Fighting Games, Hobbled by Pandemic, Come Back Swinging

From Street Fighter 6 to Mortal Kombat 1, 2023 offers a robust slate of big, brawling attractions. From a report: The pandemic stole one of gaming's purest experiences: karate chopping your buddy in the stomach and laughing as their health meter falls to zero. The culture around fighting games -- side by side on a couch or in a whirring arcade -- doesn't translate so well to Zoom. It didn't help that a lot of the online play technology for these games has for years fallen short of expectations. Few mainstream fighting games were released over the last three years. But in 2023, fighting games are returning with a vengeance. The list includes Capcom's Street Fighter 6, Warner Bros Games' just-announced Mortal Kombat 1 and Cygames' Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. Fans are also hoping to get Project L from Tencent's Riot Games and Tekken 8 from Bandai Namco Studios sometime in the not too distant future. "Rather than trash talking online, it's a lot better to do in person," Street Fighter 6 producer Shuhei Matsumoto told me in an interview this week. We were talking about what his highly-anticipated game, launching June 2, and the broader fighting genre has learned from the pandemic disruptions.

The new Street Fighter aims to bring what people love about in-person gaming into the online arena. 2016's Street Fighter 5 famously didn't have the best online experience. "For 5, the team acknowledged there were some issues with the existing net code," Matsumoto said. "As a team, we all agreed that something had to be done for Street Fighter 6." Capcom put together a specialized team to improve the online experience for Street Fighter 6. The team also aimed to upload facets of the culture of Street Fighter. In previous Street Fighter games, the main thing online contenders had to size up their opponent was their gamer tag. Street Fighter 6 has a Battle Hub, which game director Takayuki Nakayama said "is like an extension of arcade culture." Players can now dress up their avatars and show off their outfits while congregating with friends -- a process that Nakayama said can "humanize" online competitors. The culture of fighting games has changed a lot since 2020. Arcades in Japan, where Capcom traditionally debuted its latest titles, shuttered at a rapid fire rate -- a trend that began pre-Covid but accelerated during the lockdowns. Meanwhile, money has bled out of the esports industry, which funded local, national and international tournaments. 2023 promises to reinvigorate fighting games. Capcom's Pro Tour has a $2 million prize pool. "I would say it's fully bounced back and then some," said Alec Polsley, who owns my local LAN cafe. On weekends, the place is teeming with competitors leaning over sweaty controllers.

Why not actual street fighting?

[BishopBerkeley]

Now that covid is over, people are electing to do virtual street fighting instead of actual street fighting? They are willing to give up the outdoors and the wonderful smells of blood and bodily fluids to pay a sanitized violent game at home. It's mostly sad.

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[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Now that covid is over, people are electing to do virtual street fighting instead of actual street fighting? They are willing to give up the outdoors and the wonderful smells of blood and bodily fluids to pay a sanitized violent game at home. It's mostly sad.

We must maintain social distancing to protect the sanctity of our precious bodily fluids.

Dr. Strangelove Meets CoviD

/s

Ugh, fighting games

[Cap'n Crax]

Back when arcades were a thing, there used to be a huge variety of games, everything imaginable. And at some point around the early 1990's all the variety went out the door, and it became ALL fighting games. Nothing else. That's when I forever gave up on going to arcades.

And they all died off soon after that, at least in my area...

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the genre.

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[TheRealMindChild]

around the early 1990's all the variety went out the door, and it became ALL fighting games
 
Fighting, driving, and shooting games

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[dfm3]

I could be remembering wrong, but from what I recall the driving games didn't really take over until the later part of the 90's. Then some time in the early 2000s everything in the arcade became "corridor shooters" where the POV automatically moves forward and you take down waves of enemies by shooting Duck Hunt style at the screen.

I'm nostalgic for all of that now, though, since in the last decade or so it seems all the remaining arcades near me have devolved into nothing but crappy rigged "Insert the Ke

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[jonwil]

I don't see fighting games in arcades anymore really.
In most arcades I have been to lately, at least 1/2 of the place (after excluding bigger attractions like laser tag, bowling alleys, escape rooms, karaoke, mini golf, bumper cars, climbing walls etc) is probably filled with machines giving out prizes and tickets (everything from claw machines to basketball to those machines full of expensive prizes that are rigged so its almost impossible to actually win even if you had superhuman abilities).

The rest is m

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[skam240]

I dunno, the few arcades near me don't support what you're saying even remotely. Very few fighting games.

As far as I've experienced fighting games have been pretty out of style since the early 2000s. As much as I enjoy them I don't know anyone else who even plays them anymore.

