The Fighting Game topic

Or you can go Smash route.

found myself getting engrossed in this NeoGAF thread which talks about the same topic. quite a few people point out what i tell people a lot - at the end of the day, the whole "casual vs. hardcore" debate regarding fighting games is more of a mentality thing than anything else.

best mentality to have when approaching a fighting game is usually blaming yourself for your losses, then examining your flaws... which most people don't do even in real life, so i guess in hindsight i really shouldn't be surprised that fighting games have a hard time appealing to casuals.

Isn't that the case for every non-team competitive game?

Games with casual content protects people's egos, though. So long as those casual modes are deep enough to appeal to them, even if they're not "really" playing fighting games, why in the world would you want smaller audiences?

You're not going to get a huge crowd actually playing fighting games competitively, but if you can get lots of people to engage with them, that's almost as good.

yep, pretty much. a lot of people on that thread i linked also speculated games like DOTA, Lo L, Overwatch and the like get more play time because you can just attribute your losses to your teammates ("my team fukin sux").

considering this is how the average person typically acts, fighting game are obviously gonna be a hard sell to most people... and yet companies somehow think they can pretend like that isn't the case. i don't get it.

then again, i'm not the businessman. maybe the short term profits from getting casuals' money really does outweigh all the shit talking about the game they'll do once they realize they're in way over their heads.

honestly i think stuff like Capcom trying to shoehorn single player content in Street Fighter V and Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite is a rather nasty case of misunderstanding your audience. the likes of Smash Bros. and Mortal Kombat 9/X got their casual appeal because they know exactly who they're trying to appeal to, and it shows in the production values of story modes. Capcom just seems like they're trying to get the attention of everybody and... well, i think we all know how that usually goes.

edited 15th Sep '17 5:31:29 PM by Freecom

Capcom should have put more effort into making a quality product.

Sure, their story modes suck.

But you know what? People usually don't care. The Emoji Movie made millions of dollars. Michael Bay's body of works continue to shatter records. China launched the Warcraft movie into financial success.

People as a whole could give a damn about how good a story mode is, but they'll be happy to have it so they can see cool stuff in between their button mashing.

edited 15th Sep '17 5:39:01 PM by Hashil

It has to be entertaining in the end after all.

How well did SFV sell compared to Pokken and Smash?

Also, has Brawl managed to outsell SFII?

Smash destroyed SFV in sales, and Pokken managed to outsell it fairly quickly. Rather that's still true for the latter I don't know, but Smash is definitely a significantly more financially successful game than Street Fighter V.

Pokken isn't remotely casual friendly, though. It's got a million problems all its own that are neither here nor there.

edited 15th Sep '17 5:50:14 PM by Hashil

Now that I think about it, comparing SFV with Pokken isn't very fair since Pokken is getting an Updated Re-release (oh the irony).

edited 15th Sep '17 5:52:49 PM by RAlexa21th

It kind of is?

On the one hand, Pokken came out towards the tail end of the infamously unsuccessful Wii U's lifespan as opposed to SF releasing while the PS 4 was still going strong, so it managing to outsell SFV is impressive in a way.

On the other, it's attached to the gaming world's second most popular IP and most people didn't, and frankly, still don't really know anything about it except that it is a Pokemon fighting game on the Wii U amd Switch. It's more complex on a surface level than Smash but seemingly not as complex on a surface level as a traditional fighter, and it's got cute animal characters in it and is exclusive to a Nintendo console, so the FGC could give two shits about it.

But it also has nothing to hold casuals for longer than a few hours since its story mode is repetitive and uninteresting, so in a way it's the worst of both worlds.

edited 15th Sep '17 5:59:56 PM by Hashil

that makes sense, because they have the fanbase of literally every first party Nintendo IP and Pokemon, respectively, to draw upon. when you think "hardcore games", none of those things are likely to be the first thing that comes to mind.

Street Fighter gets to draw upon the profits of people who, in the 90s, would gladly pay to get trounced by someone at an arcade cabinet and still manage to have fun with that. (and also people who would unironically agree with Combofiend's "characters are functions" statement.) way smaller audience than the above.

Smash is also a game with a million different modes and forms of content for all kinds of players. The IP itself is strong, yes, but if the game was bad who cares how appealing the characters are?

Pokken is a mediocre video game overall, and its sales reflected that. I love the hell out of it competitively but there's nothing there to warrant buying it outside that, and Street Fighter V is the same.

i guess while we're on the subject of casuals, here's Harada's take on the matter in regards to Tekken 7.

as someone who has a propensity for routinely calling people "stupid", stuff like this is depressing to read... then i think back on how Rune Scape's experimental "pvp everywhere" server flopped. how Minecraft's 2b2t.org hardcore survival server only gets traffic at all because of poor schmucks trying to find out why it's so notorious. how Soulcalibur V sold fuck all despite having really solid gameplay.

maybe the whims of transient casuals really is where the money lies. but, like i said before, i'm not a businessman. i'm that weirdo that goes around chasing niche titles that are likely to elicit a "he probably fingers his girlfriend real good" quip from random commenters.

Soul Calibur V had more problems than you think.

Game development is expensive, dude. The hardcore crowd alone isn't going to pay the bills any more. There simply isn't enough of them.

If anything Pokken's sales just add to the overall point about wanting the IP to reach as big an audience as possible. Pokken's sales might be considered medicore by Nintendo/Pokemon standards, but it's a hell of a lot better than a lot of other fighting games these days.

Basically this. It's like I said on the Marvel vs. Capcom thread that started this entire line of discussion. If you're gonna go through the trouble of getting a license based on an existing IP (or hell even just developing a game in general), nobody is gonna set out to not try and reach as many customers as possible. That's just not how businesses work.

edited 15th Sep '17 6:40:07 PM by comicwriter

In the case of Soul Calibur V, good gameplay indeed does not excuss generally mucking up everything else.

Also yeah you need to reach out to enough people. Gotta lay the bills somehow.

edited 15th Sep '17 6:42:09 PM by slimcoder

I also think the cast changeover hurt it as well, as with Street Fighter III years earlier.

And Soul Calibur's story while maybe not super exemplary, is intriguing and Soul Calibur V messed that up.

Pokken basically fell into the same trap as SFV: a strong IP (which Street Fighter is, by the way, albeit not nearly as strong as Nintendo's roster or Pokemon - there's a reason Ryu made it into Smash) alone will only take you so far. You can't just fart out a game with solid gameplay but nothing else worth talking about and expect it to succeed unless it's a smaller game on a smaller budget.

reminds me of something that was said on the Mv C:I thread (too lazy to find it again) on how a fighting game can have PS 1 polys and literally no textures but still play solidly and the FGC crowd would still enjoy their "shit sandwich".

which, when looking at me and people like me, doesn't seem too far off the mark honestly...

i need to stop talking about my shit tastes and draw the line somewhere, so i think i'll do it with this post.

edited 15th Sep '17 7:06:10 PM by Freecom

Relax, dude. I understand being passionate about competitive fighters, but the said truth of it is that that's simply not enough given the scope of game development in the modern day and age.

The FGC is so small relative to the number of people who buy fighting games in general that they alone aren't enough to make a game financially successful, thus content appealing to casual fans is a must nowadays. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to dig your teeth into a game for hundreds of hours getting better at it, but for most people that's not enough.

don't know what i said that made you go "relax dude" lol. honestly i need the occasional reality check.

it's still going to bug me till the end of my days that the elements of a fighting game that aren't the fighting game itself move units better than the actual fighting. but that's enough of that topic.