Some would say that I like to browse the internet. This is not entirely incorrect, but one of the main sites that I browse/peruse would definitely be the fighting game community’s center hub of Shoryuken.com also known as SRK. Recently, SRK has had an influx of new writers adding new content for them. They had a hiring and I guess these are the people they chose for the job.
They should reconsider their position on these new writers.
Despite this blog post’s title, I am not opposed to people having opinions. Opinions are great. They stir up debate and (occasionally) create fodder for some really dope ass conversations. I am fully in support of such products. Where opinions become bullshit is when people’s opinions are fucking retarded.
You may be saying, “You can’t say that about opinions! They are opinions, everyone is entitled to them!” You would be right except for the part where you are wrong. Everyone is entitled, nay privileged, to having a butt. People use their butt for many things, primarily they use it to defecate. The majority of people, and I use the word majority with the deepest expression of sadness on my face, use their butt to insert things into it. I’m not taking a shot at homosexuals, I’m saying that people take the time to put shit (not literally, because actually shit is the only thing that should exist in a butt) up their butt that has no business being up there.
My point is that people are entitled to their opinions, but that doesn’t mean that their opinion makes any fucking sense. Which brings me to the point of my article. Recently on SRK, there was a post concerning DreamHack, a huge competitive gaming exposition. Since SRK is a fighting game website (primarily), the post concerns the fact that in the middle of the Starcraft II semi-finals, they ran the Super Street Fighter 4 AE Grand Finals.
The tone of the SRK post is mostly disbelief that people watching could be so upset at such an event. The SRK article quotes a tweet made by an irate Starcraft II fan which states the following:
@terranfromtheyear5000: When you watch the Superbowl, They don’t play have [sic] the MLB World Series at half time do they? I want SC2, that is all.
The article quotes this tweet more in jest than anything, as if to say, “Check out this tweet made by a complete retard. This guy is wrong. The issue here is that this guy is absolutely correct.
Please don’t misunderstand, I love fighting games and I enjoy Starcraft II a lot as well. I think both games are incredible spectator sports as well as incredible games to play competitively as well. I think the issue stems in the ridiculous time slot the Grand Finals of SSF4:AE existed in. It was clearly placed there as if to say, “Hey guys check out this game! We’re relevant please look at me. 🙁 “
While I definitely agree that Starcraft II is astronomically more popular than fighting games as a whole, I don’t think that fighting games have to resort to ridiculous ploys such as that to attract fans and viewers. In fact, these types of shenanigans just make the fighting game community look bad as a whole. It makes it look like the guy who desperately seeks attention at all possible moments of the day. We all know that guy, he’s the person who in the middle of a party will do a headstand or start break dancing to get enormous amounts of awkward attention. Most people are in agreement that we fucking hate that guy.
Fighting games don’t have to resort to doing headstands at awkward moments during gaming expositions, they are already growing at an exponential rate. I only joined the fighting game community in late 2007 (basically right before Street Fighter IV came out) and the fighting game community has nothing but quadrupled, if not quintupled since my entrance. I can’t take credit for all of it (or any of it for that matter), but fighting games are not so deep in the mud as far as interest and hype that we have to sandwich our Grand Finals in between other games’ semi-finals.
Yet the whole SRK article consists of nothing but snotty “pishaw” attitudes and quoting “sensible people in the Starcraft community” to try and push its absolutely fucking retarded point. All the while they quote djWHEAT, who is not specifically someone in the Starcraft community. djWHEAT has been engrossed in the fighting came community for a long time, he’s just not as knowledgeable about fighting games as he is about Starcraft.
While I agree that e-sports are e-sports, and therefore Starcraft players shouldn’t complain about the existence of other games the biggest issue is the time slot in which the game was placed in. I could make the same analogy that the guy in the twitter post made, but he’s absolutely correct. If I’m watching Scrubs, I don’t want to watch ER sandwiched in the middle of my Scrubs episode. If I’m watching basketball, I sure as hell better not see any fucking hockey anywhere or I will go apeshit.
The time slots for these games should have been placed separately. Period. End. Starcraft from X o’clock to Y o’clock and Street Fighter from Z o’clock to A o’clock. Stop trying to support headstands fighting game community, I know we’re better than that.
Want to see Jamison Trumpets play fighting games? He goes by the handle DanielRGT when playing, check him sometimes on Monday’s at Option-Select’s Mixup Monday Stream.