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[phantomfive]

If you're willing to go with Nintendo, then a lot of people play Smash Brothers.

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[skam240]

Fair point, I do actually have some friends who play Smash Brothers, I didnt think of that. Overall I dont see fighting games being anywhere near as popular as they were in the 90s and early 2000s still though.

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[lucasnate1]

If you like old games, try fightcade. Also, curious, which games do you like?

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[skam240]

Growing up Street Fighter and its sequels were my favorite. Later on Soul Caliber and its first few sequels were my jam but my all time favorite has to be Powerstone 2 on the Sega Dreamcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] . It's pretty much the reason why I have a hard time enjoying Smash Brothers, I just always want it to be Powerstone although just as with Smash Brothers its best played with more than 2 people.

As I mentioned before I dont really know very many people who play any more so my experience w

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[lucasnate1]

Looks like there's about 2-4 powerstone games in fightcade per day: https://www.fightcade.com/game... [fightcade.com]

Though I'd guess they're 1v1

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[skam240]

Yeah, Powerstone 2 is a real cult classic. Loved by a few, not even known about by most others. While it has made a number of "Games that need sequels" lists over the years I don't think that will ever happen at this point

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[Can'tNot]

Arcades peaked in 1982-83, and then started on a slow decline. Street Fighter 2 and its clones were one of the brief resurgences of profitable titles. So it's not so much that fighting games pushed out all the rest of them, it's that the fighting games were one of the few categories which managed to hang on (for a while).

Fun For 10 Minutes

[zenlessyank]

Then boredom. Guess the short attention span generation will love it.

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[lucasnate1]

I'm not sure if I understand. Many fighting game players, I included, spent hours in training mode, before even playing in versus. You get bored of the genre in 10 minutes, and yet you claim that we're the ones with a short attention span?

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[sysrammer]

Yes. "The irony is strong with this one."

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[r12o]

You have to realize that fighting game communities are home to some of the oldest players. One of the reasons is that fighting games are some of the longest running game franchises. Old games that have active communities around them have players that have been playing for decades. Some players have been grinding Marvel Vs Capcom 2 since release and are still playing today through Fightcade. Virtua Fighter 5 tournaments in Japan are peppered with wrinkly salarymen who have been playing since the 90's.
In s

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[zenlessyank]

You forgot the 'a'.

It wasn't the pandemic that hobbled them

[rsilvergun]

it was the Japanese developers refusal to put rollback netcode in their games until just recently. Japan is very much an "eat your own dogfood" programming culture and the guy that came up with it wasn't Japanese. He did make the tech freely available, but they spent a while trying to come up with their own solution before giving up and using his.

If you don't know, rollback netcode is a technique that makes fast action games played online feel like you're playing side by side, with the cost of an occasi

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[lucasnate1]

It would be interesting if someone implements lookahead as well. Basically lookahead is a way to cut local lag. I.e. let's say that when you press you keyboard, there's a 3-frame lag until it gets to the game engine, lookahead has a game engine that can run a 3-depth tree of all possible keypresses, and when it gets a key press from you, the game assumes that you actually did it 3-frames before.

If someone implements this, it might improve balance even further across different operating systems, graphical se

SF6 ditched "Unreal Engine 4" for RE Engine

[ffkom]

In a time when it seems as if everyone happily steers towards a monopoly for the Unreal Engine, it is interesting to see how "Streetfighter 6" is an exception, ditching the Unreal Engine 4 that "Streetfighter V" used in favor of Capcom's own "RE Engine" for rendering.

Would be interesting to know if it was the "5% of revenue" that Epic takes for their engine or a different reason why Capcom changed to RE.

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[flink]

I've heard that it is hard to iron out enough lag from UE to make fighting games really feel smooth for high level play. I'm not good enough to notice though.

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[UnknownSoldier]

> towards a monopoly for the Unreal Engine

Huh? UE is open source and only one engine. It doesn't have a monopoly on rendering, simulation, animation, streaming, or anything else it provides.

Tell me you've never worked on a 3D engine without working on a 3D engine. /s

Both good and bad

[lucasnate1]

It's kinda weird. On one hand, fighting games seem to become more popular. On the other hand, their complexity is being reduced. Take a look at Guilty Gear Accent Core R vs the Guilty Gear Strive, and you'll see how games are being slowed down and simplified for the common crowd. DBFZ has DLCs with stronger character that you have to pay for.

Sadly, everyone needs to make money. I kinda hope we'll see some interesting indie fighters someday.