Middle Tennessee Needs Gaming! Monthly Versus Tourneys - Antioch, TN

[Milln]

Jackie you don't know anything about SFxT, just saying.

I hear all of you guys.

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

For some reason fighting games' quality seems to be inversely proportionate to their popularity. Of course quality is purely subjective, but when you add in ease of use a clear pattern emerges. I think Jackie's right in that only a niche demographic is interested in highly skilled competition. Add in Astaroth's earlier observation of this niche group being spread thin over multiple games, and a lot of awesome fighters are going to go without the attention they deserve simply because there are a lot of awesome fighters. That's just how it goes, I guess. Pretty damned depressing, though.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Volpe-de-Glacio

[Milln]

For some reason fighting games' quality seems to be inversely proportionate to their popularity. Of course quality is purely subjective, but when you add in ease of use a clear pattern emerges. I think Jackie's right in that only a niche demographic is interested in highly skilled competition. Add in Astaroth's earlier observation of this niche group being spread thin over multiple games, and a lot of awesome fighters are going to go without the attention they deserve simply because there are a lot of awesome fighters. That's just how it goes, I guess. Pretty damned depressing, though.

You sound like a hipster. I could name lots of games that are in any area below "good" that no one plays and I can name any "good" or "excellent" fighters that do get the attention they deserve. I can also do the reverse of bad/popular good/unpopular . It has nothing to do with how "good" a game is. It comes down to its mainstream exposure. This holds true with anything, not just games. Books, shows, hobbies, travel areas, restaraunts..

To reiterate, I am not asking you to rationalize why other games get/got better turnouts.

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

It was simply an observation. If I were a hipster I would like things the way they are, but honestly like I've said before, I would love it if Blazblue, Guilty Gear, etc. were on the level of professional sports. Look at Melty Blood, Arcana Heart, Blazblue. I'm not too sure about Guilty Gear and Melty since I haven't been around long, but from what I've seen they just lack the mass turnouts compared to Marvel or SF.

[Astaroth136]

Well, we'll probably bring in really low numbers on the 31st, because there's a Tuscaloosa tournament the same day. I get really tired of tournaments falling on the same day.

[Jackie Chandler]

Jackie you don't know anything about SFxT, just saying.

This doesn't offend me because it's true. It's been months since I bothered doing any actual research on the game, because Capcom keeps giving me reasons to not care about it. Yeah, Mega Man in general was a huge slap in the face, but the fact that DLC characters (including Pac-Man/Mega Man on 360) and costumes are already on the disk is complete and total bullshit. Not to mention this. Ugh. So no, I honestly don't know what kind of game it turned out to be. It could be the most fun, balanced, competitive fighting game ever. All I know are the basic concepts.

Haha, Blazblue. Bitches don't know 'bout my DBZ. So we've got Naimat, Tad, Midnight, Star, and Grimstar? I'll still compete, even though I've pretty much abandoned xbox.

*Cries for being forgotten* Nah, but really, of course I'll be competing. My friend Tret has really been getting into Blazblue recently, too, so if he can make it up on the 31st I'm sure he'll participate.

[Grimstar]

This doesn't offend me because it's true. It's been months since I bothered doing any actual research on the game, because Capcom keeps giving me reasons to not care about it. Yeah, Mega Man in general was a huge slap in the face, but the fact that DLC characters (including Pac-Man/Mega Man on 360) and costumes are already on the disk is complete and total bullshit. Not to mention this. Ugh. So no, I honestly don't know what kind of game it turned out to be. It could be the most fun, balanced, competitive fighting game ever. All I know are the basic concepts.

*Cries for being forgotten* Nah, but really, of course I'll be competing. My friend Tret has really been getting into Blazblue recently, too, so if he can make it up on the 31st I'm sure he'll participate.

You do know that Inafune wanted him in SFxT before he left Capcom right? Probably to promote Megaman Universe. (which we see how that turned out.) So eh...

I think BB is kusoge, honestly. Still, if MTN's continue to exist the way they do now, I think it should be ran, at least for the next little while, as was mentioned by Naimat and Chandler. I'll support it, along with a number of other games.

I think the main reason the scene isn't growing is that it's already divided. MTN's overall community size isn't large enough to support two groups. Both parties play KoF and everyone is hype for GG. I think this year's growth depends on the two separate scenes coming together on the same day, a little more planning, and running every game on the same day.

How does everyone feel about that?

