@@Undergamer12esports basically got the attention it got not because of interest in the games or events, but because of massive investment from the companies involved. When that money started to dry out (because of the aforementioned lack of interest), they started to collapse. FGC was built in an era with little to no developer support, so a lot of the larger FGC events already have the experience and infrastructure to survive without external funding. The fact that companies are adding money isn’t a crutch, it’s a bonus. Imagine if a company started throwing massive amounts of money at a speedrun WR competition. Yeah, it would get some attention, and probably a lot of entrants, but chances are the viewership won’t make that money back, and once the money stops coming in, the number of people running that game would plummet, decreasing attention toward the game even further. GDQ, on the other hand, makes enough money to survive and thrive, because they’ve already built their events with grassroots funding in mind
@@Undergamer12because the first esports were not designed to become such, but to just be good games that, with time, grew a competitive scene around them. New gen e-sports are immediately designed as such, and so are seen as a constant investment and source of money, which means they either become immediately huge or fail miserably.
I think a key piece of the puzzle that often gets overlooked is that fighting games are one of the few competitive genres that were built from the ground up to be played live. Like unless there's a big money prize pool sponsored by a big corporation people don't have much incentive to play Call of Duty competitively in an actual venue. But even with little chance at any real money people will organize a local fighting game tourny because fighting games are more fun live with real people in the room with you. That's the ace in the hole that only the fgc has.
It's great unless you're that one unlucky mf that lives in a remote country. Not impossible, mind you... just unlucky. I personally drifted away from fighting games for said reason. Got hooked in MMOs instead.
Most of the other esports games were also sort of built up from the ground up but I see what you mean. The FGC definitely feels more united and collaborative. It having many local events and communities is a huge thing. Offline events and communities are more long lasting and build deeper connections. I think this is one of the reasons why esports is thriving in Korea and China. They have lots of PC Bangs where they play together offline.
I'd also like to mention that everyone plays the same game in fighting games. There isn't drastic differences between casual and professional play like in other esports. Namely League of Legends where they have entirely different balancing decisions low level and high level play.
I think it's more that esports' fatal flaw is that once the system starts failing, it all starts falling apart. As a team, there are a lot of moving parts as now you have 5 players all working for an org plus backups plus coaches plus managers ... it can all fall apart pretty quickly if just a a couple or even one integral member gets out of sync, has to be benched or even fired due to drama. And god help you if the entire org goes up in flames. Plus small teams don't get that much attention, and USA teams have a nasty habit of importing talent instead of supporting home grown talent, leaving the small time teams to crumble once the new blood realizes they don't have a ladder up to the big leagues. So that upward mobility of draft season that keeps traditional sports healthy does not exist most of the time in esports. FGC though? It's made up of individuals, not orgs so if an org falls apart the FGC and the talent can just keep going. You are reliant solely on your skill, not some org's hiring practices for that upwards mobility. Plus if you sign up with a team as a sponsor, you still retain most of you individual identity and don't get lobbed into a enormous gray blob called 'TSM' or 'Fnatic'. Most people who watch J.Wong do so because he's Justin Wong, not because he's signed with Panda Esports. Most people who watch SonicFox do so because they like watching SonicFox, not because he's signed with EvilGeniuses. If your org crashes and burns or you have a contract disagreement, you're just paying for that plane ticket out of pocket now. If you're saintvicious, Aphromoo, Voyboy, WildTurtle etc. though? Your career and possibly even your identity lives and dies by your org affiliation, making it way harder to stay successful if the org bombs or you try moving to streaming. FGC is just better a making sure current and upcoming talent can survive.
One of the things that EVO does right that other games don't: Have several games at the event by genre, making a larger community overall allowing people to celebrate *several* games at once and not just one.
Other games communities are way too toxic towards each other for that to happen. Ain't no way league and dota gonna have a tournament under the same roof and not have violent crimes happen
@@MrChickenNipsI like what microsoft did at NOLA with Halo 5 and Gears of War 4 in the same event. But 343i and The Coalition have gon on to mess up their games especially gears 5
Its impossible to understate how incredible it is to have a local group run an offline tournament 20 minutes from your house that counts a qualifier for the Tekken World Tour and Capcom Cup.
As someone who lives in New Zealand, where tournaments exist for sure, but uhhh, yeahhh, reading that statement made me inexplicably jealous, but the grassroots community can be quite nice, easy to exchange words with the few people who even know what a KBD is 😅
@@forgedinforever2866 I'll admit my area is a LITTLE privileged, but the small city of Lexington Kentucky doesn't usually have a lot going on in terms of fighting games.
You forgot to mention that the matches are done in minutes. That plus being 1v1 makes them very different from team games like overwatch, league, and CoD
Also 1v1 are just so much more intimate in a way. No matter if it’s a grudge match or just a friendly match, it’s just something is there, and it’s good
@afffenkind1160 By that logic, Arena shooters would thrive with shorter rounds or smaller arenas forcing them. Which honestly, I believe. Bo3, 10-20 frag limit on small maps with 3 minute limits? Hit me.
My favorite thing about 1v1 games like FGs, is that having a close match with someone you never met till that moment, means that probably you guys are cool with each other now. Also the fact that fgc is open, you can just go to CEO and have a chance of playing against Justin Wong, etc
Our community straight up loves the genre not just particular games. We’re ok with dropping old games in the name of competition. And there’s love and support for those who stick to older games.
@@gameologian7365 I don't feel like that is the reason, almost every fighting game are always *very* similar (especially when you compare games from the same franchise) , also all fighting games share the same core and are extremely alike. Also a lot of people still compete in games that weren't even updated in years (for example mvc3) I don't think that is something bad though.
I'm sorry but I refuse to accept that Counter-Strike was all that interesting to watch for the hundredth billionth time, Esports in its best day couldn't match up to the Daigo EVO moment
@@shindeanhonestly watching FGC is much more cooler than other eSports like I can tell what's going on in fighting games but eSports like lol or FPS shooter always makes me confused and also fighting games is just entertaining to watch because of the game animations
Tyler 1 had to create his own league to allow players to gain traction because of how horrible Riot handles it It goes to show that it’s the PLAYERS who are the most important in keeping these scenes alive, it’s why this is the Fighting Game COMMUNITY, and not CORPORATION.
