Evo 2008 Addendum
In my last post, as user "trobb" pointed out, I didn't address the communities of each game as much as I have in the previous years. So as an addendum to the previous post, I'm just going to talk about each game more from the perspective of the communities, as opposed to just commenting on the game itself.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo - I don't really have much to add from the last post I wrote. The Super Street FIghter II Turbo community is actually on the rise. GGPO and HD Remix have spurred on a rebirth of the game, and I've seen a lot more people interested in playing ST that started off playing other games. In other words, ST doesn't seem to be only for old-timers anymore, which is exciting.
Super Turbo is on its way to prove itself to be THE greatest Fighting Game of all time. The players who loved the game never stopped playing it (as evidenced by the fact that old-schoolers still come back to play it at every Evo despite it being super old) unlike many other games which have even the experts stop playing after a while. And the game is so good that all the new players who pick it up cannot help but enjoy it as well, as evidenced by its recent surge in popularity.
As a result, the Super Turbo community only needs to do one thing: continue spread knowledge. For some reason, Super Turbo seems to be the one game that people love to spread knowledge about. When you need to find information, you have stalwarts like NKI who have a wealth of information on his web page translated from T.Akiba's web page (so it took two monster efforts: T.Akiba for getting all that info and NKI for actually translating it to English!). And on the SRK Forums, people love to give help on Super Turbo and spread knowledge (see sites like Nohoho's Super Turbo blog). Super Turbo is a game of knowledge, so it is one of the easiest to teach and learn. And in the end, I think, its ability to be taught so simply is what makes it so strong because, despite how simple it is to teach, it's still very fun and challenging to play.
Capcom Vs. SNK 2 - As I hinted at in my last post, I do believe this game has no more growth left in it. I do believe, as surprising as this may sound to some people, that this game has a lot of untapped potential left in it. As I mentioned in 2007, Kim a.k.a. "Ohayo1234" pointed me to some videos of a tournament they played inJapan
Northern California is the only one, thanks to Keystone II and the fact that all of the good players of the game play there a lot, like Ricky Ortiz and Campbell Tran and John Choi.
But otherwise, I just don't think any other location has a strong enough CvS2 community that cares anymore. We have a lot of good players out and about. For example, one player by the name of SmoothCat has always been doing well in CvS2. But last I spoke to him, it seemed he was moving on to other games. It doesn't even feel worth it for the CvS2 fans to continue pushing the game to its limits because there isn't a significant enough of a reward. And there just isn't anyone left to push you to be better. Everyone is playing Third Strike and Super Turbo these days.
Don't get me wrong. The existing community for this game is a good community. I just don't see anyone joining their ranks. No one new seems to be getting sucked into the game, and I just don't see any chance of the game growing anymore. I think CvS2 has reached its peak, and it simply won't go anywhere from here... which is a shame.
New York
Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core - Bravo. I think you guys already know how I feel after the last post, so I won't bother saying much more here. But let's just say all the shit I gave you guys last year has been taken back. I've eaten my words and am happy to see myself proved wrong. Bravo.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo - I don't really have much to add from the last post I wrote. The Super Street FIghter II Turbo community is actually on the rise. GGPO and HD Remix have spurred on a rebirth of the game, and I've seen a lot more people interested in playing ST that started off playing other games. In other words, ST doesn't seem to be only for old-timers anymore, which is exciting.Super Turbo is on its way to prove itself to be THE greatest Fighting Game of all time. The players who loved the game never stopped playing it (as evidenced by the fact that old-schoolers still come back to play it at every Evo despite it being super old) unlike many other games which have even the experts stop playing after a while. And the game is so good that all the new players who pick it up cannot help but enjoy it as well, as evidenced by its recent surge in popularity.
As a result, the Super Turbo community only needs to do one thing: continue spread knowledge. For some reason, Super Turbo seems to be the one game that people love to spread knowledge about. When you need to find information, you have stalwarts like NKI who have a wealth of information on his web page translated from T.Akiba's web page (so it took two monster efforts: T.Akiba for getting all that info and NKI for actually translating it to English!). And on the SRK Forums, people love to give help on Super Turbo and spread knowledge (see sites like Nohoho's Super Turbo blog). Super Turbo is a game of knowledge, so it is one of the easiest to teach and learn. And in the end, I think, its ability to be taught so simply is what makes it so strong because, despite how simple it is to teach, it's still very fun and challenging to play.
