Fighting The Fighting Game Con

I know I'll likely catch flak from the fighting game community, and be passed over for future fighting game reviews, but what I'm about to share with you comes from a deep love, and understanding of a genre that has the potential to be good. Potential that is yet to be realized, because of greed.

Modern fighting games, for all intents and purposes, are a cash grab. Plain, and simple. Though the eSports venues, and competitive scene goers/participants would try and have you believe otherwise there is a reason no one else outside of the perceived viewership window is truly "getting good", and why we don't see new professionals coming into the spotlight as often as one would expect given the hype surrounding competitive gaming. The fighting games of today are ultimately, and purposefully being pitched at the most lucrative gaming crowd ever to grace the gaming industry purely for money sake. That gaming crowd being the casuals. Casual gamers have shown time, and time again they'll blindly follow games and gaming trends if they can look cool to their friends and audience. The keyword being "look". Developers, and publishers aren't dumb, and they fully realize what attracts gamers to the casual scene. They know it's a mixture of faux competition, bragging rights, and plenty of flash added in for extra special effect. What this means to developers is that they can develop, and shovel out incomplete games that simply look, and feel the part year after year with little effort put into the game's competitive infrastructure. They know they have the casuals conditioned to accept this same meaningless routine experience regardless of the lack of competitive value provided. That experience being a year long shelf life of the vanilla version, and other slightly upgraded releases down the line with a few new bits and baubles introduced to keep things fresh enough for casual consumer appeal.

The problem with this lies in the publishers' selling point. They lie to the casuals telling them through eSports hype that they too can become the next Daigo, or whomever is currently top tier. With mechanics dumbed down for that casual crowd, and characters built to be easily abused this only serves to give the casual gamer a false sense of accomplishment, and pride. For if their favorite character looks, and plays well in the visual spectacle they must be as good as a professional fighting game player. Sadly, this is only a facade. A pacifier for a child and their wet dream to be a hard working grown-up that's making it big in the world's eye. It's like the teacher giving everyone a golden star sticker for effort that never really amounted to anything. Much like the "give me" generation in the current political social sphere is doing. They expect praise, yearn for that praise, and feed off of it even if it is superficially given. Ultimately gaining a less than substantial feeling which everyone else who earned the same golden star sticker has.

Without the competitive at home aspect made fair and viable in fair and judgmentally viable tournament terms the casual consumer is merely left plopping quarter after quarter into a metaphorical 80's arcade cabinet quarter muncher that was built, and designed to munch quarters 24/7. They have fun, or at least they think they do, but leave the virtually abandoned arcade and experience with empty pockets and a ghost town of a playground that nobody ever visits or cares about anymore. I actually had a debate with some FGC members about this very thing. About how the at home fighting game competition differs from the tournament scene. Both are very different in nature, and targeted differently as a result. One being for the con job that is modern fighting game development, and the other the hype promotion thereof. The fact of the matter is at home you can play as you like, cheat however you wish, and look good doing it. You can even fool some idiots. At a proper tournament though there are rules and regulations set in place regarding characters, and how you use those characters. Exploits in the tournament scene are usually not permitted unless it's for show, and to build upon televised hype. Especially when there is a cash prize at stake. Unfortunately, it's the at home paying casuals who end up losing out on true competition, and never amount to top tier status, because they are led to believe they are just as good as eSports competitors. It is the casuals who keep paying for vanilla versions, and slight upgrades to buy into an overly saturated spotlight of collective individuals starving for attention in order to get their ego stroked even though they have the same damned golden sticker of non-accomplishment every other casually competitive (oxymoron alert!!!) gamer has.

Again, developers and publishers plan this out very carefully, intentionally, and methodically. They toss little John and Jane Doe a couple of cookies in the form of a character or easy inclusive mechanics that in all regards would be considered cheating incarnate to anyone who knows better in order to pat them on the back, and say "Job well done! Here's your golden star! Now give me more money!". All the while true competition is forfeit over purposeful unbalance, and a lack of true competitive values. None of the casuals in their moment of glory, and pride stop to think how they are being deprived of a valuable learning experience, or how having everything handed to them on a silver platter doesn't prepare them for the first minute in a real to life tournament. Nor do they think about how stupid it is to buy a DLC character that gives them an advantage in a game that's soon to be discarded, and upgraded to a slightly new version only to have that bought character given free, and a new exploitable character sold at the same costly price as the previous one.

This is where fighting games are. They have become a perpetual money making machine, a metaphorical 80's arcade cabinet quarter muncher. The next-gen hype peddler that whispers sweet nothings in the casual's ear convincing them time and time again to part with their saved milk money so that they too can look cool like the Jones's kids next door. I guess in a roundabout way what I'm trying to say is this ... You've been had. It's really bad. Unless you stop believing skills should be handed out freely with no effort applied instead of learned and earned you will keep paying for something that not only does you a disservice, but the genre you think you admire as well. Git Gud FGC!