Is this genre dying?

You mean football? NFL = Football, NHL = Hockey. Doesn't really matter though since your point stands with either sport. Just wanted to make that tiny correction.

 

Well thought out and in my opinion %100 correct. People don't
want to have to study to learn how to play a game. If you look
at this sites wiki it's virtually like learning another language.
I still look at that thing and think "WTF" and then think about
the people that put it together and think "What the hell are you?"

I think I'll become a surgeon instead. There's more money in it.

 

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Tekken kept catering for casual players with wacko characters, extra game modes and unlockables.
Well, that's what I think anyway.

Well thought out and in my opinion %100 correct. People don't
want to have to study to learn how to play a game. If you look
at this sites wiki it's virtually like learning another language.
I still look at that thing and think "WTF" and then think about
the people that put it together and think "What the hell are you?"
</div></div>

Wacko characters, lol, couldn't agree more /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

And yes, damn it, really sounds like learning a language. Not (only) because of the whole jargon, mind, but really for the way you get to learn and practice things. In all honesty, at the beginning I thought this site was official and that Myke was working full time time for SEGA...


ps: I did mean NHL as hockey seems the most difficult sport to get to play I can think of but yeah, NFL and American football would do too. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif

 

i agree with almost all the analysis of all the factors
mentioned in the previous posts
1) arcades dying
2) loss of interest
3) high learning curve
4) better access at home on consoles
5) online play

etc..
another factor not mentioned was the rising cost of
arcades....back when it was a quarter (in the US),
to play, and 1 to continue, a lot more players were
around....slowly it rose to double that, etc...a lot
of players couldn't afford to keep spending a lot of
money to get...then when home consoles got better,
pretty much every game you had was available to get
good at home...

although consoles used to be 1 generation behind the
arcades, it didn't matter, (even now), we are still
1 generation behind the arcade machines...but has that
stopped anyone from playing at home? i wonder what the
stats for games like vf4 were after the home versions
came out..(even for vf5 now?)....of course if vf6 only
comes out for the home, what will happen then????

now the 2nd part about consoles (sic) killing the pc,
is only partially true in some genres, i prefer pc
games, but thats just me [there is NO advantage to
the console version of games, when it comes to controllers,
graphics, etc...], in fact pc games are usually cheaper..

eg. i bought sega rally revo for the pc, and xbox 360
versions..but the pc version was cheaper...

now of course, the entry level pc that can do decent
graphics and games is pretty high, but if you already
have a decent pc, then you just need memory, and a
good graphics card...so there's not really that much
disparity their....and nowadays, many monitors double
as tvs, tvs have monitor capability so theirs no
advantage there..

[ironically, i have a 32 inch flatscreen that i play
on at home....but when i'm at a friends place, i bring
my 17inch widescreen monitor, and hook up the xbox through
the vga connecter....both are incredibly sharp, and
response rates are good, the only difference is the
screen size]..

this will never happen, but if sega/microsoft released
vf5 for windows live, yeah, i would buy it...why? because
i can still use all kinds of controllers on it, mess with
the graphics, have better framerates, etc....and of course
if i had an internet connection, i could play against other
pc/xbox 360 players...

[*NOTE : i did buy the xbox 360 ONLY to play vf5 with
originally, (and maybe sega rally, and a few other games),]


i just wanted to mention one more thing, emulators..
at college (in houston, anyway), people STILL play
all the older fighting games like crazy, just for the
competion...in fact, they were still playing street
fighter 3rd strike..i never played, just watched,
because i was never that good, and these guys had
been playing for ages...now granted, i'm sure they
were just killing time, because those games came out
for home consoles (dreamcast?/ps2)...so why weren't
they just playing those also? i don't know, but as of
last year, someone finally cracked the cp3 encryption
allowing everyone on pcs to play all the street fighter
3 games on a pc for free, combine that with internet
access, and boom, a huge jump in people playing it again.
heck, i even play it now, [although i really should buy
a copy of it, so i won't feel guilty for playing it]...

i did buy vf2 when it came out on the pc, and it did
have online play (i'll have to check)..so they did
experiment with it back then...

if there was a market for it, maybe all the companies
would consider releasing fighting games for the pc..
(not likely though)..

later
-1

 

You're still completely missing the point about GH, franz. People who play Guitar Hero *DO NOT* necessarily want to play the guitar. All they need to want to do is play a videogame, and enjoy music. It is possible that the guitar shaped controller had a hand in it's popularity. Even leaving out DDR, which many people choose to play/not play because of the exercise component, rather than the rythm game component. You've still got a huge history of the genre that paved the way for GH... Rez and Gitaroo Man are both amazing games, that I personally enjoy much, much more than Guitar Hero, but they're doing roughly the same thing, with a form factor slightly less recognizable to the general public.


Second, regarding your "hand-eye" coordination question. This is, in my opinion, the wrong question to ask, and doesn't really get to the core of what a fighting game is. If we completely removed execution requirements, there is still a fun game there (This isn't really debatable, it's known that top tournament level players have roughly 100% execution consistency, and they still enjoy the competition). The whole hand-eye coordination requirement is a traditional element of fighting games that serves no purpose but to make the game harder to play:

From Gamasutra's "20 mysterious games" article, where he is discussing how SF2 was the first notable game to not inform the players what moves were available by reading off the arcade cabinet ("Features" 1-14-08):
The first step in becoming good at any fighting game is to learn the moves. Of course most people just read a FAQ nowadays, but how do those FAQs come to be written? Before, most arcade games went out of their way to demonstrate how to control them, printing the information right on the control panel. Imagine what must have happened in order to have performed that first Haudoken? Especially the first Shoryuken, which isn't exactly an intuitive input? The breaking from the idea of direct-control to command inputs is a significant one, and for many fighting games the moves aren't printed out for the player beforehand. What purpose does hiding the special moves have? Well, it adds to initial approachability at the cost of making it harder to master. And that's not necessarily a disadvantage to a fighting game, as mastery is supposed to be difficult. That helps to make matches more interesting since, early in a title's life at least, the players must work without full understanding of a game's options.

Nowadays, people look up the frame data online as soon as a game comes out, especially a VF game, and completely skip the initial steps that hard controls used to facilitate. There's really no benefit anymore to hiding the "real" game behind the ridiculous control scheme that most fighting games come up with these days, except a sense of tradition.

 

i was scanning through this and i say ppl tlk about gutair hero (which is completly going off topic here) and Arcade modes dying.

For 1: ppl dont nessacerily (srry havent spelled that word in a very long time)play the gutair hero with gutair- i "for 1" play with the controller. u may think its stupid but it improves my finger speed for other games and my hand eye cordination. i mean gutair can do that too but its kinda hard hitting 5 straight rainbow buttons in a row and going to a 14 way controller(count all the controlls), expecting to be good right off the bat, so i just stick to controller.

Now about the arcade dying- i dont think so arcade r the one things that can always be improved in my book- thats y they keep making more (EX: Soul Caliber), or so i think. but heres a fact- thats at the top, if not at the top its second- but the arcade fighting genres (VF5, DoA4, S.F) take the most skill mainly overall. u cant even compare the shotting games. i mean, if that really involved as much skill as the fighting genres did. u wouldn't move up and down in your kill list at the end of the game meaning: somtimes u can do good (EX: CoD4) somtimes u can do bad. but in VF5 most likly, if ur good you'll beat most of your enimes out and you'll know your place.

It may take hr or even days to master a character in a fighting arcade game (trust me- i know). but in all shooters- u cant say it didn't take u more than 1 hr max to get pretty decent at it. (nd if it took longer u should just stop playing altoghter)