Is this genre dying?

Lemmy:
He meant play the original UT because practically nobody but veterans still play that game, any casual player will get whipped in 2 seconds flat if they walk into that game these days. Which isn't entirely true, you need the right server, but the chances are higher there than in most places to meet extremely skilled players.

I'm sorry dude, but saying that the competition in an fps is an abysmal excuse for a competition is silly. There's a lot of skill and knowledge required to get into the top tiers of those games and most of the players that run around in those circles only play on locked off servers because anyone else would get massacred and only be an annoying nuisance for them.

I met an international class CoD4 player online a couple months back. The end scores of the game looked like this: 1,3,3,6,10,12,12,20,26,32,84

After he left the top rest of the top four of the server went on to hitting 50+ kill scores again. I was the top player on the team opposing him with the 26 score (getting rather annoyed with the poor showing of my teammates I must add).

 

You're right, but there IS a difference.

Most fighting games are built around a very strict and abusable system. Think about Soul Calibur 3, for example, and remember how fast everyone figured out that Xianghua and Sophitia were top tier. With the combination of hit ranges, frame rates, and move properties, fighting games are, for the most part, a scientific game of chess. By their nature, they reward people with the time, money and patience to get good...which speaks to maybe 10% of the gaming market.

Now, let's take FPS games. While these games also have an overarching metagame that determines the good from the bad, the game also has a lot more randomness and variety of play. Getting owned in Deathmatch? How about some Capture The Flag? Suck at that? Make your own custom gametype/map and invite your friends along! When Bungie made Halo 3, they made sure to include a variety of ways to play the game so that even if someone finds themselves stuck at rank 15 on Lone Wolves, they could find a billion other ways of enjoying the game.

Fighting games aren't like that--especially if you're playing with other people. Sure, you have your single player modes like Chronicles of Swords and Quest Mode, but if you're a social gamer (which is what most "Casual" gamers are), you're gonna want a game that you and your buddies can have a good time playing together. Halo and Virtua Fighter may both be competitive titles, but there's no Co-Op mode in Virtua Fighter.

 

There are some people out there that are just amazing at FPS games. There is a dude named Walshy who plays all FPS's professionally but mainly Halo.

This guys skill level is unbelievable! The thing people forget is that the hard-core FPS guys will play and practice for anywhere from 4-12 hours at a time. They log a TON of time on those games. It's so immersing that your skills have to become second nature.

Walshy's sniping is crazy. He can just put the sight right on your head and fire so fast, most people will never be able to snipe like he can. FPS games are an entirely different skill set from fighters. The execution skills are so much different they're hard to compare.

I have a cousin who is 14 and he plays FPS games religiously (and he's very, very good, ranked at 45 in Halo 3). I told him to get VF5 and he said he'd never played a game like that and asked me if it was like DOA. I told him DOA is like VF but that's besides the point. Most kids these days have never even picked up a fighter.

 

I think the genre is not exacly dying but narrowing, the problem being that the parameters of what constitutes a fighting game is becoming so tight. All the big games are descendants of Street Fighter II and not much has changed except to add layers of technicality to the basic punch, kick, special move and guard idea. Many of the current games are sequels in their forth or fith incarnation.

Games like Smash Bros and EA's Fight Night aren't regarded as fighting games because they don't fit in that little box that SFII first created. Maybe to help the growth of fighting games some originality is required, however it's a danger that too much originality will alienate the hardcore who are comfortable with the established format that they have grown up with and become good at.

 

smash bros. was nick-named "marvel jr." during evo2k7 because of its fast and gameplay mechanics(which wasn't displayed until high-tier players "marveled" the crowd). if i can recall it has the 2nd highest attended game event in evo2k7. alot of ppl want this game to return to evo... anyway, there are fighters out there that are trying to be original, but are overlooked until months or years later. 3S was the same way sorta. I honestly think the scene will start blowing up this year. with many fighting games coming out, and vf5 recently getting its patch, there are gonna be alot of ppl coming back to the fighting scene, or starting out. SF4 will probably make the biggest impact on that imo...

 

I think fighting games need to evolve in this direction and maybe pick-up the original Shenmue idea; a story led or sandbox game tied to the VF5 engine.