Capcom Vs. SNK 2 - As I hinted at in my last post, I do believe this game has no more growth left in it. I do believe, as surprising as this may sound to some people, that this game has a lot of untapped potential left in it. As I mentioned in 2007, Kim a.k.a. "Ohayo1234" pointed me to some videos of a tournament they played in
But otherwise, I just don't think any other location has a strong enough CvS2 community that cares anymore. We have a lot of good players out and about. For example, one player by the name of SmoothCat has always been doing well in CvS2. But last I spoke to him, it seemed he was moving on to other games. It doesn't even feel worth it for the CvS2 fans to continue pushing the game to its limits because there isn't a significant enough of a reward. And there just isn't anyone left to push you to be better. Everyone is playing Third Strike and Super Turbo these days.
Don't get me wrong. The existing community for this game is a good community. I just don't see anyone joining their ranks. No one new seems to be getting sucked into the game, and I just don't see any chance of the game growing anymore. I think CvS2 has reached its peak, and it simply won't go anywhere from here... which is a shame.
Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core - Bravo. I think you guys already know how I feel after the last post, so I won't bother saying much more here. But let's just say all the shit I gave you guys last year has been taken back. I've eaten my words and am happy to see myself proved wrong. Bravo.
posted by jchensor at
12:15 AM
22 Comments:
Great post, more information and insight and less rhetoric than the last one. A few thoughts:
-CVS2: I think you're description here is a bit misleading. One would think that the game is on its last legs in the US, which isn't the case (I hope). Didn't CVS2 have more entrants than ST at evo?
Whats more, I don't know if enough has been made of Choi winning CvS2. Not only does it show the Americans can beat the Japanese, it also shows that A-groove players (specifically Bas and Ricky, who've owned the game) can be taken down by the other grooves.
Finally, I don't think it's such a big deal that you see a dominant group of players at the top. It would be one thing if the top 8 all used the same strategy, or if the order stayed the same every year. But there has been some evolution at the top of the ranks (e.g., the rise of justin wong as another non-A-groover, choi swapping in cammy for guile/sakura, etc) that really shows off the flexibility and diversity of this game. I also think focusing on the top 8 is a bit misleading, and does a disservice to the players finishing just outside the top 8, who keep challenging the top American players.
-Smash: My understanding of the situation is this: evo meant a lot to many of these guys. They felt that their input was totally disregarded on the ruleset, and that the general reason given was that "we at srk know better about how your game should be played than you, the smash community." In that context, I can see why they'd want an apology.
While you say that items were done just to do something different, doesn't that trivialize the issue a bit? Having items in smash makes it a VERY different game (I'd analogize it to allowing EX grooves in CvS2) from the community standard, enough so to deter players from going through the trouble of going to Evo. And for smash players to be denied the opportunity to play their game at evo understandably made them bitter about the whole thing.
-3S: This post has gotten overlong, so I'll keep it quick. Character imbalance aside, a major gripe you have about 3S is "I think the game is literally at a point where nothing new can be discovered at all." Is this a valid criticism of a game? That a game becomes stale and boring when there is nothing new left to discover? I disagree, which is the main problem I had with the whole "out with the old, in with the new" theme of the last post.
By
Anonymous, at 12:43 PM
Hey, TRobb...
CvS2 - Well, the same top 8 can be interpreted in two ways, I guess. 1) The game really IS on its last leg and no one new is playing it, so no one else has bothered getting good anymore. Or 2) The game is really consistent, and does NOT have as much random BS as a game like MvC2 or Third Strike, proving that those who are good at it will dominate because they ARE better players. So I will admit there is a different way to look at it.
Also, the CvS2 community is fine size-wise and strength-wise. I'm just not happy with it growth-wise. So I don't think the community is on its last legs, I just think that it's stagnated, and what we see now is pretty much what we are gonna see for a while. The advantage is that, despite having a huge amount of A-Bisons and A-Blankas and such, I still think CvS2 is a far more enjoyable game to watch in the Finals than Third Strike these days.
Speaking of...
Third Strike - You're absolutely right. It's not a valid criticism to complain about a game if there is nothing new to discover. That's pretty much the whole mantra of major sports: same game, just people doing things within the game you've never seen before. They aren't discovering anything new, they are just performing at an unprecedented level.
