In his EVO 2k10 wrap-up, James Chen has a fair point that Street Fighter IV's popularity can only be a benefit to the fighting game community as a whole. Certainly, unifying fighting games and getting individual communities to support and feed off of one another is an admirable, and generally pretty good, idea. However, I disagree with the analogy that the fighting game community can truly become similar to the poker community.
While there are many, many variations in poker with different applicable strategies during gameplay, each variant uses the same foundations, and picking up one kind of poker once you know another is only a matter of mastering the different nuances that make up the new game. I don't see fighting games as having the same properties. Sure, there are fighting games that are very similar to one another; but there are also fighting games that are as different as night and day (just compare Street Fighter IV to Super Smash Brothers Brawl). Both games allow you to attack your opponent to land damage, but mastering either one of these games does not make it easier to master the other any more than mastering Texas Hold'em helps you to master SSB Brawl.
I don't disagree that the different fighting game communities should embrace each other, but it should be more of a partnership or alliance than a true merging of the communities. Rather than emulating the poker world tournament, the fighting game communities should organize somewhat like the various sports games do during the Olympic Games (EVO 2k already comes pretty close to this philosophy right now). In this way, the smaller communities can benefit from the popularity and exposure gained by the fighting game community as a whole, but they can still remain independent communities devoted to their games of choice.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Week 7/8: Communities, Part 2
I find it interesting that a community receiving so much praise due to their presence and attitude at EVO 2k7 would be so berated only a year later for their presence and attitude at EVO 2k8. (Actually, this is probably not really surprising--a year can be quite a long time with notable effects on any community, and people are, well, people after all.)
I wouldn't go so far as to say that too much control over a game is a bad thing; I actually think that it adds value to the game. If you allow the players to customize options to their liking, it becomes easier to adopt the game in different settings, tailoring it to different target audiences each time. When I play Smash in a casual setting, I prefer to have items enabled to add a bit more variety and randomness to the game. At the same time, if I'm playing in a highly competitive environment, I tend to prefer items being disabled. In the former case, I like the fact that items might affect the game enough to let different people win who might not normally win; but in the latter case, I certainly don't want that kind of interference in a match of skill.
Now, that said, I'm quite frankly disappointed that the items decision at EVO 2k8 led to so much drama between the organizers and the Smash community. Sure, the items tend to add randomness to the outcome of the game, but if those are the rules, then the players might as well just deal with it. Maybe the player who has the best technical skill won't win, but the player who has the best ability to adapt to the situation will win. It might become a different sort of contest, but at the end of the day, it's still a fair contest.
Ironically, it's this same kind of random variable that SFIII:TS could use to reinvigorate itself. James Chen mentioned in his EVO 2k8 wrap-up that, despite an active, strong community, SFIII:TS feels like it has reached the highest level of play the game will ever see, with the same two characters dominating pretty much every top-level tournament. Alas, it's not possible to introduce items into a game post-hoc (this is another win for Smash: since it's so highly customizable, there are plenty of directions in which the game could grow even if it reaches this sort of plateau). However, it might be worthwhile for the community to try something new as a way to force players to try different strategies and techniques. A soft ban might be just the thing--but I'm personally not a fan of soft bans for reasons discussed in a previous post. As another alternative, the community might try to organize some lower-scale tournaments that outright ban the use of the top 3 characters (Chun Li, Yun, and Ken). This should get players to explore new dimensions of the game--as long as they don't shun the ban like the Smash community shunned the presence of items.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that too much control over a game is a bad thing; I actually think that it adds value to the game. If you allow the players to customize options to their liking, it becomes easier to adopt the game in different settings, tailoring it to different target audiences each time. When I play Smash in a casual setting, I prefer to have items enabled to add a bit more variety and randomness to the game. At the same time, if I'm playing in a highly competitive environment, I tend to prefer items being disabled. In the former case, I like the fact that items might affect the game enough to let different people win who might not normally win; but in the latter case, I certainly don't want that kind of interference in a match of skill.
