Working Title 3.24.11: The Tournament Scene – High Skill Only or No Fun Allowed (Part 2 of 2)

Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.24.2011

So is the Fighting Game Scene really all that bad? We already discussed what people see as the negative side and now it's time to kick them in the face and tell them to shut up. Well...maybe.

Welcome to the #1 Column to appear two times in the same week, WORKING TITLE! I know many of you probably didn't see it but there was indeed a Working Title column this MONDAY to make up for the missing column last week. So if you want today's column to make a bit more since or you want to see the counter-argument/rant then you probably should go read that one first.
But first, because I didn't do it on the Monday Edition and I know you all are DYING to know about the whole three games I played…

Working Gaming Update

Halo: Reach

Yeah, I am still playing this. For some reason the multiplayer has gotten its hooks into me in a way similar to what Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 did. When I am playing by myself I couldn't care less about this game…in fact I actually hate playing it alone. But when I get a group of my friends online we are party up and hit online all of the sudden his game becomes painfully fucking fun. I do wish the Matchmaking for Skill was a little bit better. There is no reason why a bunch of Warrant Officers should EVER be in a game versus a team of Mythics.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3

All this talk of fighting games and what not got me into playing it again. I am still horribly disappointed with the online portion of the game but at least the lag and network issues seem to be fixed. Now only if Capcom would stop being lazy gits and just do the goddamn spectator mode already.

Working Title: The Fighting Scene – High Skill Only or No Fun Allowed

So if you were one of the few people to read my column on Monday you know that this is pretty much about the now GIANT Tournament Fighting Game Scene. A lot grassroots tournaments have blended together in order to create an actual season and a league to further organize the ‘sport' to fit the mold of more legitimized e-sports movements like the Starcraft II movement over in Korea.

While that sounds good on paper more than a few people think that ‘The Scene' (as it will be referred to as) has reached a point where it has become too big for casual or newer players to actually have any fun. Now that resources are readily available to anyone who wants them you can go from a scrub to a pro in a matter of a few months which leaves the ‘training pool' quite low for people who just want to play the game and not those who want to end up getting their shit kicked on every weekend on a stream online full of sweaty people who use terms like "OTG" and "Pringles".

So you have already heard the argument for why the The Scene might be ruining the fighting game genre, but you know what? I think that if anything the The Scene might be helping it more than we think. We all remember the days of the arcade, we remember way back when we used to have to trek to the arcade, wait in line, put our quarter on the rack just to hope to play…and about two minutes later that game was over. What did we really learn from that? To really get good at a game and really develop skills we had to pump in money…and lots of it into a machine to get the skill going.

And then the home console came around and we got what we wanted the entire time.

Practice.

Now we had time to sit down and actually learn how to play with a character, you had time to learn the moves of everyone and The Scene was changed forever...and changed for the better.

You want to complain about The Scene making the barrier of entry too high for games? How is calling for a more skilled and nuanced style of play a bad thing? Gone are the days where you can spam one move over and over and win. Gone are the days where you have to ‘go easy' on someone because they don't know the buttons. While I do agree that some of these newer games could spent a little bit more time trying to teach you the basics of the game before throwing you out into the world to get your ass kicked. But still…is it too much to ask that players actually be decent enough in a game to hold their own in a competition if they need to?

"But I just want to play for fun!"



Yeah, you know who says that? People who can't hack it in a real competition. Games in general or a hobby, they are meant to be something to distract you from life and to entertain you. But the very sole purpose of a FIGHTING GAME is for it to be a competition. You vs. the CPU or another human. You put your skills to the test to see who the better player is. If the very nature of the beast is to be competitive how the fuck do you say you want to play it ‘just for fun'? No, you don't need to aspire to go to EVO or any other one of the tournaments but at the very least you should aspire to be…you know…GOOD.

"But I don't want to put that much time and energy into getting that good. It makes the game a chore instead of a hobby"

BUSHEET MUDDAFUGGA.