My problem with Third Strike is that the two most dominant characters, who are SO incredibly over dominant, just happen to be the two most boring characters to watch, particularly Chun Li. And the fact that the game is so completely over-dominated by those characters really hurts it. Even in CvS2, we have players like Combofiend and Buktooth and Choi who use unorthodox characters to win. But even the top players can't break into the top 8 in 3S without resorting to Chun and Yun. Occassionally, a Makoto sneaks in or Valle using Ken, but overall, if you want to win the game, you gotta use Yun or Chun. And that, really, is my main critique of the game.
Smash - I totally understand why they wanted an apology, I just don't agree with it. Thinking that we were telling people "We are better than you so we are doing it our way" is still an assumption... and it had nothing to do with our decision. If that IS actually what we were thinking, I would 100% have no problem issuing an apology. But we've explained our side, but they still continue to believe we were just thinking we were smarter than them.
It's sort of the same message I gave to Guilty Gear after last year. So Evo made a decision that they hated. But instead of fighting with us and just being bitter and threatening to boycott Evo, show up and make your case. That's exactly what Guilty Gear did this year. Smash players could have done the same thing, but not a SINGLE EXPERT BRAWL PLAYER outside of SK92 showed up. I would have loved for them to throw their own side Smash Brawl tourney there without items, and then play in the Evo tournament and have their experts watch the games with us and point out the things that they saw problematic in a non-hate-filled style. There's so many productive ways to accomplish your goals, and boycotting things due to spite and then asking for apologies when we are convinced that items wasn't the right way to go just doesn't seem like the right way to go.
Again, I sound angry and bitter at the Smash community, but I would like to post something here that I wrote on the SRK Forums, just so the Smash community knows how much I still respect them. Someone asked:
"I don't see how you can respect a community when you're having second thoughts about posting anything negative about them. I know I tried giving Brawl a chance, but based entirely on the community and not the game itself, it just wasn't worth it."
My response:
"Becase they have a community, and a strong one at that. There are so many other gaming "communities" that are lazy and don't actually do anything to promote themselves. The Smash community is one of the only communities I know of that survives on their own, grows on their own, and continues to hold tourneys and set standards across their community. And the mere fact that they CAN pull off standardized rulesets across the country for a game SO incredibly customizable is no small feat. That's why I can respect them so much."
So keep in mind, I don't hate the Smash community nor am I mad at them. I just think they are much too resistant to change, more so than they need to be.
By
jchensor, at 1:32 PM
I view the criticism on 3rd Strike as very far and, actually, I see it as a step further than the niceness with which JChen always expresses himself.
Nowadays, at the top levels, 3rd Strike sucks. The design of the game is made in a way that after a few years of plaing there's nothing left to discover. This will probably never happen wih games such as MvC2, with weekly goodness coming from Magnero or new videos, or maybe GG (not sure about GG since GG games never last more than 2 years though).
This makes for a game that, today, is very boring to watch, and probably even bring to play for the top players, since they simply have no room for getting better, asides from a little bit of extra execution skills I guess.
3rd Strike still draws lots of not-so-pro players because it is really easy to pick up and it has the parry video but, honestly, this is not enough. A game that can't evolve isn't what Evo is supposed to be, IMO.
ST may be a little like that. It may even be simpler. But it has many more relevant and diverse matchups, and the new HD Remix version can make it more interesting. Plus, it is THE easiest SF game to pick up and play. Everybody has some SF knowledge, and so ST is even more approachable than 3S. I never thought ST was popular enoug to be at Evo, bt given the new HD Remix and how fast it goes, I think it would be nice if it remains in some form next year, even if its some kind of exhibition tournament.
About CvS2 I have nothing to add. Great game. Lacks the heat.
MvC2 is the main fighting game IMO because of the hype that made tourneys become a great thing again in the last 8 years. I do agree that the top players do not spread knowledge, at least at SRK, but they also barely ost in there. I resent Magnetro openly hiding some information on frame data and stuff, but the real top players at least have some kind of contribution with vids. atching MvC2 vids with critical thinking and frame by frame teaches you a ton of stuff, and I believe many people know some differences between what the NY guys do and what other people do - but few actually have the dexterity to do the same thing. Those who commit themselves to practice enough, like Chunk, get pretty close
I have nothing to add to Tekken too. Tekken seems to be getting more casual nowadays.
GG did good this year. However, they seem to be a little bit like Smash. Once Blazblue comes out, they'll probably start hating on Accent Core like they do with every previously loved GG game. That sucks sometimes.