@@ThatWolfArrowFor real, the Melee community truly deserved the term "Fighting" in Fighting game with how much they need to struggle against Nintendo itself on a daily basis to even survive as a community. I can't think of any community more deserving of respect (yes there are bad individuals in the mix I know no need to point it out, but the group as a whole is absolutely mindboggling)
Even the personalities of the FGC are much more entertaining to follow than any other competitive game sphere. Because they're individuals carried by their own effort, their story is so much more compelling. Some hermit lab monster could just appear one day that no one's heard of from a country that had little to no presence and dominate the brackets and that's an interesting story.
Easy example, Tinker and Arachius at CEO 2021. You wanna know why I think about them alot? Because they're an old couple from Georgia who wanted to see how a tournament was run for their own fighting game tournament, so they joined up in UMVC3 pools to do so. Did they win? Absolutely not, but they were the winners of our hearts (Seriously, everyone BOO-ed when Rambam even got a hit on Tinker. more importantly, it's just another example of the strange and interesting people who join fighting games, and how fighting games aren't just about competition, but about community built around competition. Honestly, it's inspiring as hell, knowing that someone my dad's age played at a tournament. Hell, Tinker got a WIN in Losers. A Win! Even though she didn't won, I bet she's feeling proud of herself for that. Motivates me to open up +R and learn a bit more.
are you talking about arslan ash? came out of no where and whupped all of the best tekken players? or wawa came back from the losers bracket to completely dominate dragonball fighterz.
According to a lot of top japanese players, that happens all the time, where there are players that are better than them that only go to locals to play against friends as a hobby and dont participate on tournaments. Like some old folks that go to arcades after work to meet with friends, play some matches, wreck everyone includding known top jp players and then gggo home with their families, lol.
FGC is thriving because all it takes to participate at EVO (the biggest fighting game tournament) it your skill, a controller and be able to flight to vegas. Also the FGC has found players so good at fighting games in the most unknown territories, take Arslan Ash for example; pakistan wasnt a big community but when he won EVO japan and EVO and then he said: im not even the best where i come from you know that means even more competitors.
I've been playing games for 30 years. Fighting games have always been the only genre where someone could just show up, beat pros and make a name for themselves. In my mid 30s, nobody would take me seriously in cs or lol (those guys see 25+ as old), but in fighting games nobody sleeps on the old guy, because of experience and time put in. We used to play these games hardcore for nothing more than bragging rights and gas money.
Top 10 video game genres of all time: (subject to change) 10~6. MMO, Battle Royale, Horror, Metroidvania, and Turn-based Strategy 5. MOBA 4. Roguelike/Roguelite 3. Platformer 2. Soulslike 1. Fighting Games
The issue I see with the way e-sports runs its leagues, as someone who doesn't know much about them, is that they kinda blindly copy what physical sports do. However, with physical sports there's stuff like high school and college sports from which to scout, and, seeing that these are starting to come into vogue for e-sports from what I've seen, these would seem like prime sources for recruitment. The monetary barrier to make a team should also considerably lower, I feel.
Also to recuit a kid from school made sence, was the only place were a kid could play a sport properly ( rules, team, coaching, clothes, gear, gym, etc ) recruiting for Esports from academies makes no fxking sense, you just gotta see how they play in an online enviroment ( replays, game knowledge, teamwork, etc ) going to a physical place to scout someone makes no fcking sense for Esports
@@panchotz100 I see it more as a way to aggregate players, otherwise they will be competing against every single person in the world for attention. Furthermore, events that feature these players with others in their age range would likely be the way to go for good recruitment. I am admittedly just guessing since I don't know much.
Why do u think "lack of recruitment" is an issue affecting the bottom line of these orgs? The lcs literally has an import rule so they won't just fill their teams with Koreans.
@@TheNewblade1Speaking of, that's literally been the problem with the Overwatch League since day 1. "Today, we bring you, one group of Korean players we imported to America sitting under a San Francisco logo, versus a group of Korean people we imported to America sitting under a London logo!!!"
"makes for insane storylines for players" hits different for me cuz I had my second ever major be Evo, and they gave me the privilege of playing on the stage. I won and left the stage thinking "man I played pretty bad, but I was conserving my mental energy so its still fine," but twitch chat had a different story saying "HOLY SHIT THIS BEDMAN COOKING GOD DAMN." before I played I was thinking of dropping bedman because of his weakness and was losing the fun of playing him, but after being on stage hes now part of my online identity and I'm getting custom hitbox art of bedman and delilah.
I think one of the big problems with other e-sports is that they aren't spectator sports. When a non-player watches a fighting game, they immediately know what's happening. When guy gets hit, guy who hit him is doing well. When health bar empty, other player wins. Even when you don't know the technicalities, you can still tell who's winning and what's happening. But who, barring people who actually play League or Overwatch, know what tf is happening on screen in e-sport games? You don't get to see everything that's happening, and even when you do, it's unclear what you are seeing even means. It's interesting to watch for people who play it but too esoteric for people who don't. I always hated how artificial e-sports felt with their sponsored teams and coming out of nowhere. They had no history, no substance behind them. The FGC remains, at heart, a grassroots community who will always enjoy beating the shit out of each other, even if we go through another dark age.
Everything you say is spot on. Except for counter strike. It’ll remain popular and since it’s based in reality, it’s much easier to follow, and has been around for almost 25 years so plenty of history. I remember being at a bar and they had csgo e-league on and people were kinda interested. Can’t say the same for dota, star craft, overwatch, etc.
