Saving the Street Fighter Franchise

Gamasutra did an in-depth interview with Yoshi Ono, producer of Street Fighter IV, about trying to bring the series back to the quality and popularity of the '90s. Ono also talks about broadening the market to include casual players, who were slowly driven away from the game by the increased focus on competitive play. Quoting: "If you think about chess for instance, a kid and a grandfather can play the same game, with the same ruleset, and understand what's going on. I think through our competitive spirit back then; we were always out to out-complicate each other, and make our systems deeper and deeper. It was ok then because there was a wide player base who understood how to play these games, but that's not true anymore. What we're trying to do with Street Fighter IV is bring them back in. There's not a whole lot of other fighting games out there to compare it to, but hopefully, if we play our cards right and get people back in to the genre, we can blossom the genre itself again and spread things out and get it back to the way it was."

Too many scrubs

[Datamonstar]

no way the old days will be back. People still complain about a fireball + shoryuken trap, even in 3 when they could just parry out. Games aren't supposed to be complex anymore, just fun for about 2 hours so SF4 won't re-create the scene because everyone's moved on. Sure, we'll still have Evolution every year, and it will be dominated by the same players as every other year, and new tactics will be on display, but that is the large scale, which doesn't change very much. On the small scale, at home and in the arcades (wherever they may still exist), scenes that are established will flourish for a bit, but I see nothing that is going to start up an explosion of smaller, new scenes around the country. Online will be interesting, but without the social aspect, it will feel cold and empty. Street Fighter was just meant to be played by hardcore enthusiasts person-to-person, much like chess, as Mr. Ono equated it.

Smash Brothers?

[orkybash]

Yoshi Ono seems to place a lot of focus on bringing completely new, casual gamers into the SF franchise. So why does the article not once mention the one of the biggest "casual gamer" fighting games? He talks a lot about reducing the amount of memorization needed for a fighting game - this is exactly the argument that my friends used to get me into the original Smash Brothers on the N64. Be as derisive as you want, the Smash Brothers franchise (especially in Melee, somewhat less so in Brawl) is incredibly good at providing a fighting game that casual gamers can enjoy but that can also be played at a much higher level in a flourishing tournament scene (to the point where casual players, while still enjoying the game, have no idea just how good they can get at it until they sign up for a tourney).