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.