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mikadolurker

A Sign Of Things To Come: A serious thought about what went down at West Coast Warzone 5

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    So. It’s been a few days since it happened, but I think it’s time to talk about what happened at West Coast Warzone 5. I was going to cover the matches, talk about the sick Bedman play from MC|GcYoshi13, unfortunately there is a slightly more important thing that occurred. For one reason or another, all the sets in top eight were cut to 2/3, even grand finals. NTS|NerdJosh actually got somewhat robbed by the sudden breaking news after his set was ended prematurely so Mortal Kombat XL could start on time. Ladies and Gentlemen, we officially have momentum in the Guilty Gear scene and  I’m here to discuss is what to except going forward.
    To my knowledge, there has been no apology from the WCW people on this matter and I wouldn’t expect one. We got fucked and we have to hold that. So who do we blame is the next question on a lot of peoples minds after something like that happened. The answer is no one. Between the variables of the venue, it’s owners, sponsors, other companies, money, shit running late, it’s too hard to pinpoint where exactly the shit storm started. Don’t even think I’m not pissed either, fuck that bullshit. Seriously. Fuck that. Fuck it with Faust’s scalpel. I mean its taken me days to get it out of my system so I could think about this is a clear, objective fashion. You know what comes to mind though, the phrase “Pick you’re battles.”  When this happens again, and it will, we need to all take a collective breath. When SRK blew off MajinObama’s requests to mention the exhibition matches on their site, a ton of people blew up the owner/president/CEO/whatever the fuck he is’ twitter with hate. That was wrong. What that did was only burn bridges for the future, which is what we need to think about before anything. The future. What should we have done? In my opinion, we could have probably made some massive progress toward expanding the scene if we had just expressed our anger without going over the line. Shit happens though and not everyone makes the right decision in the heat of the moment, I fail at that crap all the time. I’m not going to just lay there and get reamed in the ass by some fucktard trying to foil what I love you know, but always exploding about everything (which is not the case for us honestly, more of a general thought on life) renders the noise we make invalid. We absolutely can’t afford to have that happen. One day, we’re going to gain some serious momentum and on that day Capcom, NetherRealm, Bandai Namco, every company is going to look at us not like we’re a collection of people but as a massive chunk of missed profits. We’ll be cash that they don’t have. When that time comes, they may seriously attempt to screw us. Fuck over our EVO matches, entirely cut us from majors, who knows but I put nothing past money walking over people’s values to force us into a bad position. I really hope it doesn’t happen but when it does, THAT is when we need to make noise.
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    After looking at what you guys had to say, I sat and thought about so I could take it all into consideration. No one is certainly wrong here, you've all made very valid points. Yes, Xrd will never reach the status of SF or MK in a mainstream cultural sense, it's like hoping that we'd reach LoL status. What is possible though is achieving a level like Dota 2. Even redwoods grow from seeds, we just need to be the fuckers who water that shit. Like this person: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s733/sh/36946ad5-7fbc-4389-9af3-62066adf4c8e/3c085c915d6e04db495b290d2d42628b . @BloodWolf_May was kind enough to translate Ruu's notes on May from his Japanese blog, please give it a read too it's incredibly insightful, but this is what I'm talking about. You don't have to be a pro-player, a streamer, a tournament organizer, or whatever to help the scene grow. Just do what you can. Hell, even just being kind to other players who don't practice our game in stream chats is enough. Post cool artwork that you stumble across onto reddit, cut together a montage of your local scene's best moments for youtube, lend an ear to people who want to learn more about Guilty Gear. It's all simple. And this is not a fucking call to arms by the way, not everyone has the luxury of time in their lives between work, school, and general bullshit to do things like this. If you want to just be a fly on the wall go for it and never feel bad about it! If you do want to help though, just have fun with whatever you do because that enjoyment is what other people will see and be drawn to.