Abou Smash I couldn't agree more. I 've been harsh and honest on 3S and I'll do the same for Smash. They simply behave like a huge community of scrubs. They have very little fighting game experience (Choi and Valle have amost 20 years - those Smash guys are just babies when it comes to skill deveopment and such) and they have barely any experience whatsoever in adapting. They haven't played other games, and much less won at them (like Valle, Chi, Wong...). They just imagine some random rule that may or may not exclude new players will be better and apply it. They're playing The Controversial SmashBoards Fighting Game, which may be a good fighting game, but it's not Super Smash Bros Brawl. This one they actually never played.
I understand keeping Smash because its new and sells like hotcakes, and of course without items, since that's what they like, but I also dont think other communities would miss these guys.
I guess MvC2 gotta be there next year, not only because it is the Evo and new fighting game era symbol since B4, but to keep Evo overall very hyped and filled with energy, at least the day some other game can do the same. Asides from that, I could see all of the old games getting canned, with Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 4, BlazBlue, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and HD Remix or some new VF around the corner.
By
ghostriderfortynine, at 10:05 AM
Good points jchensor.
CvS2 - You may be right about this game, as much as I hope that the community can prove otherwise. It's tough to bring new players into CvS 2 because it's learning curve is longer, the difference between good and intermediate players is so big, the graphics are poor(compared to 3rd strike or marvel), and, as you said, there isn't much random bs to rely upon. It's ironic that the depth of CvS2 is what keeps it from growing, but oh well. As a fellow fan of the NBA, you know as well as I that the masses don't always appreciate the nuances that make a game great. Fighting gamers who don't play or appreciate CvS2 are like sports fans who think college basketball is better than the NBA. Minus the racism against black millionaires, I guess.
3S - I agree with pretty much everything you said. It's a shame 3S is so unbalanced, it is really an interesting and unique game.
Smash - It's cool that you go out of your way to show that you want to cooperate with the smash community. But I have to say, while they may be assuming that the evo heads made the items-ON decision directly because of elitism and disresepect for their community, it wasn't an unreasonable assumption. By the time evo rolled around, smash had been out for about six months, and the smash community had decided to play with items off. For evo to say "well, playing with items off is an artificial limit to the game, and we don't like those," doesn't that at least strongly imply that the smash community doesn't know what it's doing? The way that decision looked from the outside is that evo said that their principles of how fighting games should be trumped the knowledge the smash community had of their game. Though probably unintentional, that does have an elitist ring to it, no?
With that said, you're right, the smash community could have been more constructive by showing up and holding a side tournament. And demanding an apology is kinda ridiculous, though it would help smooth things over: nobody owes anybody anything since you guys did what you thought was right. Also, I don't know if I would call what they did "hateful" exactly. I imagine many of the smash players just thought they had better things to do than take the time and expense to go to evo, especially if they didn't have any friends going. Weren't there other smash tournaments going on that weekend?
By
Anonymous, at 1:04 PM
I think it was something either Inkblot of Jchensor posted on Smashboards that made me better understand: for EVO is was about applying Smash with the philosophy they had used with every other game they had.
In that context it makes sense.
The "God Complex" thing that you pointed out is interesting because I see people trying to get things like spamming or "planking" banned, the idea being that its not just our job to play the game, but our job to play it, balance it, and make it fun. At some point a line must be drawn, for me it is anything that doesn't have a customizable option (in other words, if you can't somehow turn off chain grabbing or infinites, then leave them on, but if you can turn of a level or an item or even play in a different mode (time, stock, coin), then those options are up to the discretion of what the community feels best). The existence of these options tells me Sakurai recognized that the game can be played many different ways and no single way was more important or legitimate than any other way (even if there are "default" settings).
I would disagree with the sentiment that Smash players should have shown up though. It was a predictable result when the rule decision was made, and that the result panned out as expected simply reaffirmed what a dividing issue items are in the Smash community. It seems like a socialist ideal that players should show up regardless of what the rules/entry is for EVO. Its like putting a gun to someones head and using it as validation for whatever actions that person then performs. "Play by our rules or we drop your game from EVO". Such a phrase means everything to every game in EVO...except Smash, and for that reason the idea that "you must show up to support your game" actually has no meaning to Smash players.
Overall I agree with your analysis. If there was an issue with the rules it should have been fought to be changed, but it should not have ever crossed the line of hatred that it did. Of course, this hatred has been around for many years, the item/no item debate is not new to Smash players, and this history is likely partly why the backlash was what it was.