I used to think the same, but I'll have to disagree here. So I play both League and Dota, and a shit tons of FG (BlazBlue, StreetFighter, Tek, MK, GG, Tag, etc). I always think games like League and Dota have a very high level of entry, since you do need to understand what's your role and macro/tactic/objective, and that's on top of knowing all the playable characters' skills and tech. In comparison, FG is very straightforward. You see your enemy, you beat them, you win. Until I start introducing the games to my friends. I thought my friends, who barely play any games aside from the flash games, were able to pickup League in a week. Though they did struggle at first and still get spook by new champs, they understand the strategy and what to do once they start playing for a week. Meanwhile, my friends struggled to handle FG. They know they have to beat the opponent, but all the tech and footwork got them tangled up. And both the people who spectate get confused by both games. Think of League = soccer/football, and FG = boxing. Both are straightforward and confusing at times. For beginners, they only see the obvious thing (scoreboard, someone got KO, etc). However, for the fans and players, they see the techniques, the strategy, etc. All in all, I think the reason why FGC has been on the rise is definitely due to the natural growth and luck. You have to rmb Street Fighter came out in 1987. It has taken almost 40 years for its community to become what it is today. And that's not to say EVO didn't go through hard time. Multiple instances, it was thanks to the donation and effort from the community that it survives. Meanwhile, esports was artificially grown by sponsors and investors to be big. They want a return on their investment, which...yea goodluck with that. Even investing/sponsoring teams in normal sports usually is a loss, but they can take it due to the advertisement/return sales. Esports just haven't fine-tune that process yet.
The good part about local tournaments contributing to big invitations is that unknown players can become legends overnight. Sure, you probably won't win against the world-renowned player who flew in just stomp your local scene, but imagine if you do. Imagine if you just get close. Just from that one showing at a tournament that was probably within walking distance of your house, you could suddenly have made a name for yourself. You could start drawing an audience and sponsorship deals to your Twitch stream that you may have never have before. You can start building yourself up from nothing and afford to travel to larger tournaments like EVO and CEO. Before you even know it, you've become a legend. Compare that to trial of Sisyphus you have to go through for even the smallest chance of competing in any other esports league and it's not hard to see why the FGC thrives.
This is essentially what happened to MKLeo in smash, beating i believe Mr. R, a top player at the time which put him in the spotlight and the rest from there was history
Whats great about FGC is you have mini-goals like win more games in the next tournament, I think in team esports you're not even thanked or appreciated if your team is not second place if not the champion.
I think that the fgc is a lot more focused on individuals which allows people to kinda connect more with the players which helps out a lot also the games are just a lot quicker so it doesn’t feel like a drag to watch
Not to mention unlike every other eSports you can't see a random dude off the street beat a top player which makes for good underdog story. The others you can't see that but fighting games is everyone gets a chance if they can come and even then we did have online tourneies to and with more fighting games getting rollback, and I mean GOOD rollback, it helped fix a lot of fighting games issues.
Agree 100%. On top of the connection between competitors, you can purely focus on how YOU perform without having to rely on team performance or being scouted to a league as well. This focus on self improvement along with the ease of access to competitions allows for the constant influx of new and passionate players to find their ways into positions that other games are much more limited in scope.
Cause other esport² has so many gatekeepers and franchises, like in League you need to have some connections to be in a decent team and lick a few feet being the scenes.. where in FGC where it's always if not usually just 1v1, and suddenly some random guy made a name for themselves. Also the gameplay between esports² and your average online play is so vastly different, how you play in a FGC is mostly if not all the same when playing online. In a 1v1 game, I feel if I join every FGC tournament, eventually some event will have few pros and I will be in like top 10. And if I eff it up no one will blame me. ²esports that are not a one-man team.
I was one of the 7k players for Street Fighter 6 at EVO and yeah it really was insane. Pools was just an ocean of people, the line to get into the venue Friday morning according to my Google Maps estimate was about 2800 feet long. Staff had to go along the line and tell people if they were playing pools at certain time slots that they should go up to the VIP entrance instead of waiting in line.
@@awesome-yo3yx I did absolutely terrible, didn't win a single match lol. That's OK though, I'm new to Street Fighter, I'm a Soulcalibur and Tekken player typically.
When you get into FGC it feels like watching a whole anime arc. The rivalries, trash talk, villains, and toxicity made the fgc entertaining for a long time. Now the games are just getting so popular. T8 is next and i cant wait😊
one thing i think contributed to the success of the FGC is that games are just 1V1. So its much easier to gauge one's skill, and to go pro. You dont need to assemble a team and coordinate with them, you just say fuck it, go to salty EU and get your shit kicked in. You dont have teammates of any way shape or form so the difference between a ranked and pro player is deliberately blurred. I mean i got into some tournaments and even won a contender bracket. I made friends by going on those tournaments and i dont regret anything.
Even with the fgc being mainly 1v1, you still have team leagues like street fighter league, for example, that is still hype to watch. The fgc just fits competition and casual play like a glove.
Cause other esport² has so many gatekeepers and franchises, like in League you need to have some connections to be in a decent team and lick a few feet being the scenes.. where in FGC where it's always if not usually just 1v1, and suddenly some random guy made a name for themselves. Also the gameplay between esports² and your average online play is so vastly different, how you play in a FGC is mostly if not all the same when playing online. ²team esports that has more than 1 player per "team".
i personally still find team games fun with friends in a more "lets get serious" mode. see splatoon, but sparring with those same friends to get better and then going to the newbie tournaments were known in, whill always be better for me.@@MangaGamify
Evo 2023 was my first EVO and it was magical, I brought my wife with me since we also went to Vegas as a Honeymoon trip. Altho she had a passing interest in fighting games (mostly having played Soul Calibur 2 growing up) and tangential knowledge through living with me, she followed me through 2 days of EVO as more of a "con" type of experience (plus we worked on a Cammy Cosplay, so there was that aspect as well). however... when we sat down for the finals at the Arena, she wanted us to stay just an hour or so since she didn't realy care, we sat down at around 11 and witnessed Ghengis Don's incredible run and the passion and chants of USA USA USA completely captured her. We stuck till the end of SF6 lmfao. she is now a massibe FGC fan 😂
It’s a good time to be a fighting game fan and I’m so happy to be a part of this community. Seriously love you all, from the bottom of my heart. Let’s build this scene ever further.
Another important thing about open tournaments is that you don't need to be good to be a good part of the community. Even if you are seeded to go (and still go) 0-2, there's a lot of people to talk to, freeplays, other events and so on. There's also ways to contribute like volunteering to help the TOs, casting, etc... In esports, most of the time you are and will always be a spectator. Like sure, it might be engaging to some people in the same way actual sports are, but it sure as hell isn't as much as going to a Smash local and see that they brought a PS2 with Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and Tekken 5.
