Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

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Drew Sebastino
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Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

We've seen this ever since the Switch reveal in October 2016 with the (highly unrealistic) crowd watching people play Splatoon 2, and have seen similar settings being portrayed with every Splatoon 2 advertisement afterward. Then, of course, there's ARMS, and now Pokken Tournament DX, the latter literally nobody asked for. (Although ARMS and Pokken have been shown with less competitive settings.) I really don't get what they're trying to do; although Nintendo hosted little tournaments at E3, the prizes weren't much more than "bragging rights", which doesn't convince me that they're interested in supporting a competitive scene (other than slapping on a logo on a livestream...) for these games at all, and instead hope they just magically come together. Super Smash Bros Melee did just that, but the difference is that these games don't appear to have any sort of competitive foundation. I watched the entire Splatoon 2 tournament, and maybe I'm giving myself too much credit, but none of the players look much, if any, better than me, which doesn't look good. Quite frankly, Splatoon just is not interesting to watch at all either. I watched the ARMS tournament too, and I was even less impressed. I can't comment too well about the game, as I've never played it, (However, the writer of this article commented largely on what I observed; just wait for your opponent to throw out an attack and punish https://nintendowire.com/news/2017/06/2 ... k-playing/) but even watching the producer of the game repeatedly beat the champion, it was more boring to watch than Splatoon 2. I never watched Pokken, and I don't ever plan on it. People just interested in playing these games with family for fun could care less about tournaments or whatever, and anyone interested in esports will likely and avoid these games due to their lack of complexity to appeal to a wider audience. However, time and time again, I've been proved otherwise (eg. Overwatch), and fighting games, which likely have the highest skill ceiling of any of the video game genres, are often underrepresented in the esport scene, which is one of the many things that lead me to think the esport scene is a joke overall.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by tepples »

Espozo wrote:fighting games, which likely have the highest skill ceiling of any of the video game genres, are often underrepresented in the esport scene, which is one of the many things that lead me to think the esport scene is a joke overall.
How much of that is due to overhead in getting public performance licenses for fighting games? Nintendo reportedly denied MLG a license to stream an Orlando Brawl tournament in 2010. Even though Nintendo has since eased up on this for some tournaments in the years since, both Nintendo and Capcom still require a royalty to stream tournaments of their fighting games. And they retain the right under law to change their policy to end tournament streaming entirely.

The workaround is for the leagues to collaborate on developing a quality fighting game whose program is free software and whose assets are free cultural works.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Capcom at least donates to the prize pool then.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by nicklausw »

tepples wrote:The workaround is for the leagues to collaborate on developing a quality fighting game whose program is free software and whose assets are free cultural works.
The problem then is, who's gonna show up to a tournament for some random game that they're unfamiliar with?
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by tepples »

A "brand new game" twist has at least fictional precedent. The finals of the Video Armageddon tournament in the film The Wizard used prerelease copies of Super Mario Bros. 3.

In real life, competitors would been following the game project on Savannah or GitHub or whatever.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Tepples, there's a large difference between a sequel in a well-established game franchise and a new game from some no name developer.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by tepples »

I concede that Street Fighter II was a sequel. The first Super Smash Bros. wasn't a sequel, yet it got tournaments. But I concede that it involved existing characters and was from an established studio. So are you trying to imply that a studio's debut ought to be in a genre other than fighting, and its first fighting game ought to reuse characters from the same studio's previous games?
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

I've been under the impression the original Super Smash Bros did not get a tournament scene until Super Smash Bros Melee, the size of which it has never come close to matching.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by mikejmoffitt »

tepples wrote:A "brand new game" twist has at least fictional precedent. The finals of the Video Armageddon tournament in the film The Wizard used prerelease copies of Super Mario Bros. 3.

In real life, competitors would been following the game project on Savannah or GitHub or whatever.
This isn't an adequate precedent, because it's a turning point from an advertisement movie.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by rainwarrior »

tepples wrote:The workaround is for the leagues to collaborate on developing a quality fighting game whose program is free software and whose assets are free cultural works.
Yes by definition free software fighting games would solve the licensing problem.

That's a bit of a fantasy, though.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Well, I'm curious, has anyone played ARMS before? I know 93143 was critical of me dismissing it so early. I just saw the Splatoon 2 single player gameplay from E3, and I laughed that they made even the armor regenerate. The single player in the first game was already piss-easy; I don't even know why they bothered.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Sumez »

It's kinda funy considering how Nintendo have been actively trying to AVOID (or maybe even offend) the competitive scene with their last two Smash Bros. outings, wanting to focus entirely on a casual crowd instead.
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

No, Smash 4 is "the perfect balance between casual and competitive." :roll: :lol:
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by 3gengames »

Nintendo has ever tried to be competitive? That's a joke. Plus, if it isn't CSGO or DOTA2, who cares about the scene for it? Melee and other games as a competitive thing barely exist compared to those juggernauts. Blizzard's games are in seconds and gaining a little bit, but it's a lot of the company pushing and not really a solid community like CSGO/DOTA. Lastly, Nintendo competitive scene. They might host 1 event in a few hundred miles of you. And by they, I mean a group of 10 smash players who will kick your ass. And it'll barely pay for your gas there even if you win. What a joke.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: Nintendo's recent attempt at competitive gaming.

Post by Drew Sebastino »

3gengames wrote:Nintendo has ever tried to be competitive? That's a joke.
I'm not disagreeing. The only competitive game they ever released only happened to be so by accident, and then they tried to shut it down.
3gengames wrote:Blizzard's games are in seconds and gaining a little bit
Very sad news. :lol:
3gengames wrote:Nintendo competitive scene. They might host 1 event in a few hundred miles of you. And by they, I mean a group of 10 smash players who will kick your ass. And it'll barely pay for your gas there even if you win. What a joke.
Nintendo doesn't host shit, unless you mean the Smash 4, Splatoon 2, ARMS, and Pokken "invitationals" to sponsor the games before release. But yeah, unless you're Armada, this isn't something you make a job out of.
3gengames wrote:if it isn't CSGO or DOTA2, who cares about the scene for it? Melee and other games as a competitive thing barely exist compared to those juggernauts.
I've never played either of those games, but they're boring as shit to watch. The fake "hype" commentary makes it so much worse. I can't stand it; there is nothing onscreen to get excited about. I think DOTA2 looks like it could be a complicated game that rewards high level play, but CSGO? All it looks like to me is people making potshots from behind cover and hoping the enemy is out at the same time. It's better than Call of Duty, (Christ, even Splatoon is better than Call of Duty as a competitive game) but it's no Quake.

I think the whole esport model is a failure; Games with a truly high skill-gap don't get as widely popular as something like Overwatch because most people don't like getting repeatedly stomped on and, God forbid, having to practice to get good at a game. Popularity has, I believe, more to do with success as an esport than even how competitive the game is. DOTA2 is free to play after all.
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