In Third Person

Over the past few days, Mike R and I have been discussing a number of things relating to the fighting game community. As a means of bringing some of these conversations to the forefront, he’s provided me with some questions that I’ll answer in this post. Read through for some insight regarding the FGC!

Q: How does a game make it to the tournament level?

A game that is deemed ‘tournament-level’ has nothing to do with how ‘good’ a game is. There are a lot of great games across all genres of gaming that don’t have a tournament scene. Ultimately, the defining factor is audience size. If there are enough people willing to play it at a tournament, then it is a tournament game. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was one of the most broken fighting games of all-time in terms of lopsided character balancing, infinites, and glitches, but because it had such a large audience of people wanting to compete in it, that game survived as a tournament game for a decade. However, once Marvel vs. Capcom 3 came out, MvC2‘s viability as a tournament game died, because the audience had moved on.

Q: Do the game developers or publishers ask for your guys opinion about in game features?

Developers, and publishers always look for feedback from the community. Most of the time, they gather it from their own preview events, where they’ll give players access to the game early. Some players are brought in to QA the game. I would imagine that most of the information they gather is from message boards, blogs, Twitter, and other online channels where players of all sorts share their opinions. What happens after they’ve collected the community’s feedback is largely up to them.

Q: Any perks to being a tournament-level player? I don’t mean every scrub that walks through registration. Like I’m sure Combofiend, Filipino Champ, and the likes have some perks. But I also know that’s not the typical experience, but neither is being the number one ranked player in the country but you did it!

Let’s get the flattering one out of the way first. Yes, I was (and I think still am) the #1 ranked Rose player in Canada on the XBOX Live leaderboards for many months. For a brief amount of time, I was the #1 ranked Cammy too. Do I get any perks from that? Not at all. If I hadn’t done the research to make those points public, no one would ever notice. I won’t likely see any sort recognition outside of my own promotion until I do some real damage at a tournament, which I have failed to do so far. With that said, it warms my heart when I play at a tournament, and I can hold my own against the majority of people I play against (at least in Street Fighter IV).

As for the real stars of the community, they are for the most part, just regular people like you, and I. The sponsored players may have some perks, such as travel accommodations. Some players may get the games early. Other than that, I can’t really speak to what other perks they may, or may not get. At the end of the day, they have to fight their way to the top like everyone else.

Q: How do they decide on where to have tournaments for seeding points…I mean I don’t get it. I would have to be a millionaire to be able to travel to those places to get enough seed points to make it to EVO, and not have to fight through every Joe Shmuck there. I know others that kinda wondered how this works.

Ah, you’re referring to the EVO tournament season. Let’s take a step back and discuss the process as a whole, as this is relatively new.

For the last 12 years, EVO has stood as the biggest, and most important tournament in the fighting game community. Generally, EVO organizers will try to separate out the best players, so that they don’t eliminate each other early in the tournament. This process was fairly manual, and subjective, up until the creation of the EVO tournament season.

Two years ago, EVO began sponsoring a series of tournaments leading up to the big dance in Las Vegas, where top qualifiers would earn EVO seeding points. These points would then be used to determine how to divide these top players up amongst the rest of the competition. Presumably, the players with the most points would get the most favourable positioning in their bracket, rather than leaving this process to subjectivity, which is more prone to mistakes.

Do you need to earn EVO seeding points in order to attend EVO? No. EVO is open to anyone, as long as they register. With that said, you will see some of the same faces at the different tournaments, as some will have their trips paid for them, while others are hardcore enough to make the pilgrimage.

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