I can agree with this. I went to dreamhack this year and man it was so fun talking and hanging out with so many other people. Yea I didnt get far into the SSBU bracket, but still it was a really good time watching and talking with other people
Strive needs to be mentioned here, specifically. Sure, there were smaller titles with Rollback implementation - but it was Strive releasing during the pandemic with what felt like magical netcode that forced AAA FG developers to take RB implementation seriously (including ARCSys themselves, who released a Strive Beta with crappy delay netcode, which caused the ire of the FGC, forcing them to delay the title for RB implementation). The reason why SF6's netcode is as good as it is, is directly because of GG Strive.
Not quite. Capcom started implementing rollback in SF V, albeit badly. Their rollback was fixed in MvCI. If MvCI hadn't had other issues due to Marvel being Marvel, folks would have been all over it for online. For those aware of MvCI, they were not worried about SF 6 having good rollback, since Capcom had already shown they could do it.
I know about the Capcom history. They wanted to use their own proprietary RB, which is why it was "implemented badly". AS was humble enough (after getting yelled at) to just let FGC members like Zinac, that actually understood Rollback implementation, do their thing, and Strive essentially set the standard as a result. From what (admittedly little) I understand about SF6's netcode, it underwent similar consultation.
As someone who has competed in 3 fps games professionally and dabbled in fighting games since sf5, you hit the nail on the head with the path to pro. FGC is a breath of fresh air as a competitive player, also not to mention the games have way less bugs and bs patches.
I think an important distinction is that the FGC is more about the entire genre of fighting games as a whole. While there’s obviously smaller sub scenes within it for specific titles, and some are obviously much bigger than others; as a whole the FGC doesn’t exclusively wrap itself around one game. This allows it to grow, shed and gain fans, and overall be kept fresh with new installments. Lots of e sports classically on the other hand have had a tendency to do the opposite: be entire scenes about one game. Even if that game has a huge amount of potential for expansion and is retweaked or even updated, it’s still just one game being played for a decade. And whether or not there’s even a scene for a game is a gamble in of itself since obviously most attempts at jump starting an e sports scene won’t catch on. League wasn’t popular over night, it took time for it to develop into the sensation it became. Now there’s obviously other factors in play, many others; but I think the above is a big one for sure.
hmhm... I'd argue that street fighter is more or less the FGC. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but when SF is good, generally the fgc is also doing good, because it pulls more people into the genre. it's an oversimplification but I hope you know what i mean.
I think it's worth thinking about the amount of games. The fgc kind of focuses on a handful of really good games that can be practiced in similar ways much like regular sports. Whereas "regular" esports is all over the place every game is so different and teams want people in all of them which is just so expensive to manage
Not to mention fighting games have a lot of transferable skills that doesn't always apply in other genres. As a moba fanatic myself, hopping between league and dota is possible, but very difficult.
i think the other big difference is fighting games are majority solo. it's very hard to build esports communities the same way the FGC can when most other esports you need a team, hence why teams/orgs are more necessary for other types of esports. but also since fighting games are majority solo, it allows more randomness in who wins, a random nobody thats new to the scene could just straight up win competitions which is a fun storyline. also since it is more solo focused it allows people to follow their favs through their journey. it's kind of like why early league lcs teams were so fun to watch because teammates usually stayed on teams for multiple years. in recent years the talent has felt very replaceable so people don't get to grow their fanbases or follow their favs anymore =/
Solo allows more randomness? Isn't it the opposite since it's just you and your opponent and no other external factors that you can only blame yourself when you lose?
im talking about the big picture. obv game by game it's only you that makes a difference. but in team sports you need a team to even win, which makes it harder for a singular person to get big if that makes sense. @@rovidelarosa
I went to Evo and played in the 7000 player tournament. The love for the game and hype when tangible. I was out of the first day but it was great being there just to see the best of the best
Videos like this make me feel good about the community aspect we've got. However, I think one thing you're missing here is the economic piece. There has been a lot of churn, especially recently, in TOs, teams, and even full events. I don't think TOs should be in it to make a profit, however we have to consider that so much of this grass roots idea that we prize is the result of passionate people spending a tremendous amount of time and money that they're unlikely to get back.
I think it’s all about what it takes to get into these things. To make money playing Fortnite, league, or overwatch, you’ve got to not only find a team, which is easier said than done when most of the teams for those games are already pre-established, but you also have to rely on a lot of sponsors and brand deals and things of that nature. Compare that to fighting games, where all it takes for getting money playing street fighter is being good at the game. If I had to come up with a metaphor for this, big name esports are that one pop star that had a couple really cool songs a few years ago before falling off once people got tired of them, while fighting games are that cool local punk band that you’ve been watching for years who just blew up out of nowhere yet somehow managed to hold onto their integrity.
Most money made from ESPORTS (fighting game or not) are made through sponsors. You can be the best at SF6, but you still have to finance trips to majors which include travel, hotels, and other major costs.
@@richardsejour7731 Exactly the main reason FG isnt thriving as an esport before. Ure digging ur own pocket money just to join a tournament. Not everyone lucky enough to live on or near big city that actually has an event on them. Other competitive games however, u can just play at home, and when it comes to offline tournament, it usually alrd top cut and travel cost alrd being covered. Im not trying to shit on FG, but there is a reason why its niche for very long in esport scene. As for casuals, it run into same problem, playing FG online isnt fun, but trying to find people offline isnt covinient either, unless u alrd live in major big cities.