    Poultrygeist brings up a good point too! We are some of the lucky ones in the community where our games are actually covered in tournaments. We're also all in this shit together though. MajinObama has said it time and time again and I can only agree with him on this subject. However, and I'm going to catch flack for this, I never fault the Smash community for anything they've accomplished. Almost from day one they've had to pour their blood, sweat, money, and tears into that shit to get where they are today. They didn't have Nintendo behind them. Hell, Sakurai the creator has even defamed the game in a Famitsu article from last year saying "Fundamentally, my goal with Smash has been to create an “enjoyable party game”. If you want to enjoy thrilling tactical gameplay, you might be better suited for other 2D fighting games." I don't care who you are, that shit would hurt to hear coming from any developer, in any game, in any genre that you cared about. It's only been in recent years that Nintendo has even really given two shits about that game anyways aside from making more money off of it. They've built their kingdom by hosting locals, self sponsoring tournaments, building a network of streamers, it's all them. I mean, I personally don't really enjoy the game all that much, but damned if they've done what we're trying to do! I personally asked Alex Valle, one of the lead figures in the SF community once about what he thought of the other fighting game scenes and all he said was "They've got to step it up! Be the change you want to see or some shit like that." If you want to see your game played more, find others in your area and organize a monthly meet up! Not enough people to even get a top eight together? Partner up with another smaller scene and try to work together to make a multi game exhibition thingy. Even if it's just four people in Bumfuck Nowhere sitting on a shit stained couch in a basement. Everything has to start from somewhere but no one else is going to do it for you. Fuck, I mean Majin was just a guy with a passion, same with Valle and look at all they've done. The acceptance bit though is something we can all make an effort about though. I can never say this enough, we'll never survive if we segregate ourselves.

   As for MLSTRM's comment about how companies are lending their financial support to the game to help them succeed, it's absolutely right. Luckily, we're on that list too as Guilty Gear players. Arcsys is working on establishing a competitive official league in Japan for Xrd to my understanding at the moment and by supporting them through watching the matches wherever they're released, that might just show them that there is enough interest in the rest of the world to commit some serious capital to this idea and expand it overseas. Will that happen? Who knows but it's certainly possible.

    Banoffee sheds light on some very key issues as well, there is a massive stigma in the general populace against things labeled as "Anime". It's just too bad that the issue can't ever really be solved here. GG, BB, P4U, all of that shit IS anime as fuck regardless of it's label. Like, there's no getting around the visual style of May, Bang, or Hyde. For some fucking reason SF isn't considered anime when its absolutely fucking styled that way, although I personally think that issue has more to do with the game being seeded into the international mainstream consciousness since 1987, long before there were enough fighting games to make those distinctions. Telling people to "... step out of your dumb twitter circles for five minutes [and] you'll see it." is helping no one however. Least of all you. You made some damn good points man, but when you take an attitude like that you only polarize people which hurts the credibility of your very insightful points. Like how you said "And do you remember Mr Wizard being handed a literal anime pillow on EVO's main stage in front of tens of thousands of viewers? Whoever that was, thanks a lot, fucking idiot." Yes! That is so fucking right it hurts man! Fuck that shit! It's degrading as hell to anyone's efforts as a player to be "rewarded" like that! I really do hope though that one day we could even take what you were talking one step further and remove our games from what we call ourselves completely. That one day we can just say "I'm part of the FGC." Idealistic hippie bullshit I know, but hey, dreams are nice right? You know what though, in future write ups I'll really take into account what you've said about using the descriptor "anime", after all even though I'm a fan of it myself I do still need to take people who may hate it into account too. Thank you for pointing that out to me, I promise to keep that in mind! 

Oh, and to This Man and EXWildWolf, I didn't ignore what you said, it's just your statements were just already in line with my own thinking already so I don't have much else to say about them. No disrespect intended and thank you both for your input on this issue. Seriously, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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Yeah that was pretty lame that the sets got cut short

lol at the idea GG can ever gain enough "momentum" to be a bigger tourney draw then SF/MK though, or make Capcom and NRS feel bad for whatever reason
This series will always be niche my man, just doesnt have the cultural significance to make it big. Even people who dont play video games know what youre talking about when you say "HADOKEN" or "FINISH HIM", but wouldnt know a thing about GG. I'm just glad Xrd is the current king of airdashers on the tourney circuit and has some kind of American scene. And as long as it stays that way, I'm good.

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This whole entire issue seems real jagged to me. It's fucked up that Airdasher scene gets this kinda flack at big majors like this. It happened at NCR where they only streamed top 4 I believe? Which was really stupid IMO.

You give the impression that you don't care about the other people who don't play SFV, XL, or KI as your main game, which is a problem How the hell are tournies supposed to grow and have notoriety when TOs are only pushing a certain few games with big pot bonuses? This is something that is really concerning to me.

