The BB Community, EVO, Netplay, and the FGC.

[Dont_Explain]

This article is the truth. I am one of those broke college students that can only go to tourneys if they happen to be in my area and a friend can drive me. Even then cause of school chances are that we can't go. I also kinda looked at the game as just a "shitty anime game" at first, but i think after i found a character i liked i could appreciate the game more. Like you wouldnt care about the game if there wasnt something you liked about it right? I hope that makes sense. I think it sucks because people see BB as the "weeaboo" game, it's a legitimate game. In fact I've played SSF4 and MvC3 and i enjoy watching them for the same reasons as St1ck: SF can get pretty tense, and MvC3 is good for watching people get blown up and salty as hell. I think people find it hard to see the entertainment value in BB, but one big thing I think a lot of people miss (cause they're too busy bashing the game) is that the characters are diverse and the game has interesting mechanics (like barrier and instant blocking).

I feel like there is no FGC; there's just a community for each game and we're all separated. The reason i say that is even though BB gets bashed to hell and back, other games even SSF4 and MvC3 are shit talked. Sad thing is most of the shit talkers haven't even played the game they hate on so much. I have games I dislike, but I have played them and given them a chance. A lot of the so called FGC is just my game vs. your game. That needs to stop. The day all fighting games get equal respect is the day a FGC exists to me.

I'm not a high level player that goes to every tourney. I don't know all the neat little tricks. But I do know that BB deserves more respect than it gets. Now I know since I fall under the "broke college student who can't go to tourneys" category, my words dont mean much, but I genuinely like this game not cause I'm a weeaboo and I like anime, but it's a great game. If someone likes it for that reason more power to them, but I don't think people can just go around labeling BB as the "weeaboo" game cause I'm damn sure more than weeaboos play this game. Like I said im just a broke college student, but I really like BB and I would love to see it grow. Whether we go to EVO or not, I will support this game.

[Gil]

Agree entirely with everyone else, amazing read. Makes me wish I could do more to help BB grow, even if we always get put down by other FGCs.

edit: You really should consider having this posted on SRK btw.

[SuperFX]

St1ckbug: This is really what needs to be happening with the BB community: talking about problems and positing solutions. I don't agree with everything you've said here (I know a lot of the old MW GG heads were in school and still traveled all the time for that game is one example) but I think this is the type of post that needed to happen.

Honestly, BB is almost as dead as GG at this point. People can talk all they want about the netplay community but that doesn't amount to shit when we're talking about competitive gaming. In fact I think it's netplay that is killing the game. With GG we had to go out and find people to play, or try to get friends into the game so we had people to play against; BB eschews all that in favor of hopping online and being completely unproductive in terms of scene-building.

And that ties into people not going to majors because most people don't go to their first major alone (or even tournaments in general, really). Shit, during GG the Nebraska guys used to drive 8 hours to Chicago for MWC every year, but it wasn't terrible because they were going with friends (normally about 3-5 people) and it became like a road trip; we did the same shit traveling from St. Louis. But when you don't have any friends going with you the journey can be a bit shitty: having to cover your own gas if driving, maybe your own room too if you're not super close with anyone else in the scene.

And that's the real problem with BB in America: in most parts of the country there is no real 'scene' or community. It seems as if the EC has a strong group, but I know the midwest has only disparate pockets of players (who really just play the game together, they aren't friends) and out here in SoCal I can't really say either way since I don't follow the scene now. During GG the midwest hung together hella strong, as we tried to get as many of us as we could out to each big tourney. It almost became a social gathering as much as it was a tournament. I just don't think BB has that. I'm sure it could, but it doesn't right now.

[Skye]

This article is really inspiring, and I hope it gets archived in the future for other new FGs that get a lot of crap.

I already regretted not making it to NEC, but this has me pumped.

If I can get my hands on a better paying job, I will throw in all of my support.

[Spud]

Too young to drive. Parents won't let them. Too broke. School.

Nice to meet you too.