I think a huge difference between most esport games and fgc js that the fgc is basically a part of a fighting games DNA. You cannot get more personal and competitive (yes even fg with party mechanics and other non-competitive stuff) than a 1v1 (or team) brawl. Whether back in the arcade era where people lined up to fight against other or in the current times where people can just play online, there will always be tournaments, and small brawls because that is the essence fighting games. With most esport games, they were initially designed to be fun. People did take them comparatively, but the community of the games weren’t necessarily competitive in the same way you see in most fg. Like Halo is one of the best examples. Bingos themselves said they designed the games around its sandbox and to be fun. 343 twisted that and has tried to produce a game (infinite) that is balanced around the competitiveness of it (I’m talking about the weapon selections of the game and their usages compared to prior games). OVERWATCH is another good example. It was the most fun when the characters were designed to just be fun (and not overly unfair), but have been tweaked for the competitive scene. Not all esports suffer from this, but a vast majority were artificially brought into the scene by investors, than a natural progression in the game’s community. This is why I think games like LoL and Star Craft are still insanely popular as they too now have it as part of their DNA, just as has been done to the FGC. Another similarity with those games and fg is that they’re easy to watch and manage. FG is pretty much just 1v1 in most cases. LoL, there’s not a fight happening every second across the whole map, making it easy to switch camera location to find a moment of action or intrigue. StarCraft is a mix of both.
i think the most important thing is the watchability. Fighting games are easy to follow because of only 1 vs 1 and It got into action right away. Non-gamers can enjoy it as well. For other games, MOBA, MMO and FPS... etc., it's just too hard to follow if you are not the game's player.
Let's see how this narrative holds up a year from now once the new toy shine has worn off of SF6. There are negative indicators in the FGC worth caring about, namely the decline in the IRL tournaments that used to be the base of the scene. One of the very longest-running majors in the US (Northeast Championship) just announced this year will be their last, and we had already lost Final Round a while ago. Within a couple years we could very well be down to like, Evo/Combo Breaker/CEO/East Coast Throwdown and nothing else on that level. Southern California (which is only THE foundational region for Capcom games & Tekken in the US, mind you) hasn't had a major in years because venue costs are just astronomical there anymore. Beyond just majors, locals have had more of a struggle as well. A lot of places only get maybe 10-20 players for weeklies even in larger cities; for comparison, the early days of SF4 saw an explosion of random tournaments and the main Northern California crew having to cap their weeklies at 128! Top players also rarely go to locals anymore when that used to be the norm forever (because that was the only way to play). Maybe rollback was both a blessing and a curse?
How did you not mention MK during the dark ages of fighting games? As shitty as those games were they played a big role in keeping an engaged casual audience. There literally wasn’t shit to play until SFIV
A lot of the real creativity at that time was happening in anime fighters, and a bunch of those games never got a US release at all or were severely marginalized over here (think Arcana Heart or Aquapazza). You still had Guilty Gear & Melty Blood holding it down though! Also Soul Calibur 4 came out during the ~Dark Days~ and is actually still the best-selling game in that whole franchise, believe it or not. Tekken 5 was one of the most financially successful games in that series too - there just "wasn't shit to play" if you were a Capcom head.
Financially successful doesn't mean much when you are projecting to sell like 10 copies. And most people playing 3D fighters at the time only really played 3D fighters. Same with anime players. If people were stuck in their genres and no games where bridging that gap, then it feels like the variety isn't there. To this day a lot of arena fighter and platform fighter players are in that exact same position. It feels as though there isn't much to play to them because their niche genre's don't get many releases and that's all they are looking for. I meant less in the literal sense when I said there wasn't shit. And also I wasn't a Capcom head. I played every fighting game I could get my hands on back then.@@joshthefunkdoc
SF6 is just that good, TBH, it finally connected the two continents of "fighting games are niche" and "even I can play this, and man it looks fucking sick" I'm not sure there will ever be a more satisfying fighting game mechanic than counter Drive Impacting somebody. It's literally that " nope!" meme, the move. ALSO - FTX propped up most eSports.....and it's gone.
uh... because basically everything after league of legends got popular was artificially manufactured as a speculative investment under the assumption that a community to sustain it would grow under it. which means the whole structure of the esports scene is built on guesses and therefore ranges from barely working to utterly dysfunctional to blatantly corrupt to the point of incompetence? just my guess.
Pretty much most of the esports scenes, they're built on investment and pray they pay off. Dota 2 and League are one of the more successful ones and Dota 2's prize pool is funded by its own players.
The main devs are the founders of evo and creators of rollback netcode. I think the community is in good hands, i believe they said before they'll try to integrate the game with the preexisting scenes
@@Eemu98 Iirc they said they want to be part of EVO and the community but also have their own tournaments and prize pools (think Capcom Cup for SF). But yeah as you said, they got the founders of EVO and the studio who created rollback. Just pray Riot's executives play smart.
@@Eemu98 devs are good but the suits in Riot are another thing. With the way they "experiment" on $200 Jhin skin and expensive af Valorant skins it feels like the core gameplay of Project L would be solid af but the monetization surrounding it will be obnoxious since it's a f2p game
Fighting games are a niche genre that will never reach the same popularity as shooters or other genres that do not resist changes, but at least I give credit to the IP owners, they know the limits of their own capabilities and do not try to inflate the importance of their own games for the sake of their own ego.
It depends on your definition of thriving. If it means mainstream appeal like FPS, MOBA, Battle Royal etc, then no. But if you mean keeping your community aloat by focusing on your niche, then yeah. Even JRPG community is arguably bigger than FGC
@@uberculex Speed run is a thing and they have actual conventions, just not a competitive one. In Philippines and Indonesia, there was an annual even dedicated just for one JRPG series.
Esports die because they gatekeep new players. You have to have an agency and a team and it's just such a hassle getting noticed to be pulled into a team In fighting games, you just.... Win. If you win, you go places. And you're free to compete even if you're bad. The Arslan Ash miracle would have never happened in traditional esports. He just showed up, and won.
One of the things i dont like about the upcoming proyect L is that riot dosnt get the love of the fgc has for the fgc if the come and just shove money big sponsors and everything that investors want to see it may push sole other developers to make the same mistake but i trust that the fgc can thrive or in the remote posibility tht riot can have some sort of plan that doesn’t involve killing the fgc
The devs are HUGE supporters of the fgc so I have to give them a chance. Their whole basis for the heavy investment into netcode in to support the fgc.
One thing about the FGC is you aren’t gonna buy their attention. Nobody is gonna play a game that isn’t fun. Remember when MvCI dropped with all that marvel/Disney money behind it and everybody stopped playing it because the game was boring as Fuck?
Before watching the video and even without really knowing much about the comp scene im gonna go out on a limb and say it probably has something to do with companies going: "whats the least amount of effort i can put into the competetive scene to get my game on there" and doing absolutely nothing to actually, you know, get people to like it enough to enter of their own accord. Or even give them the tools to do that in the first place.
