Playing Fate/Unlimited Codes made me three times better at doing ridiculous combo inputs that no one should ever have to do consistently.
It’s possible to play the game without being concerned with winning or losing. Different aspects of a title appeal to different people. For most players fighting games are just interesting diversions. Played for their ability to entertain for short periods of time.
Here’s an analogy for some perspective:
I buy butter because I like putting it on toast, but there exists a community of people that are really into Butter Sculpture. They have contests and champions and a thriving competitive community*. While I can appreciate that they invested a ton of time and effort into honing their skills, I just do not find butter sculpture to be particularly interesting. I certainly have no aspirations to become a butter sculptor myself. I only like to eat butter on bread, and I don’t even like it significantly more than jam or Nutella. That’s how most gamers view the FGC. Just a bunch of butter-carvers.
- A community that could not exist without people like me buying butter just to eat it, much like the FGC depends on sales to casual fighting gamers for the creation of new titles.
I was going to say you could fap to Chun-Li but that works too.
I think most gamers have a healthy respect for the idea of competition. Even if you don’t care about being a champion (I certainly don’t) it’s hard to argue that competitive battles can be extremely exciting.
Most people I’ve talked to who don’t play fighting games have expressed interest in the genre, they just don’t have the motivation to get into it.
The problem with the analogy is that butter sculpture isn’t really a direct natural offshoot of how butter is meant to be used. Competitive play in fighting games is.
cvs2 - footsies
st - zoning
mahvel 2 - execution and blocking
mvc3/umvc3 - salt
I think the analogy would work a lot better in reverse. Eating butter, like competing in a fighting game, is the direct, intended, and most effective way to get enjoyment from it.
And competition makes a lot of things more intense and exciting. Fact.
I think there’s something very appealing to casual players about picking a character that represents them. You can see this in the number of people on SRK who list the characters they play in their sig. Outside of MMO’s few games offer the same kind of variety of avatars for the player(s). Naturally palette swaps and alt costumes play into this too.
I deliberately chose an extreme example to make the point obvious, but both the FGC and the butter-carving community (BTC?) are examples of highly competitive groups that are a subset of a much larger set of people consuming the same thing, except not for competitive purposes. I also probably chose it because I had just finished watching a movie about butter carving that featured Olivia Wilde, who is very hot.
Perhaps a more apt comparison would be to the competitive Rock/Paper/Scissors community (though I personally see this as an inferior example because there is no RPS movie that has Olivia Wilde in it). Still, RPS is an intrinsically competitive game played by a large number of people, some of whom actually take it seriously. These people formed a community of like-minded individuals and they hold competitions such as the “USA Rock Paper Scissors League” and “UK Rock Paper Scissors Championships”.
What do I think of RPS? It’s something to help settle “which fast food joint do we buy burgers from” arguments. What do I think of skilled, tournament-caliber RPS players? Nothing. I don’t think of them at all. Their entire community is of no significance to me. That’s how most gamers think of the FGC (and all e-sports, really). In the grand scheme of things, we’re just another fringe group of people with a laser focus on one aspect of a game that most of the world considers a frivolous waste of time.
Again, this is the part I object to. Not for any philosophical reasons or anything, but just from experience, most of the players of other games I’ve met have respect for competition and competitive gameplay. They recognize it as an exciting and enjoyable way to play, they just personally don’t get into it for whatever reason.
Just because you don’t personally enjoy or participate in something, that doesn’t mean you cannot respect what it is truly about.
MB, GG, BB, KOF, DS, JOJO, SKULLGIRLS etc enhance your anime and manga reading skills
UMVC, INJUSTICE, XMvSF etc enhance your American comics reading skills
MK, TEKKEN enhance your b-movies and cult movies or 3D action animated movies watching skills
DARKSTALKERS enhance your horror flicks and horror comics reading skills
SOULCALIBUR enhance your fantasy movie watching skills
SF4 and SFxTekken enhance your 3D deviantart watching skills
And we all know, girls only date guys with mad skills
Personally, I believe that what were trying to build is something along the lines of basketball and the NBA, or golf and the PGA - except with a much more open structure allowing more people to compete.