weekend. “Well hes not at the” In case you didn’t catch that, he was about to mention that several people had mentioned that he wasn’t at Summer Jam, but he cuts of the sentence so that anyone watching who hasn’t seen this thread, still doesn’t know about Summer Jam or the fact that he knows that I am busy with something else the entire weekend. “You want the gauntlet, you want it thrown down? You want to meet for a face to face” Again for anyone who hasn’t read this thread it clearly sounds like I challenged him to a fight, which you can read in this thread was not what happened. “I am not a hard man to find” He ripped that directly from the post where I asked him to come down to the Sheraton. I already told him exactly where I would be all weekend and how to recognize me. He says that if I don’t show up "I’ll be a bitch from now on on the internet, because that’s all I care about. Meanwhile in reality I am actually at an FGC tournament and he is posting a video on the internet. He mentions the Sheraton AGAIN without mentioning Summer Jam, if the only source of information you have is this video it sounds like I’m staying a the Sheraton on vacation. Finally and he mentions that I said I would be checking the thread for the next two days, I never said that you you can go read the post for yourself. I said if he sees this in the next two day he can come down to the hotel and talk to me. The fact that he says I am watching this thread is what made people think I was ducking him, but the reason people who watch the video think that is because he provided them with the false information. In reality I ended up checking this thread during injustice top 8 because I find the game to be very boring at times.
Again when he gives you information he expects you to trust what he is saying is true, when I give you information I give you proof to back it up. Posts on SRK have the time they were posted and the last time they were edited listed on the posts if you doubt anything that I am saying you are free to check them for yourself.
Sorry to everyone for going back to this after I said I was done, but I felt like moving on without putting this information out there for people who actually took the time to come here after seeing the video would be a disservice.
I’m on a shortened lunch break and typing on my phone so good luck reading this through the spelling mistakes that I won’t get to check but I wanted to try to get this thread back on track and answer a question that a few people have asked in here.
As far as who gets to offer opinions on how to change the community I welcome input from everyone. As I said a conversation at work gave me a differnt outlook on this issue and the article is the result of more conversations than I care to count with people both inside and outside of the community. Good ideas can come from anywhere but the difference between the internal and external view is that people on the inside understand the situation on the ground and have a better understanding of what happens when an idea hits reality. I welcome ideas from everyone but, don’t get offended if I tell you that your idea is not going to work because its been tried before, multiple times with terrible results. I long ago stopped counting the number of tournaments that failed, when someone had a bad idea and didn’t bother to figure out the realities of this communty or ask someone about it before setting the tournament. If someone has ideas to help they still need to be balanced by real world experience, and if the person with the idea doesn’t have that experience then they should at least ask for help from someone who does have that real world knowledge
Break is over. I’m not even sure if this is understandable.
Edit
It is very easy to fail at running fighting game tournaments and it is very easy to do catastrophic damage to your reputation. So if you are new keep offering ideas if you think that they will help, but realize that a TO has a lot more on the line than you do if they implement your idea and it goes wrong; but if you are serious about the idea, take the feedback you get and refine the idea and see if you can turn it into something that will work or is less risky.
The community needs to figure out which path it wants to take internally, and my suggestion if that it takes two separate paths, but regardless of which side of the debate someone falls on they should still be looking for ideas on how to grow the community in the direction that they would like to see it grow.
Does this event status topic have anything to do with the initial topic or should i just ignore it in hope of the original topic of the thread resurfacing ?
If you would like to add something to the original topic, feel free. The detour has ended, but the original thread hasn’t picked up again yet.
“After thinking on this issue for some time I have come to the conclusion that there needs to be two FGCs. There needs to be a FGC that is professional that sponsors can get behind and there needs to be a FGC where the only requirement is the desire to play and get better at or hang out with people who enjoy fighting games and there needs to be a clear and defined separation between the two.”
That is the fundamental flaw of the FGC, in my honest opinion. The professional players are supposed to be marketable. Skill plays a role, yes, but being able to sell the game, the products used to play the game, and maybe even other things like Broken Tier apparel are what grow the scene. The pro players need to have a “following”, people who admire their play, their skill and want to see them compete, as with any fan to any team. I think the fact that there are events where pro players have to face casuals or players who are lesser skilled help build them up. That’s why TO’s love having the best players come to their tournament from around the world. People want to compete against the best players, and have that sort of thing. As long as the top players are professional and the immaturity and lax behavior of the fans does not be the forefront of what you’re selling about the FGC, the FGC should become more marketable.
