The Salty Runback: Rise Up

Eagerly, you tore the cellophane from your copy of Street Fighter 5 and sped home to gingerly ease it into your PS4 or PC like it was prom night. This is my time, you’ve thought to yourself. You’ve watched Justin Wong, Daigo and Ricky Ortiz, and you’ve thought, "I can do that." Maybe you have played fighting games for a while. Maybe this is your first go-round getting serious about them. Either way, you’re full of vim and vigor, picturing yourself standing on the stage at Caesar’s in Las Vegas, medal around your neck.

Before you go buying plane tickets and paying entry fees, there’s a few things you need to know. First among them, I’m sorry to tell you, is that with all your determination and belief that you’re going to break through and be the next PR Balrog: You’re wrong. You won’t. At least, most of you won’t.

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The Salty Runback : RIP SC2

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Today, it was announced that Starcraft 2, a real time strategy title for the PC with a niche following in certain gaming circles, has officially ceased operations necessary to be classified as Sufficiently eSports. Now, it falls on Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s publisher, to figure out where to go from here.

The first and most obvious answer to the question of how to save the sinking ship is to take the advice given by luminaries of the fighting game community like the guy that exclusively attends MLG tournaments to play Dead or Alive and spend as much money as possible on prizes and orchestras. It’s time for Blizzard to get serious about making Starcraft 2 like League of Legends. Having a trophy that takes no less than eight men to lift it is an obvious place to start.

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The Salty Runback : Community Effort

As I watched Mago fight Romance, listening to open microphones pick up the roar of the crowd, I found myself dwelling on Major League Gaming’s King of Fighters conundrum. Since introducing the title at Columbus, KoF13’s performance as a tournament attraction has remained consistently underwhelming. After Columbus, the conventional wisdom dictated that the disappointment of the first outing was the result of several factors, such as location and short notice, and that Anaheim would prove to be a much more successful showcase for the game.

It made sense : Anaheim is in KoF country, and the tournament had been on the community calendar for months. However, as the event drew near, organizers and observers were alarmed by the relatively low number of pre-registered attendees. Attendance remained low, even after many claimed that the fighting game community was just being their normal, procrastinating selves.

Even before Anaheim had finished, many wondered if this would be the last time we would see King of Fighters at MLG. Some seemed certain, including event staff. Frustration was evident everywhere. How did things come to this point? What was wrong with the King of Fighters community? There was a lot of money up for grabs at both Columbus and Anaheim. Why weren’t the tournaments attracting players or viewers? In the week leading up to Anaheim, even I took to the issue, imploring KoF players to sign up, to represent their game. We all missed the point.

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The Salty Runback : The Cost of Doing Business

This morning, I casually commented on the kerfuffle - allow me to take a moment to soak in the pleasure of using the word “kerfuffle” - caused by the rumor that following his match against RayRay at East Coast Throwdown 4, Filipino Champ opted to walk away from the set without shaking hands or congratulating RayRay. Sarcastically, I tweeted :

“A community of homophobic, racist, sexist stream monsters is outraged when they hear a rumor FChamp was a poor sport.”

I often find humor in the ridiculous, and our community is, at times, a font of ridiculousness. That is part of its charm. To me, it was absurd that a group of people who have become somewhat notorious for reprehensible internet behavior would manufacture outrage about poor sportsmanship. The same group of people that create Tumblr accounts dedicated to posting screencaps of female players stamped with the Brazzers logo are upset that two players didn’t hug it out after a Marvel match.

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The Salty Runback: The Paradigm and The Path

We are poised. We are ready. Fighting games are primed to burst through the glass ceiling and dominate the professional gaming world... which is the purgatory within which we seem to be indefinitely condemned. “This year is our year,” has been our shared rallying cry for coming on four years now.

Make no mistake, we have not become becalmed. We are still trudging forward. Yet our progress seems stunted and slow. Shouldn’t we be feasting in the halls of Valhalla at this point? Shouldn’t we be seeing photographs of Wolfkrone holding an oversized check reading “Five hundred thousand dollars!” at this point?

For us, this is a boom time. Five-figure guaranteed pots are huge for the fighting game community. Yet, we look across the fence, to greener grasses in eSports Land, and we wonder. Why not us? What’s going on over there that we don’t have over here?

It is time to examine our community, honestly and objectively, and to forge a new path forward. Simply put, the paradigm as it exists today, the Fighting Game Tournament — untouched for coming on three decades now — is not adequate for our ambition. We want greener grass, and we can have it.

