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[Pelta88]

To be clear, the FPS genre outsells Fighting Games by a huge margin. Games Like Battlefield and Call Of Duty also release far more frequently than games like Tekken, Mortal Kombat, and of course Street Fighter. But this isn't a thread about any a specific publisher's stock price. Or each genre's differing business models... I'm talking specifically about each geners cultural impact on gaming.

As a gamer who has plays both genres I've seen this debate pop up before and wanted to see what Gaf thought.

Personally, I think that FP shooters is something you get into but eventually, grow out of. Whereas the FGC, perhaps because of the level of skill required, is a genre that keeps pulling players back.

Thoughts?

 

[Pejo]

The shooter communities are orders of magnitudes larger than the fighting games ones, so this seems pretty skewed. Are you talking just about e-sports or just communities in general?

 

[Belthazar]

I guess the Sonic community is the one with the biggest cultural footprint inside and outside gaming tbh.

 

[Pelta88]

The shooter communities are orders of magnitudes larger than the fighting games ones, so this seems pretty skewed. Are you talking just about e-sports or just communities in general?

I'm not talking about which sells more and has the larger community in terms of player count. I'm talking specifically about each genres impact on our gaming culture.

 

[Timberwolf25]

Cultural Impact? The FGC has a ton of weird characters. Have big tournaments with various games because most tournaments aren't big enough to support a single game. You also see way less single game pro players since a single fgc game doesn't pay enough by itself unless you win world titles. I used to be a big fan of the FGC until they started to become too political banning players for various BS. A lot of it for shit that should be left out of the FGC's business.

Impact on gaming as a whole would definitely be fps games. Besides having a larger number of players, they sell way more and have vastly bigger number of people making them. They are big enough to have dedicated tournaments to a single game with an audience that is rabbid enough to support it. Other than a few exceptions, pro players in the fps scene tend to be single game specialist due to the high competition at the higest tiers.

 

[poppabk]

I'm not talking about which sells more and has the larger community in terms of player count. I'm talking specifically about each genres impact on our gaming culture.

But those two things go hand in hand. The sim community is one of the most dedicated gaming communities but it is tiny and thus has little impact.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I like fighting games better but FPS are way more popular and relevant

Looks at CS:GO numbers all these years later

 

[Roxkis_ii]

I don't think you can divorce the size of the communities and their impact. The elephant will always have more impact then the ant.

 

[Pelta88]

But those two things go hand in hand. The sim community is one of the most dedicated gaming communities but it is tiny and thus has little impact.

I don't think you can divorce the size of the communities and their impact. The elephant will always have more impact then the ant.

Like Avengers Endgame did record numbers but the first Matrix movie was seen as a paradigm shift in cinema... Sales / popularity don't necessarily translate to cultural impact.

But I understand if you think the two are inextricably linked.

 

[SmokedMeat]

The fighting game genre?? Are you serious? This ain’t the ‘90s. Only the diehards bother with fighting games.

 

[poppabk]

Like Avengers Endgame did record numbers but the first Matrix movie was seen as a paradigm shift in cinema... Sales / popularity don't necessarily translate to cultural impact.

But I understand if you think the two are inextricably linked.

Err have you noticed how dominated by superheroes the box office is? How everyone wants a cinematic universe?

 

[STARSBarry]

As a part of the older grass root teams before esports was really a term. My late 90's and early 2000's was full of clan battles with the likes of Multiplay leagues and scrims over some old quakenet channels.

People think fighters dominated the gaming community early on (maybe the 80's) but honestly FPS always dominated the scenes in the early internet days, from Unreal Tornament, Quake III, Team Fortress Classic, Counter Strike & Day of Defeat, they where all played competitively but there was no prize pools outside your clan being top of the leaderboard, but I remember in the TFC leagues we had well over 30 clans in our bracket, 8v8 that was alot players.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

It's shooters and it isn't even close. Look at the impact of Goldeneye on consoles, bringing PC quality multiplayer to the couch. And now the last few generations of gaming have been dominated by the dudebro CoD players and more recently the battle royale squads. They're so popularized by shooters that they are even spreading into other genres with stuff like Fall Guys and even Horizon 5 has a battle royale MP mode.

Meanwhile fighting community hasn't really had any impact outside of its own genre, which isn't nearly as big as it used to be, and is dwarfed by the shooter genre.

 

[kirby007]

what genre? are there fighters outside smash bros?

 

[Pegasus Actual]

FGC is by far the greatest contributor to gaming's cultural impact.

By that I mean the cultural belief that gamers smell bad and can't get laid.

Street Fighter 2 was cool back in the day but it was all downhill from there.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

As a part of the older grass root teams before esports was really a team. My late 90's and early 2000's was full of clan battles with the likes of Multiplay leagues and scrims over some old quakenet channels.

People think fighters dominated the gaming community early on (maybe the 80's) but honestly FPS always dominated the scenes in the early internet days, from Unreal Tornament, Quake III, Team Fortress Classic, Counter Strike & Day of Defeat, they where all played competitively but there was no prize pools outside your clan being top of the leaderboard, but I remember in the TFC leagues we had well over 30 clans in our bracket, 8v8 that was alot players.

Agreed.

The main reason why fighters got the spotlight way back was due to SF and the million fighters that came out after in arcades and home ports. The second shooters got popular (PC) and then transferred over to consoles in full force (which made it even bigger), nobody but hardcore fighting fans give a shit about fighting games.

Street Fighter - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Street Fighter is one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time and is one of Capcom's flagship series with total sales of 48 million units worldwide as of June 2022.[2] It is the highest-grossing fighting game media franchise of all time at US$12.2 billion, including 500,000 arcade unit sales.

The most iconic fighting series (some might argue it's Smash but that's another topic) has sold 48 million copies across 30 years of home gaming.

COD alone sells that many copies every two years.

 

[HTK]

If you think Fighting Games have had a more impact on our culture, you're living in a bubble.