[Kiba]

If there was a big tournament here in London, and BB wasn't on the list of games to be hosted, then I wouldn't be surprised and I'd only be blaming the complainants who haven't actually tried to get down to the events.

We've had several tournaments here and while myself I can't necessarily host my own sessions/tournaments, I flag people several times giving them information about the tournaments. For crying out loud I even had the next casual session/tournament listed in my sig! We managed to get LordspectreX involved and Manta which I'm grateful for, so that doesn't mean I'll continue to give up. It's just difficult to continue to flag information at people who aren't even bothered to bust their balls to get to events.

For one of the touenaments we had here, we only had 8 entrants for BB, and it was no surprise that BB was not on the list of games to be played at the next tournament. And guess what, some people had complained afterwards. That's fucking disgraceful. And yet, why did that happen? The tournament was surprisingly on the same say as the fuckin' anime expo. That was such perfect timing, but this is where the arrogance of the other players kicked in. Not to mention that the staff were not strict when it came to time management. This is why so many other players could waltz in at 3pm to enter tournaments when the deadline closed at 1pm.

We had SvB, and even though we had a bigger turnout than usual, it was only about 40 players, compared to the other games which had over 100 players. London has one main problem though. Most of the players are so far scattered it's difficult to get a main and accessible location for everyone to come together. This is why so many tournaments in so many areas have very little turnouts.

There are even those who have said that they'll learn the game after seeing BB head on in some pretty hype tournaments, but I fail to maintain a smile because some of those players don't actually bother playing the game. We get that same response for players down here too: That the game is too weeaboo for them or 'anime' or w/e.

My friend constantly works his ass off hosting tournaments for players including people and even that has a low turnout. The revolution tournament here had a poor turnout for BB - only about 16 entrants, and even despite that, he still continues to do these things for us. I can only do everything in my power to support him in organising these sort of things. There is a session this Sunday however at a different location, so hopefully that'll attract more players.

Props to you organising the events and all, I have actually seen you have ben doing these things. I have the most upmost respect for you. It's just a shame that the game can be such an offput to new players because of the snobby attitude that people have, or because they can't even be bothered to support the scene.

[Sanoshi]

A must read for anyone that plays BB and GG. We need to get our act together as a community and start having making anime games alive. Fuck what everyone else things, we love our shit.

Totally down for making an AnimeEvo of some sort. I feel that if Dustloop mods and admins were behind it, it would inspire and help our community! :] I'll do what I can to help with our scene!

[Hughalicous]

Massive respect to you Stickbug. I'll continue to work at growing BB in my area, being hype, and having fun. I wish I could travel to America one day and support you guys and all your tournaments, when I graduate University and get a real job I will. Keep up the good work. Anyone in South East Queensland, contact me for BB

[Yggjrasil]

A must read for anyone that plays BB and GG. We need to get our act together as a community and start having making anime games alive. Fuck what everyone else things, we love our shit.

Totally down for making an AnimeEvo of some sort. I feel that if Dustloop mods and admins were behind it, it would inspire and help our community! :] I'll do what I can to help with our scene!

I would show up to this, real talk.

[Lord Pwnge18]

Very well said stickbug, best thing I've read in a long ass time.

As a broke high schooler AND netplayer, I really do care about this game and the community, and you can be damn sure I'll be out and about supporting the BB scene when I'm no longer confined by this steel cage called 'netplay'. Or 'age' for that matter.

[Zephyrus]

A hell of a great read, Stick. I fall under the "broke college student that can't attend majors" category, and even if I could go, there's the problem of parents being untrustworthy of me and blah blah blah. Honestly, I picked up BB from a friend around Junior Year of high school and it all kind of tumbled down from there. Played online, always wanted to go to a tourney even if I sucked, but I have horrid self esteem issues. I normally had friends to play with before we all split up, so it's just little old me and online. I didn't even care that people thought it was a "crappy anime game" or anything like that, I just liked the game. I didn't even get to searching around until about a year after I'd started playing.