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The Salty Runback : The Right Assist

The inclusion of the fight game community beneath the larger umbrella of corporate-backed professional gaming has been discussed ad nauseum. The matter is no longer a question of if, but when. IGN and their proxies in the IPL have been caught undressing the community with their eyes on several occasions. Recently, the league added DEVASTATION tournament organizer Robb “Jedirobb” Chiarini to their roster, making him their new Event Director. It is only a matter of time before we get the first announcement about Street Fighter IV sharing stage space with Starcraft II at an IPL event. I cannot imagine that MLG would be far behind.

This is the moment we see whether or not 2D fighters have what it takes to transcend from the arcades. The problem is that the effort is handicapping itself from the onset. We’re all lining up behind the wrong name. There is a game with the potential to take the scene and push it to new, dizzying heights. It’s just not Street Fighter IV.

It is time to ignore the conventional wisdom that states that Street Fighter has to be the crown jewel in our line-up. It might be the cornerstone of Capcom’s fight offerings, but it is not the game best suited for the big lights. There is another fighter out there that’s better at capturing the imagination, creating excitement, and most importantly, representing our community.

It’s Marvel. But only if it gets the right push.

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The Salty Runback : What's In Your Wallet?

There is a catharsis that comes from watching something implode. Like the late George Carlin once remarked, “And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether its natural or man made, I always hope it gets worse. Don’t you? Don’t you... don’t you have a part of you, a part of you that secretly hopes everything gets worse? When you see a big fire on TV... don’t you hope it spreads? Don’t you hope it gets completely out of control and burns down six counties? You don’t root for the firemen, do ya’? I mean, I don’t want ‘em gettin’ hurt or nothin’, but... I don’t want ‘em putting out my fire.”

As of this writing, less than an hour following the conclusion of Canada Cup, my mind’s eye pictures all of Stream Monster Nation in a post-coital daze, unsure of whether to make a snack or take a nap. Hasta la vista, Canada Cup.

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The Salty Runback: Oktoberfest

So, you are a “professor of game design,” which sort of sounds like being the Mayor McCheese to me (but it’s only the first paragraph and I shouldn’t pop off so early). You are attending a conference on game design, and you find yourself present for a panel on a game series that intersects your personal opinions. You take issue with misogyny in video games. You think Street Fighter is misogynistic. Seth Killian is sitting right in front of you. Now is the time to speak your mind to the face of Street Fighter.

Hey! Cammy is in a THONG!

There’s not being able to see the forest for the trees, and then there’s being too busy to see the forest because you peeled bark off a tree and you’re trying to mix it with a handful of lead paint chips you pulled out of your pocket in case you got hungry while out on a hike.

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The Salty Runback: No Remixes

Earlier this week, after that seventeenth-level scumbag Haunts somehow managed to blackmail his way into writing 1UP's review of Third Strike: Online Edition, David Sirlin roused himself to take to his blog and post a response. For the “tl;dr” crowd, it can be summarized thusly: everything that Capcom did with 3SOE that is similar to what I did with HD Remix — inclusion of GGPO netcode, press-to-bind button mapping — is smart and good, everything else is “shameful”.

Sirlin is, of course, notorious for being the lead dude behind the development of Super Street Fighter II: HD Remix, a game that dealt a solid groin-shot square to the American scene for the game that some call the greatest fighting game of all time. If not directly driving nails into the ST scene's coffin, HDR was definitely lurking around its grave with a hammer. Anyone who knows that and isn’t already approaching Sirlin’s opinion on the Third Strike port with trepidation is possessed of a startling naïveté.

Mr. Sirlin quotes a section of Haunts' review (dealing with the decision to leave Third Strike as-is, rather than attempting a revision that would “balance” the game) to make the point that not only was it the wrong call for Capcom to allow Third Strike onto Xbox Live and PSN with its engine untouched, but also that reviews such as Haunts’ are actually damaging to the development of fighting games in general. Anyone who feels so inclined, please feel free to take a moment to picture Sirlin swaddled in elegant lace, clutching his pearls and fanning his face.

Reading his points, the thing that became most apparent to me? This guy couldn’t find a clue if it had him in its mouth.

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The Salty Runback: Regular People

This week, Kotaku published an article that used some out-of-context quotes by David Treacy, a.k.a. “Zaccubus”, as a launch pad for some childish editorial commentary about the health and growth, or lack thereof, of competitive gaming. The author then proceeded to push her glasses further up her nose, awash in the glow of smug self-satisfaction, and got back to work on her slashfic featuring a sexually confused Sephiroth fending off the advances of an amorous Legolas afflicted by Sauron with an ancient Boner Curse.

