Fighting game community

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The fighting game community is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Soulcalibur. The fighting game community started out small in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s referred to as the grassroots era, but it has grown to a larger scale in the 2010s, with many tournaments being held across the world. This is predominately due to the rise of esports and digitized viewing habits on live streaming sites such as Twitch.

History

Beginnings

The game Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was a huge success when it was released in 1991 and is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time.[1][2][3] It refined and made the fighting game genre more popular.[4]

2000–2009: early years

In early 2000, a forum was created called Shoryuken.com which was named after the iconic Street Fighter attack. The site became the main go to forum for many fighting game competitors and it quickly attracted the community to create major tournaments to gather the best players from around the country. One of the most major tournaments that gather players from around the world is called The Evolution Championship Series. In middle of the 2000s the FGC's popularity began to fade due to lack of new fighting games, the overall sales of the genre, and some problems within the community.[citation needed] It was not until 2009, when there was a new spark in the community.[5]

2009–present: new age of fighting games

After nearly a decade, Capcom announced the development of the next installment of one of their most well-known fighting games, Street Fighter IV. The game received a lot of positive reception from major game reviewers and the FGC.[6][7][8][9] Street Fighter IV brought life back into the FGC by not only rejuvenating the popularity of fighting games, but also creating an influx of new players into the community and increasing the number of competitors. After the success of Street Fighter IV, new fighting games began being developed and the FGC expanded with more tournaments. The tournaments even started being live-streamed with Twitch so many people can view the tournaments. There are also sponsor-ships from franchises like Evil Geniuses, Broken Tier,[10] and Mad Catz,[11] which pays players for free advertisement.

Despite the rise of other competitive video game genres, a phenomenon known as Esports, many members of the FGC have rejected the label of "Esports" on their community.[12]

The overall size of the community remains a very small proportion of the fighting game market overall. Some of the genre's biggest selling games, such as Tekken 5,[13] Super Smash Bros.[14] and Mortal Kombat X,[15] have sold in excess of 5 million copies. In contrast, the same games might only attract 1,000-2,000 entrants at a large tournament.[16][17] Typically some 20-30% of players fight online.[18]

Culture

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. The fighting game community, which is prominently SJW-converged, has been praised for its racial diversity compared to other gaming communities.[19] However, it has also been criticized, mostly by left-wing and far-left political activists within it, for what they see as sexism.[20][21][22][23]

A highly publicized incident of so-called sexism occurred in 2012 on a live streaming event, when Street Fighter x Tekken player Aris Bakhtanians made comments about a female player's bra size and other remarks that were considered as "inappropriate", leading to the female player to drop out of the event.[24] Later, during an interview with Twitch he is quoted as saying that "sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community." He later apologized for his comments.[25]

Tournaments

References

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  18. ↑ Data from server logs, for example, 20% of Street Fighter IV players acquire the trophy for playing an online match on the PlayStation 3
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  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Bibliography

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