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to be honest as a non GG player I already feel extremely unwelcome everywhere I go.  like I feel like GG is considered the only "acceptable" anime game and that if you don't play it you get tossed to the side with all the really obscure games.  but in reality we're all looked at the same way, that's why we have to settle for scraps at some majors.  half the time we only get one anime game run at a time because of some imaginary anime cycle, yet we get two Smash games and two (sometimes more) SF games.  i honestly think it's time we stepped up and respectfully (that being the keyword) aired our grievances with TOs and media outlets.  it's great that we have things like CEOtaku but i'm tired of us getting shafted while literally every other community gets treated well.

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It seems to me that part of it is also due to a lot of developers directly supporting the scene for their games (Capcom Pro Tour, Killer Instinct World Cup, Mortal Kombat XL Cup), and as such sponsor events and throw money around, and so TOs are more likely to give them more time.

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I've been thinking about this for a while and need to get something off my chest. Even in this thread I'm seeing the wrong behaviour. I'll propose at least part of the reason why GG gets shafted unfairly.

"Anime" needs to go. Anime games, Anime community, Anime FGC, just stop, please. "Anime" has a huge stigma in the west. It immediately brings to mind neckbeards with Sailor Moon hug pillows and weird anime clubs at your school. Look at it from the average gamer's perspective. Maybe most people don't want to be a "member of the anime community". Or to be associated with such a thing in any way.

If you all step out of your dumb twitter circles for 5 minutes you'll see it.

I'm not exaggerating, it's a serious issue holding back GG outside of Japan.

The more sensible people out there are probably thinking to use "Airdasher" instead. But that's misguided in a similar way - it's a subcategory that doesn't need to exist. You play Guilty Gear, say you play Guilty Gear, or fighting games. It's not hard. Or else you'll be stuck playing second fiddle forever.

Japan doesn't subcategorize themselves like this at all, players or developers. Arcsys has never referred to its own games as "anime games". Always fighting games or kakuto gemu or whatever it is. Take a hint. And follow their example.

It's really going too far now. Red Bull just posted a bunch of "Anime" and "AFGC" shit on their eSports site. CEOtaku, great an event as it is, is an example of how deeply rooted it's become, and now in an official capacity. Many other tournaments have what they call an "Anime Room". And do you remember Mr Wizard being handed a literal anime pillow on EVO's main stage in front of tens of thousands of viewers? Whoever that was, thanks a lot, fucking idiot. Do you see what I'm saying?

Don't get mad about your game being treated like a lesser thing when it's your own fault.

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That might've been possible back when GG was the only game of its type, but its far too late now. Once other titles started popping up that followed a similar formula, of course a sub-category was created. And I wouldn't necessarily say it was something that the GG community made by itself, but there's not much sense in fighting an accurate description.

And the anime stigma existed even back in the days of GGXX, in the sense that a lot of SF players and whatnot wouldn't touch it just based visuals. So I wouldn't blame it on the unification of the "anime community" as if it were something new. If anything, events like CEOtaku give a chance for the lesser games to take the stage for a change, instead of waiting on support from groups that can't or won't run tournaments with those games for various reasons. That's a good thing, regardless of whether or not you approve of the branding.

So while I agree with a few of the points you made, as a whole its a pretty moot point. The fact that you're posting on a website dedicated to GG and other similar fighters is proof enough.

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I have to wonder if being associated with anime even has anything to do with Guilty Gear's lack of mainstream popularity. BlazBlue has been very warmly embraced by the anime fandom, and the popularity of that series in the US seems to have caught up with GG, if not surpassed it. Enough mainstream titles being released these days have a distinctly Japanese aesthetic that a game being "too anime" is no longer a reasonable excuse for it failing to find a sizable audience. (I swear Squenix is intentionally trolling their fanbase with every new Kingdom Hearts game they put out, yet each one still sells a bajillion copies over here.)

Any number of reasons could be the cause of GG gettin' disrespected at big events, but I'd probably point to how badly ASW has the dropped the ball. This isn't me hating on the company, mind you — in my view, they're easily one of the top ten developers in the industry when it comes to pretty much everything except marketing. In Japan, their ability to actually sell their games seems to be slightly lacking compared to most of their competitors; outside Japan, their marketing is inexcusably dismal. They have virtually no presence in the US (and even less in other countries by the looks of it), and that's obviously going to affect the popularity of their titles at tournaments. Capcom keeps disappointing their fans time after time, but thanks to marketing they continue to be a household name among every demographic that plays games. How many people living outside of Japan who aren't a part of the fighting game scene have even heard of Arc System Works?

