Fighting Games the dead genre

[Toy Master Typhus]

I kinda think it isn't really dead it's just not as popular as it used to be, and I kinda think one of the things that are making it slightly decline in popularity is the lack of breakthroughs or changes in the way the game is played.

Take shooters for example: in the beginning there was paper thin enemies and hip-shooting, things were good but could be better, then there was multi-player and people lost their minds over that. For a while it was just deathmatch but then came capture the flag and with it came new elements: new ways to play. But why stop there then came objective based modes (Attack/Defend, Find the Object, King of the Hill) and with it came more depth to shooting. Next was Iron Sights and people lost their shit of that as well, then we got the modern day Cover system.

My point of the history lesson is that most genres either evolve or die. There hasn't been much change in the fighter genre, the last major system that they all added to their games was counter system and before that the idea of a 3d arena with bits you can interactwith while fighting.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The fighting game community is probably the best game-oriented community out there, partially because it is not CoD size.


Fighters require a lot from the player so fewer, more dedicated and disciplined players will stick with them long enough. Disciplined and dedicated people are generally NOT the kinds you'd see making racist remarks or swearing over their mics online, so this contributes to an environment where tolerance of idiocy is limited, which in turn makes fighting games not popular since most people who play competitive games WANT to act like idiots.




No, fighters are not dead, they're just very Japanese, very niche, very difficult and very demanding, which makes them less prevalent than other genres. That has nothing to do with their life though and as one of the last genres to still persist and not get too dumbed down for the masses I say this is for the better.

 

[Aegis A'Sha'Se]

What about point-and-click adventure games.
I am pretty sure that genre was endangered by the time Street Fighter moved out of the arcade.

 

[dimensional]

On top of that good fighting games are generally hard for newcomers to understand. It's a more complex/refined genre if you will. It's a genre that, in good games, balances entirely on player skill, and the more I look at games these days the more I'm convinced that skill is something to avoid. Most people playing games are terrible, and they tend to prefer games with mechanics that either mask that, or limit the effective "gap" between a good and a bad player (e.g: cod).

In a good fighting game? Good luck with that... A good player won't just beat a bad player bad, they'll annihilate them.

There's a lot more to it, but let's put it this way: Fighting Games are growing from a rather niche community into the mainstream. They're far from dead, they're more alive than ever. It's just that this causes them to be noticed all of a sudden... By people who thought them long forgotten.

Agreed skill seems to be sacrificed for accessibility but I dont think they can do that with fighting games because quite frankly it is a genre that lives and dies on its gameplay.

I do agree that they are more alive than ever that was why I was bemused when I heard it referred to as the dead genre but it is dominated by a few companies i.e Capcom,Arc Systems,Namco with a few other companies having one franchise in there.

You dont see many new I.Ps for fighting games however particularly triple a games the last one I can recall was Blazblue and that was from a company with a good heritage all others have been sequels/spinoffs or crossovers it just seems commercial suicide to start something completely new in the genre there just isnt enough pie to go around.

It seems to me that it is a more underground genre and with the exception of a few games will never achieve global awareness which is a shame as a properly made fighting game offers one of the tightest gameplay experiences around.

 

[Brandon Logan]

I wouldn't say the fighter genre is dead.....games aren't advertised or sometimes even released.....I'll admit I'm looking forward to Skullgirls.

 

[Ubermetalhed]

I miss soul caliber 3, I'm hoping 5 saves what 4 almost killed. Also stop putting block on the d-pad. if I press left it is because I want to go left not because I want to block and get crushed by a throw. a controller has 8 buttons 2 sticks and a d-pad, no button needs to multitask.

Yeh 4 was such a backwards step from 3. Not sure what it was that pissed you off with 4 but for me I hated the emphasis on pure attack. 3 was extremely defensive and tactical and I loved it, it was frustrating to be insta-killed from blocking too much in 4.

Also the character creation in 3 was hilariously fun.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I think it's coming back. There have been LOTS of high profile fighting games that have done VERY well recently.

Also, if you compare ANYTHING with modern war FPS games, it will look like it's doing poorly. That genre has exploded so much that it pretty much dominates all the sales charts.