By
Unknown, at 1:33 PM
TRobb said: "By the time evo rolled around, smash had been out for about six months... For evo to say "well, playing with items off is an artificial limit to the game, and we don't like those," doesn't that at least strongly imply that the smash community doesn't know what it's doing? ... Though probably unintentional, that does have an elitist ring to it, no?"
Yeah, you do have a point there. If it came off as elitist, that wasn't the intention for sure, though I can totally see how that might be the interpretation. And the other tough thing is that 6 months may seem like a long time for many communities, but admittedly, that's nothing for a community that is still playing a 15 year old game. ^_^
Let's put it this way. Let's say HD Remix came out and had 6 months to bake for Evo. And let's say it turned out that, oh, Ken was amazingly broken and way too good. Even if we played for 6 months, I would bet the house on Evo still using Remix mode instead of classic mode at Evo. Because we just want to be sure. We'd probably still play Remix mode after that, even if top 8 was like 6 Kens.
Perfect example: when Alpha 3 first came out, X-Dhalsim was soooooo broken and he dominated most tournaments early on. It took more than 6 months to find out that V-Ism was even useful and longer than that to even figure out that Custom Combos were top tier material. Nowadays, X-Dhaslim is the WORST of the three Isms (A and V are top tier in the game and X is nowhere to be found).
So it's really hard for us to dimiss things so quickly. I STILL think that playing with items in Smash Brawl is very possible and deserves some more research, but at this point, I think that goal is moot and for the greater good, we should just drop items all together.
Alpha said: "I would disagree with the sentiment that Smash players should have shown up though... It seems like a socialist ideal that players should show up regardless of what the rules/entry is for EVO. Its like putting a gun to someones head and using it as validation for whatever actions that person then performs. 'Play by our rules or we drop your game from EVO'."
Yeah, I always tell people to show up anyhow despite what rules and choices we make, and I never mean it to come off as mean and elitist as it DOES sound. The reason I tell people that is not because I want people to play by our rules. The reason is because Evo is always driven by community, despite how the staff comes off. To me, showing up to Evo is not acceptance of our rules... in fact, the REASON I want people to show up is to basically show a mature act of defiance. If they all showed up, and played in a side tourney they organized themselves AND boycotted the main tourney (so our tournament would have, like 30 entrants but their side tourney at Evo would have 150 to 200 entrants), don't you think that would have been a VERY mature and effective way to stick it to us?
And keep in mind, I would LOVE to have people stick it to us, as the Guilty Gear community essentially did this past year. They had more entrants than the Tekken tourney. That says a lot to me and made me retract all my comments about them being lazy from two years ago.
Also, by showing up, they could make a case for why items suck face to face. Let's all be honest: on the internet, we all act much more insensitive than we do in real life. And if Overswarm or others showed up to Evo and talked to us face to face where we could smile and laugh and joke about things and he watched the Finals with us and said, "Okay, that's just stupid..." to us in person, it holds a lot more weight. Plus, I think it would improve relations because, when you post on a Forum, everyone sounds waaaay more elitist than they really are.
Plus, showing up to Evo, lastly, just shows how strong and mature the community is. It shows the community isn't bitter or hateful. There are always going to be things you don't agree with, and being angry and bitter usually is the least productive way to get your point across. And Evo is not a socialist event. ^_^ Just because you are at Evo doesn't mean you are there for the good of Evo. To me, the main tournament of Evo is great. But more importantly, it's an excuse for gamers who love Fighting Games to gather. And nothing is cooler than having a room full of people who love the same thing you love. I'm not telling people to go to Evo because it's Evo. I'm telling people to go to Evo because it's a convention, regardless if it has the Evo name or not. And even though you play only Smash, it's fascinating to go there and see people playing ALL sorts of games. It's just cool and I want them to go because I can almost guarantee they'd have a good time there, just because of the atmosphere and the people that are there.
- James
By
jchensor, at 12:48 PM
this is leviathan from hawaii...
James, it's a shame that you feel that way about 3s. I think 3s is a great game and people should learn from people like dagger-g and emphy. They have no trouble keeping up with any of the top 8. I think you're making a generalized assumption and you should take a look at the sbo results from previous years. USA's 3s level is still not on par with Japan and there are a lot of matchups that the US top players don't know themselves.
By
synthesis, at 8:46 AM
First, you are right, looking at a top 8 is a pretty small sample size and probably isn't a proper way to judge if a game is balanced. It is too easily skewed by, among other things, tournament participation.
However, even looking at the SBO results, you must admit that 3rd strike does look pretty unbalanced at the top level. 7 out of the 8 quarterfinal teams this year had chun and 5 had yun. No other characters came close to that high of a usage level.