Having people within the mainstream media be dismissive of professional gaming isn’t something new, but that’s not what’s going on here. We aren’t talking about someone barricaded at the top of a print magazine’s ivory tower, we’re talking about a fellow gamer (I guess?) borrowing time out of her busy schedule of breeding Pokemon to lob grenades at Morlocks.

Thank god for Jen Schiller. She may be a bull in a china shop when it comes to the good she’s done for pro gaming, but I was in a dry stretch of some writer’s block before Kwanzaa Sagat dropped this little nugget down my chimney, wrapped with a bow.

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The Salty Runback: Eat the Seed Corn

We have seen the future. It is a first person shooter sequel.

Once again, the industry circus has picked clean the carcass of Los Angeles, leaving behind naught save a smear of gore while supplying us, the remora we are, with that sweetest of sustenances: preview information. Good news, everyone! If you were haunted with foreboding, at a loss for what you might purchase as a Christmas gift for your girlfriend’s grandmother in calender year 2012, Microsoft and the Kinect have got you covered.

For those of us invested in virtual worlds where warfare of a modern nature is eschewed in favor of settling global disputes with martial arts tournaments, it wasn’t a bad show. Advance impressions of “Street Fighter X Tekken” seem universally positive. One comparison I read exhumed the jurassic bones of cult staple “Project Justice”. News that Street Fighter: Third Strike’s Online Edition would feature netcode by GGPO and YouTube sharing integration were met with a rousing chorus of God save the Queen, cheerio, pip pip, etc.

There is a lot of excitement about the future of fighting games pumping through the ventilation, and it has a unique musk. Me? I’m not so excited. I see another dark age if the developers, especially Capcom, stay the course. I see leeches in our future.

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The Salty Runback: I'm Telling Mom!

This is the week where Team America fired Matt Damon out of a torpedo tube and killed Usama bin Laden. In the south, thousands of families dig out from beneath the wake of the terrible power of nature.

Oh, and Justin Wong threw a match at PowerUp.

The EVO “Tournament Committee” has stripped @jwonggg of his EVO placement points after ruling that Justin did not compete “in good faith” during his match against Noel Brown in Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s loser’s finals at PowerUp. They’ve also issued him a “yellow card”, which is their official way of saying, “Do it again and ya’ done, son.”

The question I’m left with is: who cares?

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The Salty Runback: Occam's Razor?

Dread seeped into my bed, sealing shut the door between this sleeper and the far reaches of dream. As morning drew closer, my restless trepidation grew heavier, eventually pressing my feet into pink fuzzy slippers and me bleary-eyed into my living room. I quickly learned the cause of my subconscious discontent.

Capcom, we need to talk about Sentinel.

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The Salty Runback : He Got The Mango Sentinel Edition

I have seen the future. It wears a curley moustache.

Today, I drove up to San Francisco and met up with Haunts and Rogerdodger to play in GameSpot.com's Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament. Despite having been present at, and doing commentary for, more than one event since Evo where the game was playable, I hadn't gotten any time on the buttons. My exposure to the game was limited to drooling over match videos, then acting offended and claiming a severe mental disability brought on by a recent stroke when my friends mocked me for sitting with my mouth as open as a barn door while salivating down the front of my shirt.

I finished Top Eight.

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The Salty Runback : January Power Rankings

Photo courtesy of SteveHwang.comSo, after reading the title, I'm assuming the first question on your mind is, "What are Power Rankings?" Simply put, the Power Rankings are me taking the players in NorCal, looking over their performance in the month's tournaments, and then ranking them according to success or impact (or both). Every month, the line-up will change, as players stumble or succeed.

Before we get into that, however, I wanted to take a minute to give my personal take on the IPW Topic of the Week. You're already aware that IPW streamed West Coast Warzone. Technical issues, like angry pimples, arose unexpectedly. Some of the problems were severe enough to force down time, some of that outage occuring with markedly unfortunate timing.

The result, of course, was a legion of stream monsters armed with pitchforks and torches.

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The Salty Runback : The Arcade Edition... Edition?

I've had opportunity to punch the clock with Arcade Edition. Those of you living in Nebraska might expect me to say I've walked away mind blown, spent and gratified. Quick to the disappointment, this is Super Street Fighter 4. Anyone expecting the profile of additions on feature between Vanilla and Super will be sad. Aficionados, though, are going to find a lot to be excited about. At the very least, it should tide over those of us in California until Marvel. Sorry, red states! I know it's unfair, you get Sarah Palin and intelligent design museums, we get sunny weather and Arcade Infinity.