 

I played UT1999 until like 2005 haha, so yeah you can say I tried it. I also was a respected LMS, TLMS and Rocket Arena player online. Mad clans wanted me to play for them and I was in at least 6 over the years. I didn't care for TDM or DM though I preferred LMS with an active mod that kicked campers. Or at least had no camp I'd regularly have the most kills on the server. Yes, yes I know DM elitists say well try TDM or DM. I did and when I did I still came out on top or close to on top.

Ahh those were the days.

My comment was aimed more towards the casual gamers ability to get into a game easily. Aka why do more people play Tekken than VF? It's simpler (can of worms) prettier (maybe a ziplock of worms) and more edgey (argue this and your an idiot.)I could
put a scrub on 1999 UT when it first came out and they could still enjoy playing put them on VF? Hah, first you don't get
the boom and the bang, but a shitty looking p,p,p,k and some low punches.

Now there is going to be exceptions but at the end of the day in a FPS you point and shoot. Anyone can play and be somewhat entertained things go boom. I personally think the skill set in hand eye coordination is still more specialized in fighters but that's another argument altogether, I could be biased based on my personal experience but I digress.

Bottom Line.
They don't have the attention span to get into a game that is packaged like Virtua Fighter. I still stand behind this. I have a friend that is actually pretty good goes by Bizazedo super MMORPG player, he came back to VF for a little while until in his words "Got tired of all the little BS."

 

I agree with Sebo that FPS are somehow similar to fighting games in that they are mainly games based on hand-eye coordination.
We can probably conclude that FPS are to western gamers what fighting games are to Asian gamers.

This notwithstanding, games that require hand-eye coordination are clearly falling out of fashion. To some extent, it all started since mass data storage devices became part of console technolgy. The first consoles with a CD-ROM drive were the first to feature FMVs, proper audio dialogues between characters and that kind of "multimedia" things. Games started to be cutscenes over commands, plots over playability and basically quantity over quality.
This suited the burgeoning industry of the second half of the 90s very well. Games relying heavily on a background story/plot lose most of their entertainment value once finished. This means you have to buy another one whilst any game in which the actual playability matters tends to last longer. Short term and long term longevity of a game are usually inversely related and by cutting long term longevity you force the average user to buy games more often.

That's basically how we ended up with so many games being either movies/books (any modern adventure game) and or chat programs (those fucking MMORPGs).

To this, add the fact that arcades lost their reason for being as they ceased to have technological leadership. Back in the days arcade games (which have to be immediate and hand-eye coordination related by definition) meant graphics that were always one step ahead of home consoles. This is not the case anymore which is also a reason why arcadish games are not so popular anymore in the west.

The final corollary of how dying is the BEU genre in the west was the million of twats who found Ninja Gaiden to be way too difficult. Disguised and marketed as a normal action game (whilst its laughable plot can almost be seen as a pisstake of mainstream action games), NG is 90% based on fighting and with some seriously interesting mechanics. Ah, and you have to use the guard button. I guess that's why FPS players couldn't dig it...

 

Not true about the hand-eye coordination thing... Those games are getting MORE popular. Guitar Hero, Rock Band... what are those? Nothing but hand-eye coordination. You're basically referring to GTA type games I guess... There will always be simple, single-player games on consoles. Platform games will always exist. Multi-player games are more complicated because there's competition, when there's competition people will spend much more time trying to get better to best their opponents. Multi-player games let you test your skill against some one else where GTA or platform games you just beat the levels and the bosses and then the games collects dust. A good multi-player game will make you play so much your controller will wear out and you'll need a new one.

 

Guitar Hero is usually played by people who'll consider shmups or beups boring or unattractive and playing real guitar too difficult.

Note that since the arcades lost technological leaderhsip for graphics, all the new trends regarded funny peripherals, in a (correct from business and marketing stand point) attempt to offer something that consoles couldn't.

There is hand-eye coordination in Guitar Hero but it's not the main factor nehind the success of rhythm games. It's the ""coolness" of having an instrument and some sort of musical game...

About platforms I agree, they're always been there. But look at what they've become. 3D charades full of nothing. Just walk through the level until its end. I wouldn't trade 99% of those plot-based action/platform of the last 5 years for 1 hours of playing Donkey Kong Country 2 on SNES.

 

I've trimmed your post about platformers because I think the same accusation could be made about a lot more genres.

But I think many people are playing games for the excitement of exploration (I'm thinking of my own fun I've had playing Metroid, Zelda, GTA etc.). So it isn't 3D full of nothing, it's full of new stuff to be seen, what's next, whats around the corner?