That sounds like the best idea honestly. Part of what is keeping the scene so divided is that neither side wants to dabble at ALL in the other's games. So far it's literally been Myself, Milln, Astaroth, Patrick, Tad and Naimat (whenever they actually feel like it :P) and lately Doromac, as the only people who really try to go to the other tournaments and play different games. Before that I felt like I was the ONLY person who showed up at MTN and Jason's tournaments for SF mutually.

And I feel like part of that is that too many people just have these blinders on, forcing them to play whatever the majority of their friends/people in their scene are playing. Which is stupid. I tried my fucking hardest to get some of the SF guys on BBCT when it was out and MTN was in it's glory days. I sparked a little interest but ultimately that fell to people not wanting to play it due to not liking it, or not wanting to dedicate time to it. And when Marvel 3 came out I was extremely hyped because I figured it would be the game both the SF and BB guys would play. Which it was.... for about a week. So I'm not going to be as naive to think SFxT will do it for us either.

It just requires people to actually want to play more than the one game they feel best at. Get outside of your comfort zone and experience a different fighting game world with different competition. It will make you better as a player, in every aspect I feel. And as much as I love to rag and troll on Blazblue and you guys, you guys are awesome. And I fucking loved MTN back when CT was out and CS1 was just released. Using Hazama in his prime before he became even more braindead boring. That was the shit. And Relius is fun, so I'm going to be entering the next MTN to see how it goes. And to support MTN again after my inexcusable absence for the passed uhh.... time. (months?)

Another thing is that a lot of the SF guys I've talked to don't want to try Blazblue at all because they feel like the players get an elitist attitude of "Well it's the best game. SF is too slow and boring and it's players are simple." I'm not accusing anyone here of that, but if you do talk like that, people hear it. It turns people away from the scene in general. And I know the SF guys are just as guilty of it themselves, but that's the way to ensure you lock down your scene and prevent new people from entering.

Chris Brown is trying his ever loving hardest to get more people to the arcade though. Any time he sees ANYONE playing a fighting game in that bitch he like appears beside them and is like "HEYWHATSYOURNAMEAREYOUONTWITTERWERUNTOURNAMENTSHEREYOUSHOULDCOMEDAWG!!!" it's awesome. But that's more of what we need in order to expand our scene and get more players all around. We need people who are open to new ideas, new faces, new anything.

Anyways, I almost feel bad about all the shit talking and trolling I do to Blazblue now... On second thought...

Edited March 8, 2012 by Grimstar

[Seiki]

As long as there is at least a single person in TN playing BB I won't drop it. Same goes for any other game I choose to pick up. I'll even have a two man tournie. It'll be a FT10. If it's like 3-5 people we will do round robin.

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

I knew I was forgetting someone. . . Everything I've posted was pretty rushed; my access to computers is limited. I'd try to make it to more tournaments and expand my fighters, but it comes down to time, money, all that good shit. I can barely manage making it to just ours. The way things are looking, I'm probably not going to be picking up Skull Girls or going for round two for KoF, even though it's fun. Simply too many games out there that I want to get good at.

@Milln, I was mainly talking about fighting games. Perhaps I'm just greedy, but even the most popular fighters don't get the attention they deserve. It might sound silly, but if people can golf as a career I think we should be able to play fighters the same way.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Volpe-de-Glacio

[Milln]

Chris Brown is trying his ever loving hardest to get more people to the arcade though. Any time he sees ANYONE playing a fighting game in that bitch he like appears beside them and is like "HEYWHATSYOURNAMEAREYOUONTWITTERWERUNTOURNAMENTSHEREYOUSHOULDCOMEDAWG!!!" it's awesome. But that's more of what we need in order to expand our scene and get more players all around. We need people who are open to new ideas, new faces, new anything.

Hahaha this made me laugh out loud at work cause that's exactly what he does.

I'm enjoying this conversation. You guys already know my stance, I preach it every tournament. Mingle. Merging

@Volpe: they do. Sponsored players. Starcraft is South Korea's national sport. I can keep naming examples. Don't denounce golf, though. You can make anything sound negative. Lemme use your wording. "If people can play video games professionally, why can't I play golf the same way?

Edited March 8, 2012 by Milln

[Papstr]

this.

Holy hell. There is a 360/ps3 game that directly references Nintendo by name. My mind is blown. I also lost it at "capcooooooom!" best ending ever. As for SFxT itself, it looks fun, but alot of the business practices i've read that Capcpom has done with it is pretty stupid. I wanna try before I buy, and if I DO buy, it'll be 100% used.

