Annual reviewWe look back at the highs, lows, surprises and highlights in and around video games this year.2020 was bad. You know, I know. It was in the midst of this chaotic year that the fighting game community was pushed out of the arcades, hotels and convention centers that competitors were accustomed to and into the unpredictable world of online play. In the beginning, the organizers were unsure whether the community could survive, but now it is clear that the competitive spirit lives on. It’s just a matter of whether fighting game developers can get their own acts together.
In the months leading up to the Covid-19 outbreak, the fighting game community was functioning almost normally. Regional tournaments are planned exciting moments on a regular basis, the Tekken 7 world final ended with a new villain, and the prestigious Evolution Championship Series have been announced the line-up for 2020.
The first sign of trouble didn’t come until February 20, then a weekly Granblue Fantasy Versus tournament in Japan canceled out of concern over what was then a fresh outbreak of a new strain of coronavirus. Fighting game tournaments around the world quickly learned of the dangers Covid-19 posed to their events, with some organizers openly concerned about the future of their events following the steep financial blow of canceling venue contracts and refunding them. potential visitors.
“Unfortunately things are not looking well for us at the moment,” said the organizer and veteran of NorCal Regionals street fighter competitor John Choi told Kotaku at that moment. “We can deal with a few thousand dollars lost in sunk materials, labor and miscellaneous costs, but we cannot handle the cancellation fees of the venue for which the hotel holds us accountable. That hit for NorCal Regionals is about $ 50,000, which we can’t manage and will put us out of business immediately. “
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From there, the community saw a cascade of canceled and shortened events. SNK postponed indefinitely her King of Fighter XIV and Samurai Shodown championships. A controversial one Tekken 7 The exhibition between teams representing Japan and South Korea was scaled back after two Korean players chose to stay at home rather than travel. Last Kombat, a year end Mortal Kombat 11 contest, a last chance qualifier canceled and the number of personal spectators reduced. Capcom canceled the first half of the Capcom Pro Tour, and finally Evo called it up for 2020.
While some organizers, like Rick Thiher from Combo Breaker, hoped that offline events were still on the agenda for 2021, leaving players wondering what to do for the rest of the year. That void was soon filled by both existing and newly created online competitions, but it was not the same. Since fighting games typically require split-second decision making and the ability to execute strategies in mere frames, the inherent latency of online play is a constant obstacle to high-level competition in many games. Since there was no way to play in person without the risk of infection, the demand for competent net code began to grow.
This tidal wave of support, especially with regard to a technology known as “rollback” netcode, did not fall on deaf ears. After a unofficial mod improved Street Fighter V.‘s own (and faulty) rollback netcode, Capcom tried similar improvements in-housealthough that did not stop top players from leaving official leagues. Bandai Namco did the same Tekken 7, with slightly better results. Classic games such as Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R. and Garou: Mark of the Wolves receive rollback netcode via post-release patches and saw huge peaks in their online player bases. Guilty material developer Arc System Works has since promised that the forthcoming Guilty Gear Pursue will use rollback netcode.
Unfortunately, not every fighting game developer is so community-oriented. When a group of Super Smash Bros. Melee fans have Slippi, one third-party program adding rollback netcode to the old-school platform chaser through the Dolphin emulator, it seemed the diehard Smash the community finally had a light at the end of the tunnel. But the first major online tournament to use the mod, The Big House, was forced by Nintendo to cancel his match after the company learned they would be mimicking the 19-year-old GameCube game.
“I am very disappointed in that one year [where] our only option to play online during the pandemic is also when we are told that road is closed, “The Big House organizer Robin” Juggleguy “Harn said at the time about Nintendo’s decision. ‘I don’t have all the answers, but I still believe Melee will find a way. We always have and we will again. “
Nintendo’s overbearing policies sparked a firestorm in the US Smash community that continues to this day, with many high profile players and personalities demanding that the Japanese company work with the community to resolve these issues rather than shut down the event altogether. Nintendo claimed it was well within its rights to throw its weight around as The Big House used ‘pirated versions’ of Melee posed a threat to his “intellectual property and brands,” which, as I noted earlier, is absurd nonsense.
That’s not to say that fighting game developers have given up on official tournaments altogether. After the first half of the Capcom Pro Tour was canceled, Capcom continued Street Fighter V. play with an online variant that is will end offline in the Dominican Republic in February. street fighter League, the team-based company Street Fighter V. competition, has also continued in earnest, although it was forced to take off for several months and replace a handful of players who were either unable to travel due to restrictions in their home country or left voluntarily out of caution. Bandai Namco has just completed a series of online national championships for Dragon Ball FighterZ in four countries. But none of these events have lived up to the grassroots tournaments the community lost in 2020.
Fighting games have long been hampered by their lack of stable online play. When the only way to get a good, foundational experience is to travel to an offline location, it adds another new barrier to entry for newbies. Various developers, including Killer Instinct‘s Iron Galaxy Studios and Mortal KombatNetherRealm Studios, has made significant progress towards implementing quality grid code rollback by 2020.
But that is no longer enough; the larger fighting game scene is actually a complex ecosystem of countless smaller communities, and they need depth and variety to survive. Any company that makes fighting games needs to have a serious internal discussion about how their games are played and how the online experience is as close as possible to what players like offline.
If players cannot return to the personal league quickly, it is imperative that the next generation of fighting games play well online. I don’t see much in the way of future growth for the competitive community as players, both newcomers and veterans, are forced to contend with the current limitations and frequent, predictable frustrations of playing online today. The strength of this community has always been linked to the consistent organization of the grassroots, and that means that competition must be feasible for the widest possible group of people.
When a virus has locked everyone at home for a year (and still counts), state-of-the-art grid code is hugely important to achieving that goal. The community knows this and the publishers need to listen if the survival of the competition scene is a priority.