This. If not this year it would have been next year.
The FGC is more than even the people who attend locals or majors on a regular basis. Content creators and online warriors are also members of the FGC if they choose to be. A larger prize pool draws more attention, more attention increases awareness of a game and/or genre of games. This can encourage people to pickup a FG when they might not have before, or seek out others. Maybe they don’t have interest in becoming the best of the best but they just want to play the game at a decent level with some cool people so they search out other people who play the game. Maybe that causes them to explore the genre more later on.
Know what a larger prize pool often does? Increases people who watch streams and increases the number of news sites that discuss these events.
let’s increase the prize pool while lowering the amount of people who can enter the game at evo that way we can maybe attract more people to come play at evo
it’s brilliant I tell you
Despite my best efforts, Capcom has completely ignored my attempts to get them to adopt our PS3 stick driver.
It’s possible they’re rolling their own, but I don’t know why they wouldn’t announce that.
-CEO of Lab Zero
Because they’re not making their own driver and they’re in bed with Sony and Madcatz just so you can shell out more money for their PS4+SF+TE stick orgy… those whores.
You can’t be a member of a community you aren’t participating in; nothing works this way. I have played hearthstone a bit, I’ve conducted middle school orchestras by myself, I can somewhat play the harmonica and I spent a summer eating well and running at the park. I am not a hearthstone player, a band/orchestra instructor, a blues musician nor a runner.
If you aren’t active in either offline or online communities, you are not a part of it. People need to accept that randoms in Xbox live are not really are peeps. They could be our peeps but they aren’t. There’s a multitude of reasons why they aren’t. Could be work schedules, they don’t have much interest outside of a few games every now and then or they are a shy. But you can’t claim them to be part of it.
The reason why accepting this is important is because those are the people we are most likely to get involved as active members. So the question shouldn’t really be “how do we make LoL players into FGC members?” because that’s not gonna happen. On the other hand, getting online warriors to become offline warriors and legitimately active would be a proper goal.
So then the questions are: what haven’t we done that could get those players there? Top players from all over the world show up to majors in different places, there are BYOC stations as well as demos for new games in random majors outside of Evo…Sure we could increase the pay out, but the lack of a payout hasn’t stopped talent from going to any other tournament.
Right now we have all the conditions which a bigger payout is supposed to bring. We got there by having our events sponsored to help for costs and by top players having sponsorships that give them room & board for events. Majors were covered by larger media outlets, this acted as advertisement for them which along with streaming let the general gaming world take a look at this community. This definitely turned a lot of people into online warriors to offline. If they did stay with the community, it definitely wasn’t what Chris G made a tourney that kept them playing.
For right now you have to remember that Evo just changed the console and peripherals a lot of online warriors used; under your assumption this means that the payout will outweigh the inconvenience of getting new input devices. Truth is that this will be hard to say unless we do a proper survey since, as I mentioned, Evo has been growing every year. It would be a fun, and incredibly useful, project to do but its eh altogether.
Now you and d3v actually are trying to say is that bigger payout will increase the viewership which in turn lead to more active members in the community. This one might be a bit easier to work with since, if they cooperate, we could ask TOs for entry number for games for their last 3-4 tournaments and see if adding the Capcom Pro Tour did anything to affect them. Why would we look at the year with the Capcom Pro Tour? Because it raised the stakes significantly in terms of potential pay out as well as increased the exposure to the community in a lot of ways. I think this would be the most likely route to determining whether pay out has any correlation with increased membership in the community.
Why did you ignore the “IF THEY CHOOSE TO BE” part you bolded? online warriors and content creators are also part of the FGC if they choose to be. I meant if they interact with other people.
Also there are a such thing as other FGCs it’s not one big thing. People can have their own little communities of players that interact with each other. That is still a fighting game community even if it’s not posting on SRK. Maybe they host a weekly event but they don’t stream it. Not everyone knows everyone who could be part of the FGC. Are people deeply invested in some obscure fighting game but not the ones being played on stage not part of the FGC? Maybe you don’t know about these major tournaments but you still play a fighting game a lot. Finding out about this tournament might make you part of that other community.
A bit of a strawman argument. I never said anything of the sort and again you assume you need to be pro or attempting to be pro to be part of a community or are comparing people who do other things besides compete as those who only did something once (like play the game) and moved on with their lives. Not a fair comparison.
So you need to be deeply invested in the community to be part of it? You can’t just occasionally go to an event or host a website and post on forums and discuss your favorite games/players/streams or support the community in other ways? You have to be deeply dedicated to actually playing? I get that “randoms on xbox aren’t part of the community” but your definition of part of the community seems to exclude more people than it should.
Again, don’t need to be an offline player to be part of the community. WNF hosts online tournaments, salty cupcakes allows online entrants to SG tournaments, PandaXGaming hosts online tournaments. You just said yourself that if you aren’t active in the online community you aren’t part of the FGC but then say that you need to get those online players to offline events. Why? There isn’t a requirement to go to these events to keep your FGC card. You can support it in other ways. People who regularly are watching streams and subscribing and moderating those streams can’t be part of the community? They need to actually be at the event? I mean sure, going to these events is the best way to play the game and supports more offline events but it’s certainly not something that you HAVE to push every online player to do to be considered part of the FGC.
