Thursday, February 02, 2006

Fighting games to become obsolete?

So I'm trying my best to keep updating this blog so that you people will keep returning for the crumbs of entertainment/knowledge i'm leaving. Either that or so you can watch me implode one post at a time.

I was talking to another videogame designer the other day on a internet message board about DOA4 and how hard the AI is and how that is a dis-service to the average player. Fighting games are already a niche market. Making the few that do come out even more un-inviting is not helping matters at all, regardless of how many fanboy panty shots there are. His point was that fighting games are so niche that all it will take is something like GTA to have good combat and pow, there will no longer be a need for fighting games. Players will get their 'fill' from playing GTA.

At first I agreed with him but the more I thought about it, if GTA had a basketball as good as (insert some really good basketball game I have never played) I think people would still buy said basketball game. Fighting games are dying (are dead?) and there is no denying that. There are still a few franchises that knock homeruns as far as sales are concerned every time they step up to bat - Mortal Kombat, Dragonball Z, etc.

So i ask you readers if GTA had a combat system as good as Tekken would there still be a need for the next incarnation of Tekken?

1 comment:

omar kendall said...

That's a pretty strange contention to make on the part of your opponent. I think there's a flaw in the notion that people will buy only the barest number of games to experience whatever gameplay outlet in which they are interested. GTA has cars and crashes, has that precluded the viability of Burnout? It has shooting; should everyone stop making first-person shooters?

Structurally, I think there are a lot of things wrong with fighting games that are directly leading to their demise - you mention AI difficulty, and I definitely think that's one of them. I would also offer that as Western gaming gravitates more and more towards Western developed games; the fact that most fighting games come from Japan will also continue to hurt the genre's positive growth. The art and gameplay styles aren't necessarily suited towards both markets equally.

Still, I think there is hope. EA Chicago seems to be committed to developing fighting games, with both Fight Night and Def Jam probably sticking around for years to come. Other opportunistic developers will undoubtedly try their hand at the fighting game genre, and who knows, maybe some of them will succeed.

Great topic.