On December 13 2011 16:43 trancey wrote: [TL'DR] UltraDavid feels the fighting gaming community isn't under the same tent as "esports" and would rather they be left separate. Their community has learned of the benefits from video streaming, PODcasts, youtube, and corporate sponsorships from StarCraft 2 but doesn't think the two communities could ever co-exist under the same moniker because of a variety of reasons (mostly, the backgrounds from which their community originated).
this TLDR is so broken.
streaming existed in FGC before SC2 came out. podcasts? we had podcasts for 3S on arcade. youtube? are you serious?
ultradavid also believes they can work with MLG *if* they have a lot of community support and work together and not against them. but one has to acknowledge the differences in scenes which have led to different development; it's not a fault of the community. remember that the FGC is being built now, grassroots; SC2 had so much to borrow from the Korean BW scene which was professionally developed. japan had the talent but never did anything to harvest their talent; it took MadCatz (remember them? they made memory cards and controllers that always broke!) to sign a Japanese player to a pro contract and now Japan is realizing what a difference good business practice can make.
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i also don't understand the want for more "professional" commentary. you have a fast paced game (or games) that can end very quickly. you have a lot of players that are not necessarily famous and you may not know who they are. in starcraft you put down your barracks before supply and the game changes dramatically, though the effects do not manifest themselves for at least a minute or two or three giving you plenty of time to talk about it and analyze. in 5 seconds in SF4, 4 important decisions can be made. it's not even close to being the same and they call for different skill sets and james chen and ultradavid do a superb job; i much preferred watching the EVO stream as opposed to actually going to EVO.
I read the other poitns, but they seemed all less important to me. Where i live and in basically all of switzerland there are next to NO arcades. There is no "place" to go to play Street Fighter/Tekken except private/half-private meetings... Therefore onlineplay is the by far most important aspect of the game. Yes, lag is an Issue and will be for a long time, but i doubt that any fighter will get truely big before it can be played online.
This is also the kind of complacency that the FG community looks down into. Don't have a community? Create one. This is how Melty Blood, an obscure game by FG standards, made it all the way to the main stage. They started by playing tournaments in a gazebo in a park in New York. Of course network play helped, but it was by traveling and being in-person at events how they made a prescence.
He wrote about a guy sleeping in a car, guys that were in prison... In General i felt he stereotyped the FGC very bad.
It is no insult. He is being realistic. It just shows how much the FG community has gone thru, instead of given everything in a silver plate. ESPORT people have no idea how easy they have it, especially the SC2-only crowd.
One thing I really didn't like about the article was that he tried to include things about broodwar vs FGC. Professional broodwar in korea is a shining beacon of impossibility and I don't think he should've grouped it into ' esports ' at all. Korean professional broodwar came from very similar roots as the FGC ultradavid describes.
In the fighting games vs broodwar comparison someone like ultradavid [ white, born in the western world ] has no idea how similar his FGC and the korean broodwar community is. It literally cost less than $1 to play starcraft for an entire hour back in the 90s pc bangs. Pc bangs were MORE NUMEROUS than any section of arcades in NY/LA/DC and korea was wired up for anyone to play. Broodwar in korea in the 90s was face to face, I'd argue even more than fighting games.
If you were good at broodwar, pc bang owners let you play for free so you attracted more customers. This is the same stuff that Ultradavid is describing in his FGC history. And although Korea is a homogenous society, low-lifes/commoners/college-tracks were all in those pc bangs together hammering out starcraft. And if ultradavid somehow thinks what he does compared to what commentators like Um jae kyung and the other OGN commentators went through...then again I posit that he is ignorant.
I like the FGC a lot. I think ' I got next ' was one of the best documentaries I've ever watched, and I watch a lot. I like ultradavid a lot more than most sc2 commentators, and i think Seth Killian is a fantastic voice and media presence. A lot of my friends are into fighting games.
All that said, I think broodwar should have been left out of the article. This post was actually about 3x as long but I cut a lot of it because it was negative. My personal opinion is that even if a big figure of the FGC like ultradavid thinks they can work with esports they could never become something like professional broodwar. Sc2 sure, but not broodwar. It's not that they are choosing to be careful and wary. They just flat out can't. Broodwar as a professional ' SPORT ' in korea is just so beyond what any fighting game [ ANY ] could achieve that its naive to think the same could be done.