I think at the very least I should start looking/going around to any BB scenes in the city or at least in another borough. I think we just need to get our heads together and do something, support the game to the end and screw the haters (hell, I still get grief for liking Digimon :l). Props to the people holding the events, and I'll try to get a can of courage and attend something instead of just playing online half the time. Hell, might as well just go to Next Level Arcade, seeing as how I'm a train ride away. <_<

[CakeWasBannedd]

animeevo=blazblue, melty, ah3, guilty, catherine(?), and what else?

making a new major sounds super neat. if you make it something for all the games that have side-tournaments at EVO but aren't a main event due to having not enough interest, then everyone who plays those games showing up together would be a pretty sizable turnout i think.

of course i don't know shit about tournaments though, so feel free to shoot me down

[cookiehours]

I agree with your article. Once I get my life in order, I'll be damn sure to get out there and promote this game. Despite the salt that occurs when I play online sometimes, this game and series needs more exposure. It's the best fighting series I have ever played, hands down.

[Fluck]

If there's really gonna be an animeevo, then I'm sure you'll want to include Skullgirls and P4U when they're out. There'll definitely be interest because they're new, and they're already featured on Dustloop anyway. And there's Vsav, there's people who'll play that.

Of course, throwing in so many games is a problem for the organizers of that, and we don't want to give any game the shaft, especially since the reason for such a major would be BECAUSE these games have already been treated badly.

[LunaKage]

I know this money problem all too well, I've only made it to a grand total of 7 tournaments, 6 of which were in MI, 4 of which were just ranbats. When I had a job, I had to work weekends, so I couldn't go, and now that I'm out of the job, I can't afford to go, hell MOST of the MI tourneys I went to were payed FOR me, because MI has my back for stuff like that, but paying my way for a 10 dollar ranbat is one thing, I don't expect anyone to just pay for me AND themselves for a whole round trip to a major.

Despite all that however, I was the one to hold casuals, to make up for my lack of tourney support, I made sure every week, people had a free place to come and play BB, it's a small place, but I would fit anywhere from 5 to 25 people in here any given Friday, all to show support. Sadly though, I'm getting evicted, so I can't even do that anymore.

I'm still gonna continue to do everything that I personally can to support the BB scene, and one day when I get everything on track, I plan to hit as many out of state majors as I possibly can.

Great read Stickbug, you've given me a new DRIVE.

[Jyosua]

As a new (Kinda. I played in CT, but not seriously...) player here, let me give my perspective. I entered a small tournament at an Anime convention. We had like 10 or so entrants. This was my first fighting game tournament, let alone my first BB tournament. I felt I was decent at the game: anyone I've played IRL I could easily beat. I was proven glaringly wrong during the tournament, where I was blown the hell up by much better players than I. There I was told about the Florida scene, but I was hesitant to actually attempt getting involved; I'm in my last semester of college, so I'm quite busy, and I'm not sure I have the time to put into becoming a better player. I started talking to people anyhow and now I'm convinced I want to improve at this game, but as far as entering tournaments? Right now, I'd be better off buying lottery tickets. Combine entry fees with the cost of travel and it becomes plainly obvious why beginners or people new to the scene won't show up. Gas is expensive. Traveling a few hours for a day tournament is expensive, but traveling further than that is ludicrous if you know there's no chance of taking anything home with you.

Personally, DL has helped me improve at the game a lot, but one on one interaction would be better. I think local scenes need to regularly meet up and organize local events to draw more players in: that's the best way to get new blood and also to teach beginners. Beginner tourneys would help, as would casual events. Overall, word needs to be spread and new locals scenes need to be started if one doesn't exist already. Live streams help too, but there's only so much you can do without meeting with people face to face.

[mAc Chaos]

You guys shouldn't look at entering a tournament only as a means to win #1. What you're really paying for is the experience of meeting all the other players in the community and getting lots of games with folks you normally wouldn't, having a good time and witnessing lots of hype matches.

