Mike Watson's take on Final Showdown's lack of support as an example of how games die in a community

I saw a couple people complain about the Sega Cup being in Cali and I can understand their frustration but that's pretty much the best place to have a such an event. Despite that being the best place look at what's happend. Now I don't live out there in Cali and I don't know why the support dropped off out there but I know how hard it is to sustain a community especially one in Virtua Fighter because I live in Mississippi and it seems like no more than 6 of us in this state care about the game but maybe we're not trying hard enough, I don't know...

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2012/...rt-should-be-example-how-game-dies-community/

 

I'm just gonna throw in my 2cent rant here. Get the damn FS tournaments off the PS3 Okay?! Most of us got 360's when VF5 online came out and that's what most people have. Can we just stop the ps3 only at major events thing?

 

all truth. and new games coming out didnt help. the effort was there, but the support wasn't. Even the east coast attempted to put in an effort with its East coast tourneys, Northwest with No Mercy Fridays and others - even majors putting the game as 1 of their feature event. still people stopped showing. its a shame, and even with this SEGA is still putting on an event for us.

I disagree that VF completely fell off but it is pretty bad. theres many places to start but lets just see if we can focus our players in america on this Sega Cup first...

 

its weird that eventhubs posted this statement from Watson but didnt even advertise the official Sega tourny thats happening at his arcade. anyway i went ahead and sent a news submission so hopefully they post it soon to offset the negativity thats going on in the comments section of that article.

 

Doubt the tourney need will get posted. online is serious, just look at the BG threads and Snake Boss threads, lol!

Hopefully people show up instead of being a DOAC-lite community.

+1 on having 360 used.

 

Kind of weird that this is popping up on Event Hubs now; I'm pretty sure he posted this on Twitter about 3-4 weeks ago (when LA Akira announced he wasn't running VF @ WNF for the time being).

I don't think the issue is as simple as "oh no one showed up because they're playing the wrong version". Building a grassroots community is hard, especially when you are one of the smaller games in the genre. Anyone who is mainly looking for competition in a fighting game, they're going to be playing SSF4 or UMvC3. The only people who are going to play VF5:FS are people who honestly enjoy playing the game. Which is fine, but you somehow have to get a prospective player's attention, and get it long enough so they can learn how to play the game (which is non-trivial for any fighting game). Why would someone put time into learning VF when they're having fun playing UMvC3, TTT2, Mortal Kombat, Arcana Heart, Chaos Code, or whatever other fighting game? Never mind taking other competitive games into account (ever see a LoL player try to play a fighting game?)

Honestly, with all of the money and attention flying around from competitive games in multiple genres, you need top down support or you aren't going anywhere (to be fair, Sega has shown some support -- much more so than in the past). The community can only really sustain things once all of the money and attention leaves (and that's still important!).

It could be worse -- this could be a Skullgirls fansite. D:

 

Another thing I have to say which is my honest opinion (and probably gonna be an unpopular one) but this site and it's members may have a lot to do with VF's waning appeal. I've been a member of this site since 2001. I'm a member of quite a few fighting game sites but one thing that set this one apart from the others was the general attitude of it's members. Throughout the years I've found this site to be quite tight knit, elitist, cold, prude and unwelcoming. Now I've never met any of the members here face to face(my face to face experience comes from people who don't post here) but if this site's general attitude is any indication of how this scene is in person then that must have played a big part in the current situation.

Reading some of the comments from that eventhubs link let me know that I wasn't alone with my less than stellar experiences with members of this site. With this site being THE hub for the Virtua Fighters series things need to change our else no one is going to want to play our game. The hard to penetrate userbase here will definitely make people not want to take the time and money travel and meet people in person. It's something to think about...

 

I've got to disagree with you here.

The members of this site/game are no different than the members of any other FGC. You will always have the people that do nothing but badmouth/trash talk/denigrate those of "lesser" skill. You will always have the usual folks that think they are the best in the world and act like it. This could be Tekkenzaibatsu, SRK, etc.

I've been a member of this site for quite a while as well (though I only recently started posting on a regular basis), and although VFDC has had its share of assholes, the LARGE majority of the members here simply like to talk about the game, hang out, and enjoy each other's company. I've found the members here to be exceedingly helpful and welcoming to new players that don't bring unnecessary drama with them (ie: not snakeboss/tuch_myballz/general trolls).

Myke, Akai, MarlyJay, and Shag have done a good job of keeping the small community of VF alive. If the members of this site are guilty of anything, it's for not spreading the word passionately enough about how awesome our game is. Alot of passive people on these boards. Myself included...

 

I always send a msg, "gg if you wan2 learn more about virtua figther pls visit virtuafighter.com" to new players I meet in rank. Sadly tho, some take it the wrong way and think that I was belittling their skills that's why I was sending them to VFDC.
Anyways, I've always wondered why VF is not that popular here in the west. Graphically, it was mile ahead of any 3d fighting game when it started. The fighter engine is still the best. I think is more on marketing.

 

Sucks knowing that I'm part of the reason VF died at WNF, I only went once before real life kicked in.

 

http://virtuafighter.com/threads/virtua-fighter-6.16975/page-6#post-344799

 

Sounds like repeating shit that never existed. There a lot more assholes in other communities due to their being more people in general. Never understood this line of thinking especially with the stuff that gets posted at SRK, especially ST threads or the older Capcom games. Same with DOA and Tekken. Ive me more pretentious assholes that play CvS2, ST, and Tekken.


No one here is elitist and the general consensus of people thinking VF players are assholes comes from people who ran into a jerk who said he/she plays VF, but really didn't, let alone actually good at it.


Your post reeks of making things up.