I don't think Ultradavid tries to compare FGs to Broodwar, but Starcraft II. He uses "Starcraft" as a generic term, but is pretty clear he is making a comparison to the ESPORT SC2 people.
On December 14 2011 07:13 VManOfMana wrote: I don't think Ultradavid tries to compare FGs to Broodwar, but Starcraft II. He uses "Starcraft" as a generic term, but is pretty clear he is making a comparison to the ESPORT SC2 people.
Did you read the full article?
He clearly uses broodwar as an example when describing the different background of esports vs fighting games. He thinks that because broodwar was successful, investors and blizzard were just like ok, we should put money into this.
Broodwar was actually nothing significant until koreans put in the blood sweat tears and devotion to make things like Proleague/Kespa/OSL/MSL etc.... What I described, the 90's pc bang culture is very similar to what he described the FGC as. The main difference is the game[s] they are supporting. Certain broodwar games could be described as simply art....like watching a high-level world-cup soccer game. Watching daigo parry reverse super combo is not art....just straight up ownage.
I read the other poitns, but they seemed all less important to me. Where i live and in basically all of switzerland there are next to NO arcades. There is no "place" to go to play Street Fighter/Tekken except private/half-private meetings... Therefore onlineplay is the by far most important aspect of the game. Yes, lag is an Issue and will be for a long time, but i doubt that any fighter will get truely big before it can be played online.
This is also the kind of complacency that the FG community looks down into. Don't have a community? Create one. This is how Melty Blood, an obscure game by FG standards, made it all the way to the main stage. They started by playing tournaments in a gazebo in a park in New York. Of course network play helped, but it was by traveling and being in-person at events how they made a prescence.
He wrote about a guy sleeping in a car, guys that were in prison... In General i felt he stereotyped the FGC very bad.
It is no insult. He is being realistic. It just shows how much the FG community has gone thru, instead of given everything in a silver plate. ESPORT people have no idea how easy they have it, especially the SC2-only crowd.
Point 1: SAYING that a part of your community, that is big enough to be worth mentioning, was in jail is nothing negative? Well, to exagerate this a little... Is it also not negative when i say.. A part of our community, that is big enough to be worth mentioning, is raping teenage girls? See, i don't know where you come from, but it is not normal, nor positive or in some strange way "special" to have enough convicted criminals (serious enough to go to jail) in your community to make you feel to write about them when talking about your community in general. Thats, where i come from, normally the case when you write about some criminal organisation/group, not a video game community.
Sorry, i had no clue about the FGC before this article and there is next to nothing positive i can take from it, except that some of them are just as passionate as many SC2 fans.
Point 2: The "forming a community" stuff. I completly agree that "offline" or better "in person" events are more important than online tourneys/games, no matter the game. The problem the FGC has, is that to form a SC2 or Hon/Dota/Lol B I G community, you need the possibilty to play it online whiteout having to travel to somewhere EVERYTIME you want a decent game. Gathering some people that occasionally meet to play is never ever gonna compare to what online communities are able to do. You say the FGC just sais you should "Form" a community... We are talking about communities of thousands of people here, not 10-30 guys that occasionally meet in some guys garage, thats fun and awesome to do but thats hardly what i would call a community when comparing it to SC2 and what makes it big (we had something like this in Switzerland for SC/BW, but where did we met first? Battle.net). I know that right now, the lag is an issue (and will be for a long time probably). I would argue that you can forget a fighting game becoming truly BIG as an "Esport" before it is not an issue anymore or people don't care as much anymore. These small groupes/communities are awesome to play with and hang out with, i loved it, but they are not really what the fighting games would need to "explode".
Btw: I love playing fighting games and it's a shame that it's so hard to acutally play them kinda "serious". But thats how it is atm.
So, in short after reading that article: We're loud, abrasive, exclusionary and extremely passionate about this, so much so we have in groups that fight amongst ourselves, and that's what makes us awesome.