I can forgive ASW to a certain extent because they are a smaller company with more limited resources, but sometimes it looks like they just aren't trying that hard. The US release of Sign was such an unmitigated disaster that I'm surprised they sold as many first-run copies as they did. I know the shipping strikes that delayed the LE weren't their fault, but good lord, we're talking ZERO advertising. No promotion, no hype, no anything. Put part of the blame for that on Aksys, I guess, but ultimately this is ASW's show and they have to put in the effort to make sure people see it.

Better marketing won't make GG the new Street Fighter overnight, but any increase in visibility would help it immensely. They appear to be stepping up their efforts across the Pacific with Revelator, and now they need to do the same in other territories. I frankly don't see GG ever breaking out of its niche if they don't.

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Guilty Gear will never be the new street fighter or mortal kombat or whatever. It's a highly complex niche game with an extremely high learning curve so much so that the vast majority of people who like and play it regularly, including myself, aren't all that good at it. There's a barrier to entry that prevents people from getting into the game unless they want to put the time in to learn it and many just don't want to do it. It's unsurprising that it gets dismissed because it has such a small fanbase. And it is small. At any given time playing Xrd online has less than 50 people online in the entirety of North America most times of the day.

So instead of of expecting visibility or promotion, the fanbase should probably look to getting a better designed game especially when it comes to netplay.

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People often reference the difficulty of Guilty Gear as a reason for its smaller playerbase, but I'm not convinced. GG has a more complex gameplay system than some of its competition, but it's nowhere near as absurdly difficult to get a handle on as the chatter would lead one to believe. At a casual level, GG is actually pretty friendly to button mashing. You won't get very far unless you do your homework, but at least it isn't like most SF and KOF games where the AI will pound you into the dirt on the easiest difficulty setting if you don't instantly figure out how to counter all the shit getting thrown at you. Regardless of how demanding high-level play may be, the learning curve in GG is far from unmanageably steep.

In any case, a game being difficult doesn't automatically doom it to low sales figures. The Dark Souls franchise had sold almost nine million copies as of last July, and that number has since increased by another three million (give or take) if you include Bloodborne and DS3.

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On 4/22/2016 at 6:37 PM, Banoffee said:

I've been thinking about this for a while and need to get something off my chest. Even in this thread I'm seeing the wrong behaviour. I'll propose at least part of the reason why GG gets shafted unfairly.

"Anime" needs to go. Anime games, Anime community, Anime FGC, just stop, please. "Anime" has a huge stigma in the west. It immediately brings to mind neckbeards with Sailor Moon hug pillows and weird anime clubs at your school. Look at it from the average gamer's perspective. Maybe most people don't want to be a "member of the anime community". Or to be associated with such a thing in any way.

If you all step out of your dumb twitter circles for 5 minutes you'll see it.

I'm not exaggerating, it's a serious issue holding back GG outside of Japan.

The more sensible people out there are probably thinking to use "Airdasher" instead. But that's misguided in a similar way - it's a subcategory that doesn't need to exist. You play Guilty Gear, say you play Guilty Gear, or fighting games. It's not hard. Or else you'll be stuck playing second fiddle forever.

Japan doesn't subcategorize themselves like this at all, players or developers. Arcsys has never referred to its own games as "anime games". Always fighting games or kakuto gemu or whatever it is. Take a hint. And follow their example.

It's really going too far now. Red Bull just posted a bunch of "Anime" and "AFGC" shit on their eSports site. CEOtaku, great an event as it is, is an example of how deeply rooted it's become, and now in an official capacity. Many other tournaments have what they call an "Anime Room". And do you remember Mr Wizard being handed a literal anime pillow on EVO's main stage in front of tens of thousands of viewers? Whoever that was, thanks a lot, fucking idiot. Do you see what I'm saying?

Don't get mad about your game being treated like a lesser thing when it's your own fault.

Yes and no.  

The thing is, fighting game subcommunities are inevitable because of how different games are.  People who play SF aren't necessarily going to play 3D games or Western games or Smash or...let's call them fast paced high mobility games.  These subcategories exist for an obvious reason, and that is that there are specific types of fighting games that do things in a specific way.  This isn't the problem and I know you're not trying to imply that it is, but you can't be surprised that not every style of fighter appeals to every player.  Just like every other genre has subcategories, so do fighters.

