Final Week: Fighting Games and Other eSports

James Chen's recent wrap-up post regarding Evo2K10 and the fighting game scene mentions that fighting games have a good chance of surpassing other games (FPSs and RTSs) and becoming the top eSport in terms of popularity and viewer rankings. I myself have never played at a serious competitive level (the only fighting game tournaments I’ve been to are the Rice Cyber Sports tournaments), and I have no experience with fighting games whatsoever besides the Super Smash Brothers series. Even so, I can definitely see Chen’s viewpoint, and I agree with him in that fighting games have the potential to become top spectator eSports.

Fighting games are certainly the easiest to watch from the audience’s perspective. Chen’s comments about spectator confusion in many FPS and RTS games is spot-on; although I have decent experience playing both categories of games, I find that I never have fun watching from the sidelines. The fact that so much information is hidden from the players doesn’t bother you much when you’re playing, since it’s all part of the game and you usually have things that occupy your attention besides just the “action.” As a spectator, however, I’m not watching to analyze every little move the player makes. I like to see action, whether it’s an eSport or a physical sport or a Hollywood movie I’m watching. In terms of the tangible action, I don’t know if fighting games necessarily have the best moments, but they definitely have the highest density of “good” moments, and this is whether the other games fall short.

My biggest issue with watching FPS games, and in particular RTS games, is the length of a match. With fighting games, each round is typically a few minutes, and during the match, you know exactly how much time there is on the clock and how much longer the match might take at its longest—just like in a physical sport. FPS games might drag on for long periods with nothing going on but the players searching around for each other. With RTS games, so much of the time is spent preparing for the eventual clash; I can generally appreciate what the players are doing over these long dull periods, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching every such detail as a spectator. In the time it takes me to watch one complete Starcraft match, I can probably watch 3 or 4 complete Street Fighter or Smash matches (depending on the number of rounds per match.)