My first post will be one based on race. Yeah i said it…
I’m a 32 year old white male and was a strong player back in the early 90’s when SF: WW came out. I went to college and other distractions (girls, studying, drinking) quickly took up most of my time and I barely touched the ALPHA series or 3s. I have much more free time now that I got laid off frm my job so I decided to pick up SFIV and make a go at it. I’ve also been heavily watching youtube clips of EVO, japanese tourneys, other US tourneys and have a decent understanding of the faces of the scene.
It’s great to see such a variety of races and genders represented watching these vids (especially EVO '09) and it exemplifies what a melting pot the US really is and how everyone can get together for fun events lke this. One thing i cant figure out is: Where are the white boys? busy playing rpg’s, WOW, etc…?
Evo results:
1st: daigo- Japanese
2nd: J Wong- Chinese
3rd: Ed Ma- asian (can’t tell which one and dont blast me on it)
4th: Sanford- African-American
5th:Shady K (vietnamese??)
6th:Eduardo Perez- latino
7th: Dan from Japan
8th:RIcky Ortiz -latino
OTHER big names in the scene:
Gootecks- asian/latino combination??
Valle- Latino
Mike Ross- African American
Combofiend- afro latino
Dont get me wrong i love the varied ethnic backgrounds that compose the SF base but where are white guys? It’s hard for me to count on one hand the number of white dudes that are top players.
There has to be various socio-economic factors that come into play here.
Please discuss. This is not at all a race war but those of you that understand the scene a lot better then i do can touch on the subject.
i think i found out some clues to my answer…this is overgeneralizing of course
Top tourney players= arcade rats
Arcade scene is dead and only available in metro/urban settings right now
Urban settings include many varied ethnic backgrounds
White guys simply dont have the opportunity to hang out in arcades all day
But really, I see enough white guys in gaming (and gaming media) to even care about a lack of representation. I’m actually REALLY happy to see that the fighting game community is so relatively diverse. I’m tired of seeing white guys playing these games, Asian guys dominating those games, black guys playing other games… It just shows that race has nothing to do with skill and (good) video games.
But I do agree with your urban arcade idea, which accounts for at least part of the reason. Living in an urban area myself and having been to some suburban/rural areas a few times, the racial differences have been pretty obvious to me. =p
can any of the mods move this under the regular SF 4 forum? I tried posting there but it states that i need 50 posts before i can start a new thread there…what an elitist forum
I thik this could generate some great activity over there
Back in the early 90’s, pretty most the Asian guy I knew in socal area was playing street fighter 2 at the local donut shop, arcade land, laundry mat and so on. It was pretty much like an california asian subculture effect, like slick back hair (tomo style) and ridiculous rice rocket hondas with JDM parts.
Ya, i think white people have like a racial handicap or something when it comes to SF. Not sure what it is, i kno theres plenty of white people like myself that put in a lot of time, but it seems like we have trouble reaching the top lol.
I’m a white surfer dude and I main Chun Li how does that make you feel? Although I’m no top 8 player, yet.
Back when SFII WW\Hyper fighting was in the arcade it was me and a few of my “white” friends against pretty much an all Asian crowed. I like to think that we held it down pretty good. To be honest I didn’t think black or Latino kids even played SF seriously until MVC came out, but it was probably just my neighborhood. (Orange county\Riverside) I hope that didn’t sound racist :\
Anyway I see your point us white kids need to step it up. I’ll see what I can do about it lol
Although I’m no top 8 player, yet.