My first thought was that this was about gay pride?
But my second, more serious thought was honestly, if the group leaders who want their community to grow the way it always has with minimal support, best of luck. They know that people who are passionate about competitive gaming want them to grow, but the simple truth is you can't force them to change. They want to do it their way, and they will, and they are probably more passionate about their growth than others.
As a spectator who enjoys almost all competitive gaming, I want them to succeed. Maybe I'm not in the know why they feel the pressure to succeed now, and I hope that their course to stay themselves is the course the gives them mainstream appeal and growth.
Late Edit.
After reading my own last sentence, suddenly I realize that my own hopes are contradictory to their goals of independance. Ahh well. Hopefully you don't become a group that loved fighting games before it was cool. Be the group that loves fighting games before it was cool, while it was cool, and while you make it even better.
I did read the article. He clearly says Brood War, and I do agree with him that the reason money is thrown into ESPORTS is Korea's Brood War success.
But when it comes to communities, I think he talks about ESPORTS lead by SC2, not the Korean BW scene.
I actually agree with your original post in that he mistakenly puts BW with SC2 in terms of communities (I don't think FG people is aware that there is a division between BW and SC2 fans), but I don't think BW should be completely omitted as a cause of the current ESPORT scene.
Iirc I only brought in Brood War when talking about models of success that pro gaming leagues could use in bringing in and expanding SC2. BW was definitely one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that so many leagues wanted to jump on SC2 so fast. I've read about the conditions under which BW got popular but they're not relevant to what I was talking about. I understand that it developed in an arcade-like situation, that Korean infrastructure and culture were built in such a way as to allow it to succeed, that people were looking for something like it, etc. But for the North American FGC and SC2 comparison, which is what I was really writing about, all that doesn't really matter. All that was necessary to know was that BW had a very successful model for pro gaming. Comparing the North American FGC and early Korean BW would make for an interesting read just not terribly relevant to what I was writing about.
Anyway it's cool that you love your game. I like it too. But to the idea that there's no strategy in my games, no moments of art in gameplay? Obviously that's stupid to the point of hardly being worth responding to, but let me just say that yes, fighting games are very strategic games of space control, option control, and mixups, and there are absolutely times when the best players can make me go WHOA with the push of a single button. I don't care about the Daigo parry moment because he pressed toward a certain number of times, why care about that? I care about the strategic choices that were being made.
This is a little thing I put together a while back, year and a half ago or so, as a basic primer on how to watch fighting games: Including why the Daigo parry moment is interesting, why fireball wars are interesting, etc.
On December 14 2011 07:45 UltraDavid wrote: Iirc I only brought in Brood War when talking about models of success that pro gaming leagues could use in bringing in and expanding SC2. BW was definitely one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that so many leagues wanted to jump on SC2 so fast. I've read about the conditions under which BW got popular but they're not relevant to what I was talking about. I understand that it developed in an arcade-like situation, that Korean infrastructure and culture were built in such a way as to allow it to succeed, that people were looking for something like it, etc. But for the North American FGC and SC2 comparison, which is what I was really writing about, all that doesn't really matter. All that was necessary to know was that BW had a very successful model for pro gaming. Comparing the North American FGC and early Korean BW would make for an interesting read just not terribly relevant to what I was writing about.
Anyway it's cool that you love your game. I like it too. But to the idea that there's no strategy in my games, no moments of art in gameplay? Obviously that's stupid to the point of hardly being worth responding to, but let me just say that yes, fighting games are very strategic games of space control, option control, and mixups, and there are absolutely times when the best players can make me go WHOA with the push of a single button. I don't care about the Daigo parry moment because he pressed toward a certain number of times, why care about that? I care about the strategic choices that were being made.
This is a little thing I put together a while back, year and a half ago or so, as a basic primer on how to watch fighting games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd3riT6p9xU Including why the Daigo parry moment is interesting, why fireball wars are interesting, etc.
Sorry that you think its not worth responding to but you responded anyway.
