So, me and my friends were talking about EVO, and the matches last EVO, who won etc etc, and I decided to look up the last results of past EVO’s, and I cant help but realize that we(westerners) haven’t won EVO in the current SF in the last 12 years! We did in Tekken though, but only till about 2010, then the Korean and Japanese players took back over, only once in Blazblue and once in KOF(Reynald).
Even though we have hometurf advantage literally every year, here in the U.S. in Nevada, we as Westerners(wether its North/South Americans, Mexicans, or even Europeans) never win the big one. (Except in games only we mainly care about… like Mahvel and Smash) Except once in Blazblue and SCIV waaaay back.(He was French). And before Mahvel, the Japanese literally dominated Capcom vs SNK.
So me and my friends kinda got in a argument, on WHY its thats way. Are they just naturally better than us? Do they practice more? IS it the fact they actually have Arcade scenes in Japan/South Korea? Or are they better at learning? All I can think of to be honest is we just don’t invest as much time into as them, or of course, your average American player usually just wants to win, and doesnt really care to learn more (and by average I mean everyone, not just Americans who attend EVO yearly). Though Japan, Korea, well, East Asia in general FGC is a complete mystery… but whatever they are doing over there, its right, cause they beat us every year for over a decade straight and take the trophy back to their country, from our turf… it feels we’re completely inferior tbh, the proof is in the pudding. sigh
Well Asians players getting arcade releases of games before us thus giving them a head start could play a factor. Also the FGC is much bigger over there than here in the States. Well maybe not bigger but definitely more dedicated. Like just about every relatively known fighter still has a decent sized scene over there no matter how old or new. I.E Darkstalkers/ Vampire Savior. And Japanese players just take this more seriously IMO. I think the completion is asia is way more fierce than in the US. Thus that builds players skill level up to a point that most high level western players can’t match. Because here in the US people don’t take it as seriously, so the quality of competition while good, isn’t as good as Asia.
So for this to change, either western players in general have to step it up and push each other, or those who really want to win Evo might want to take a trip overseas and compete in some of those Asian majors and git gud enough by competing with the best over there and learning some things. That’s what some Asian players do. They travel over here for some majors, not just EVO.
Work ethics, education and mentality.
Japanese people in general tend to not blame outside sources but themselves for failure, while I see a lot of pointing fingers in Western culture.
Everyone who gets good at fighting games is good at self-reflection and identifying their own mistakes, which is a good lesson learned in life not just for fighting games.
I feel like overall better education, better competition and a humble mentality is what gives Asians (not just Japanese) an edge in fighting games.
The Japanese arcade scene helped them alot. Even as the scenes start to near parity, old school arcade experience still wins out, especially when you have older arcade players involved.
In addition to this, there’s another thing that’s helping them out these days - godlike internet. Online play in Japan, Korea, etc. is getting pretty close to offline due to a combination of the high bandwidth plus the overall lack of distance between players.
True that, cause even here in the U.S., most the local scenes that actually have alot going on are only in big major cities for the most part. And if youre in Kansas, getting to Chicago or Dallas aint a walk in the park due to our sheer size. Now if we were shrunk, then yeah, Id love to drive to a major city with a real scene to get ome rounds in all the time, but like you said Japan is so dense too. And with them taking that so much more serious, I bet even in their boonies you can find a scene. Ashame we have like x9001 the population and still not on that level. Or even something like going from Raleigh to D.C./Atlanta. And then of course too many of our local scenes only have certain games people like to play. Ontop of the fact most people just wanna whoop ass, no one wants teach/learn anything.
So yes we will continue to get bodied as Westerners for Decades to come as long as we can’t even help our scene.
Oh yeah and of coure the rigor. And complete nonexistence of Arcade scene. What cities in the U.S. even have REAL arcades? Besides like maybe NYC/L.A. of course? Sure as hell aint any in Atlanta or Seattle.
But yes, it is as if they’re minds are wired to be better than us at this stuff. Pretty discouraging tbh.
can you imagine if EVO was held in Asia every year? We probably wouldnt even make top 8 every year. We barely do it WITH hometurf advantage. Even the mighty Latif’s (Europeans) fall before the Nukis, KO’s and Infiltrations.
A sad story.
Why you keep talking about home turf advantage? Like do you really feel some type of way about Americans not winning EVO just because it’s held here in the states? EVO is not just an American event. It’s an international event at this point. Why people get so patriotic over this?
It’s not about being patriotic, its about basic advantage.
Just think for a second instead of being so… offended for a second.
If EVO was held in Seoul, or Fukuoka every year, what would that mean as far as demographic attendance?
Think for second.
Okay, EVO is always held here in the U.S. that means that for us as Americans, its a hop skip and a jump compared to players alllll the way in Asia, who have to fly literally across the Globe to get here.