Well, basically myself, Milln, Klien, Midnight, and teh Paps went for Taco Mac, and it was awesome. Hot ass wings, and Klien's manliness matched dat beerd. I forgot what Ranch tasted like, and Caleb never knew. Midnight spit on my fries and I ate them anyway, like a fuckin' honey badger. Milln you were right, that shit was just too fun. For the record, I wasn't too wasted to find my way in from the parking garage. Just way too lazy to figure out where it was in relation to my car that I had to go to, and then back to the hotel. I didn't want to put the effort in... too much walking. I was a little too drunk to not appear like a total dumbass tho, so I'm glad it worked out that way.

Why would you refer to me as Papstr and then randomly switch to my real name?

[tret_tree]

Like I've said, Jackie, don't you dare switch games on me now. :P

As a PS3 native, I've personally more or less found the 360's analog stick to be intolerable. Does anybody know where I can find a PS3 to 360 controller converter? I've had a difficult time finding one; evidently, keywords typed in Google have the capacity to give me exact and relative opposites of what I'm looking for. :<

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

Good luck with that; Star's been hunting for one forever, and the only reason he got his was because Midnight switched to stick.

[Seiki]

Why would you refer to me as my real name and then randomly switch to Papstr?

[Milln]

Why would you refer to me as my real name and then randomly switch to Papstr?

Speaking of this I kept trying to call Midnight "Naimat" the entire Final Round trip unintentionally. I actually did it once but managed to catch myself all the other times.

[Jackie Chandler]

Like I've said, Jackie, don't you dare switch games on me now. :P

As a PS3 native, I've personally more or less found the 360's analog stick to be intolerable. Does anybody know where I can find a PS3 to 360 controller converter? I've had a difficult time finding one; evidently, keywords typed in Google have the capacity to give me exact and relative opposites of what I'm looking for. :<

Lol, you don't have to worry about that. I may pick up and try to play other games seriously (Guilty Gear is very likely, as is KoF if I can ever manage the time for it), but I'll always play Blazblue.

Also, I think I may have found the converter Star has. I found this thread which not only has a picture of the converter Star has, but mentions a name as well. It's called the Blaze Pro. He notes that you don't need a wired 360 controller to bypass Microsoft's security (a problem that other converter had), and that it works with PS3 controllers with no lag. The only problem is that I can't seem to find any places that have it in stock. :/ I'll keep looking around for ya though.

[tret_tree]

That certainly helps. I'm having trouble finding anywhere with it in stock as well, though. Sadface...

Dammit. Dammit.

This is much more expensive, and not what was suggested, but it looks legit. It requires a wired XBox controller, but that doesn't matter much to me since I have one anyway for PC gaming.

Edited March 8, 2012 by tret_tree

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

Hahaha this made me laugh out loud at work cause that's exactly what he does.

I'm enjoying this conversation. You guys already know my stance, I preach it every tournament. Mingle. Merging

@Volpe: they do. Sponsored players. Starcraft is South Korea's national sport. I can keep naming examples. Don't denounce golf, though. You can make anything sound negative. Lemme use your wording. "If people can play video games professionally, why can't I play golf the same way?

I know about sponsored players, but there are far more professional golfers than fighting gamers. They also make a lot more money and are more easily sponsored. I wasn't talking bad about golf, just pointing out that it's almost as niche as fighters yet it still receives sport status. Hell, other video game genres' pros make a lot more than fighters. SC, WC3, FPS (CONSOLE FPS), LoL and those types make a lot more on average than a sponsored fighting game player.

I was just having to defend competitive fighters from my LoL playing friend because he wanted to get me competitive in that instead. My argument had to be based solely on gameplay, because in terms of community size, pay off and such he was completely right.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Volpe-de-Glacio

[Milln]

I'm not going to argue with your friend for you, but look at the SRK calendar. Every single day is full of events, EVERYWHERE. Online moba games don't have the number of tournaments.

Consider the payouts of all these tournaments combined versus the once in a blue moon tournament. Fighters.

Community size? Of fighting games? Less than ten million? Don't make me laugh.

[LastStarSaviour]

I don't see anything wrong with the way BB is going in Middle Tennessee, keep running it. Turn-outs for majors and what not don't really matter when it comes to the communities themselves so low turn-outs there doesn't necesarily mean low turn-outs all the way around the FG spectrum. Let's just do what we've always done.