To be absolutely clear, I am not saying there is no strategy, difficulty, or merit in fighting games. I am merely saying that fighting games [ take your pick, MvC, street fighter, blazblue, etc ] cannot achieve the level of something like professional korean brood war. I'm not even saying this is because broodwar is better [ which it happens to be, to more people ] but the statistical impossibility of brood war achieving what it did.
I will be the first to admit I don't know the most about fighting games. But you're shooting yourself in the foot if you think fighting games have had the art I describe like broodwar did.
Fireball wars. Ok cool East coast vs west coast. Ok cool. Daigo parry. Ok cool.
When daigo parry reverse super combos one of the best players in the FGC I just think wow he got owned. When boxer 3x bunker rushed Yellow into oblivion, I know for a fact Yellow is going home and questioning his existence as a human being.
When east coast 5-0s west coast, I think great the underdog won. When god of war JulyZerg win the golden mouse and the ENTIRE HISTORY OF ZERG PROGAMERS succed together in that one singular moment, I think east coast vs west coast is like an ant colony compared to the colloseum.
Mixups and strategic choices and on-screen space management. Ok cool When you see Flash play at 300+ apm against people who could be considered bonjwas in their own eras, and play at 4 places at once utilizing all those things like spacing, timing, and multitask...what do you have in fighting game that compares to this. Btw he does this shit in practice in his sleep.
You want me to watch a video about how to watch fighting games. It's your turn to read a Final Edit by Ver on Iloveoov or Savior and honestly say with a straight face anything a fighting game player has done compares.
Hm, I'd love to read something like that lol. I also kept very close tabs on BW back in the day, it's not like I'm new to this. I played it a ton and watched it a ton. In very early WC3, before I got tired of the game, I contributed significantly to a couple of the major online communities, posting a lot about strategy and digging in deep to dps and stuff.
Again, that's great that you prefer a particular game. But you clearly don't know jack about mine. Personally, I feel that fighting games are better spectator games than RTS. Presumably you feel the opposite, and that's great, there should be no hate or haughtiness on either side. But you'd do better to try to inform yourself first. I hope other people are willing to spend 10 minutes at least heh, cause I'm not gonna be interested in keeping this going if you're not willing to get outta your shell during the free time it takes to boil up some pasta.
Edit: Tekken used to be one of the major communities. Part of the reason was that the games are good, the other part that Tekkens were still being released during the 2D dead era, so it was the new stuff people played. For a long time it was maybe like, the 2nd biggest individual game in North America? But no longer, it's fallen way down. The last Tekken game was released in 2007 and the scene has been through some crap since then that hasn't helped it out. It's also had to deal with the resurgence in 2D fighting games since Street Fighter 4 came out. So those combined have meant that it's barely even a side game anymore, to be honest. It's too bad, hopefully Tekken Tag Tournament 2 changes things when it comes out next year.
On December 14 2011 08:11 UltraDavid wrote: Hm, I'd love to read something like that lol. I also kept very close tabs on BW back in the day, it's not like I'm new to this. I played it a ton and watched it a ton. In very early WC3, before I got tired of the game, I contributed significantly to a couple of the major online communities, posting a lot about strategy and digging in deep to dps and stuff.
Again, that's great that you prefer a particular game. But you clearly don't know jack about mine. Personally, I feel that fighting games are better spectator games than RTS. Presumably you feel the opposite, and that's great, there should be no hate or haughtiness on either side. But you'd do better to try to inform yourself first. I hope other people are willing to spend 10 minutes at least heh, cause I'm not gonna be interested in keeping this going if you're not willing to get outta your shell during the free time it takes to boil up some pasta.
I'm admitting that I don't know about your game. And I don't hate your fighting game genre or think that somehow RTS is better.
I'm just stating that objectively, factually, there's nothing that exists in the real world that shows that street fighter players are doing something more difficult, or even as close to as difficult as what the most top tier broodwar progamers do. That's it. It's not even to say hey my pros are better than your pros. It's just the way it is. If you want to listen to pop music, ok that's cool. But don't pretend like classical music isn't better in almost every way to any educated individual in regards to MUSIC.
Broodwar as a professional sport in korea [ not esport ] is more important that any fighting game ever will be to any nation is what my argument is. It's the nature of the game itself.
