Dr subzero should do a live videopodCAST at EVO 08 and stream dat shit! :rock:
Streaming style coverage is pretty cool actually, SBO did it and that worked pretty well.
this post cant be anymore hipocritical.
we got halo, gears, cod4, DOA4 (and i think VF5 now), vegas, etc⌠on tv now. key words are in bold.
those crazy dramatical outtakes at evo happen ALL THE TIME, every year. the daigo parry just stands out the most. the average halo/vegas/cod4 match probably makes even less sense to the average person, yet its on tv. Think about it. You got a FPS game, televised. Only seeing one screen at a time, or maybe 2. You only see parts of the entire match since theres 4 people on a team, iirc. most of the time you cant even see why or how a team won cuz you only get to see like 20% of the match. you could be watching the player thats getting fragged to shit or just not getting kills. while the other players are getting all the action, and those just happen to not be getting camera time.
Now take a fighting game, 1 on 1. ALL 100% of the action is on one screen, the viewer can see everything. anyone can follow the basics of 2 characters beating the hell out of eachother. then you get the crazy crowd (which is non existant honestly, at fps events, no hype or intensity) going bananas. Its more exiting. of course they arent gonna understand the strategies, and all the complexities/difficulties of certain things. but either is the average person gonna understand bunny hopping techniques or whatever else advanced tactics for whatever game is being played. its the same thing. If anything, fighting games on TV make way more sense. a lot of people can get awed by an awesome long combo. it looks obvious, it looks cool. what is there that you see in an fps match that makes the average person want to go âwow that was fucking coolâ and looked obvious to the viewer? I play fps games and i canât even get much out of any matches i see. and i miss out on a lot of cool shit cuz im not seeing thru the eyes of the other player to make it look more interesting.
just my 2 cents
I see your point Sabre, just one problem. FPS games DO make more sense to most people than fighters.
A person can pick up a shooter and have it down faster than a fighting game, plus its a tad bit more exciting to watch than fighting games. Sneak attacks and explosions and such. People get that more from everyday entertainment than the classic Street Fighter. If someone were to pick up a fighting game RIGHT NOW and play it with no expirience it would go down to them learning one move and doing that move over and over again. The general public wont be able to follow fighting games because its MORE fast paced than your average shooter. People like us can follow it cause we play it and know the moves and can follow the match and know why certain things happen like infinites and roll cancels.
Halo, CoD4, Vegas and other random games are on G4 and TV generally speaking because its also popular. And people like violence and shooting other virtual people because they cant do it in real life. And ill say it again, shooters are more popular. I can find someone to talk to about goldeneye before i can bring up hyper fighting.
Think about it.
G4 would fuck it up some how.
They ARE G4 after all.
i dunno man, i know a lot of non gaming friends. they come over. see other friends play a game like cod4. of course the non gamer friends will be like âthats sickâ or âOMG you took that dudeâs head off.â but even they can do that right off the bat, if they pick up the controller. they dont see any strategies other then aiming. they dont understand map control, bunny hops. rocket jumps, strafing. so really, when they see this on tv, why are they watching? they dont understand whats happening, especially when they can only watch thru the eyes of one player, effectively only allowing the person to see 15% of the match roughly. they see people getting hit with nades and shot. why dont they jsut turn their xbox on and do it themselves?
atleast with a fighter, they see everything. all the focus is on 2 characters, its much less confusing and its all right there. a person that just casually plays a fighter or has barely played one, can actually get more out of it. theres very obvious stuff to be seen in a fighting game that the viewer cannot reproduce himself by just picking up the controller. things like very long or stylish combos for instance. actually gives some type of reason to watch.
i have non gamer freinds that get more out of watching a 10+ year old fighting game over a next gen fps game. this is all from personal experience. so its just observations.
bottom line, the average person isnt gonna understand anything for the most part no matter what game it is. so its rather moot point
Yea, weâre pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place for both of our points. Screw it then, letâs leave EVO to the gamers. We donât need publicity. Like its going to matter if some kid in Maine knows you own at SF3. Who are we trying to impress, the public? Or ourselves?
