If you guys want I’ll do the first few interviews if you line the people up. I interview guys like Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter all of the time for my job. So interviewing top players isn’t exactly something new for me.
Who da fuk is Tiger woods? Nigga ever enter any tourney?
Man vf4 what else you’re not telling us.
So you’re thinking to interview them live, with a camera / mic and shit?
Or you’re going to call them up and have an interactive style of phone interview?
Or you’re just going to edit my crappy interview questions and polish them up like we’d read them on the newspaper?
TIA either way!
BTW, here’s another out of the box idea from nh2. It’ll be great if it can be setup, but it might be asking too much since that would mean a lot of work from other folks like NKI/Gian/Team spooky, etc.
But none the less it is a very cool idea
I would do the interviews just text based for now and see how they go. Probably over IRC or MSN or whatever. Text based interviews are the best for thorough discussions as the person being interviewed can revise his respondes before submitting them. Also it allows for longer followup questions if needed. Not only that but if the person being interviewed mentions a specific match or tournament we can try to find YouTube videos of the match or a link to information about the tournament.
OK VF4, let’s setup sirlin first. Don’t fuck up and be nice to the guy or you’re fired 
j/k. probably none of us can do this job coz we’re blacklisted.
we’ll have someone else convince him if this proves to work with the other guys.
i’ll let you know asap if any of these peeps replied.
If you ask nicely and say you wont attack him about hd remix and just interview him on being a player, you would have a much higher chance of success, imo
I’d rather interview someone like RoyBisel who is the one organizing the ST arcade tournament at SBR this year. And Roy is always on GGPO/SRK as well so I could catch him anytime. I’ll interview him after SBR about that tournament, ST in general, his history with various SFII games, and a few assorted other questions. In the meantime if someone wants to suggest someone else, and not Sirlin, I’ll interview them.
the thing is, with the questions, you want to ask them things we really, really want to know. those questions i posted are to the point. sometimes if you over think it and try to ask too many questions, or ask questions that require paragraph answers, you might not get a quick response (or 1 at all). it’s like doing a survey about your favorite game - how many of us even bother to fill those out? also, you see alot of threads asking about matchups or how certain combos etc are done. i’m sure some top players read them but how many bother to tell us? btw, let’s get someone good who can translate completely and fully… somewhat worried about mistranslation or stuff being left out altogether (even moreso if their answer is long).
actually, another question i’d like many top players to answer is:
in your opinion, who are the top 5 characters in this game?
no explanation needed unless they’d like to elaborate.
with regards to asking them about hdr, i think it’s a legit question. this gives us an idea if they’ve even heard or played the game, and i’m interested myself to see how they like or dislike the changes that were made. this is maybe the only real question i’d like to see alot of detailed answers on. i’m also curious on their opinion about hf and ae btw.
It is just my opinion, so i apologize in advance if it offended you.
imho this is the least useful question that one can ask.
i mean, you even boldface this question.
so let’s say the answer is rog, claw, sim, o sagat, chun
do you all now go to main these? there is already way too many rog, claw and o sagat and it’s boring.
does it matter that the character of your choice is not top tier as long as you enjoy the playstyle? ST/HDR unlike other games, are pretty balanced. every one can compete.
it’s this kind of mentality that separate us from the japanese.
i’m not a dictator (no pun intended) so i’m not ruling out this question, if more people agree that this is an answer that you guys want to find out, we’ll throw it in.
(disclaimer: not trying to start a flame war, and it might not be your intention at all, i just have a strong urge to express my feelings when i see this kind of question)
Actually one of the things I was think of asking each person was to make a chart for their main character. So if I interviewed AfroLegends I’d ask him to look at his charts on Nohoho’s Blog and give a comment on one or two matches. Or maybe just ask him what his favorite match is to play and his least favorite match. Or what his hardest match is to win for his two main characters.
I do agree that making a big deal out of tiers is incredible misleading for lower level players. Valle said something similar in that when you create these tier lists it only serves to encourage lower level players to immediately gravitate towards higher tier characters. Or it encourages lower players to never learn matches that are rated with lopsided numbers. This unfortunately reduces character variety at all levels of the game. Beginners flock to high tier characters, then when they level up to intermediate they are still with high tier characters, and this continues until everyone is playing the same characters. Then there is zero preparation for our scene against low and even mid level characters when we play the Japanese.
Maybe to offset this we should interview some low tier character specialists from the foreign SFII scene. So…who plays low tier characters?