I'd argue that Guitar Hero is actually played by more people that have never been attracted to computer/console games before because they found the subject matter uninteresting. Play as a Chinese martial artist or some cartoon character: WTF! Play as a rockstar: Yeah, I can get with that!

There are many types of fun to be had with lots of different types of games. The set-up situation of a fighter is pretty mundane: two people in a ring having a scrap. The background may change occasionally but it's always going to be fairly static. The enjoyment is going to be that twitch based adrenaline rush.

There is more choice these days in how people have their fun and games need to be more alluring. I don't believe that it is about complexity. One of the criticisms about VF is about it's complexity and that it requires a long time to get into but on the surface you can have immense fun mashing about on Quest mode without a second clue about frames, sabakis and nitaku etc. (believe me =)....). I think that a game needs to lure you in initially and having lured you in can then reveal the depth of it's gameplay. That's what is going to keep you playing.

It seems to me that the "buy-in" value of fighting games, the initial promise of fun seems lower than other games because they offer less scope, less "stuff to do" and that this why people are not as attracted as they once were. Street Fighter II ruled because it was a big fish in a little pond. These days fighting games need to offer more.

 

Granted, I'll give you the Guitar Hero quote, but I think the blanket statement that all rhythm games are popular because of looking cool may be a misconception.

I played DDR for three years (still sort of do) and I never was in it mainly to look cool. In fact, I was quite aware I looked goddamn geeky. However, I played it for the fact that it was challenging, and something that gave me something I could do for a long time. I think the amount of pissed off people Konami made when they bought out Roxor proves that. Most of the friends I know now won't even touch the new DDR because it's all flash. They try to find ITG Cabinets because its a lot damn harder and a lot more rewarding to get good at.

On another note, I think if any game's gonna draw casual people into fighters its Smash Bros. That game is almost the epitome of easy to learn, goddamn impossible to master. The addition of third party characters to the Nintendo roster will only serve to draw even bigger audiences in to see what all the fuss is about.

 

Well honestly in the hand eye coordination department it's a different kind of hand eye in my opinion.

Fighters vs FPS vs Guitar Hero.

Fighters: You have numerous button presses or combinations of presses in a predefined AND arbitrary fashion in accordance to
your and your opponents moves, position, stance and god knows what else, their character alone can open up new factors. Imo you need very good reaction time at high levels but good reaction time on average levels as well otherwise I wouldn't hear people say they are losing to scrubs or mashing.

FPS: While todays FPS games have more button presses than older games it's still relatively simple. Your job is simply to move your mouse (pad players aren't worthy of mentio) and point at whatever it is your trying to kill and fire. Yes you have to take measures to not get hit, but those measures are universal.
In my opinion there's less to factor in. Not to mention it's not like you have 45 seconds to win or lose. Now it does take a LOT of reaction time at high levels but in average competition it's not as demanding imo as a fighter to win. The gap in my opinion is so huge between good player and average player in FPS that a good FPS player will SLAUGHTER the average players to the point where the average player will seem like they are standing still.
There will be no oops I lost due to X.

Guitar Hero: Haven't played it but if it's anything like DDR
there's a song, a set pattern and you press your fingers in
accordance. Hard? Sure, but lazy, nothing to figure out. Flat
out you just need good reaction time, but it's brain dead motor
skill reaction time.

My 2 cents.

 

I did mean that you do that in order to look cool but that the most of the interest in the game comes from the (then) unusual playing system. You can't deny that many people who were never interested in games got into rhythm games (of which dance games are some sort of subgenre) because they are less "geekish" than a cabinet with a joystick and buttons. That's what I meant with the coolness. The difficulty with dancing games is to do well in the game while looking like you are dancing normally, which can't always be done I guess and that doesn't get rated by the machine (hence the reason for having tournaments with judges and stuff). But yeah, if you wanna play the most difficult songs properly, you'll look like somebody having seizures, not dancing, I agree with you on that.

In general, I meant that those kind of games are likely to attract more people because of the way they are presented. I think DDR will appeal more to somebody into dancing than VF could ever appeal to somebody into martial arts.
To conclude, I wouldn't consider the success of games like GH, DDR and such as a consequence of people being interested in hand-eye coordination games.