I guess some humans arenât capable of unserstanding the complexities and intensity of a 2D fighing game. To some random gamer watching gamer TV, heâs not going to notice things like baiting tactics and the use made of the situation. On the other hand, itâs easy to look at an FPS game and say, âgood shot!â Itâs that lack of main stream appeal and general understanding that makes it less of an option, to say DoA4, Tekken 6 or Virtua Fighter 5, which are games that harness the power of the next gen consoles and actually have something to âshow off.â
Other than that, 2D platform games need to get back into the US and EU market before people will really start noticing them. Thereâs a lot of truely great fighting games out there which are so specialist they only really appeal to the Japanese market. The appeal in the US/EU is so small, broadcasters wouldnât waste their time with it as itâs too big a risk. Hopefully in the future, SFIV will change all that and get the attention of the main stream market. But while 2D games are designed for Japan, weâre not going to see much coverage on them, imoâŚ
I blame Street Fighter the movie.
Well G4 used to make people playing fighting games in that head to head show. The one where people played Unreal and Mechwarrior(???). The 3rd game was always a fighting game, I think they made them play CvS2 a couple of timesâŚit was pretty funny.
Edit: Tekken also.
I think the name of that one was âArenaâ, I didnât watch it very often, but do I remember seeing some scrubby Tekken 4 action on there. 
Does anyone have a youtube link to that coverage of one of the later EVOâs where the host concentrated on the way people dressed and shit (not the super old one, but the one from like the travel channel or some shit)? Thatâd be my argument against major coverage until gaming gets a real dedicated program. Most of these big name sponsored events are just advertising for newer games and hardware anyway. G4? This is the same channel that shit on the DC and ragged on 2d fighters for being 2d. Exposureâs good, but tv is garbage these days. 
I believe they played Unreal, Jedi Academy, and a random game (not always a fighter. I remember them playing the GC Warioware once lol). They were always terrible at the random game, but it was usually funny to watch.
Arena
Oh wow, I remember that shit. It was called âArenaâ, as someone already mentioned.
They had GG (either XX or #R, donât remember) on the show once 
To go back to Sabre and Kimoâs discussion, IMHO most of the games shown on competitive gaming TV shows are horrible, horrible spectator games, FPSs in particular. As Sabre alluded to, in team-based FPS games a viewer watching the coverage at home has barely any idea of the overall strategy of the team. Sure, they can see the individual team members giving instructions to each other, but the actual game footage conveys little of how each team is doing - every bit of gameplay footage is one guy walking around, attempting to shoot people (or planting a mine or something else, I dunno).
Fighters, on the other hand, are a completely visceral viewing experience. Sure, people watching wonât pick up on all of the nuances if theyâre not familiar with the game, but the basic, most entertaining moments in matches donât require such knowledge - big comebacks, tight matches down to each playerâs last pixel, those are situations anyone can intuitively understand and find exciting, regardless of how much exposure theyâve had to the game. The lack of exposure can even be somewhat solved with rudimentary play-by-play or post-match analysis with replays, explaining certain events in the match after the fact.
In conclusion I think fighting games would make excellent mainstream entertainment, and Iâd actually vote for G4 on the âwhat channelâ debate - even though you guys hate the channel a fair bit, their target audience (mainstream âgeeksâ) is EXACTLY the audience fighting games can explode with.
The problem is most people donât actually watch G4. Last time I checked a random cooking infomercial channel was getting better ratings than G4.
Ah yes Arena, whatta tub of slop that wasâŚ
And yeah, FPS games are hard to follow for spectators, given the fact that everything taking place is happening either from the First Person View or the âAdmin Viewâ Where you can see the overall mapâŚboth arenât very entertaining to watch.
A fight, where you can see everything happening on the screen, is much more conducive to the spectator experience. Thatâs why people crowd around TVs and arcade cabinets even if they havenât put their quarters up. They can appreciate whatâs happening because itâs very straight and to the point, everyone can appreciate a good ass kicking and the seasoned can appreciate the things most people DONâT see in a 2D/3D fighter.
They need more games. And maybe theyâd actually learn a thing or two.
It may have something to do with the fact that 98% of the shit Iâve seen on G4 lately doesnât even have anything to do with games too. Why the fuck is Cheaters on that shit? You want late night programming? B-Fucking-Movies, like every other self respecting Cable Network has.