Critical Edge: Cut Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face?

[Alstein]

Ultimately, the pro leagues are going to do what's best for them, just like how EVO is going to do what's best for the Capcom community.

If you want your scene to grow, you ultimately have to do what it best for its community, which may not always be obvious.

My idea would be to partner with another major that isn't EVO, and declare that your nationals. If EVO wishes to have your game, it can, but having a close relationship with another major would do wonders for security and building a scene that is independent.

 

[Jaxel]

He basically accuses Evo of purposefully marginalizing SC games because of personal bias, even though they had good reasons not to include them. He also says the FGC was "shit" before SF4, in addition to saying the SC community is not a part of the FGC. Any way you slice it, those are polarizing opinions coming from someone many believe to be a community leader.

And open entry is not the only essential element of FG majors, because people don't just go to them to enter the tournaments. FG majors are also one of the best ways for people to play against competition from outside their area in casuals and money matches, or even challenge a top player on the spot, which are things they don't get to do very often. They're also great for holding impromptu side tournaments and promoting games that might not get enough exposure. I don't know how open to BYOC areas the leagues are, but I've seen at least one MLG representative say that they would probably not be at MLG events. You can bet that a lot of people will probably not support them if that's the case.

If pro leagues really want to jump into the fighting game arena, the best way to start would probably be to sponsor or otherwise help the current FGC ecosystem in some way. The FGC's player-based model is proven in a lot of key areas, but perhaps MLG or another league can help improve viewership or efficiency, or add to the prize pot.

Again, you're focusing on the wrong things and missing the entire point of the article. You're saying that MLG has restrictions on tournament sizes; I get that, 256 players are their max. But the point I made that you're also missing is that events like EVO and NEC are not going away! The community can't be mutually exclusive to one specific league... which is the ENTIRE purpose of my article.

Right now we are exclusive to the EVO league, and are at their whim. The point is CHOICE, in order to expand our game and bring in more capital for our top players. You'll still have EVO, you'll still have your majors with open brackets, money matches, challenges and side tournaments... There will still be BYOC areas. Why hinder growth because you're afraid of what might happen? Not to mention, when we talk about eSports, we're not talking about MLG specifically! There are other leagues!

 

[MikeBreezy92]

But no one is saying we (the FGC as a whole) that we shouldn't get involved. We just want to make sure that if we get in this, we won't loose who we are. A real possible reality. The only people who are against this are people who hold no weight in the community anyways.

 

[soakrates]

Again, you're focusing on the wrong things and missing the entire point of the article. You're saying that MLG has restrictions on tournament sizes; I get that, 256 players are their max. But the point I made that you're also missing is that events like EVO and NEC are not going away! The community can't be mutually exclusive to one specific league... which is the ENTIRE purpose of my article.

Right now we are exclusive to the EVO league, and are at their whim. The point is CHOICE, in order to expand our game and bring in more capital for our top players. You'll still have EVO, you'll still have your majors with open brackets, money matches, challenges and side tournaments... There will still be BYOC areas. Why hinder growth because you're afraid of what might happen? Not to mention, when we talk about eSports, we're not talking about MLG specifically! There are other leagues!

You're putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about tournament prizes, entry caps or majors disappearing, as they are not big concerns of mine. I do think that league events may impact some FG majors due to the sheer number of majors during the year, but I don't see them going away entirely, at least not any time soon. I brought up the casuals, money matches et al because they're things that pro leagues should be mindful of if they want the full support of the community.

And what does being "exclusive" to Evo even mean? At their whim? No game is so beholden to Evo that it suddenly becomes illegitimate after being passed up for something else. Plenty of people still play Third Strike, Super Turbo and a host of other games that haven't been at Evo for years (or in some cases, have never been at Evo at all). The reason SC or any other game hasn't been featured at Evo in the past has pretty much always been because the community hasn't demonstrated that it deserves to be there. Yet these games still have a sizeable presence at various majors throughout the year. You're simply ascribing way too much importance to Evo and its organizers.

 

[Jaxel]

Okay... I'm going to give you guys a scenario, but first, lets try to agree on something: eSports leagues WILL have fighting games in them. This is an unavoidable fact. It's not something that we can control. Can we agree on this? Okay, we are greed.

Now, lets say we follow Tom Cannon's advice and reject all support from the eSports leagues. What happens? MLG runs the tournaments their way, with their rules, likely pissing a lot of people off. This leads to many different possible outcomes. The obvious one, being that eSports leagues say "fuck it" to fighting games, and everything returns back to how it is now.

However, there is another possibility which people are forgetting. Since the FGC is not working with eSports, we end up having EVO majors and MLG majors on the same weekend. People may not like the way MLG is run, but the prizes are bigger. Sooner or later top players have to make a choice and decide to go with MLG because of the bigger pots. EVO events get smaller and smaller, and the FGC's control of the situation diminishes because they aren't working with MLG to rectify any issues. We all lose.

Now, lets say instead of we against Tom Cannon's advice and try to work with eSports instead. Now we at least have some connection with them, and we can offer our advice and try to fix the many issues they've had in the past (although, who knows if they will listen; but I've heard their recent Tekken events have been run ever well). We can help to try to fix issues, as well as make sure events don't compete with each other. Worst case? eSports leagues say "fuck it" and everything returns back to how it is now. Best case? We all win.

Now, Tocool asked in the 8wayrun chat room yesterday, "Why do we even need eSports? We've been fine for 15 years without them. Why do people suddenly think we'll die without them?" (paraphrased; yes, I do read the chat room, even if I don't always talk) This is an excellent question, which I don't feel has been properly answered yet in all the discussions in the FGC. Well to put it simply, its because of "escalation".

Fighting games are getting bigger, and people's times are limited. The number of fighting games coming out are increasing, and the amount of money being thrown around at major events is skyrocketing. We've been seeing a growing trend that players tend to flock to the bigger events and leave the less profitable games behind. A lot of players I know play Marvel and/or Street Fighter right now because thats where the players are, and thats where the money is... it doesn't matter whether they like the game or not.

Now, as stated before, eSports WILL have fighting games. The games featured in eSports leagues will naturally have the larger community because of the amount of money involved. We see this in the MOBA community. League of Legends, while having a huge advantage due to it being free to play from the start, has the majority of the community. And as other games come out, or go free to player; whether or not they are better is irrelevant unless they have some major promished cash in tournaments such as DOTA2.

So why do we suddenly need eSports, when we never needed it before? Because of limited time. If Soulcalibur V doesn't have any eSports leagues behind it (and I do consider EVO an eSports league, even though its "unique" in it's own right), we'll quickly be hearing the same things after the first 6 months: "I like SC5, but I see no reason to spend my limited time playing it, instead of practicing these other games which actually have huge tournaments". And sooner or later that common sentement becomes a downward spiral which turns into: "I like SC5, but no one else plays it, so why bother?".

In the past, a $200 payout tournament, and a $400 payout tournament for a lot of players wasn't enough to convince them to give up the game they preferred for the higher profit. But because of escalation, the margin of difference in payouts between the less popular games and the crowd-pleasers have become so large that they can't be ignored. Stick with a smaller game with a $500 payout, or switch to the less fun game, and try for that $5,000 payout.