The problem with 3rd strike isn't that other characters cannot compete with chun/yun in any given match. The problem is that over the course of a tournament, the matchups are so stacked in their favor that anyone not choosing chun/yun is pretty much making it harder for themselves to win.
By
Anonymous, at 11:11 PM
Thanks for this writeup. It was really cool.
To add a bit more to the Smash comment, let me just give a bit of my experience:
I play all the other evo fighters too(st mostly), but I waited in line for the midnight release of Brawl. I entered a handful of tournaments and trained with my 4 friends(crew), and we even hosted our own tournament. All of us were hyped for Brawl being at Evo.
Then, the items discussion showed up on srk, and I argued right along with other smashers for our own ruleset, but it basically FELT like it was Mr wiz's and Keits's opinion of how the game OUGHT to be played vs all of us guys who go to all the tourneys in our area and host our own tourneys with all basically the same agreed upon ruleset.
Honestly, everyone in my crew and the local crews we game with all FELT like the EVO authorities just gave all of us smashers a huge slap in the face. Evo was going to use items, and there was nothing we could do about it. (The whole "prove items are broken" debate was a sad joke).
It wasn't that we don't love evo. It wasn't that we were "encourageing our community to not attend and then using poor attendance as proof that items on is bad". It was that ALL of us FELT like evo didn't care what we wanted. The evo staff would just follow Mr wiz's and Keit's elitist fighting game mindset of 'keep it as close to default as possible cuz that's how all our other "pro" fighting games are done. You little kiddies need to just learn to adapt.'
This is the vibe we all got. Dj (friend from another crew) and I LOVE the other fighters. We've played them for a long time, but we love Brawl too, and we FELT that it was wrong for evo to ignore the hundreds of tournaments on AiB that all followed almost the exact same ruleset. It's how we all loved to compete.
There wasn't some campaign that said "boycott evo!" There was just a ton of AiB blogs about how sad/angry/disappointed/infuriated (people dealt with the disappointment differently) the whole evo situation was. Basically, as a community, we just said "Well, I guess evo is out for our major this year. Who's willing to hold a tournament for us?" And we DID have a west coast major that had I think around 300 players. It was awesome.
I just hope the evo staff can try to understand how hurt we all were when you look at the people who didn't deal with their disappointment rightly by dissing evo or mr wiz or keits or anyone. There was hostility on both sides, and obviously, evo did what they thought was right, and srk is right to feel angry at the scrubs from swf who can't have a civil debate.
I'm just looking forward to Brawl no items being at evo 2009. We still didn't have a west vs east clash yet. DSF used that west coast major to further show his continued dominance on the west, but I've barely followed the east scene (since i'm not part of it), and I know I'm not the only one who wished evo was where these epic snakes et al would clash. Instead, we had Ken (someone who isn't leading the west scene like he did in melee) vs CPU (basically an unknown) who, seemingly, were duking it out not to prove who was the greatest Brawl in the world right now, but just to see who would walk home with a cool title (winning evo items on brawl tourney is still one hell of an accomplishment), and the prize money.
Umm.. this is rly longer than I expected, but I'm pretty confident that these feelings that I'm expressing aren't the isolated case, but the general rule for us Brawlers.
By
Anonymous, at 12:08 PM
So I get on the Playstation Network last night, download HD Remix, and jump right into the action. After a few wins with Guile, I'm feeling pretty good about my rusty skills. Then I come up against a player using E-Honda. I think to myself, "Okay gotta watch out for E-Honda's new jab headbutt." I then proceed to get owned by not only that move, but also his 360-motion grab. Over, and over again. Not until I lose the match do I notice that the person I'm playing has the screen name of "jchensor". Immediately I get a flashback to all those Capcom fighting videos I used to watch on the internet years ago. Could it be him? Did I just get my ass handed to me by THE jchensor?
I don't know if it was really you, but this post sums up why Super Street Fighter II Turbo is going to continue to live on forever. Good game! :)
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Russelbutt, at 9:47 AM
Just dropping by to leave a thumbs up to the Evo 2k8 trailer :D I loved the way you "identified" everyone with an clip to follow. Awesome product as always, man!
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Brian, at 10:08 AM
It's interesting to me what you said about MvC2. If you know who I am, you know my tournament time to shine was from late MvC1 through CvS1 to the first year and a half of MvC2. I was there for the East vs West Rivalry. I was there when Ricky had ice thrown at him and they called him names. Most of all, I saw the cliques.