I read somewhere that someone was saying that people only "play the games they are good at" which isn't necesarily true (since I play a few games like Third Strike that i'm not exactly gdlike at). I also heard someone say that BB players just bash SF without actually getting to learn how to play the game. To this I say that for some players that is true, but at the same time you do have BB players who have legitimately played the game and gave the game enough time to come to a concensus on whether if it is something worth continuing. Myself for instance, I had SF4 for about maybe a year and a half or two when it first came out (I trained regularly as any person who picks up a fighter shoud). Plus, everyone I knew liked it at the time so I tried to give it a chance but over time as I got to play it more it just became a boring process (therefore I legitimately dropped it). I see nothing wrong with people playing the games they actually love playing as apposed to just playing games so bigger communities can be built. If a community has to stay small but very active in a game, then so be it.

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

I wasn't asking you to make an argument for me, merely pointing out an imbalance. If you haven't noticed by now, I enjoy discussing things personally, seeing as regardless of the result I tend to learn something.

Considering LoL apparently has tournaments every weekend with 10k pots, 1 or 2 monthlies for 100k, and their bigger tournaments can offer up to a million TWICE a year, I doubt fighters even come close. I'm not sure about Japan's tournaments, but at EVO 1st place winners get like, what, 20k? This being for Street Fighter, with top Marvel players making 10k or so. This might be wrong as I got it from a discussion on SRK, but it should be in the same area. Winning just one weekend tournament in a moba can finance your trip anywhere in the country for a bigger tournament. Fighters just can't stack up as a sport. The only place they probably have an advantage is money matches, but even those aren't exactly consistent.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Volpe-de-Glacio

[Seiki]

Why do people try to argue about videogames' legitimacy as a sport? It doesn't need to be called a sport to be respected. Just call it what it is: competition. Because that's what it's all about regardless of whether you call it a sport or not.

And surely, money and sponsorship shouldn't be reasons to legitimize something as a sport.

Hell, have you heard of taser ball? Yeah I haven't either, but these guys have and they think it's a "sport" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E38G31wo7qc

Point is, don't get occupied with placing videogames under a category it draws focus away from the main reason why we play and that is the love of competition and the fun of play.

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

That wasn't my intent. If you notice, incentives like that increase motivation and enable more players to compete. My whole focus was pretty much competition. In the time between our scene meets, they have 4 tournaments that provide players with the ability to travel and enter even more events.

Dollar signs and categories have never been the issue, at least not for their own sake. All I ask for is competitive viability. One weekend LoL tournament can take you anywhere in the country to compete in another one. If you want to travel around your region entering events for your fighter, you'd better place high consistently or have a separate source of income (which typically limits your ability to travel and compete in the first place.)

Those who rise to the top of their scene in LoL can then in turn sharpen their skills practically anywhere in the country. Money wouldn't be as much of a problem if sponsorships were assigned as liberally as they are in 'legitimate' sports and other genres of games. Fighters pretty much get shat on in comparison to mobs and FPSs.

The only respect I give a damn about is the respect we already have: the appreciation of those who compete and improve their game and those high level players who contribute to the community and the competition. What I'm pointing out is there should be a more solid path for the players who actually want to reach that goal. For now, you'd either have to have a damned good connection with which to play a game with a solid net code, or your scene had better be filled with damned good players for most every character of your fighter.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Volpe-de-Glacio

[Milln]

I wasn't asking you to make an argument for me, merely pointing out an imbalance. If you haven't noticed by now, I enjoy discussing things personally, seeing as regardless of the result I tend to learn something.

Considering LoL apparently has tournaments every weekend with 10k pots, 1 or 2 monthlies for 100k, and their bigger tournaments can offer up to a million TWICE a year, I doubt fighters even come close. I'm not sure about Japan's tournaments, but at EVO 1st place winners get like, what, 20k? This being for Street Fighter, with top Marvel players making 10k or so. This might be wrong as I got it from a discussion on SRK, but it should be in the same area. Winning just one weekend tournament in a moba can finance your trip anywhere in the country for a bigger tournament. Fighters just can't stack up as a sport. The only place they probably have an advantage is money matches, but even those aren't exactly consistent.

Did not know that. My bad. Go go e-sports

[Volpe-de-Glacio]

The only online tournaments are the weekly 10ks. I will say this for fighters, though: the amount of competitive fighters is far more diverse than mobas, but I still think if advertisers and developers were as invested in tournaments, we'd really see fighters develop into a 'legitimate sport'. When we gain a massive, hungry community with accessible tournaments, tournament players will become a demographic actually profitable to cater to.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Volpe-de-Glacio