Now onto your actual point, for better or worse you are right that there is a stigma against "anime" as a concept in the west.  But believe it or not, GG has never been immune to this.  Even before BB and the like existed, people knew GG as "that fighting game with the heavy metal references and the anime art style."  Granted, this is a very vital part of GG's identity and if it threw that away it would probably instantly lose like half of its fanbase, but that has no bearing on how the community acts, they are responsible for themselves.  This is part of the reason why that vocal part of the GG community exists that gets so violently angry at the mere prospect of their game being grouped in with other games like BB.  Despite how obnoxious these insecure people are, I do 100% see what you are saying.  Smash has basically done the same thing with the way people now think of them as manchildren and furries due to the way they present themselves.  

(And for what it's worth, every fighting game community has weebs and weirdos in it, yes even and ESPECIALLY SF.  Just that it's only in GG/BB and related games that it's really pervasive and part of the community's image.  Not saying they need to abandon it or that they can't like what they do, but what you are saying does have basis in reality)

It may not sound like it, but I'm actually 100% on board with you that trying to splinter groups is toxic for the community.  It's already bad enough that we have so much shitflinging and infighting with people hating on other games.  (SF5 vs SF4, SF vs other games, 2D vs 3D, GG vs BB, "normal" vs "anime" and  FGC vs Smash and so on) but then when you have people trying to splinter off Arcsys "anime" games from non Arcsys "anime" games and shit.  Trust me I'm sick of being lumped in like that too, I don't play GG and I'm tired of being told "well we can run GG and that's anime so you like it right?"  We have people who think all our games play the exact same and they're all just button mashers with flashy sprites.  

However to play devil's advocate, the GG community is partially at fault for its decline.  Whether it's the shit Marn pulled back in the day or the aggressive sense of insecurity and self importance that many GG players seem to have (God's Gift LOLZ!  GG is the only good anime game praise be!  We're not weeaboos fuck you SFV/MKX/Smash is shit why does nobody play our game?) they've done some shit in the past that has hurt them very badly.  I can say this for 100% certain because I have experienced this in person at events and it is the #1 reason why I refuse to play the game.  Fighting games are community driven, and if the community makes the experience unpleasant then it will kill the game no matter how good it is.  This elitism is an extremely real problem, and it's not exclusive to GG (hell even BB has this problem) but I haven't seen ANY community be as bad about it as the GG community is.  Not even Melee elitsts, not even Capcom fanboys.  And if it's over Xrd, that's on a GOOD day, because god forbid you are a Xrd player having to deal with a +R elitist.  

But you know, you're right.  It sure doesn't feel like we're much of a fighting game community, it feels like we're a bunch of communities fighting each other over stupid shit.  I wish I could just play SF with one group, MK with another and then BB with yet another but it's not that simple, because we've splintered off communities to the point where we consider that because MOST people from game A won't play game B, then it means that nobody from game A SHOULD or WILL EVER play game B.

Sorry for that long winded post.  TLDR is basically that I agree with your core message but I feel like there is some slight bias/misleadedness in there.

So basically this.

On 4/22/2016 at 6:33 AM, TittyFOFO said:

That might've been possible back when GG was the only game of its type, but its far too late now. Once other titles started popping up that followed a similar formula, of course a sub-category was created. And I wouldn't necessarily say it was something that the GG community made by itself, but there's not much sense in fighting an accurate description.

And the anime stigma existed even back in the days of GGXX, in the sense that a lot of SF players and whatnot wouldn't touch it just based visuals. So I wouldn't blame it on the unification of the "anime community" as if it were something new. If anything, events like CEOtaku give a chance for the lesser games to take the stage for a change, instead of waiting on support from groups that can't or won't run tournaments with those games for various reasons. That's a good thing, regardless of whether or not you approve of the branding.

So while I agree with a few of the points you made, as a whole its a pretty moot point. The fact that you're posting on a website dedicated to GG and other similar fighters is proof enough.

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Man... I just wish I could at least go from the Sm4sh booth to the SF5 booth at PAX without getting called a casual. At least I kicked there ass afterwards, but still... The whole "Traditional vs. 3D vs. Smash vs. Air-dashers" thing honestly just hurts the FGC as a whole. And honestly, it's a bit hypocritical. The video game community has struggled to be accepted by outsiders, and now we're treating others the exact same way. The shooters, fighters, and MOBAs don't just ash each other, they bash other games within the genre, and it doesn't help anyone.

ok then im done with the intelligent stuff gtg play millia now

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