And that is the point of the split that I was talking about, because skill and professionalism or maturity don’t always come packaged together. As long as top player are professional is a HUGE uncertainty in the FGC. Also there are people in the community who are very interested in focusing on the immaturity and lax behavior of fans. You can’t force someone who doesn’t want to be professional to be professional, and you can’t force someone with their own camera to only point it at the people acting responsibly and ignore the people acting immature, especially if they brought the camera specifically for that purpose.
This is why a section of the FGC focused on growth and sponsorship needs to be separate for the other side of the FGC, so that these rules are established before anyone even signs up for the tournament and no one is blindsided by the fact that certain actions will not be allowed or tolerated. Evo did a very good job of shutting certain things down this year, the way I phrased it in a previous version of this article was that it wasn’t strict enough to ruin people’s fun, but it was strict enough to not let anyone’s fun ruin the event.
If a top player who is very immature will hurt a TO getting a sponsorship because of their antics, than they should not allow that player to the tournament. It has to be a big time TO to start the trend, obviously…but TOs do this for the community, and they can’t keep going off their own money because it’s not efficient. If your a top player who is sponsored and you are immature, than there is something inherently wrong with the community.
Everyone wants to have fun at events, but if the fun hurts the TOs from growing their tournament, getting funds for the players to play more, and for expanding the event to better venues with more devs jumping on…then there is a problem…
The Forver Gossiping Community has returned/about to begin school. So lets see how the kids act up till Final Round. Things seem calm [knocks on wood] now that the summer/free time is over.
I’ve done long posts on this before, but its not that it has to be a Major TO, its that it has to be a group of TOs. Any tournament, even EVO, can be boycotted with little effect on the boycotting player(s) because there are so many other tournaments to attend. Without unity certain hard stands taken by a TO can mean death for a tournament even when the TO is 100% right in making that stand.
Also a top player being immature doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the community it means that that individual person is immature. Top player are on top because of their skill in the game, but there is no requirement that a person be mature, polite, hygenic or punctual to be good at a fighting game. Again there isn’t a universal consensus on whether these things should get someone disqualified or banned from an event, leading back to my idea for a split.
I’ve been saying this since jump street. Its like people that have it in for the FGC thinks that one player acting like an asshole = the FGC is in trouble. Already I heard rumblings of somebody doing a video about the FGC. Starting to not care anymore. To me, if you’re not willing to understand the community and go out to the major and you restrict yourself to just negative videos you see, you ain’t helping yourself.
Edit: my bad! I fail at cell phones.
My understanding is that the community having assholes in it is no big deal, because it is expected that in a sufficiently large group you’re going to have bad apples. The issue is that the FGC is perceived to be tolerating and maybe even encouraging the behavior of assholes.
If the FGC wants to have large events with big payouts then it needs sponsors. If it wants sponsors it needs mainstream appeal. If it wants mainstream appeal it needs to show that bad behavior is not tolerated. Ultimately, I think my initial suggestion is sound. Divide events into “mainstream” majors and “hardcore” majors. Make it clear what those labels entail. Let the players decide which events they want to go to, let the sponsors decide which events they want to throw money at.
Not only that, but these assholes are the more prominent players in the community, who are sponsored and featured on streams…as well as selling points for tournaments. When a tournament says a Chris G is coming to a tournament, for example, that makes the tournament look better because the competition level has increased. It’s different if it’s a random individual, and I know the top players, or at least quite a few, hate the responsibility put on them, but just like FChamp has said, they have a responsibility to be a bit more mature and represent themselves better.
I don’t think dividing majors based off of how behavior at the event will be, is something that will work. Most TO’s will probably go hardcore, and most companies like MLG will simply just go their ‘esports’ route…and we already know what the players pick, which isn’t sustainable for the hardcore TOs at all…because it costs money to host those hardcore tournaments and if people go in thinking “I can do whatever the hell I want” at hardcore tournaments and it appears on stream, that might ruin some partnerships for them in the future.
I’m not saying that you have to remove the crowd chants and all that, because even in mainstream’d events you can hear people saying vulgar chants (NBA, WWE come to mind) but stream control and top player professionalism should stay consistent with what they want out of the scene. If they want more money in their prize pools, and better venues and all that, they need to become marketable and help the TOs out by stop bringing unnecessary drama that could lead to Kotaku or disparaging articles to the scene.
It’s not just the community that doesn’t take it seriously, it’s the higher ups too. I’ve talked to various organizers and executive level people from some well known sponsors that have straight up told me that they think that the majority of the FGC are “basement dwelling losers”.
I recently talked to a well known salaried man online (that I’d say everyone knows) make fun of top players by divulging to other people what they do for a living (and yes it’s usually an embarrassing dead-end job).
So there you have it.