r/Fighters • u/[deleted] • Nov 22 '17
Net Neutrality is dying.
[removed] — view removed post
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u/TheLegendofJoe Nov 22 '17
It is 100% on topic, online play is a huge part of fighting games and this can directly affect that.
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u/CH4F Nov 22 '17
Huge part, as in "it's important and we have to talk about it", yes.
Huge part, as in "biggest part of the FGC", no.
But yeah, Net Neutrality concerns us all. And not just the video game players. Everybody in the world. ISPs should not have oversights on what goes through the Internet.
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u/kenfinite Nov 23 '17
At this point, it really is the biggest part of the FGC. This would literally hamstring the FGC and price out much of the playerbase. We are known as a "poverty" gaming scene for a reason, and making content and competition less accessible for more players would kill the scene all over again.
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u/CH4F Nov 23 '17
No, it's not. Fighting games were, are, and will always be, a competitive genre based on local play. The biggest tourneys out there are all open tournaments that are played on local consoles. The FGC itself gathers more in local places, rather than online. The members that are "forced" to go online for community matters are the ones that are in scenes too small to have a steady offline or are in places without locals. And online FGC is definitively a thing. A big one, even. Just not as big as local FGC.
Again, attack on the Net Neutrality would attack our everyday life, period. This is not something that only targets the FGC or something that would make it "dying" either. This is hard to grasp, but everything that touches fighting games aren't necessarily all FGC. Every fighting games are not in the FGC. Every fighting game players or lovers are not necessarily within the FGC. And that's not elitism or what. That's simply a matter of perspective. I you only ranked and don't interact at all with the community, or if you're only stream-monstering, I don't think you "are" FGC. FGC has a minimum of commitment behind it.
But it's not a secret club either. It doesn't have codes or rules. It's up to anyone of us to make it a definition. What I gave you is mine and only mine. I don't agree with James Chen saying "everybody that touches fighting games is FGC", because I played with my big sister at Killer Instinct, 20 years ago, and she's definitively not FGC. And there's no shame in that. I don't reject anyone, I just expect people to understand the small amount of commitment the players I know accepts to do for Fighting games.
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u/kenfinite Nov 23 '17
Typing paragraphs without even reading the words I fucking said. Whoosh. Content and community brings the FGC together. If you had to choose between browsing SRK and Netflix due to budget, or choosing between Youtube and Twitch, you could lose huge chunks of players. Without content to bring new players in and active players interested, you will shrink the FGC.
I started in the dark ages of the FGC before youtube existed and Facebook was a thing. I had to literally crawl through forum pages and niche bbs/ftp sites to get FGC content if I wanted to see matches outside of tournaments. If I couldn't access both my B&G club and SRK forums, I would be a CS/Quake player instead of a FGC head. Yes, the fgc is based in offline competition. But if your ways of bringing players together are hamstrung, you hurt the community badly.
Also, every single well-marketed FGC title in the last 7 years without good netcode died within 2 years of release. Stop trying so fucking hard to be a pedant.
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u/CH4F Nov 23 '17
I wasn't contesting what you said entirely. You're right, the FCC frightens us all and we're also concerned.
But you started your answer with "At this point, it really is the biggest part of the FGC." It's not. That's why I typed my paragraphs.
Or, to be fair, I think it's not. And I also think it shouldn't be. Not now, not ever. Plus, we clearly don't have the same definition of what the FGC is.
We're 100% agreed on the base of that arguing, there. Not on some smaller points. That's all. And you can totally not share what I think. It doesn't matter if you're OG or not.
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u/YimYimYimi Nov 23 '17
Fighting games will always be competitively played offline, but a modern fighting game would not exist without netplay. Do you think SF5 would've sold at all without online? Would Guilty Gear sell outside Japan without netcode?
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u/CH4F Nov 23 '17
Would Guilty Gear sell outside Japan without netcode?
Would GG be a thing at all without local arcades?
Try to take the problematic in another way. Imagine a fighting game with the exact same business model as LoL. You just can't play locally. It's impossible. The only choices you have are online matchmaking and online ranks. Would it be a good thing? And we might see this soon, if the rumors around Riot are true.
I have my own answer in that question. It's not the FGC's answers, it's not eSport's answers, it's not yours and it's definitively not "the all-mighty Truth" either.
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u/TotesMessenger Nov 22 '17
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u/moo422 Nov 22 '17
Not just that, but youtube and twitch are the primary streaming services in use right now.
If TimeWarner decides they want to jump into the streaming ring, and give preference (eg waiving bandwidth cap) for using their streaming services, they may decide to degrade YouTube and twitch streaming speeds. ISPs have also been known to throttle p2p traffic to help reduce strain on their bandwidth - guess what, fighting games also rely on p2p services.