WHY??? I DO NOT understand!!!!!!

I don't get it! I go to Japan, and there are VF5 machines freaking everywhere and everyone and there dog is playing them. Even a few girls and old guys in business suits with win/loss records in the thousands! This game is HUGE over there! the other fighters were barely being played and the VF5 machines out numbered them greatly in every arcade I went to (all in tokyo and kyoto i might add)

so WHY is this game not bigger in the USA? I have a hard time even finding a match online sometimes much less LIVE play with a human being beside me in my huge metropolis of Dallas Texas!!!!! Like seriously, WTF? I am just plain mad.

I understand that I used to play nothing but 2D fighters and nothing would "ever be better" but then i play VF and i have never looked back once I "figured out how to play it"

Seriously, I don't understand.

 

Do you really not understand why the scene isn't as big here or are you just frustrated that it isn't? Cause there's many, apparent reasons why it isn't as big here, and more than likely, won't be. At least for many years.

 

Games like Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur and Tekken happened thats what. Thanks to those games with all flash and no gameplay thats what casual gamers want now... all flash and no substance. So when they play a game like VF which lacks flash but has godly gameplay they feel put off and say "it sucks"

 

True sonic, and here's the true irony of it. B/c that fastpast instant gratification is what we want in our "free and easy" society, those games are more popular and thats what "we want". Yet those games suck in the long run, and thus fighting games are a dying genre, b/c we want games that suck and then we think they suck.

 

I don't know how much I really believe that... where I live, SC, Tekken, and so on are even more dead than VF, which is saying something.

The big games are MvC2, ST, GGXX, with maybe CvS2 and 3rd strike below those. Most of the players of those games seem to hold a lot of respect for VF, but there's just a lack of support. When Evo and other big tournies aren't holding VF tournaments, most people's opinion seems to be "why would I bother learning a new game when I can't go and play it at any of the events where I play the other games I enjoy?". Meanwhile, the tournament organizers are all saying "We can't afford to add a 6th or 7th game to our standard roster, especially if you can't guarantee a decent turnout."

The problem's kinda circular... we can't get the game into tournies because the scene is too small... but the scene remains small because there aren't enough tournies. Not sure what could be done to fix it. I think it's too late for VF5 now, anyway... just gotta wait and hope VF5R sees a release over here, and then give it another try.

 

By all means enlighten us.

 

Hey why don't we pool in money and buy a lot and make a school for Virtua Fighters? Yea right. Though if i won the lottery thats what I'd do I promise.

 

Tourneys don't make a scene, players do imo. The scene is small because people don't want to play the game.

 

I could actually teach a class at my school about that. We call em STUCCO's. My only problem is that I could only really teach people how to play with my character and maybe a little bit about others. Making a lesson plan is a bitch.

 

1. Arcades are or were a huge part of japanese culture, those virtua fighter became huge. Arcades over here are mainly used by young kids whose parents want to get rid of them for a few hours

2. Virtua fighter is not advertised at all

3. In the past there was no online mode, and finding another person or ,even rarer, a group of people to play this with was extremely difficult. And lets face it, virtua fighter without competive competition sucks, therefor people never got into it.

I think the virtua fighter community is growing though with online play, new people like myself are picking it up and getting better every day

 

Speaking for the States, but probably applies to Finland-land too.

-Gaming isn't as socially accepted in the States, though it is becoming more so. In Japan, it's not taboo to be a 30 year old business man who makes a trip to the Arcade after work. And there lies more Arcade revenue as the people with disposable income are older than teens and younger (generally).

-Partially dealing with the first reason, arcades here can't turn a profit, and when they do, they're rare, secluded cases. Be it consoles/internet/social preferences, whatever the case, Arcades are not in existence for profit reasons. Or lack there of.

-Regardless of how popular fighters may or may not have been, tournaments and 'high level' play are and always have been vastly unknown or foreign to the rest of the general gaming community. The 'superstars' or top players of fighting games aren't even known, there just isn't any interest as a whole.

-America isn't already great at it. We're behind Japan-ville because of the reasons above, and the fact we use to get games later than there. And when our country isn't already remotely on par with the rest of the competition or isn't vastly better, we seem to be reluctant to give a damn lol. See Examples > Football (Soccer) and Cricket.

-Dealing with the individual detail of it being VF. We have a bunch of people who just want instant gratification. Pair that with all of the ignorant statements of how deep and incredibly difficult it is to begin the game and you have a bunch of reluctant players who would rather play ____ instead. (Yes, I know the game is "deep" AND "difficult" to get into, especially in past iterations, but some people make it sound impossible)

-Then last on the top of my spontaneous list would be the lack of an established scene, which kind of correlates with America already being behind. When players decide they want to compete in fighters, they generally let their egos and wallets take over rather than what they'd enjoy the most, game-wise. If I'm a player wanting to 'get that cake' or fame, I'm looking to get down on say, Guilty Gear, CvS2, 3S, or the more mainstream titles like Smash and... DoA. Not some seemingly eclectic, bare boned community like VF (Which I'm not knocking, I fking love the offline community of VF, more than any other fighting game community I've experienced).

