The Fighting Game Monetization Dilemma

Game Publishers, developers and the competitive fighting game scene face a dilemma.


Facts:

• Millions of copies of a fighting game are sold upon release (e.g. Tekken 8 over 2 million sold so far
• There are not millions of players playing Tekken online, or competitively or even who want to play competitively
• The streamers, twitchers, tubers, and e-sports hopefuls all believe the majority of customers who bought the game want to play competitively, or get gude enough to play competitively, and participate in the e-sports scene.
• Since there are not millions of players online at any given time, the publishers, developers and streamers believethat these people are all spectators and are watching fighting game content, but not necessarily participating
• The fighting game publishers and developers want desperately to find a way to not only monetize those logged on and playing the game competitively but those that are supposedly "Spectating"
• 6) The reality is that although millions of customers buy the games (e.g. 2 million purchased Tekken 8) the majority of those players are casuals and have no intention on ever playing competitively , and really only want to play, big brother, little brother, uncle, little sister, dad, mom, grandpa, friends and other family
• The casual players enjoy single player content, and fantasy fights against the their favorite CPU characters That's why the online scene doesn't have million of players online daily even though millions of copies were sold. If the casual players are not enjoying fantasy fights against the CPU then they are playingfriends and family just for fun.
• Publishers, e.g Bandai Namco, need to be able to sell battle passes, season passes, micro transactions, DLC of all types. The problem is only the e-sports hopefuls, and content influencers are willing to invest hundreds and hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours into the game All those casual players will trulyinvest into microtransactions and DLC if the single player content is extremely compelling. But here in lies the rub, the fighting game publishers don't really want to invest a lot of money into single player content because single player content is expensive, time consuming to make, and seriously eats into profit.
• Publishers such as Bandai-Namco that have big monetization plans for titles such as Tekken 8 have a dilemma because the majority of their battle pass, season pass, DLC, micro-transactions are largely only purchased by the e-sports hopefuls. In general the casual players want story modes, cutscenes, game modes, survival modes, team-battle modes, time-battle etc. These modes cost money, and the e-sport hopefuls and influencers typically look down on single player content
• To their absolute shock and dismay the e-sports hopefuls, the tubers, twitchers, etc represent the minority of customers who bought the game. Even the publishers don't want to face that disconcerting fact.

There is no doubt that e-sports hopefuls the streamers and influencers keep the game in the mouths and ears of fighting game players. But the reality is over 65% of the sales were to fighting game customers who only want to play fantasy matches against their favorite CPU characters, or against family and friends That means that if fighting games i.e. Tekken 8, Mortal Kombat I, Street Fighter 6 and soon to be Virtua Fighter reboot, have any hopes of maximizing DLC and micro-transactions, then they are going to have to work a lot harder, and spend a lot more money catering to the majority of customers who play fighting games. And that majority consists of casuals, noobs, occasional players, pick-up-the-game-and-play-10 times then quit, small cliques of friends, etc.

If the FGC streamers and influencers truly want a successful future, they should seriously start push content that is attractive to majority of fighting game purchases, i.e. Single Player Content