[Dont_Explain]

I just remembered that SSF4:AE has a 24/7 live stream for both 360 and PS3. If we could at least get it one system that would really help at least show the game more. I mean yeah it's just more netplay, but honestly its better than nothing. When i went to the SF4 stream i would usually ask what i did wrong and some people on stream were legitimately helping. I think that would help a lot of beginners and just overall make online more enjoyable instead of just playing a random person you could at least talk to them in stream and if they wanted to they could help you improve in the matchup with some advice. Doing small stuff like that will build the community and make us better as a whole.

[zeth07]

Honestly, BB is almost as dead as GG at this point. People can talk all they want about the netplay community but that doesn't amount to shit when we're talking about competitive gaming. In fact I think it's netplay that is killing the game. With GG we had to go out and find people to play, or try to get friends into the game so we had people to play against; BB eschews all that in favor of hopping online and being completely unproductive in terms of scene-building.

Reading comments like these makes me feel partially responsible, and one of the various reasons why I'm reluctant to even bother organizing anything on netplay for the "community" in the future. If it's somehow hurting the scene like stickbug mentioned as well, then it would be for the best not to do anything and as I said is part of the reason why I haven't done anything in a while, so people are forced to go to offline events if they want that kinda thing. Whatever helps the greater good I guess.

[Woocash]

Good stuff to read. I'm nowhere near out there in the community as many other people are, and not even in the online community. I also belong to one of those "groups" (the busy college kids). However, I just want to chime in because I really liked reading it, and because I just experienced pretty much what you're talking about. This past weekend I went to Frosty Faustings IV near Chicago, and BB was... sad. It was Extend, we had one setup, smooshed in a corner, and 8 players. Entry fee of $20. My theories for such small turn out was that it was a new version that most people haven't played and the hefty entrance fee (venue fee was also 10).

But as you're saying, this is one of those periods when a new version is out, but not on consoles in NA yet. A year ago, when CS was out, BB had about 25 people.

On the bright side, GG had over 20 people even though the fee was also 20 dollars. Still, all the other games like MK, SF, and MvC pretty much dominated in numbers...

[Star-Demon]

Thanks for writing all this, man. I'm glad to see I'm not alone with some of these ideas. I'm glad you fleshed out a lot of what needs to go into an event.

TWO THINGS Y'ALL NEED TO DO:

1. Get a better attitude.

2. SUCK IT UP AND GO PLAY WITH OTHERS OFFLINE.

I think it's time for us to show we can do our own event, and it's going to take money. That means players need to step it up - there's just no avoiding it.

[Moy_X7]

*Reads gigantic wall of text*

That's really fucked up about the shit that happened at Season's Beatings and the douchy sponsors not letting their sponsored players even touch BB. You hit the nail right on the head for everything else, IMO.

I have a personal reason as to why it's difficult for me to go out of state and out into a major, I'll let you know more through a PM if you're interested, it's shit I can't just disclose here. Outside of that, I've done my part of supporting the tournament scene in Indy and that's going to the tournaments and signing up for them. BB was only supported by the TOs here 3 times at max, one was CT and the other two were CS I believe. I made it to two out of three but the TOs just dropped the game completely from the local tournaments. Why? Not many people show up for it, it was a rare occasion when we actually got the minimum of 8 entrants to play. So why won't people show up to these? You've already explained it, all of it, no need to go over it again.

I'll get back to locals once I fix my car with my poverty ass and try to get as many people to play BB as I possibly can, which doesn't seem very likely since most people there prefer to play SF and Marvel...

If the FGC doesn't want to accept BB then why bother? Fuck EVO. Let's do our own thing.

This, fucking this. I'm not into the whole "let's get on our knees and beg EVO to get our game out there". No, fuck that, I don't see the point in getting our game out there when all that's going to happen is that we'll get even more people hating on it through the forums, the stream chat, and even in person at EVO. The fact that seemingly shitty games like SxT and MK9 made it there as opposed to BB is enough proof that the people at EVO just hate BB and probably other "anime" games. I'm not even mad about that, I'm mad that people are making such a big deal out of it. So really, fuck EVO.

