State of the Fighting Game Community Union

#1

It has come to my attention that the world has turned upside down, flipped sideways and has a hole in it. The community I’ve been apart of for more than 6 years is, from what I can tell, getting more and more ignorant. More and more tolerant of stupidity, and the very hand of god of these communities is now literally goddamn clueless.

For so long, there was nothing. There were people who played Marvel 2, 3rd Strike, CvS2, Guilty Gear and Tekken. These communities were stagnating and honestly, a bit too mean in many regards. That was a mistake, the communities were slowly dying and there was very little new blood to take the place of those who left. Open arms, hugs and kisses, might have helped. But now thanks to a game. This game isn’t the best game ever, it’s not terrible, but it certainly doesn’t really have a lot of cool things and a lot of bad design decisions. But it brought everyone back. The community is huge now! However there remains a new problem, in the days of old, if someone was stupid, they generally got called out on it. Or maybe they were ignored, whatever.

Though that may be the case, we hugged, we kissed, we let these new pot monsters join us! After all, a community isn’t a community if there aren’t people in it. However there is a huge problem. Much like a spoiled child, these new members have never been told off, in fact, their idiocy is borderline encouraged (for reasons that shall remain unnamed, let us not get political here). An unnamed few people benefit mildly from this. No they aren’t Justin Wong, or Marn, or Mike Z, or Emphy. These people make money from fighting games. However, offending these new players harms the pockets of some few distant people who are so far removed from the community, it would be borderline insane to consider them a good representation of it.

Since this is the case, with no tough love to teach these newbies to not stick their fingers on the burning stove. The community is clueless, and the groupthink within said community is causing more and more distance between quality players or people with a goddamn clue, and the actual people trying to represent the community. Top players who understand the game completely are ignored for utter morons, they are not only drowned out, but actually shunned for not only posting facts and opinions, but being RIGHT about them.

What kind of ass backwards ideas have we come in to? Where was the Seth Killian of yore, who would post how fucking retarded option select parrying is? Our champions have been slayed by Capcom itself. Shunning them for ideas that are “making the game more accessible” while actually lowering the quality of the games we are playing. There are orders being followed and not enough questions being asked. When are we going to realize that hey, maybe things like ultras, fADCs, invincible backdashes, extremely long throw animations, free combo breakers to punish someone doing a combo are BAD IDEAS. When are we going to stop praising Capcom for not giving us qualities we deserve in games. Certainly the Capcom of the olden days wasn’t exactly great, in fact, they fucked up a lot. But now we have smarter players, better community feedback, easier ways to communicate with the people who make these games and they ignore us. And the people running these communities are ignoring seasoned veterans with deep understandings of mechanics for mouthbreather 23.

When the fuck will this garbage end?

#2

I got ya back Wisdom God. One Love in the Old Earth.

#3

Hella good points you made, but people don’t have to settle for what they don’t like when there are many many different fighting games out there that people could be playing.

#4

but if they want someone to play against then they have to play SSF4. I went to a local gathering and set up another game besides SSF4. Guess how many people came by to play? 0, not 1 person decided to try it out. Instead they stuck to playing SSF4 on 8 other TVs.

#5

amen brotha

#6

when the gaming industry crashes which is to say hopefully sometime soon

#7

Random unrelated thoughts:

I think the mentality that if you don’t like something in a game you should suck it up and go play something else is is borne of good intentions; a counter to the “cheap” whining which is anathema to competitive play. However, it’s also a product of a time when there were many essentially equivalent options for which game to play. Don’t like 3s? Play CvS2. Don’t like CvS2? play MvC2. Don’t like MvC2? Play ST. Don’t like ST? play GG, etc. etc. However, given the dominance of a single game in the scene right now I think it’s worthwhile to allow a space for serious, well-considered criticism of a game’s mechanics. It’s important to understand that it’s possible to dislike things in a game and still take it for what it is.

Be wary of the dominant narrative that the fighting game scene was dying out before SF4 came along. I believe Evo attendance dropped for the first time in 2008, but the recession was in full swing at the time. Granted it’s not like tournament attendances were swelling year on year, but things were trucking along. The idea that SF4 ‘saved’ the scene is repugnant to myself and many others because we were perfectly happy with the scene before SF4 came along. More competition can be a good thing, but the influx of players we’ve seen has weakened previously existing community ties and introduced a playerbase that has no understanding of, nor respect for what preceded them. It’s also and perhaps most obnoxiously introduced a new class of player who is more spectator than competitor, the guy who plays online and watches streams but will never consider attending a tournament. Why are we catering to these people?