Not to reek too strongly of fanboy, but Arcade Edition is an impressive feat. Under the hood, things look almost identical to the console version of the game, but the subtle tweaks and tune-ups cause impressive shifts in the meta game. By simply changing the dynamic of specific match-ups, or lowering the effectiveness of a maneuver or two, the landscape as a whole is altered. Instead of pulling an ArkSys and machine-gunning over-compensating buffs and nerfs, characters are adjusted so as to still be playable.

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The Salty Runback : The Art

Pulse dancing, palms going damp and mouth going dry, you sit down to plug in your stick alongside a fellow traveler. The pleasantries of occupation are extended – button check? Why, thank you, sir. Then, to swords.

A knockdown is scored. You cozy up to your fallen foe. Itchy index finger taps short kick, timed to press the enemy's brain into processing defense against meaty pokes. The exhilaration of auspicious chicanery presses you forward as he foolishly tosses out a reversal, to which you dole out withering punishment and place him back upon his shoulder blades. Deja vu from your tapping fingertip. Unnerved, your prey elects to block, a decision you reward with a throw. Now you have meter; now you are invincible...

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The Salty Runback: FADC into Seppuku

Laws control the lesser man.  Right conduct controls the greater one.  -- Chinese Proverb

Historians point to the Kojiki as the first written record of the code of conduct that would later come to be widely known as "bushido" after the publishing of Inazo Nitobe's 1899 work, "Bushido : The Soul of Japan". 

For hundreds of years, samurai lived lives of fealty and service guided by a code built upon a foundation of Confucian teachings, later folding in philosophies and dogma from shintoism and buddhism. It was a way of life that held above all else the value of loyalty, mastery, and honor to the grave. 

In today's society, the concept of living with principle is foreign. We have become a culture driven by reverence for consumption and dangerous nationalism. Loyalty is a simple matter of handing your two dollars and fifty cents to the sales clerk at the gas station so you can walk out with a magnet to slap on your bumper printed in the motif of the American flag. In the scene, we casually toss about words like "brother", or "family", when in reality so many of us view our contemporaries as resources - not Jeff, the guy that likes Smash Brothers, but Jeff, the only guy in the area that plays Gen. So we're friendly to Jeff, not because he's funny, but because we need match practice. We win tournaments and give post-match interviews about growing the scene and helping the community, but the truth is that before we even got into our car, we asked the folks that have been to this tournament previously for the dollar amount of the last event's prize pot, because if it isn't at least such and such amount, we aren't coming.

Five hundred years ago, faced with surrender before a foe unworthy, a man would lay open his belly with a short sword, a sword he carried only for that moment, so that he might be embraced by death clad in his honor. Today, some of us might have a hard time just spelling the word "honor". 

Men and women that stand for something have a habit of transcending. There is a strength imparted by integrity and character that can not be stolen away, and can not be imitated. Placing your name beside a virtue is a potent act - one that can make you one beastly mother at the arcade.

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The Salty Runback : IPlayStarcraft

This week, Haunts and I have played a lot of Starcraft 2 on battle.net. A whole lot. The more time I log Void Ray rushing, the more I begin to squish bits of Starcraft into the cracks in my Street Fighter game, like some sort of Korean aftermarket caulk. 

A lot of players seem to be under the mistaken impression that any game other than a Capcom fighter is anathema to their personal progression. The reasoning is that if they play too much of something else, their mindset will adjust to the new game, and their hard-earned automatic muscle fiber will re-program itself like some kind of Star Trek nightmare. To wit, this is the excuse that many Street Fighter players give for not even attempting to dabble in Tekken, which is especially confusing, considering the truth - Tekken is a far inferior game in all respects, and its players are slavering goblinoids whose flesh transmutes to stone at the mere touch of the sun - marks a sufficient explanation. 

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The Salty Runback : Post-Evo M.O. Edition

Welcome to first official volume of "The Salty Runback". I apologize for the brief absence of my articles in the weeks leading up to Evolution 2010, but contrary to popular belief, I do actually play this game, and I've been in hard training. Now that we've put another one in the books, I'm revitalized and ready to get back to work. 

Spending five days of indulgence neck deep in the scene from a nation-wide lens, I've returned to NorCal with a lot to get off my chest, a honed sense of purpose, and a heap of creative ideas. The thing I'm most excited about is taking the sort of opinion-based commentary I provide on the iplaywinner.com streams and using it as a launching pad for a regular column, i.e. the Runback. Trust me; the salt will flow.

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