On December 14 2011 07:45 UltraDavid wrote: Iirc I only brought in Brood War when talking about models of success that pro gaming leagues could use in bringing in and expanding SC2. BW was definitely one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that so many leagues wanted to jump on SC2 so fast. I've read about the conditions under which BW got popular but they're not relevant to what I was talking about. I understand that it developed in an arcade-like situation, that Korean infrastructure and culture were built in such a way as to allow it to succeed, that people were looking for something like it, etc. But for the North American FGC and SC2 comparison, which is what I was really writing about, all that doesn't really matter. All that was necessary to know was that BW had a very successful model for pro gaming. Comparing the North American FGC and early Korean BW would make for an interesting read just not terribly relevant to what I was writing about.
Anyway it's cool that you love your game. I like it too. But to the idea that there's no strategy in my games, no moments of art in gameplay? Obviously that's stupid to the point of hardly being worth responding to, but let me just say that yes, fighting games are very strategic games of space control, option control, and mixups, and there are absolutely times when the best players can make me go WHOA with the push of a single button. I don't care about the Daigo parry moment because he pressed toward a certain number of times, why care about that? I care about the strategic choices that were being made.
This is a little thing I put together a while back, year and a half ago or so, as a basic primer on how to watch fighting games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd3riT6p9xU Including why the Daigo parry moment is interesting, why fireball wars are interesting, etc.
Sorry that you think its not worth responding to but you responded anyway.
To be absolutely clear, I am not saying there is no strategy, difficulty, or merit in fighting games. I am merely saying that fighting games [ take your pick, MvC, street fighter, blazblue, etc ] cannot achieve the level of something like professional korean brood war. I'm not even saying this is because broodwar is better [ which it happens to be, to more people ] but the statistical impossibility of brood war achieving what it did.
I will be the first to admit I don't know the most about fighting games. But you're shooting yourself in the foot if you think fighting games have had the art I describe like broodwar did.
Fireball wars. Ok cool East coast vs west coast. Ok cool. Daigo parry. Ok cool.
When daigo parry reverse super combos one of the best players in the FGC I just think wow he got owned. When boxer 3x bunker rushed Yellow into oblivion, I know for a fact Yellow is going home and questioning his existence as a human being.
When east coast 5-0s west coast, I think great the underdog won. When god of war JulyZerg win the golden mouse and the ENTIRE HISTORY OF ZERG PROGAMERS succed together in that one singular moment, I think east coast vs west coast is like an ant colony compared to the colloseum.
Mixups and strategic choices and on-screen space management. Ok cool When you see Flash play at 300+ apm against people who could be considered bonjwas in their own eras, and play at 4 places at once utilizing all those things like spacing, timing, and multitask...what do you have in fighting game that compares to this. Btw he does this shit in practice in his sleep.
You want me to watch a video about how to watch fighting games. It's your turn to read a Final Edit by Ver on Iloveoov or Savior and honestly say with a straight face anything a fighting game player has done compares.
Don't pretend to speak as though you're God. Comparing video games is exactly like comparing physical sports. Anybody who engages in an argument as to what sport is "better" is laughable, and is just as easily applied to esports. Don't believe me? Look at any conversation that has ever taken place between Soccer and American Football where both sides don't come out looking like complete retards.
I might disagree with some of UltraDavid's conclusions, but don't turn this into a pissing contest as to what game is "better," as if there's some sort of objective answer to that.
Mechanics are one thing, but if you judge games based on mechanics then we should all be playing games much harder than SC2 or BW. edit: This makes me think of Milkis being torn a new one by the community when he posted the exact same thing you posted but comparing SC2 to BW instead of SC2 to a fighting game.
On December 14 2011 07:45 UltraDavid wrote: Iirc I only brought in Brood War when talking about models of success that pro gaming leagues could use in bringing in and expanding SC2. BW was definitely one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that so many leagues wanted to jump on SC2 so fast. I've read about the conditions under which BW got popular but they're not relevant to what I was talking about. I understand that it developed in an arcade-like situation, that Korean infrastructure and culture were built in such a way as to allow it to succeed, that people were looking for something like it, etc. But for the North American FGC and SC2 comparison, which is what I was really writing about, all that doesn't really matter. All that was necessary to know was that BW had a very successful model for pro gaming. Comparing the North American FGC and early Korean BW would make for an interesting read just not terribly relevant to what I was writing about.