Also, of course not all 3D games are rubbish, but think of the average. For every Zelda you get a gazillion tie-ins from the latest pixar movie, an avalanche of new devs trying to be interesting but failing miserably, dozens of games inspired by some comics hero and stuff, loads of militaresque action games.
I mean, there are SO many 3D action/adventure games and most of them are complete rubbish, still they are breaking even. That's because the market for that genre is SO huge that even bad games make money. While it seems to me that a sub-market like 3D fighters is way smaller, with a much more demanding audience and ultimately much higher quality of software.

To go back on topic: no, I don't think the success of dancing games and rhythm games is ascribable to some interest from people in the hand-eye coordination component of those games. Hand-eye coordination is not what people want and therefore the games that are mainly built around that are dying.

 

I think you've really got the wrong attitude about this stuff, Franz, you're trying to create some kind of competition between genres where none exists.

Um... no, I know as many people who love both shmups and fighting games that play Guitar Hero, as I know people who refuse to play either and also love Guitar Hero. And it's completely ignorant to compare anyone playing Guitar Hero to someone playing an actual guitar.

Tycho from Penny Arcade said it better than I ever could (December 7th, 2007):
Invariably, when reasonable people are discussing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, that forum smart guy oozes in somewhere near the middle of the thread and tells people that they should be playing real instruments - presumably, like he does. Put aside that Mozart has missed the point completely (i.e., why don't you play for the real NFL, etc). The fact of the matter is that he is quite simply wrong. And not just wrong: it's that thick, unctuous kind of wrong that masquerades as erudition. He is, in fact, a yokel - and he's operating under some pretty romantic notions of what constitutes an "instrument." I wrote about this a while ago when talking about the remix mode of Frequency, another Harmonix game, and how it made the PS2 controller a kind of instrument. That idea fascinated me. Actual instruments are not especially ergonomic, in general terms - they are not engineered for use. They need to account for crass physical laws to epitomize their function. Instruments are beautiful, let me be clear. But they are not, themselves, music. These guitars are only toys because they are limited, at this particular moment, to playing other people's songs.


Dancing games are a different story. You're playing a video game, you're not dancing, and you have to realize that. But there's certainly a huge amount of skill that goes into DDR, I used to be able to clear 9-foot songs, but was never in good enough shape to last through an entire 10-foot song, unfortunately. But, still, it's arguably my favorite game after VF. There's really not this distinction between players of these different genres that you're trying to talk about.

I do agree on the hand-eye coordination side. GH and DDR are memorizing a set of inputs, with additional help such as the song you're listening too, not just what you see on-screen. Fighting games require responding to your opponent, never following a set pattern, so it's a completely different skill set.

First, do some research... those games don't break even, or even get close. Last I heard(2005, maybe?), the top 10 selling games of a the year are usually the *only* games released to even make a profit, much less break even. They just sell sooooo much, that they're able to carry the entire rest of the industry. A publisher like EA only needs one of those big hits, and they can afford to put out the other 50 games of the year, usually some good, some bad.

I also don't know what you've got against 3D games, but "3D" is not a genre. And how is the "average" rubbish? Off the top of my head, in 3D action/adventure we've got Zelda, Jak, DMC, NG (praised by you earlier), Mario, Mass Effect, Resident Evil... I could go on and on, but I won't. We've really got no shortage of fabulous 3D games out there, and all my examples came out either last year, or will come out soon (as long as you count the WII version of RE4). The fact there's some crappy clone FPSes, and movie tie-in games that show up every once in a while does not automatically mean you get to discount everything else (also, just as many horrible 2D games came out back in the SNES days, you probably just don't remember cause noone played them).

 

I totally disagree with the Penny Arcade guy. About 80% of the fascination with Guitar Hero is basically the shape of the controller, because it looks like a guitar. It's the clever idea behind the game. If you had to play it with a freaking Hori EX2, if there was no guitar peripheral, nobody would have ever bothered with the game. Ever. You can't deny this. IMO, a fancy controller does not make a good game. Seriously, forget about the guitar for a second and think of what you are actually doing: pressing the buttons you are told to and only those. That sounds like Simon to me. It's a fun thing, but it's nowhere near things like "the best game in the world", "the ultimate video game and stuff" (not that you said it was, anyways).

And yes, I do play guitar and the comparison with NFL just doesn't stack up. Playing hockey requires a gazillion conditions: being in a specific country (US, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia or else you are fucked), finding a team, going to the ice rink and stuff. I can understand a person that does like hockey and plays an hockey vidoe game instead of real hockey.