I don't know how many tournament scenes are like EVO but I feel like what really helps them is that a lot of the people that founded that scene are still involved decades later. They're passionate about what they've built and do what they can to safeguard that mentality. Many scenes in other gaming genres didn't really start that way. Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of people that are or adjacent to Pro players that absolutely love what they do but there always seems to be Businessmen in there somewhere or another pulling everyone's strings. Not that EVO doesn't have those people but they never appear to be in direct control of the Event. Or maybe they're just better at staying hidden, I don't know.
Rocket League still has most of the Esports staff from the beginning and they're really passionate. Unfortunately, Epic Games isn't backing RL at all at this point, so the Esport is stagnating with the game.
Not every game is capable becoming a spectator competitive scene. This works in real sports and in e-sports. Fighting games are just neat because you can have these smaller games still have competitive scenes, because fighting games are a genre that people often jump from game to game much more easily. So you can have multiple games with intermixing player bases. It's also a lot easier to have a grassroots tournament with such a simple 1v1 format. No need for teams or huge setups with 10 computers. All you need is a TV a piece of paper and a box to hold the buy ins for the winner.
I think perhaps the biggest thing other esports community’s missed in NA is that a lot of the people who watch the events and attend events, are people who want to also play competitively. And a lot of investors seemed to assume it would appeal to larger masses of people when in reality they should’ve stuck to smaller venues and ensured a profitable tournament structure, such as open tournaments so smaller orgs and teams could pay small entry fees and compete for smaller prize pools. As well as larger tournaments for larger orgs.
I know it was only a small part of the video, but it's so weird how now a days when the dark age of fighting games gets brought up, people say it's inaccurate/misleading but have flimsy reasoning for it.
The other thing is that the esports are directly influenced by if the creators like you or not. If RIOT decides that you are a bad person they just straight up make the game unplayable for you. We are seeing the hand of God the balances these games try to always tweak the scene for high level play and always ignore the core audience. It alienates the player base.
@@brunop.8745 riot has deliberately counter balanced champions and nerfed primary champions of pro players they didn't want to win. They posted in forums they deleted the balance patches were because of what the pro players said about China.
@@steve_account oof that sucks. That's why I think project L would start solid but eventually gets messed up by the suits. Not to mention the expensive $200 "monetization experiment" they're trying out with Jhin's League skin copying Valorant's expensive af skin pricing.
Fucking fantastic video, dude. Covered so many great talking points about why so much of the community is based on love. I love the mention of the open format because the first time I ever competed in BlazBlue my first pool was against GcYoshi 😭
Fighting games are the best competitive gaming genre. No need for a team means it has a lower barrier of entry and it's the easiest for normies to watch. My mom could watch a Street Fighter match and grasp what was happening in at least a basic sense. No such luck with MOBAs.
I don't see anything that is cool or skill about commanding a bunch of troops to destroy a base in starcraft or combining abilities with your teammates in league of legends, fighting games are and will always be the most skillful eSports, fight me but you are wrong to say that aiming better in csgo is harder than neutral, mu's, setups, combos, and inputs
@@cosmic5665 man the fgc looked so cool. They were one community of many games. But then I see this and realise you are the same as all others. “I liKe sO it Is gOoD, if i DonT liKe it muSt be dUm.” Other esports and fgc ones go hand in hand and help each other grow. Guess the fgc are to hateful in the end
@@unwweyrich4661 maybe I was being hyperbole and a giant idiot I apologise I hate being that guy, the internet does awful shit to people and I hate toxicity despite saying this
Always interesting to hear about the esports scene. Outside of the FGC, I occasionally watch starcraft. Both games are past their popularity-peak, but are still run through smaller events.
Maybe this was too obvious to include in the video but esports for single player games are much more resilient because anyone can just show up and play. If the game has a built-in ELO-style ranking system then there is no need for an external "pro pipeline".
I think part of it is how easy it is to understand whats going on on the screen is for a casual observer. You can see everything going on in the match at the same time. In shooters or mobas yoi can only really see one fraction of the match at a time and it usually consist of guys walking from point a to point b with some combat here and there, and most of the time the goal can be unclear if you haven't played the game. All fgs have 1 goal, kill the other player, 2 enter 1 leaves and the matches are quick.
Not to mention only 2 regions dominate at League on the top level (Korea and China) making Worlds predictable unlike in FG where it's more easily accessible and Cinderella stories are common
i don't think that's the reason, i think it's just that fgc is just pure bliss and peace, run with good and fun intention to create a wonderful experience of a lifetime, while eports is filled with evil losers who loves rigging matches to create painful psychological torture to extort money. The community is just a reflection of the inside of who are in it. Fun wonderful people makes wonderful community, evil toxic people make toxic community.
Fighting games are just easy to understand for someone that doesn't play them. You just have two players beating each other up. You can see each players' health bars very clearly, and it's easy for someone with no knowledge of a game to see what's going on and get an idea of who's winning or losing. It's similar to why some eSports like CSGO are still pretty popular - you just have 10 people shooting each other with guns and there aren't too many crazy abilities and stuff to confuse the audience. You show someone who doesn't play LoL or Dota 2 a match and they'll have no idea what's going on
When you mentioned JDCR being at a local for some Dojo Points for TWT, he really did do that. He went to a local near the Combo Breaker site (I think CB was that or the following weekend). I even got a picture with him! Cool dude!
Cheating has always been a major issue in other e-sports which isn't present in the FGC. Also, E-sports focuses on the entity and not the person. They want you to root for the sponsor/team and not the players. While in the FGC you want a person to win, not the entity that person represents. This is obviously excluding character bias. Also, fighting games are fast and concise. You watch people play, they play, then you watch other people play, and so forth. In one hour you can watch 10+ matches between other players easily. In other games you'll watch matches for up to an hour to find out who's winning. Only someone genuinely hard-core interested is willing to watch League for an hour for only a few matches to have gone through. It's easier to watch a fighting game you know nothing about than to watch most other games. They're boring on a casual level but fighting games are not boring on a casual level. It's easier to hook people into them.