 

So my thoughts on WNF.
The Southern California VF community has always been a somewhat quiet scene. Even before WNF, our local meetup events have been a "who's going to show up today". No one really knows who will show up and who won't until the day of the event.

So flash forward to WNF. When the game was first released during the summer we had a pretty strong weekly turnout. Some original players that came back and new players that were looking to see what the game had to offer. With the pre EVO WNF as being our largest turnout. Then EVO was over and all the games had a lower attendance, but VF still averaged a turnout of 12 or more and becoming an official game of WNF.

So when you take into account the day that this event is on, the release of Tekken Tag, the fact that people went back to school, you can expect an average turnout of 12 to start to shrink week after week. All of the games at WNF's have seen an up and down when it comes to turnout. I noticed that prior to a big weekend tournament or at a launch of a new game is when people tend to show up.

I give huge props to LA Akira for trying to keep the scene alive and WNF allowing us to play our game at a venue week after week.

But VF is NOT DEAD. SEGA Cup is our opportunity to show the world and more importantly SEGA themselves that this community is something to invest in.

Hope to see you ALL THERE

 

If anyone does care about VF's tourney viability Sega Cup is the place to be. I don't care about the tourney viability, but I'm still going because I love this game and want to test myself in it. Enjoying a hobby with other like minded people is a lot of fun, especially in person.

If anything this community is too quite and soft.

 

Actually, SPINMASTER does have a point, not about the actual people on VF, but about the perception other fighting gamers have of us.

I think I am guilty of this myself, because back in the 90's, when VF was going head to head with Tekken in the fight for the 3D fighter market, I remember many VF players I knew in person(myself included) going around saying VF was the obviously superior game. At the time VF players were a lot younger, and there were shades of that immature "Mine is better" mentality like we see today with some of the Battlefield vs Call of Duty arguements. Many VF fans went even further and bashed SF, KOF and every other fighting game, which didn't go down too well.

Somehow that impression of the VF community has stuck for years and years, which is a shame. Somehow the way reviewers always cite "technically this is the best fighting game" has only helped further that image of us being "the haughty snobs drinking fine wine while all those other yobs are drinking beer and actually having fun." Of course, this image is ridiculously off the mark, but it wasn't really until VF5FS that other people started realising all the positive traits of our community.


Back on topic, Mike Watson is saying the same thing LA Akira and others on this site were saying just before VF5FS for console was announced. You want a strong community, you have to make the effort to be there. Many of the guys on this site went to tremendous effort, but the rest of us didn't turn up.

I'm sorry to say I'm one of those who hasn't made a sufficient effort. Other things in life got in the way. Not that I'm a top player, but anything that adds to the numbers helps keep things going. Here in Melbourne, we got some decent numbers at the 2 big annual fighting game events earlier this year, and at the very least, I'm planning to be at the next one to make up the numbers there. If we're going to have only a few events, try to make those as big as we can.

 

Really sad to hear about WNF. I really enjoyed watching the stream and seeing the players come out and compete. This is just further proof of why we all need to do all we can to support our local scenes.

Thanks to LA, Plague, Brisal, and all the guys that made it happen week in and week out. You all really inspired me.

 

Again, this happens with every game. VF is no different, it only stick throughout the years if you let it. People are lazy when it comes to this game and others, whether it's repeating stuff said by other people who have no idea what they are talking about or just had different experiences. Even when it comes to system knowledge of previous VFs or the current one, people are lazy (which lead to the "FS isn't real VF" remarks)


The other thing is, people are acting like this game is dead already. You guys/gals should be getting hype for Sega Cup instead of poutingF feeling bad for whatever.


Lastly, VF is the best ever. Not my fault AM2 knows how to make the funnest game around.

 

I wish I wasn't in graduate school so I could play VF all day. If only Sega had released it sooner.

Oh well, I'm still going to try to make it to Socal Regionals and the VF cup. Should be fun!

 

Repeating shit that never existed? LOL you gotta be kidding me. I'm not here to pick fights with members here using bogus statements. You make it sound as If I'm some new guy coming in here guns blazing with bold untrue statements that I had heard at SRK a week ago. I hate to be that guy and bring up join dates but once again, I'm not new here, I've been here since 2001 and what I said wasn't repeating what I'd heard, it was what I'd both seen and experienced.

The difference between this forum vs Shoryuken.com or Tekken Zaibatsu is the organization and maturity level of this place. SRK and TZ were and still are filled with children, ESPECIALLY SRK. Their forums get filled up with goofy pointless and sometimes out of control threads with loads of unnecessary drama. Their elitist pretentious assholes were laughable as they were the equivalent of some backwards visor wearing '97 Chevy Cavalier with a huge wing driving douchebag who think's he's cool but really isn't. VFDC was always generally a much more mature place with members who were very well informed. Also VFDC much like the VF series itself was very organized, clear cut and about no nonsense which at times the members and mods would be overzealous about. Namely "read more, post less" rule(which I don't disagree with at all) but if a n00b asked a simple yes or no question they'd get bombarded with a huge statement about reading more and posting less instead of a simple yes or no.

Granted, I should have mentioned that this place has lightened up as time has gone on thank goodness, but these days I have very little participation outside of the Goh forum so I don't see every and all changes around here. But to say that it never existed? Who are we trying to fool here?

Femto, your post totally reeks of you being in denial. "No one here is elitist"? Seriously? On an interent forum nobody is elitist? LOL I don't know what made you type a statement like that.

[edit]p.s. And if this place is even more friendlier than what I've claimed it has become as the years have gone on then that's even better. I hope we keep on being that way and putting forth more effort to keep the scene growing.