I can gurantee you the amount of Americans and Westerners that attend EVO in general is far larger than the amount of Asians. (I dont even need to gurantee, we see it every year…)
So that makes it even worse because we can literally DRIVE to EVO, (and for people in the West/Cali, its like no problemo) have the numbers and STILL, lose every year to someone from the East. Someone who flew all the way from the other side of the planet bro. Only aobut 20 or 50 of them can come here very year, and someone from there will win it all, and we can have hundreds to thousands, and still lose.
So if EVO was in Seoul every year, it would be alooooot more Easterners, and if we can barely make top 8 , on our OWN hometurf, you know we wouldn’t if we had to go to the East.
Period.
Nothing to get patriotic about, basic statistics.
And you’re talking about patriotic, like this is a good thing. What to be patriotic about?
And it would be ironic to call it an American event when an American rarely wins it…
(excluding the games only we care about)
I dont know how many people have seen this video. The video title translates to " Beginners workshop" according to google translator. Found this to be pretty interesting as how knowledge is more freely shared/available over in japan but not to take away from the usa people who do youtube tutorials for fighting games and such.
I don’t understand why you’re saying I’m offended. I’m not I’m just asking a question. My point is that Homefield “advantage” implies that we here in the west have some type of edge against other competitors because EVO is here in the states. Now yes that does mean it’s much easier for us to attend thus we bring in more competitors, but that has no bearing when it comes to actually playing. In that regard homefield “advantage” is irrelevant. Eastern players beat us because they take it more seriously, active arcade scene thus most players are still playing offline where as a lot of players here play on-line, Jap players seem to always push each other to get better, where as here people tend to be out for themselves. Like “the less quality competition equals more money for me” mentality.
I did not say being patriotic about this was a good thing. It seemed that’s the way you were feeling. But I guess I was mistaken, my bad. Also it is an American event because it’s founded and hosted by Americans, hence why it’s held here in the states. But I also stated at this point it has grown into an international event. That happens to be founded and organized by Americans.
I think it also has to do with cultural mentality. In the west the emphasis is on the individual, so placing better than your peers matters a lot more compared to the Asian collective mentality, which may affect the willingness to share information. Also in Japan they don’t play in tournaments for money so they have less of an incentive to keep good info to themselves. That is my educated guess at least.
In Japan most people are willing to share information. They all play in a few centralized places and they all keep in contact. I imagine the arcade proximity + the culture difference makes the biggest impact.
Some of the strongest players for every character in 3s have LINE chats going where they all get together and can discuss their character, bounce ideas off each other, etc. Basically think of the top ~10 Yuns in the world, and realize that almost all of them are in the same chat room and talk to each other all the time.
In America this would never happen. Mostly because of a combination of
people don’t want to share info
people are too snotty and will ignore whatever you say if they think they’re better or they play in a stronger scene
most Americans don’t do much research and would actually have nothing to contribute to a chat like that anyway
Read about Japanese school systems because I was curious why they all suck at English even though they got it at school, but that’s another story.
Apparently in Japan and a couple of Scandinavian countries, kids in school do not get any grades for the first couple of years.
The focus of these years is on teaching kids how to actually learn efficiently and reinforce positive social behavior and manners, which goes a long way compared to many western country schools that start dropping grades straight when kids come out of kindergarten, and let children who do not have wealthy parents backing them up at home, fall through the social class filter.
On top of that opposed to western schools, in Japan often times the smart kids are the cool and popular people in schools there.
Dunno how that is in the USA but I guess it’s similar to Germany where the hard-working and smart kids are treated like outsiders and called names like “egghead”, “or 4 eyes” or some shit.
Also the average Japanese person thinks more about how he can be of use to society and fitting in rather than trying to be a very special pancake, which leads to people sucking shit up and dealing with it rather than pointing fingers and getting upset about outside sources.
I feel like overall learning about being humble, sucking shit up and dealing with it and being taught how to deal with dull and repetitive tasks are all qualities that help you getting a better fighting game player, or craftsman or whatever you choose to pursue in life.
I’m not saying that the Japanese are strange super people or that their system is perfect (they used to rock an incredibly high suicide rate where people killed themselves because of unemployment, pressure in school and social issues), I just wanted to point out that it’s not just the arcades that are the reason why Japanese players seem to become very proficient at the games they play and the jobs they pursue.
This looks exactly like the conversations I see in some Facebook fighting game groups. That niggardry.
I always thought asians being better was just that their eyes squinting naturally allows them to just focus on the game and not look at outside stuff so much like the US.
How many Asian teams own in c.o.d . They dont have a big gun culture most arguments are handled fighting then capping a mofo in tokyo. Usually only gov and police have firearms. They have much more respect for fighting and fighting games and they still dumb enough to put quarters in machines for a match . That shit ended in the U.S. once sf came in cartridge on snes pay 60$ and own the game. We aint feeding a machine quarters. Plus they get everygame a year early. Hillbilly in the trailer playing cod not bkazblue. “Cuz them games is gay button mashers” Not enough Zombies"