Those who say we need to accept the dumbing down of games if we want the community to survive are wrong on several counts. Firstly, as aforementioned, the community was just fine before this trend started. Secondly, there’s little evidence that dumbing down games (as opposed to sensibly and considerately making them more accessible while minimizing the harm to high level play, a feat which Capcom has repeatedly failed to achieve) has resulted in expansion of the scene. Finally, even if such arguments were correct, why is this site now considered an appropriate place for airing them? I’ve had several discussions (flame wars) with guys who celebrate the dumbing down of games and tell everyone else they just need to get over it and accept that we don’t make up enough of Capcom’s audience to matter. My response: why does being a minority mean we aren’t entitled to argue our case, especially on a site which is supposed to be for competitive players? We don’t care if what we want wouldn’t result in maximum sales for the game (and, again, there’s little evidence that that is the case), we want what’s best for us! Is SRK still a competitive fighting game players’ site, or is it now a fighting game fan site? Many users seem to be under the impression that it’s the latter.

#8

I like fighting games.

#9

What game was it? Was it tuff enuff?

#10

I’m tired of bad players thinking their opinion means shit. Sorry but if you think someone like THawk is “cheap” then you don’t know enough about the game to have an opinion. SF4 brought in a lot of idiots that don’t understand fighting games nor the mechanics used in these games yet still think their opinion is valid. Everyone’s opinions are NOT equal.

#11

Raise your sentence structure game.

“But now thanks to a game.”

#12

Street Fighter IV is not for us. It’s not a sequel to 3S. It’s for nostalgia **** who gave-up way back when SFII was around. That’s why the game is full of archaic characters and mechanics. Street Fighter Alpha IV is what it is.

#13

fart

#14

Yep, no one’s made a thread like this before.

#15

Have you just… not been paying attention to forums like this for the past couple years?

#16

Cosign SF4 was my gateway game to the community but I got turned off by the leniency and it just being too nostalgic so I switched to sf 3 and kof . I just can’t play a bad game.

#17

MK9 interview explains the state of fighting games
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/8617/page10c.jpg

It’s not going to stop, especially for the bigger companies like Capcom.

Like I said before, Capcom hates the hardcores, hardcore players are like a disease to them.

If companies are going the direction of appealing to the casuals by dumbing down the gameplay to make them start playing their game, they shouldn’t go overboard. SF4 went to the extreme when it came to dumbing down the gameplay for the casuals. I will forever hate Capcom for adding Shortcuts to really strong specials like the Shoryuken, I really hope the other companies don’t follow the Shortcut idea.

#18

you joined literally 2 days ago and youre an idiot

#19

Street Fighter IV = The Final Fantasy VII of fighting games

As much as I can enjoy, appreciate and respect SSFIV as a game, I just don’t have it in me to want to play it every so often. I actually got burned out on SFIV at one point, despite all the hype and let’s not even go into most of the game’s problems. The main thing is that the diversity we enjoy from other games could be buried underneath SFIV. With rumors of a new Vampire, I’m afraid that we won’t get a real Vampire game as opposed to “SFIV with Vampire characters” Basically, I want fighting games to be themselves, including SFIV, but it’s like SFIV (and most who nuthug it now) think every other game should follow suit. That’s society for you: The illusion of choice and diversity.

Also, at this point, and I KNOW it has been mentioned (Just as pretty much everything else before this paragraph), I can’t really justify calling this a “fighting game community” as opposed to the “SFIV community,” because let’s face it: What does everyone, their mother and their cat here (besides the fact of the site being named SRK) want to play? Honestly? How many people follow up with posting on a thread for insert game here, make good on their word and foster talk and growth?

Yeah, I’ve seen threads like this several times before and I guess now is as good a time to actually respond to one.

On a side note: At the risk of sounding like an elitist, Looking at things now, it’s this advent of “fighting gamers” that makes me glad I mainly play VF. Sure, figuratively I can count the amount of U.S. players in one hand, but at least they’re serious players that earn my respect as gamers. Sure, it would be nice if it was more popular so more people play it (or at least the very company that publishes it gives a damn about their audience), but 2-4 people is better than no one.

Long-held-in rant over.

#20

vf5fs ftw. im going back to my early 2000s mentality of ‘who cares if every game sucks, vf exists’. ill be happy going back to it and playing 4 or 5 dedicated players, ill take it any day over playing sf4.