ＤＡＲＫ ＳＯＵＬＳ ＰＬＡＹＥＲ · @TheSpiritJuice
23rd Jul 2015 from TwitLonger
Evo, the Rise of Anime, and Moving Forward
Hey everyone. I apologize in advance if this blog post is kind of messy since I'm just posting my thoughts, but I'll do my best to try to be concise and have the post flow as cleanly as possible. I'll be giving some background on myself so people unfamiliar with me can try to see where I'm coming from with this post.
My name is Scott, and I've been playing video games almost all my life. Video games are a huge passion for me, and ever since I've been a teen I've been interested in competitive gaming. I played FPSs competitively as a teenager before starting to play fighting games in 2003, going to UC Davis weekly tournaments despite still being a junior in high school at the time. My first Evo was 2004. Guilty Gear XX was the very first fighting game I tried to be competitive in, and while I learned how to (poorly) play Third Strike and CvS2, air dashers (anime) games have always been what I've enjoyed most. As corny as it sounds, getting into fighting games has changed me a lot and for the better. I've met so many people I would have not otherwise met had I gone a different route of competitive gaming, and I feel like much of the community is like a second family to me. While I don't play that much anymore, I am still active within the community by going to local events, going to majors, and interacting with the community members. I am still very passionate about the scene despite not being a player anymore, which is why I'm making this blog post.
A twitter conversation between Jiyuna, James Chen, and others occurred last night, with Jiyuna being frustrated that the anime scene at Evo did not get much US media coverage, if at all. In his words, sites like SRK, EventHubs, and Twitch did not even bat an eye at what was going on in regards to the anime scene at Evo. Meanwhile, Jiyuna said, "We had 4Gamer, Famitsu, Arcsys, Aksys, Kokuniki, KSK, etc. in the room...but not even a junior SRK reporter. That's unacceptable." in response to lack of coverage. I can feel his frustration on this. Anime blew it up this year. Side tournaments for many games, organized by DJCream, with the games getting their own streams for finals or even on the MadCatz stage (thanks for your support, MarkMan), and the anime sweet absolutely killed it both nights that it was up. Even Daisuke Ishiwatari, the father of Guilty Gear, stopped by the room and played with people! How cool is that?! Overall it was a very big Evo for anime. Both Persona 4 Arena and Guilty Gear Xrd were at Evo, with Xrd having over 1000 entrants and having a very hype finals on Sunday to boot. Zidane was even the only American to make top 8, defeating Japanese gods FAB and Kazunoko (I could be wrong, but I think it was Kazunoko) to get there. The community even pooled together to get GO1, another anime god player, to Evo; he later swept up first place in four of the side tournaments.
There were a lot of great stories being told at Evo, but there was no real coverage being made of the community. While I don't expect everything I talked about above to be covered, Jiyuna's tweet about lack of coverage of the anime suite is a bit frustrating for many anime community members. We love our games and the sub-community we are in. We are hungry to show everyone just how passionate we are and how awesome our community is, but it's very frustrating not to get recognition just because we're not Street Fighter. This has been the case since I started playing back in 2003 when Guilty Gear was "that new weird anime game" in a sea of Capcom games. Please understand why the community can feel frustrated or jaded because we've been getting the short end of the stick for a very, very long time. It's very easy to be a Capcom player, or rather SF players now since Marvel is struggling, to look at the anime community and think we "don't work hard enough" when you aren't a part of it. You don't know the struggle we've been through, especially if you started playing fighting games when SFIV came out. While yes, the fighting game community is one large community, there's no denying that there are sub-communities that do their own thing, similar to how League of Legends and Dota 2 are part of the MOBA community but do their own thing. My point is that in regards to media coverage, we still have sites and media outlets that are supposed to encompass all things fighting game related, but Street Fighter continues to get a majority of coverage and that becomes frustrating. There is much more to the community as a whole than just Street Fighter, but it certainly doesn't feel that way and hasn't for the longest time. This applies to all sub-communities, not just anime. NRS games, Marvel, Tekken, etc. all deserve fair coverage, but coming as someone in the anime community, I feel there's a huge disconnect between our community media outlets and any community that isn't Street Fighter.
Some people have brought up Woshige's early victory blunder showing up on ESPN as recognition or progress, but I personally don't about ESPN's coverage. While it's cool that EPSN has shed light on the anime community, or FGC in general, I feel it's not really relevant to Jiyuna's point: lack of US media coverage by any kind of US FG related media company or site at Evo. The anime suite would have been a perfect way to showcase the anime community's sense of passion and community, yet the opportunity was missed. Some people didn't even know the anime suite stream was even going on since no sites reported on it; people had to find out via Twitter. We just want people to see how awesome our community is and how passionate we are about our games and the community itself. We are not saying we are better than other communities or that we deserve it more than other communities, but rather we think we are ignored just because we are not Street Fighter. I'm sure other communities feel the same way, although maybe Smash is the exception.
So what can we, the anime community, do, moving forward? It's hard to say. The FGC has evolved into a business, and any kind of proposition made usually has a "What's in it for me?" kind of response. It's difficult to try to propose coverage of something like the anime suite to a major video game media outlet because it's not a "Street Fighter IV, the most popular FG, Salty Suite sponsored by Red Bull". I don't think that's really what we're looking for here, but rather just recognition by US media within the fighting game community. Something small. Coverage from SRK, EventHubs, and Twitch would be nice. Plans for next year should include exact dates and times (if possible) of the anime suite and dedicated stream. Grab the viewership statistics the anime suite had this year and save them, as they are important for proposing sponsorships or media coverage. Start gathering contact info now on who we will need to talk to in order to ensure we get stream information out there that is NOT just Twitter. Having Twitch roll through to get footage would be a huge accomplishment, or even just have them involved in some way. We can definitely make the anime suite even bigger next year, but we will need a plan ahead of time. To be honest, it doesn't hurt to each out to anyone you can think of that can possibly get us coverage of the anime suite or more.
My closing thoughts: the anime scene has really come very far since I started playing in 2003 and only continues to grow. I never expected Xrd to get 1000 people, and was pretty surprised Persona got 400 people. I never really expected anime to ever reach numbers like that, and it really makes me happy how far we've come. During Xrd finals, there were 100k+ people watching. Seeing everyone in the room get hype and knowing 100k people were watching online actually made me feel pretty emotional. My favorite game, Guilty Gear, was getting this much love and respect. It really means a lot that a lot of people are fans of watching the game, but ultimately, we want the rest of the community to know OUR COMMUNITY. We're no better or worse than the Street Fighter community. This isn't about which community is beter or worse. We're hype. We love our games. We love the people in our community. We are the anime FGC.
Thanks for reading.