I tired to share my knowledge at the time, being placing high on the West Coast during the MvC2 infancy. I never could quite keep up with Ricky and Hiro. Eventually SoCal and Sacramento started getting really good. And I noticed that if you wanted to learn anything about the game, you had to be in the right "Crew" as you put it.
I always attributed this to my own shyness. I figured if I were more of a people person I could have gone a lot farther. I don't know if that is still true or not.
I think my biggest mistakes were #1 placing too much emphasis on tiers and team dynamics rather than outplaying the opponent, #2 notdisciplining myself to higher execution.
Still, it's nice to see someone write about how things have been on the MvC2 scene. I hope I didn't help cause the problem we still see there today.
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Anonymous, at 8:11 PM
James-
Nice comments.
Are you by any chance the same James Chen who I worked with to put together a petition to Capcom to release a classics collection way back when?
-Bob
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Unknown, at 4:53 PM
What is it, a year already? You're about due for another post m'man.
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XSPR, at 7:06 AM
^ yeah. :)
you are due james! too bad i missed evo this year. i can't believe this was the first year they moved evo up a few weeks, and when i weighed viewing total solar eclipse from shanghai vs evo, i just had to go with the former. :)
i can't wait for your review/insights at this year's evo and i did see the intros you've done and wow those were some pretty beautiful shots; especially the sf4 one.
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Unknown, at 2:51 PM
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オテモヤン, at 2:46 AM
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aa, at 2:02 PM
Do you know where I can get all the years of EVO on DVD???
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Pics just for Kicks, at 8:56 PM
"Third Strike has a ton of players with nothing left to discover."
A year later, Hugo was moved up on the tier list. You're asking too much from a game that has been out for 9 years without any updates. I think you don't watch much 3S videos outside of Evo. Watch agtool's videos. That should represent 3S. There's also TheShend who uploads Japanese 3S tournaments.
The only reason why there were so many Chuns and Yuns in top 8 is because there were so many good Chuns and Yuns in whole tournament. It's a matter of statistics that they will end up in top 8. If you look at SBO tournament, you'll see that there are many mid tiers in top 8. In SBO 2012, 2nd place was team with Dudley, Remy, Alex. You also went too far on those results throghout Evo years. There were other characters in top 8 at Evo such as Necro, Ryu, Alex, Akuma, Makoto, Dudley.
"Well, the problem is that the game has simply grown stale. And not because no one is trying new things, it's because there is absolutely nothing new left in this game to try. I think the game is literally at a point where nothing new can be discovered at all."
To make such statement, you would have to be very good at 3S to recognize what's new and what's not, and then you would have to watch 3S tournaments actively to see what's discovered so far. You don't have any of these two requirements, so I think your view on 3S was very biased. If the fighting games can only be interesting if they have something new for discovering, then this whole genre is in deep trouble.
Doesn't matter anyway, 3S and CVS2 will be perserved through Japanese tournaments. Whether you like it or not, Evo doesn't have highest competition level for these games.
The worst part about these comments on these games is that new players who read it will actually be resistant to try them out. I once read someone's reasons for not liking 3S, which were basically "because James Chen and David Sirlin said so". He should have asked himself "Are David Sirlin and James Chen even 3S players?". And it's a shame because he's from Japan where 3S community is far better than anywhere else. That's when I realized I will never dismiss a game just because people who don't even play it didn't like it (or tournament results for it).
There's something very wrong with your view on Evo games in general. Just because players aren't showing anything new in CVS2 and 3S, and there aren't new players for MVC2, doesn't speak anything about the games. That's the kind of view I would expect from some corporate bastards who organize tournaments "these games have nothing new, so let's drop them" (but it's more like a view from a desperate man who wants fighting games to be closer to more popular games). Whatever happens at Evo is not official. So, if there was shitty skill level at Evo, it doesn't mean it's that way everywhere. I think if Kuroda played 3S at Evo, you would actually like the game.
Refering to CVS2 - "The game is really consistent, and does NOT have as much random BS as a game like MvC2 or Third Strike, proving that those who are good at it will dominate because they ARE better players."
If 3S has random BS which would help weaker players win more, then why are Japanese so far beyond U.S. in that game? Why wasn't Kuroda's winning streak of over 100 matches ended by some random BS when he was using low tier characters?
P.S. Evo 2008 3S commentary sucked.
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Ryukenden, at 3:01 AM
Crazy to see a new response to this post so many years later, but it's very cool.