I would say it's also easier to catch cheaters as well. I mean if during the button check you see a move that's stuck on turbo, call the TO. If something is fishy, call the TO. Conflicts get resolved very quickly due to checking the controller or the setup. Everything else is just kinda on them. If they wanna chug 10 red bulls before the match I mean be my guest. Just don't do dumb shit to your controller is all.
@@NrettG The only time I've seen controller drama at an event, excluding hardware malfunctions or a non-player controller pausing a match, was Fullschedule having a up-forward macro that was deemed tournament illegal even though Mr. Wizards approved it and forgot about it lol.
Its failing in the west because we dont have that kind of audience. We have these companies popping out of nowhere investing money hand over fist and offering contracts and salaries that are WAY too high for that their scene can really sell. The fgc is still grassroots. The top 1% of players (mostly from Asia) have sponsors but the rest of the community travels and participates with money out of their own pocket out of a sense of pride more than as a chance to become an e-celebrity and make money
so I'm at that point of the video where I need to comment this..... GLORY TO RAMLETHAL VALENTINE! even though I don't know what it means I have an unclaimed feeling to actually say it in the comments so here
I'm someone who began competitive gaming with Smash (and also Pokemon but I don't think this'll be super relevant to my comment but yeah Pokemon cool 👍) before making the jump over to Guilty Gear Strive as my first traditional fighting game. This video actually made me realize why Smash and the FGC have always had that separation despite being things that (in my opinion) should exist together. The groups that began with Melee in the early 2000s and the arcade culture of fighting games are 2 completely different groups. It feels painfully obvious now but yeah the arcade culture is what connects Street Fighter and Tekken and every fighting game that started out like that, whereas even though Smash ended up in a similar spot it started up completely differently. Hearing your summary of the current issues in larger esports were painfully relatable as a Smash player. We run open brackets like the FGC so we don't share the barrier to entry but things like money and sponsors are issues in the Smash community, compounded by the fact that official support from the developers is almost non-existent and when it does exist it doesn't go well that often. TSM and Liquid are organizations that had/have heavy hands in Melee and Ultimate and in addition to their cuts we also had 2 monolithic organizations of ours completely disolve (BTS and Panda) due to not being monetarily sustainable, and a HUGE fuck up by the CEO respectively. We lost a lot in a couple years due to a lot of these factors and the cherry on top is that Melee only has Rollback (and online at all) in the form of fan mods that Nintendo famously hates supporting, and Ultimate is still running on delay based netcode. I'm just glad that the larger platform fighter genre is finally picking up now. The genre as a whole is in a very promising state with a lot of games on the horizon this year and next year but Smash is hurting for sure. Overall I really want plat fighters to coexist alongside the greater FGC but I also understand a lot of the stigmas Smash gets labelled with as someone whose seen a lot lol. The Strive community is definently very refreshing compared to the no mans land that is Smash. Another huge factor that my brain completely lapsed on (which I'm deciding I'll just sloppily tack on to the end of this) is that the approach the Smash series has taken to bridge the gap between casual and competitive players has ironically caused a fair amount of complications in my opinion. It's basically impossible to agree on a universal ruleset mainly because of the way stages work. They weren't all designed with a clean fighting experience in mind and different people have a different idea of where the cut-off point is. We can't even decide as a community whether certain characters need to be banned (I think the ban discourse is silly there's nothing centralizing about any of the characters argued over) which is something that's been frustrating me A TON lately. But yeah, very good video and poggers clickbait title eeheehee 👍
And even if there is a timeline where Nintendo somehow supports the comp scene; the fundamental level Smash isn't designed and balanced to be competitive (as mentioned many many times by Sakurai himself) as it is meant to be played with items and the random sht on stages. Yes you can play 1v1 no items on final destination but the core design philosophies of the characters are still not meant for a high level fighting game.
@@Gigi-zr6hp This even goes a step further where I feel smash also hurts itself in the time matches take. Strive can be done in 10 minutes on average for a FT3 but smash will still be on it's second match by the time R2 of Strive will be starting. Nothing wrong with that as different games have different times but to the venue as a whole that can also complicate things.
This is a perspective through a very specific lens, though. League of Legends is huge here in Brazil and just broke viewer records in the last split and *massive* in Korea and China. It's not a worldwide phenomenon, mind you. I will say that it's a lot more common here to have try outs for team, they have a trainee team as well and it's very common for players to raise from Challenger's League, though
i can kinda answer that, its been year and its only the same teams on the top, toxic communities, bad monetization on the ones that are f2p, the only people that are pros are the same faces lack of opportunity for other people on high ranks even tho they're probably better than the pros, its rare to see new players rising, also the need to be on a team to compete
17:40 tbm, I think is the fact FGC games... you simply can not "blame your team" for your underperformance. Is simply 1 person raw skills, hard cold results, Beat ppl or get beaten. (At least until Project L realeases, lol)
@@AYAKXSHI Not quite. When some big LoL or CS team loses you can always bçame a player wasn't at its best that day or the team underperform as a whole, tactics didn't work out as expected and what not. While in Fighting games, you lose, you got outmatched. Plain and simple
@@lrdalucardart not entirely true in order to play at a high level you have to accept your own Ls even in team games there are no excuses you knew your role n you failed to perform n because of that you became the weakest link I won’t deny what you said about fGs because that’s also true im just saying personal growth etc is in all competitive gaming rather team or 1v1
Fighting games started from poverty, so these big prize pools that are only very recently popping up for the fgc had grown to that point organically. It's the difference between trying to microwave your food and properly cooking it with the stove, oven, etc. The microwave may get the job done faster, but it often comes at the cost of the overall quality. Large businesses tried to microwave their esports programs and while some of them may have gotten solid results, many were just left with a streaming hot mess.
If we are basing league of legends esports i think we failed to see that riot rn is undergoing on a lot of changes due to them committing a lot of game that are focused on esports such as valorant hence why league rn is kind of weird.
Another important thing with the FGC is the desire we have to see ONE ANOTHER become better. Tech used to be very "ace in the hole" back when games were credit-based, because losing matches meant losing money. That's not the case with the more modern formats (outside of an actual tournament); and since execution barrier is such a harsh thing to overcome, we've become increasingly able to extend ourselves to newcomers and help them get real feet on the ground.
what i am kind of getting is esports kind of needs a reset to go back to its roots. FPS tournaments started off as LAN parties between homies where anyone could show up and play. esports i think is dieing but what that really means is there is another reset happening for the esports communities.