[Urichinan]

animeevo=blazblue, melty, ah3, guilty, catherine(?), and what else?

making a new major sounds super neat. if you make it something for all the games that have side-tournaments at EVO but aren't a main event due to having not enough interest, then everyone who plays those games showing up together would be a pretty sizable turnout i think.

of course i don't know shit about tournaments though, so feel free to shoot me down

BlazBlue

Guilty Gear

Melty Blood

Arcana Heart

Persona

Aqua Pazza

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Vampire Savior

Fate/ Unlimited Codes

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (Is that an anime game?)

These all come to mind, I'm not sure which ones are on console or not, but these seem to be some of the most popular anime games. And Hokuto no ken could be thrown in, just for fun.

I agree with everything you said St1ckBuG, instead of everyone complaining about the community not getting better, or how BB isn't at EVO, people should instead try to uplift the community and show support for the future. Regardless of how big SF or MvC is, they had to start at some point as well. I think doing a massive meet up at one of the majors this year is a fantastic idea, and if I can convince my parents to take me, I'll be there supporting you and everyone else the whole time. I think it's time, we, as a community, need to start getting the games we love more exposure and hype. We need to show the masses that there is indeed a scene of players, and that we all have something to bring with us to the table.

I'm behind you 100%!

As for what you said about BB's majority of players, you were completely right. I'm actually 14, and I suffer from almost all of the cases you listed. School, no money, can't drive, not old enough to travel alone, etc. It can be a real pain trying to go out to a local tournament, luckily, my parents support me in my love for fighting games, and are trying to help me make it out to Final Round with whatever extra money they can set aside. It's difficult for young players to get out to a scene, but it's not impossible, you just need to try hard. Talk to your parents about it, see if they'll let you go with a friend, if one of them will take you themselves, you never know what's going to happen. As long as no one stands up for the community and tries to help it grow, we're always going to get screwed over. (Like at SB)

I think we all need to try and decide on an event to go to, where everyone can go and we can have the BEST BB tournament to date.

Setting up our own major, strictly for Anime games is a fantastic idea, in my opinion. Who need EVO? We can handle it ourselves, hype it ourselves, and run it ourselves. We don't have to give into what's popular, or try to appeal to a biased crowd, if there are people willing to play, who's stopping us from starting our own majors?

[RagnaXBL]

Not sure when this was posted, just read it now

Wow that bit about the Blazblue demographic hit me hard, anti-social-high-school-weeaboos that don't know how to play fighting games? lol ouch;

had no idea the average age of BB players was lower than other FG scenes, if anything all the players i met were pretty old, some married even.

although i guess you've seen a few more players than me if your running tournaments

pretty good read though

[lime93]

Damn you're right about loving netplay too much. I know for me I was pissed that Blazblue didn't make EVO this year, but I was more than able last year to go and I didn't. I just realized that I should travel more to more tourneys to get more experience, to get better, and hopefully get people on this game in Mississippi, because there is absolutely no fighting game scene here. I would love to go to any big tournament that has Blazblue, and I would support it in any way I could and try my best to get out there. I also agree that Blazblue players get a bad rep for playing an "anime" game. I have had my people on my XBL friends list take me off because I didn't play Street Fighter that much when I got Blazblue.

You can't just look at the Blazblue scene though, other fighting game scenes such as the Capcom fanboys all think Blazblue is a shit game. Most of the people I have talked to haven't even played the game to make an informed decision or they don't want to dedicate time to learning complex combos and multiple defensive and offensive options Blazblue offers. I like to try to convince those guys to put some time into the game. I even got one guy on my I used to play Street Fighter with buy Blazblue and I helped him learn the game and now he loves it. It's not all bad on the Blazblue players, because like you said most of us are too young, broke, and/or we spend too much money on anime.