Playing guitar is a much simpler task. Go to a shop, buy a 100 USD second hand squire, go back to your room, look up some tabs on the internet and play any song you want or even better, start to do your own music. Very similar to what you would do with your Guitar Hero videogame. It can be done anywhere in the world, you don't need to meet at specific times with specific people and stuff.
And yes, I do have a definition of a musical instrument. No, it doesn't necessarily have to be a grand piano or a guitar. It can be a PS2 controller attached to a synth. As long as you can make music, i.e. play the notes that you want when you want. Which you are not allowed to do in Guitar Hero.
True, instruments are not music. But a guy tapping a rhythm on his driving wheel while waiting for the traffic lights to turn green is more of a musician than the best Guitar Hero player in the world.

I really think that if one got into GH because of an interest in guitar-based music, he is wasting his time, he'd be so much better off doing something real, exactly because it's very possible. If you approached it out of interest for games, then it's another thing (IMO you're still playing a rather brainless game only partially justified by a fancy controller).

 

I don't have any problems with how much apparent skill a genre may or may not take, the community, however, is acompletely different matter.

The community for FPS games is horrific at the best of times.

 

Not really sure now how we ended up discussing whether GH is a good game or not.

I repeat what I said at the end of my other post:

To go back on topic: no, I don't think the success of dancing games and rhythm games is ascribable to some interest from people in the hand-eye coordination component of those games.Hand-eye coordination is not what people want and therefore the games that are mainly built around that are dying.

 

someone earlier hit it on the head...this is the decade of fragile egos. peoplpe have been so pampered of late with the proliferation of coop/team based mmogs and shooters than they can't handle a beating in a one vs one situation.

also, today's gaming audiance want to be fed a constant stream of stat boots, extra moves and shiny collectibles to justify playing a game. it's sad but true.

 

extend on Maximum:
Oh, I remember showing a girl who was into SC VF4E. The first thing she asked was: only 15 character, no secret characters to unlock or a storymode? What a crappy game. There, done, no further argument could be made. She'd even prefer MKD over VF4E. Most people are just not interested in the 1 on 1 bout/tournament playing. VF has always catered purely for that clearly defined audience.

On rythm games:
DDR was never mainstream popular the way Guitar Hero is, they cannot be compared in any way really. Anyone can theoretically play a rythm game as the only thing that's required are working fingers and a brain that can keep information stored for about an hour. DDR is a pure rythm game, they only replaced the controller/buttons with a plate you stand on. GH on the other hand hands you the rock star fantasy and then executes it as a rythm game. Sure, they work the same, but the appeal they present is very different.

From a gameplay point of view GH does nothing new, they invented the proper wrapping for the candy, but in the end you're still sucking on the same caramel. That so many gamers (including those that never wanted anything to do with DDR or DK conga) have embraced it is testament to the sheer genius of it though.

On fighting games:
People are afraid of movelists, try introducing someone to fighting games and the first thing you'll hear is that they can't be bothered to remember all that stuff. As someone said before, fighting games became popular because of arcades, they looked flashy and instead of just trying to beat a score you could beat you friend. It was different and easy enough to get into. Six buttons, one for a move each and up to three special moves per character that a lot of people didn't even know about at the start. It was simple and enjoyable.

Since that time they've added immense amounts of depth, systems, patterns, strategies, corner locks, throws (remember when people whined they were cheap?), combo's. 3d fighters removed special moves and expanded movelists tenfold. 2d fighters these days require you to track at least three bars and who knows what in extra states and stats. If they had tried introducing that from the start it would have failed horribly, and it is detrimental for getting new people into the scene. The fans of the games demanded something from the genre that has made it inaccessible for everyone else. In our hunt for 'depth' we practically killed the games we love.

That fighting games are slowly rising from the grave again is testament to the sheer power of the original idea of 1 on 1 combat. And why have fighting games begun to rise again? Because they're becoming easier to play again. VF5's input windows have lengthened, easy inputs for many moves have been inserted. Soul Calibur and Mortal Kombat refocused on story and extras, shifting the main appeal of the game to get players to stick with the game longer. MvC tossed everything to the wind and inserted the most insane stuff they could think of, re-applying the original flash appeal of fighting games. Tekken kept catering for casual players with wacko characters, extra game modes and unlockables, and people stick with it despite punishing input requirements for a lot of moves (95% of the players couldn't care less about that).

Well, that's what I think anyway.