Ryukenden: this was written in a very different time than we are in now. Reading back on some of the things I said about Third Strike, I actually don't agree with myself much anymore. At the time it was very frustrating to see the same things year after year. And our exposure to Japan style of play was limited: streams and YouTube clips were much harder to come by in 2008.
Fast forward to now, where technology and new tricks spread like wildfire, and we have a completely unblocked access to what's going on around the world, my viewpoint and mindset are very different than before. So you're right, it is unfair to say Third Strike has grown stale. It has advanced and still continues to change ever so slightly even now, with characters like Yang rocketing up the tier charts. I still believe the game is highly unbalanced, it may be one of the most imbalanced SF games in history. I've had many people try to argue otherwise, particularly citing Kuroda, but it's not a valid argument: Kuroda is a savant at the game and if he used Chun Li or Yun, he would never lose. He's essentially being Inigo Montoya and fencing left-handed just to give himself a challenge. Even MOV said his Chun Li should be banned from tournaments because it's too unfair.
But the game is still growing, and the spreading of information has changed a lot of the way we view and grow fighting games. Again, in 2008, we didn't have the ability to see as much as we do now.
The only thing I do disagree with entirely is the idea that one MUST be an expert at a game to understand where it changes and such. The best analytical minds are often not the best at the subject they are analyzing, and the people who are the best at the game are not always the best at analyzing. Case in point: Seth Killian was by no means an SFIV expert or a MvC3 expert, but he understood how to balance those games like nobody's business. What he understood about the games and the CONCEPT of the games themselves made all the difference. Super SFIV was super balanced, AE was not. Guess what? In AE, he was not part of the balancing team.
Meanwhile, you take someone like a Justin Wong, he may not actually be the best person to ask about new tricks and balancing and understanding a game from a technical standpoint. Justin is noted for not being particularly technical or frame-date savvy and such. But it doesn't matter, his NATURAL inherent understanding of the competitive aspect of the game knows no bounds. But again, being good at a game and analyzing a game scientifically are two entirely different talents. So while it may seem like I have no place to criticize Third Strike, in 2008, I had seen just about every Third Strike match video you could imagine that was available to us at the time (I used to watch Match Videos like MAD). So even though I wasn't good at the game, I understood it very well.
But I do appreciate the response and I do agree with much of what you said. So thanks for taking the time to read this, even years after the fact! ^_^
- James
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jchensor, at 2:45 PM
Also, I just wanted to clarify, my comments were very much from a community-growth stand point. So when you said:
"There's something very wrong with your view on Evo games in general. Just because players aren't showing anything new in CVS2 and 3S, and there aren't new players for MVC2, doesn't speak anything about the games."
It doesn't speak much about the games, but it speaks a lot about their communities. Which was the main point. Games thrive when their communities thrive, and I felt that the lack of new players was hindering the games' growth. That's my main criticism, not that the lack of players meant the game wasn't good.
- James
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jchensor, at 2:47 PM
"YouTube clips were much harder to come by in 2008."
TheShend uploads 3S videos since 2006. There are many high level matches uploaded since then. Uriden.log matches are awesome. I miss those 1 match uploads. Now we get 30 min and 1 hour matches uploads and we don't appreciate it as much.
"Kuroda is a savant at the game and if he used Chun Li or Yun, he would never lose"
He did use Yun, just not at SBO yet.
"The only thing I do disagree with entirely is the idea that one MUST be an expert at a game to understand where it changes and such."
I said "very good", because you have to be very good to know what is new in a match and what is old. You have to know everything about every character to make a statement that there is nothing new. Naturally, someone with that knowledge would also be very good.
"So thanks for taking the time to read this, even years after the fact!"
I wanted to know more about Evo history so I read all your Evo posts (and comments) here and some random gaming stuff (you should have mentioned Hitman in "Save Game" series).
"It doesn't speak much about the games, but it speaks a lot about their communities. Which was the main point. Games thrive when their communities thrive, and I felt that the lack of new players was hindering the games' growth. That's my main criticism, not that the lack of players meant the game wasn't good."
From what I read it looked like games got dull and players stopped joining to play them because of that. New player would not know if a game is dull or not, so that can't be correct. I think when a game has big community, it encourages new players to join because no one wants to start playing a dying game. So I think lack of players hindered its growth, not lack of new players as you said it. That, and/or a game doesn't look interesting enough for new player to join.
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Ryukenden, at 10:58 PM
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