I have a view that is similar to papasi’s in this sense, and agrees with VF4’s opinion that complaining about tiers helps nothing.* Even being amateur players, we can already have a grasp of what characters are or look strong and what gives us trouble at our level, and I believe it agrees mostly with their tier lists, despite both players not being top. So, it is sort of useless. So, punctual advices on how to deal with them and “confessions” as to what can make them lose an apparently easy match-up should be more interesting and helpful at the same time. Also, even though it would not warranted, some may feel sort of insulted or not recognized in the sense that if they play a top tier character, they play the game on “easy mode” or something. Also, match-ups are known to be more important than tiers, so I guess we could just not talk about them but when they release new tier lists.
*not saying or implying you are, JJTIC
Outside Japan, I could cite Jumpsuit, Bob and the Brazilian player Sarda as people who make him look good overall and use lots of tricks. But Sarda now plays SF4 only and does not like HDR due to the changes. In fact, he has said he only really enjoys Fei in ST.
afro legends’s inbox is full.
hey people’s champ, if you are reading this. please contact me or vf4.
or if any of you folks can contact him via other means, please help.
(my strategy is that for the first few interviews, try to get people that are neutral to ST/HDR so we can have a great start…)
Edit:
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we have two peeps signed up. i’m going to redirect the 1st guy to vf4. let’s see how it goes
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BTW, here’s a twist to snk’s question and would make it interesting.
we could ask what’s the best advice to beat the toughest characters in the game? what are their weakness and what to look out for.
papasi,
no offense taken. regarding that question, i wouldn’t necessarily say it has more merit than the others i suggested, but i personally like to know what some top players opinions are. it stirs up good debate. you can’t say that there is no use for such a question. for any game, even before it comes out, people form their opinions on who the best characters are. we always like to speculate and whatever they say, i doubt it would make people migrate to a certain character etc. (especially at this stage of the game’s life where the tiers haven’t changed much for awhile). besides, say you interviewed komodo blanka, you think he’d throw his character in there as top 5? and if he did, you think alot of people would migrate to his character? on the flipside, wouldn’t you want that though since it’s a different character he’s mentioning instead of balrog, vega, o.sagat, etc. and if he doesn’t feel his character is top 5, it can lead into a question where you can ask him his motivation for learning such a character.
btw, i think it’s actually better than asking them to make a chart or comment on individual matchups, for the simple fact that - telling them to name their top 5 is quick and for most, it wouldn’t require much thought to say (although that would be nice if they went in detail, but would they really give us their time to do that?)
David Boudreau (sim), Bob Painter (honda/gief), Cigarbob (), NKI (chun), damdai () , john rambo (sim), Kuni (gief), DGV (ryu), afro legends (boxer/dj), ganelon (claw), snake eyez (gief) have agreed to do the interview with us.
If you guys have any specific questions for these players, please post asap.
Also, do you guys prefer we do this as soon as the interviewee/interviewer are free or you’d rather have this done weekly / biweekly?
I’m going to interview CigarBob first. I’ll be asking about his history with FGs. His history with SFII, especially ST. Why he plays the characters he plays. The history of his custom arcade cabinet and when he started bringing it to EVO. A few questions about his favorite strategies, shenanigans, combos, and so on. How he practices execution. His favorite players. And a few more miscellaneous questions.
So if anyone wants me to ask CigarBob a specific question just throw it in this thread before the end of the week.
For CigarBob:
Any tips for people willing to get/make a supergun?
Fat people are accused of obtaining an unfair advantage on American cabs by naturally pushing skinny people to the side. What are your thoughts about it? (joke)
What kind of sticks do you use, and what is your favorite way of holding them?
Do you preffer buttons with soft or hard springs?
Edit: on the blog now.
If you guys would like to ask me any questions, feel free to ask. =)
I feel that some of the people you picked to be on the the “to interview list” are good players but “greats” per say…
I would like to ask Komoda Blanka what he hates the most about Blanka. I know know what bugs me about him…
[
afro legends, thanks! we’ll have a tons of questions for you no doubt.
btw, could you leave your email or contact via PM ?
you only show up at srk like every 3 months it’s hard to get a hold of you dude
]
BTC, keep the questions coming. Potentially we have three contacts (many many thanks for them) to help us get those questions to the japanese players. Hopefully we can reach komoda.
BTW, it really doesn’t matter whether people on this list is the world’s top 10 players or not.
We just want to attract more new players, get everyone interested into playing again (for those who have stopped) and help intermediate players level up.
Sort of like those “introduce yourself” thread but for people who know how to play the game.
Actually, you’re one of the best blanka players in the US and we want to interview you as well.
It’ll be fun and you gotta spread the blanka love
wat da ya say?
I’m in the middle of CigarBoB’s interview right now. So far it’s absolutely amazing. I know some people want these interviews to be knocked out very quickly. But once you see how unbelievable the answers I get out of CigarBoB are you’ll see that patience is rewarded. I get so much incredible information out of him it is truly staggering. Really this is one of the best interviews I’ve done in years and I interview professional athletes for a living. Get hype…
Is it voice on tape or via email/IM?