Now, that said, I'm quite frankly disappointed that the items decision at EVO 2k8 led to so much drama between the organizers and the Smash community. Sure, the items tend to add randomness to the outcome of the game, but if those are the rules, then the players might as well just deal with it. Maybe the player who has the best technical skill won't win, but the player who has the best ability to adapt to the situation will win. It might become a different sort of contest, but at the end of the day, it's still a fair contest.
Ironically, it's this same kind of random variable that SFIII:TS could use to reinvigorate itself. James Chen mentioned in his EVO 2k8 wrap-up that, despite an active, strong community, SFIII:TS feels like it has reached the highest level of play the game will ever see, with the same two characters dominating pretty much every top-level tournament. Alas, it's not possible to introduce items into a game post-hoc (this is another win for Smash: since it's so highly customizable, there are plenty of directions in which the game could grow even if it reaches this sort of plateau). However, it might be worthwhile for the community to try something new as a way to force players to try different strategies and techniques. A soft ban might be just the thing--but I'm personally not a fan of soft bans for reasons discussed in a previous post. As another alternative, the community might try to organize some lower-scale tournaments that outright ban the use of the top 3 characters (Chun Li, Yun, and Ken). This should get players to explore new dimensions of the game--as long as they don't shun the ban like the Smash community shunned the presence of items.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Week 6: Community Spirit
In his Evo 2007 wrap-up blog post, James Chen draws attention to the excessiveness of some fighting game communities (such as Street Fighter III: Third Strike), asserting that the game might even be way too popular for its own good. Admittedly, if a game has too many not-so-good players, they can quickly fill entire tournament brackets, which effectively shields the entire community from the top players.
This is definitely a problem, but I don't believe that the community needs to take special measures to remedy the situation. For a community suffering from the aforementioned bloat syndrome, the biggest problem is that players lose motivation to improve just because their current level is "good enough." But this also means that it's easier for someone in the larger community to surpass the local champion; and as long as there community remains strong, someone should find motivation just from the fact that it's a reasonable and quite attainable goal to defeat the local champion. With any luck, such active rivalry for the title of "top of the lower tier" can drive the lower tier's collective skill higher, closing the gap between them and the higher tier of the "really good" players.
In essence, the "large excess" Chen refers to is very much like a clone of the whole original community in its infancy--just larger. Over time, this community should mature and reach the same levels as the previous generation as long as the community remains strong. (And if it's not strong, the larger community will stagnate without ever getting better; this in itself will induce a drop in motivation, leading to disinterested members leaving the community. In this case, the community might thin itself out.)
That said, I completely agree with Chen that a strong community makes a strong game. Without such a community, a game will receive much less exposure, attracting much fewer new players, leaving much of the game unexplored. No matter how good the game may really be, if this inherent "goodness" is not discovered by the masses, the game will always be forced to stay on the sidelines, overshadowed by the titans that are regulars at Evo2k.
This is definitely a problem, but I don't believe that the community needs to take special measures to remedy the situation. For a community suffering from the aforementioned bloat syndrome, the biggest problem is that players lose motivation to improve just because their current level is "good enough." But this also means that it's easier for someone in the larger community to surpass the local champion; and as long as there community remains strong, someone should find motivation just from the fact that it's a reasonable and quite attainable goal to defeat the local champion. With any luck, such active rivalry for the title of "top of the lower tier" can drive the lower tier's collective skill higher, closing the gap between them and the higher tier of the "really good" players.
In essence, the "large excess" Chen refers to is very much like a clone of the whole original community in its infancy--just larger. Over time, this community should mature and reach the same levels as the previous generation as long as the community remains strong. (And if it's not strong, the larger community will stagnate without ever getting better; this in itself will induce a drop in motivation, leading to disinterested members leaving the community. In this case, the community might thin itself out.)
That said, I completely agree with Chen that a strong community makes a strong game. Without such a community, a game will receive much less exposure, attracting much fewer new players, leaving much of the game unexplored. No matter how good the game may really be, if this inherent "goodness" is not discovered by the masses, the game will always be forced to stay on the sidelines, overshadowed by the titans that are regulars at Evo2k.
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