My top 10 video game genres of all time: (subject to change) 10~6. MMO, Battle Royale, Horror, Metroidvania, and Turn-based Strategy 5. MOBA 4. Roguelike/Roguelite 3. Platformer 2. Soulslike 1. Fighting Games
All it required is games getting rollback and people can understand what is happening easier in fighting games. Like others said it wasn't artificially made. Not to mention the other problems behind the scene with the company. A few notable fighting game actual controversies not withstanding. It be good not to have companies put their hands in the FGC too much though cause they will fuck it up more but having a balance of support from the companies and still the grass roots will help. I remeber a video someone did for LGBT charcters in fighting games by Sugarpunch Design and the line "Anyone can fight as all are equal in the ring" and yeah. Random fuck can walk into a tourney and beat a top player. That's what happened with a Shrek Super Slam player because one dude walked off the street, played Red Riding Hood not knowing she was top tier and long time Big Bad Wold player left cause of how broken Red was and they not banning her and just said fuck it. Arslan Ash story is a thing in Tekken, you can see ANYONE at a fighting game tourney from different countries, backgrounds, ages from kids to dudes in their 40's who can still play because of muscle memory and knowledge match ups, playstyles, player controllers and so on, the fun different looking characters that connect with anyone, personality of players, Melty Blood memes of playing in the bathrooms where you have a ton of smaller side tournies you can watch to and people just enjoy shit. Oh yeah! Fucking losers brackets! A loser can rank back up and beat a winner and take it all!
I love the banter and main culture around the FGC. There are brainlets that take it too seriously but I love the goofy community. Diaphone having Badlands chugs riff on Romolla for her birthday was hilarious, and joking with grappler players about drinking glue. Lythero's videos vsing another team are my favorite kind of energy to a fight Its that level of expression and personality that brings me in, honestly.
It's not really that esports is dying, it's more that investments are drying up because capital is no longer cheap. As some here have mentioned, the non-FGC esports is generally inflated. Player salaries and event budgets are gigantic and the sponsorship/ad model doesn't quite work yet the way it does for stick and ball. That being said, I do think that most non-FGC esports will be scaled back with only the best performing games and their leagues thriving.
I think one of the reasons Evo is always so successful is that it is a Mecca of Fighting games and community While esports events are one singular game Instead of relying on one fanbase to show up and watch an event You get dozens of fanbases coming to a huge tournament that caters to players, artist, influencers. The passion of every single person there is amazing You don't just go for the games but for the community. Local tournaments run off this passion because it all builds upon itself Hell Yipes ran MVC2 tournaments through his basement and it became a super successful stream That very local and community driven passion keeps it honest and grassroots and no one forgets the humble beginnings
The skill gap between gamers and pros and real athletes is just unimaginable. I was global in CS and at the time could've imagined to badly replace a pro. I also did MMA and in no way would like fight professionally because I'd get my ass kicked. That's why fighting games are so interesting because there's an immense skill ceiling.
Why don't you like Smash Bros/consider it a fighting game in the same way you would for Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, etc.? It has 2 (or more) people looking at each other and beating each other up with various magical BS. If it's not a fighting game, what would you classify it as?
Because it's a video made for fighting game fans to jerk each other, and they don't consider Smash a fighting game (no, not even Final Destination, Fox only, no items or some such thing)
To try and answer with what I have seen on forums for this topic; Smash Bros and other 'Platform Fighters' ARE fighting games. They are not frequently "FGC" games. "FGC" can be a misleading title as it isn't always all types of fighting games equally. "FGC" stuff seems to mostly focus on 2D (Street Fighter / Guilty Gear) & 3D (Tekken) style games - the stuff from the arcades. The Smash Bros community originated separately, and while I have heard of some community cooperation and overlap in the past, with both good and bad results, but most of the time they seem to function separately. Thus, I don't think he was saying that Smash Bros isn't a Fighting Game - but that if you are searching things labelled "FGC" you may not find what you need. And vice-versa.
Some of the Smash stuff is rooted in old community attitudes regarding banning things. The "traditional" FGC prided themselves on not banning almost anything ever, on seeing broken bullshit as a challenge you can overcome if you outplay your opponent enough. This led to a ton of debate when Smash started earning consideration for Evo, most infamously coming to a head when Evo allowed items & Smash Balls in their one and only Brawl tournament. The wider Smash scene hated that decision obviously, and it took years and a donation drive contest to get Smash back into Evo after that. There's also older demographic differences that contributed to this. Basically, the FGC in the pre-SF4 days was a lot less white & nerdy than your typical esport...or, indeed, Smash. One of the earliest notable Street Fighter players wasn't even much of a gamer at all before - he was part of a freestyle rap battle crew and just fell into SF2 because his buddies would keep playing it at their local 7-11. A lot of the main arcades in the competitive scene also tended to be located in Black/Latino neighborhoods that would scare off the suburbanites. Hip-hop culture in general was a major part of the earlier FGC's DNA, and unfortunately sometimes that could manifest in dudes bragging about how hardass they are compared to the nerd children playing Smash or Halo or what have you. A lot of these differences have faded over time (non-Smash communities have become more open to bans, SF4 did a lot to gentrify the FGC, etc.), but that's where a lot of the beef initially stemmed from.
I havent watched the video yet but I have my own answer and I wanna see if it's similar by the time I'm done watching. The reason why the FGC has thrived while eSports is dying is because the FGC does not have an esports foundation. eSports cares about marketing, advertisements, selling merch and tickets. The FGC is not just a tournament. It's not just sponsors and ads. It's a community that loves and celebrates fighting games. The FGC is vocal and for the most part, the developers are responsive and respectful of our time. Also, for spectators, most fighting games imo, are easy to digest and fun to watch. You get personality in the FGC. Individual personality that develops into rivalries and organically grown stories. We pop off and get salty, talk shit, and either back it up, or people are glad to see us put in our place. It's also way more rewarding to get behind a player than to get behind an organization with a revolving door of talent as well. Time to watch the video. EDIT: Different words but overall pretty similar thoughts. Great video
