In my opinion, fighting games should be the ultimate esports.if you throw a League of legends or call-of-duty Match on the screen of your average bar and those without at least basic video game literacy will be lost. The breadth of camera perspective, action, and what’s possible is complex. Fighting games, on the other hand, are almost primitive in their simplicity.
Some games, like Tag Warrior, become more complicated. But essentially, the genre can be watched by just about anyone. At the most basic level, it’s two people hitting each other until one of them can’t go on. Things like super bars can be a little confusing for newbies, but the sheer side-view and character health bars make this genre the easiest to understand and expand the audience for competitive games.
I really, totally believe this. I’ve seen it myself, even when I’ve helped run very small tournaments at the local pub in the past – the older guys (regulars) who support the pub will find their interest drawn. They’ll start watching, and they’ll start asking questions. I think that lacking the basic cultural understanding of games based on real-world sports, fighting games have a unique positioning. They could be the breakthrough mainstream esports.
That’s what Capcom has believed for years, it seems. Ever since Street Fighter 4 pushed the flagship series back into mainstream relevance, the company has had lofty esports ambitions. As Evo grew from a hotel meeting room to a ballroom to Mandalay Bay itself, Capcom kept trying to expand the scene and give it more legitimacy — often with mixed results.
The company’s latest attempt to standardize things has made a splash again – the response was so swift and overwhelmingly brutal that it’s already been pushed back on social media, promising to “review feedback with the wider Capcom team,” which means taking outrage back to Japan. What’s going on…well, it’s probably a great example of the single greatest thing holding back fighting games as esports.
Unlike almost every other major esports genre, fighting games had a truly thriving grassroots scene long before money and sponsorship got involved. Of course, it comes from the arcade scene. People would gather in local arcades on fixed days throughout the year to make more and more formal tournaments. Things have developed. The arcade is on the way. You end up in a rivalry where regional pride is put in jeopardy as the best players from the Southern California arcade face off against their northern rivals; then the best of them go to fight the best in New York. The same has happened in other countries. Nerd culture has its own subculture of athletes, where scrawny, bespectacled lads fight each other, and sometimes even fight over in-game beef.
There’s often a WWE vibe in the fighting game community – except for matches and a lot of competition, it’s all real and unscripted. I’ll never forget when a competition resulted in a real life fist on screen, the commentator didn’t cut off the live stream, but screamed “YO MARVEL!!!” excitedly MvC beef has spread to The real world. And I’m not gonna lie: I love it.
Still, you can see that all of this is incompatible with big sponsorships and esports money. On the last generation of consoles, the fighting game community did a lot to clean up its behavior. But even so, companies like Capcom (who want to make the whole scene pro) and the scene itself (want those pro money without sacrificing the grassroots, bang-machine arcade feel).
The latest frontier of the fight comes in the form of a new Street Fighter 5 community license agreement — basically the legal framework tournament organizers must sign in order to host a Street Fighter tournament. While this is for Street Fighter 5, it’s fair to assume that’s also an indicator that Capcom might take on the esports icon sporting Street Fighter 6 as well.
The agreement divides tournaments into two camps: community events and esports events, which organizers may fall into based on prize money, number of entries, and the number of events they host each year. The protocol also contains a number of restrictions on how Capcom assets, such as the Street Fighter logo, can be used on streaming. There’s also a clause that gives Capcom unrestricted rights to use photos, videos and streaming footage from the event at will.
It’s important to note that basically any event in North America where a bonus changes hands will be considered a “community” event and require a license – even if it involves only a handful of people, a small amount of cash, and a few hundred live viewers. The rules presented apply only to North America; Capcom’s regional affiliates may develop similar rules in other regions.
David Graham, aka “ultravid” – a pioneer in the fighting game community and a lawyer who now specializes in gaming and esports – provides a good analysis of the situation. The point is, the community is not happy.
As ever, the FGC responded largely with sarcasm, hilariously declaring on Twitter that “you don’t run SF5 tournaments without a player license” in the same format
However, others are more serious, Compare with companies like SNK, they offer contest organizers prizes and gifts without legalese. One cry is almost universal: grassroots community events have always been the lifeblood of FGC, the oldest scene in competitive gaming – anything that kills the low-level scene won’t work – even if it helps electronics in other areas Competitive ambitions. Before abandoning grassroots organizations, the bulk of the community would simply take their competitive desires elsewhere, like The King of Fighters, Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat, or Killer Instinct (do it again) one, Microsoft). While the exciting goal is to have a reputation in international esports, those dedicated communities are the springboard to get there. Capcom needs them.
As we mentioned earlier, Capcom walk back soon. will now revisit the whole thing. We’ll see what the end result is. But that’s exactly the kind of bad-meaning blunder that a company must not make after the Street Fighter 6 promotion goes on normally. Meanwhile, Street Fighter’s endless back-and-forth between the community and esports continues.