Enlightened?

And I actually really agree with SMB when he said:

 

just to add a little something here of my personal opinion. I kept hearing people say that VF characters' design is "boring", "plain", "unattractive", "lacking personality" compared to other 3D fighters. if only they know the ridiculous amount of customization we're allowed to for each character... VF characters are much more fun and attractive to look at due to the customizations. I mean, seriously, 4 costumes (5 in VF5R) and like, what, 80 items for each character? the possibility is endless. of course, we have to work hard to get those items, but still! it beats any "attractive" looking fighter of game X or game Y. it's, once again, instant gratification...

 

How cool your customization is in the eye of the beholder. The characters in other
fighters people deem cool are designed to be "cool" by default. Me? Quest mode
can kiss my ass.

 

VF PAWNS OTHERS.. Games like DOA only attract the crowd at time only because of the big jugs of ayane and her beach friends.. it seems like other crappy fighters like DOA follow the same pattern.. BIG TIME SEXUAL INNUENDO.. VF.. on the other hand is raw.. though i'm a noobie.. i'm sticking with it.. it's just ADDICTIVE. everytime i lose.. hehe..there's not half naked women to throw me off.. lol

 

I fully agree with this point. VF is infested with those who spout hyperboles on how deep/difficult/realistic/spiritual VF is. 70% of those statements are either exaggeration or flat-out BS that serve nothing but their fragile ego and scare away potential new players.

For an example, there was a guy online who tried to "prove" that VF is deeper than Tekken by claiming that each VF character has over 800 moves. Well, even Vanessa has no more than about 200 moves even counting all the variations of the rising attacks. Here was a guy who clearly has no idea about VF yet just like to spout BS to make himself look. . . I don't know, hardcore or something. If you are basing "deepness" on number of moves Tekken beats VF.

Sega itself has been trying in each iteration to make VF easy to pick up for a newcomer. (Just look at Lei for a proof) Let's not BS that VF is hard to learn. It's not a game that's hard to learn, it's just difficult to be very good at or become a world champion in, but that's true for almost any game.

 

My Reasons.

1)Machines are capable of bringing the arcade experience home cheaper.

2)Xbox Live help Makes America more anti-social in public places.Alogn with PSP's,Iphones and anything that can make being alone more peasurable.

3)No body wants to spend a $1.50 for a Game of VF5.

4)Sega Has no money to invest in making a game like VF stateside huge.

5)Thank Sega Corporate sponsors and Market directors who assume that america don't like their game so they won't focus on the US market.

 

You're half right.

Casuals say that VF sucks because it lacks flash and personality. It is the flash and personality that entices the casual player(s) to learn more about the system, so as to use it in the right situations.

I dunno why people say that casual gamers hate challenging games, when they fail to realize that casuals judge books by their covers. So you might as well make the cover of the book look and act cool for the casuals to open the book read it and become enticed with its level of depth.

I'm more amazed that it took AM2 10+ years to figure this out.

 

It partly has to do with the nature of fighting games. The fact that it took such a long time for any developer to come out with a decent, online fighting game has hurt the genre.

Fighting games are inherently multi-player. They just are not as good playing by your self vs the CPU. When the American arcades died, the fighting game died with them. With no arcades, the only multiplayer options for a long, long time was FPS and a few RTS games...

Thus, FPS is hugely popular here, it was the only genre that had online multiplayer for years so people gravitated towards those games...

With, IMHO, the first good, mostly-lag-free, online fighting game to come out being VF5 for XBOX360 the player base is just not there.

However, when these other fighting games start dropping with online enabled, the genre will come back quickly. There's nothing more exciting or personal in all of gaming than going head to head in a fighting game. People will remember that again when a few more fighting titles come out.

I have a feeling, after SF4 drops on console and "the masses" get their first taste of satisfying, online fighting, it will bring the genre back strong.

I think our problem right now, today, in the fighting game community is a lack of quality titles that have online play. Without arcades or online play, fighting games will die. It's one genre where you REALLY need other people to play the game with you.

What's the point of practicing all those nasty combos if you never get to use them on a person with some emotions to crush???

 

I agree with not enough/any advertising comment.

Remember that commercial where the "janitor" for lack of a better word, finds the tooth that jeffrey kneed free. that commercial was awesome. or maybe i was just a little kid, but i thought it was awesome and it had me hyped to play the game!!

 

While VF pwns other gamers (except Tekken, why it is so comes later), it can't pwn those games with guns. VF will never be as popular as FPS because it's not part of the American culture with guns. VF even have guns that don't fire, just blow. But here you have Bryan Fury with a shotgun used for a combo! (That's the reason)

That, and there's not enough advertising because "it won't enough money".

It's like the internet lobby is the arcade of the 21st century.