It feels like the large majority (but definitely not all) of the people who post about Guilty Gear having attributes which make it inferior/not worth learning when compared to old-school SF really haven’t given the game a chance. It is quite different, no doubt, and many people immediately decide they will not like it simply because of this. Guilty Gear is an awesome game which has improved immensely with every revision since XX without a question. Due to these large changes for each revision, there is also bound to be a portion of the community itself which doesn’t like it, resisting change is just part of human nature. I highly recommend to each of those players to have a more open mind and give new things a chance before making up their minds.
One of the most blatant changes is in the most recent revision from Slash to Accent Core, where it went from a fairly low damage game where you could mess up a few times and still come back with solid play, to a high damage/reward game where when playing a high enough level of player, messing up just once could easily cost you the entire match. Despite how this change could be considered making the game worse at tournament-level because results are more random, or that it isn’t as fun because you have to be more careful as it is so unforgiving, when you actually take into account all of the changes to each character’s moveset and move attributes, along with how the GG system works and it’s changes, the game ends up being one of the most competitive, fun, and fast-paced 2D games ever created, with results almost completely based on player skill/experience, and is accordingly very balanced as character balance doesn’t have as big of an impact.
After considering all of the current 2D fighters and their player bases, I believe that there is no doubt GG is the future of 2D fighting games until another big leap comes along (similar to the leap from SF to GGXX, and the game that made this leap would have to sustain itself as SF did and as GG is doing) The scene in Japan for sure, and less so in America, has shown that this is definitely currently happening. If GGXX continues to progress so much in each revision, as it has over the past 3, I can only see it becoming more and more popular as it has.
In Japan, a combination of their numerous arcades, the internet, and their culture allow the current method of updating and releasing GG to be extremely successful. In the USA, however, there are a few fairly large limiting factors that the game will have to overcome to continue to grow, some of which are already being overcome and others which may never be.
Thankfully, two major issues which would have prevented Guilty Gear’s growth have already been solved for Accent Core, both being issues with the home release of Accent Core. Before I mention those though, I feel it is important to discuss the current arcade situation in the USA. Due to the arcade scene here being mostly dead due to numerous reasons I need not mention, the GG scene in America does not have the luxury of having easy methods of gaining new members, having those public places to hold tournaments/gatherings, nor does America receive newest revisions when they are actually released(as it is only for the arcade). There are a few answers to the competition problem, one obviously being finding competition online, including maximizing the few arcades which are available by making sure everyone who is within travelling distance who might be interested knows about it. As for actually having the game to play- we must have a console release to be able to play without that luxury of having tons of arcades. This is why we must rely on the home-version for personal game consoles to play. This allows anyone to have access to the game, along with competition within an easily reachable distance. In the past the scene has had to import the game from Japan, which absolutely has the negative effect of making it much more less accessible to the average fighting game player, let alone the average gamer. This problem occured for Slash and again in Accent Core. Another problem which wasn’t a serious issue until AC is bugs in console releases. The original Japanese version was flooded with bugs, albeit mostly not gamebreaking, but they were absolutely a a big issue. As mentioned earlier, though, these two big problems were solved. We lucky were able to get both an American release which was bug-less, essentially killing two birds with one stone.
As things are, I would highly recommend anyone who would even consider learning a new fighter to pick up GGAC. Chances are, if the trends continue, the next revision of GG will be the biggest and most fun yet. There are tons of people on the Dustloop forums who have spent lots of time making sure any information people might want is available, and the community is constantly working towards setting up more events, spreading more information, and pushing the community forward. Join us in pushing the American 2D fighting scene to the next level!!.. wow that sounded corny.
I honestly don’t see how someone would draw this conclusion without being clearly biased towards either the game, players, or scene itself. Many people in the scene will not or cannot travel to Evo. The majority of the best players in the world live in Japan and cannot travel to Evo. As both scenes grow, attendance from America and awareness/attendance to Evo from Japan will too. Sending players to SBO 2008 who perform very well, or if it was a possibility sending players for other events such as DF2 or the a-cho 3v3 would likely aid this greatly as well, although that is entirely another subject.
It makes even less sense to try and relate the popularity of the game strictly to the attendance to the finals for the game at Evo. Obviously, especially at an early time slot, many people who may be big fans of the game and who support the community will still party/drink/etc the night before because it is Vegas and that is what people do. Putting the game at a later timeslot will obviously draw more people in from the scene- and will definitely draw more people in who may be interested in the game or the players in the final but not enough so to cut their night short to wake up early for it. Putting GG at a later timeslot would have increased it’s attendance and hype by a large amount, there is absolutely no question of that. Using VF as an example of why it wasn’t acceptable for GG not to be packed isn’t valid either, as the scene for VF is much smaller and I’m sure that had it had even less attendance from people at Evo for other games than GG did. As for the individual players showing up late- that is entirely a personal problem which reflects absolutely nothing from the entire community, and an obvious answer to the problem is to penalize that frankly insulting act by disqualification or something similar.