What people like Mr X. aren't willing to understand or accept is that some people just don't value video games in-and-of-themselves that much. I'm one of them. For me, it's a medium to facilitate social interaction and mental stimulation - fighting games; a very specific type. For others, it's a time-wasting activity or indulgence.
Looking at my library: it's pretty much all fighting games with the odd exception of a single player game here or there I've gotten suckered into buying that I will likely never finish (TLoU notwithstanding).
I value the competitive aspect of a fighting game above all else. The quality of its gameplay is meaningless if there aren't communities playing it, or the communities playing are so tiny they have little to no visibility, and hence, no transferable energy in terms of fun and excitement.
As frustrating as that may sound, the catch 22 nature of this approach is not my dilemma to fix, nor the responsibility of any particular person/s.
I've put in my work. I've evangelized FGs across message boards and in my part of Florida for 11 years. A south florida LAN center's Smash community is thriving partly because almost 8 years ago, I managed touch the competitive spirits of some key people who were just young adults, then. It fills me with a sense of pride whenever I'm just hanging out there, and some teenager is asking about me, because he/she heard stories about my Captain Falcon's play style or saw old tournament videos, or whatever. It lets me know that, yeah, while there's no specific documents I can point to or resume I can build off it... I helped
build something positive. That feels great.
I don't have time for that level of commitment anymore. My scene building and evangelizing days are over. But I'm just as passionate about fighting games and their communities as ever.
How many are playing your game? How many people are excited about your game? That matters most to me and it matters to more people than they're willing to admit because they're scared of being stripped of their enthusiast card. This isn't even a position that should have to be articulated: fighting games are competitive. But competitiveness is a word of degrees. Some only have the time to give to the most competitive game in an effort to derive the most
value out of their 60$.
People talk like taking this approach is some binary simplex. Putting more time/effort into Street Fighter 4 than GGXXAC+R because it's more popular than the latter, despite liking the latter more, mechanically, doesn't imply that I don't like SF4
at all, mechanically. That's the type of notion I see people like Mr. X like to bandy about a lot as though I'm somehow sacrificing my identity to walk with the herd. Get outta here. If I don't enjoy the game at all, I won't play it. Period. I was glad to SFxT die just so Ryan Hunter would stop talking to me about it.
I also think FGCs don't need to be all encompassing, it's actually beneficial in the same way game OTs or gaming threads complement these FGW threads. When you have a genre like this with so much breadth and variety, it is a bit naive to assume that everyone will always get along.
"Everyone" and "always" notwithstanding; I don't think that's naive at all and it's pretty deflating to hear someone in your position articulate this. It's not about getting people to play your game as much as its about getting them to
understand it, so they have some
appreciation for it. People only attack shit they don't understand. That's what initially inspired me to start FGC threads, here. I saw Smash/3D/2D game players attacking each other because they didn't fundamentally understand each other's games, making the most ignorant of comments. I'd like to think there's been progress on Neogaf (and the scene at large) since then, and I like to think this thread is proof. Hell, even the mods were pretty damned bigoted back then.
MVC3's cast is way better than MVC2. Especially the Capcom side.
I guess, but the cast doesn't matter much to me today. MVC2 gameplay at high levels is just fundamentally more dynamic.