Getting skilled at a game doesn't make it fun? What the fucking fuck kind of panty-waste excuse is that? While practicing and grinding your way to a skill might not be fun all of the time, are you honestly going to sit here and tell me that somehow getting better at the game…and in many of the tournament players circles being the BEST at the game is NOT FUN? You are fucking kidding yourself if you think this is true. You play the game NATURALLY and you actually end up getting better as the game evolves around you. You play hardcore with skilled people, you play against the worst people and you learn new tricks to get around defenses. Hell, when you play JUST FOR FUN you might not realize that you are still learning how to play the fucking game. When exactly doing have FUN become a chore? Grinding out levels in an RPG? That's a chore. Doing the same level over and over again in a badly designed action game? That's a chore. The vast majority of Assassin's Creed 1? THAT'S a chore. Fucking playing a game until you get skilled enough to play with other like minded skilled people…for possible MONEY?

That sounds pretty goddamn fun to me.

What makes this even crazier is that with 20 minutes of searching you can find TONS of strategies, skill sets, moves, unknown moves, and just general help from any fighting game based website. A quick 15 minute scan of Shoryken.com can tell you A LOT about the game you are playing. You might even LEARN something. We didn't have these tools back then; we didn't have the wealth of knowledge that is available. I won't go as far to say that there is no reason why anyone shouldn't be skilled enough in these games to take it to a competitive level, but you definitely can't hide behind the excuse that "It's too hard." Man the fuck up.

And finally…this might be simply from ‘the bigger picture' point of view but if there is one thing The Scene is doing its making something like Competitive Gaming more viable as a form of entertainment. Any weekend you see one of the big tournaments online (or even the smaller ones) and you can see there are at LEAST 30,000 people watching. Do you think all 30,000 people watching have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game? Do you think most of them know what FADC + HK + LP + QCFP mean? Hell no. Do you think all of them are entertained at the high level of play going on?

Yes.



Just like ‘real' sports, you don't have to be able to play it to enjoy it. You don't have to be able to play Football to watch the Super Bowl and have fun. You don't have to be a golfer to have fun watching golf. You don't have to know how to fly an airplane to see that The Blue Angels are fucking awesome. The Scene might require a bigger learning curve and there might be some actual work on your part to get in…but from a purely E-Sports standpoint The Scene might very well be the thing that propels E-Sports onto a bigger stage in America.
So learn the game, play the game, have fun with the game and just know that if you get REALLY good at it you can test your skills among the best in the world.

And if you don't get really good at it? You can still be entertained by it.

Is The Fighting Game Scene bad for Fighter Games as a Whole?

Verdict: NOT GUILTY

The Scene is fight. It might get a little too exclusive for its own good sometimes…but nearly every video game community has that. Just the very act of PLAYING the game is still fun…when certain people get bored with that they want to take it to the next level. It's not like they are dragging you kicking and screaming to join them.

You can always just watch.



Yes, you have to watch this twice

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Working Question
Yes, this is word for word what I posted on Monday. Sue me. I dare you
Keeping with the theme of fighting games. Warner Bros. just came out and said that they will be throwing a 21,000 dollar tournament for new Mortal Kombat game to prove they are really damned serious about this being a fighting game this time.

So with all of these grassroots tournaments springing up over the years like Evo, Final Round, Winter Brawl (etc.) forming together and creating their own Leagues and what not. Do you think that the Fighting Game Scene will take off here with big money matches and tournaments similar to the Korean Starcraft Scene?

I say yes. Almost every weekend there is some sort of tournament going on for fighting games and they are getting better and more organized. They have sponsors like MadCatz and Capcom giving them special treatment and even last year Evo was getting a lot of exposure through G4 and Xplay (with Adam Sessler's commentary and all). So I think sooner than later we might see live televised coverage of fighting game tournaments.

I still await your reply. Also which side are you on? Do you think the competitive scene is ruining it for everyone who just wants to play or is the next logical step for the genre as a whole? I'll be back next week with possibly some Working Feedback…and maybe a new column. Who knows?

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams…and..MY 3DS IS IN THE MAIL. FUCK YEAH.