I specifically said that bigger payout can grow the FGC via viewership and exposure to the games. Again though, you are equating entrants to tournaments to the exclusive way to see if the community is growing. Are you saying people who post tech, who post FAQs, who give tutorials but don’t go to tournaments aren’t part of the FGC? People who just do combo videos aren’t part of the FGC? People who compete in online tournaments aren’t part of the FGC? People who only play casually but talk with others about the tournaments and pay for things like subs on twitch to help pay for tournaments streaming and help support pro players getting to tournaments don’t count as part of the FGC? People who setup streams but don’t compete at a local aren’t part of the FGC? Your definition is incredibly insular and pushes others away. It’s also incredibly narrow.
Some pros have said they couldn’t afford to go to some international tournaments because the cost of going was significantly higher than the payout even if they took first. Like hundreds of dollars more. Actually if you notice, many of the pros that go to international events compete in multiple games just to increase potential payout.
Lastly: More viewership increases chances of more sponsors. More sponsors at events means more strong players get sponsored. Right now a lot of strong players aren’t sponsored. Snakeeyez didn’t have sponsorship for quite a while at one point for instance and he is considered one of the best in the world. Is Valmaster even sponsored? What about Smug? I think Smug is just part of PIE which AFAIK is only a clan/team not actually sponsored like EG.
More sponsors at events also can mean more events! Canada Cup Master Series lost $25,000, they might not have lost nearly that much with more sponsorships.
Perhaps we may need to agree to disagree on this. I’m not saying forcing entrants to pay to upgrade their hardware is a good thing unto itself but the additional payout can do a lot of good for the community potentially and in this case the good may outweigh the bad.
Besides, PS4 may end up being best for the players. It doesn’t have the headache potential of setting up PCs. It may not have the input delay or slowdown of PS3. It may not have the frame drops / slowdown or game crash bug of Xbox360.
I’m kinda glad I waited to buy a new stick since I expected PS4 to be standard when it’s released. (Even though I have never been to a tourney before, may start this year or the next) I personally feel if you are traveling to go to a big tourney and get a hotel and what not it should be no biggie to mod or get someone to mod your stick.
It’s not always as clear-cut as that. Some people rely on splitting a room and enter maybe only their main game(s) to be able to participate. Others even go as far to bum sticks off of other people each match, but if there’s not one available… they’re assed out or there’s the risk of getting a bad loaner stick and losing partly due to that. Being capable of showing up and entering something you’ve been playing for a while doesn’t always mean you can afford whatever you want after you get there.
Also, as far as the version being released on PS4: it’s not out yet and we don’t know if it will have any major issues compared to the established standard, and this isn’t the first time it has potentially been an issue with Capcom fighting games either. So, if that does turn out to be the case (I’m concerned about lag issues if it’s really going to be through their game streaming service), do we just move back to the established standard now and apologize to the players for wasting their time and money, or would we be stuck and still have to play the shitty version? The only decent outcome seems to rely on the PS4 version definitely being up to par, but since it’s not actually out yet, I think they jumped the gun on this.
i hope that they use the power of the ps4
that loading times and netcode set a new standard
and when sony and capcom really want to sell many ps4 copies they better make drivers for old sticks
cant see that many casual gamers buy a new 200dollar stick for usf4
Casuals usually don’t buy sticks. They most likely won’t buy the game again on a new console. They also don’t normally go to evo/tournaments, which is the whole reason we’re talking about PS4. Kind of a moot point.
I’m hoping that Sony & Capcom will use the PC version of this game for the upcoming PS4 version, especially since that the PS3 version is shitty & that porting games from PC to PS4 is a lot easier than porting games from PS3 to PS4.
All they would have to do, is just map the button configurations for the DualShock 4 controller, & use Rollback netcode for better online multiplayer like GGPO, that’s it.
have you played the PC port? be careful what you wish for…
I haven’t done a full attentive read of the whole thread but has anyone brought up the idea that converting to PS4 now for EVO is going to make adopting SF5 as the central game of EVO an almost seamless experience? Because I think that would be a really smart idea getting their hardware procurement down now instead of later.
For anyone wondering, some folks were using the Titan One at Winter Brawl 9.
Only problem with the PC version is the online which has to do with how Capcom took little extended effort in transitioning their online systems from GFWL to Steamworks. Since PS4 wont use steamworks the problem wont be there 
PC version is also the closest to the arcade original in terms of speed.
Interesting. I’m assuming everything was smooth?
It’s not “smart”. Buying X number of PS4s now and X number of PS4s next year isn’t going to make a difference unless there’s a price drop between then and now.
Whether the transition happens this year or when SFV comes out, the logistics are the same. People will still be forced to buy new sticks or mod their current ones if they plan to play at EVO. EVO will rent/buy the number of consoles they need.
The ONLY difference is that if the switch happens when SFV comes out people will buy new sticks without bitching about it, because it’s a new game and all their righteous indignation will disappear. That’s it.
There is a good chance that Sony will provide many PS4s for EVO to use. I’m sure that would be part of the deal in regards to the switch to PS4s being used as the main console.