Anyway it's cool that you love your game. I like it too. But to the idea that there's no strategy in my games, no moments of art in gameplay? Obviously that's stupid to the point of hardly being worth responding to, but let me just say that yes, fighting games are very strategic games of space control, option control, and mixups, and there are absolutely times when the best players can make me go WHOA with the push of a single button. I don't care about the Daigo parry moment because he pressed toward a certain number of times, why care about that? I care about the strategic choices that were being made.
This is a little thing I put together a while back, year and a half ago or so, as a basic primer on how to watch fighting games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd3riT6p9xU Including why the Daigo parry moment is interesting, why fireball wars are interesting, etc.
Sorry that you think its not worth responding to but you responded anyway.
To be absolutely clear, I am not saying there is no strategy, difficulty, or merit in fighting games. I am merely saying that fighting games [ take your pick, MvC, street fighter, blazblue, etc ] cannot achieve the level of something like professional korean brood war. I'm not even saying this is because broodwar is better [ which it happens to be, to more people ] but the statistical impossibility of brood war achieving what it did.
I will be the first to admit I don't know the most about fighting games. But you're shooting yourself in the foot if you think fighting games have had the art I describe like broodwar did.
Fireball wars. Ok cool East coast vs west coast. Ok cool. Daigo parry. Ok cool.
When daigo parry reverse super combos one of the best players in the FGC I just think wow he got owned. When boxer 3x bunker rushed Yellow into oblivion, I know for a fact Yellow is going home and questioning his existence as a human being.
When east coast 5-0s west coast, I think great the underdog won. When god of war JulyZerg win the golden mouse and the ENTIRE HISTORY OF ZERG PROGAMERS succed together in that one singular moment, I think east coast vs west coast is like an ant colony compared to the colloseum.
Mixups and strategic choices and on-screen space management. Ok cool When you see Flash play at 300+ apm against people who could be considered bonjwas in their own eras, and play at 4 places at once utilizing all those things like spacing, timing, and multitask...what do you have in fighting game that compares to this. Btw he does this shit in practice in his sleep.
You want me to watch a video about how to watch fighting games. It's your turn to read a Final Edit by Ver on Iloveoov or Savior and honestly say with a straight face anything a fighting game player has done compares.
Don't get so defensive. David responded to "no strategy" posts like theBALLS, not yours. No need to throw a fit when he points out that the Korean BW scene is not relevant to the main point of his article. The "join us" message is coming from the ESPORT crowd, not the Korean BW scene.
What mozart contributed to music is more important than what kanye west contributed.
What top tier brood war progamers contributed to professional gaming is more important than what ' x top fighting game player ' contributed.
I didn't say broodwar was the only true esport or fighting games were easy.
Edit: But anyway this is going off topic. And it seems we've said what we need to. Neither of us are changing the other's mind so I'll just say you wrote a good article and I had minor gripes about it. If you gotta throw shit up on twitter to feel better about validating your own opinion or showing the world how stupid 1 guy on a forum that nobody cares about...go for it.
On December 14 2011 08:28 Ack1027 wrote: What mozart contributed to music is more important than what kanye west contributed.
What top tier brood war progamers contributed to professional gaming is more important than what ' x top fighting game player ' contributed.
I didn't say broodwar was the only true esport or fighting games were easy.
This is not an argument you're going to be able to win. You're attempting to speak objectively about purely subjective things.
Now you're also attempting to change the argument. Saying, somebody had a greater impact is measurable (I suppose...), but what does that have to do with anything? Dustin Browder has had a greater impact on esports than Boxer. What a pointless debate this would lead to.
You can personally see the beauty in BW because you're personally invested in it. It's ironic that you earlier referenced Boxer's bunker rushing of Yellow because that's the perfect example of strategy and mindgames being so important. Those exact same things persist in a fighting game but they simply happen much, much faster in the middle of a match.
EPT
