It's that time again!
Canada Cup Preview!
Canada Cup is most known for two things, a world cup 5 vs. 5 style competition in SSF4AE (in addition to the usual singles tournaments) and the $8.95 fighting game community meme.
As discussed in the above video, Team Europe had to pull out of the event, the other 8 teams are:
Team USA 1, Team USA 2, Team Canada 1, Team Canada 2, Team Japan, Team Korea, Team Netherlands and Team South East Asia.
So there's going to be plenty of global competition on show during the weekend, lots of EVO standard matches and the accompanying hype is guaranteed.
As for 8.95? Well to watch last year's stream in HD you had to pay 8.95, but the non-HD stream was plagued with a stream producer who kept pressing the "play an ad now" button as soon as matches ended, but for stream viewers who are watching with a 10-15 second delay, would miss the ending of the match. It features as a joke in Divekick. To put it in context, remember the Daigo Parry video? Imagine the 8.95 version.
Hilarious.
Stream Link
http://www.twitch.tv/team/canadacup
Zangief wins his first Street Fighter IV major
Two games, two downloadable upgrades, four years. Not a single Zangief player had won a major. Until this weekend, when AGE | Snake Eyez defeated Justin Wong in a grand final that was a great example of patience and spacing. It was incredibly tense and a great end to the LA Qualifiers of the Street Fighter 25th Anniversary tournament.
Team Rush Hour returns and with it, some of the funniest FGC content you will see
Sit down and let Aquasilk and Chris Hu, Team Rush Hour, spin you some tales about a League of Legends player forgetting to turn off his stream after playing LoL and indulging in some "self celebration" as he triples his viewership in 5 minutes. Also features the explanation to Chris Hu of where "I pee on some little girls" comes from. Couldn't stop laughing when I saw it live, ahhh funny stuff, shout out to Team Rush Hour.
EVO founders announce the winners of the EVO College Scholarship winners
One of the things I was really intrigued by at this year's EVO 2012 was the $10,000 College Scholarship that was paid for by the 720p PPV stream viewers (of which I was one, because the archive was locked behind the pay wall). After 500 entrants, three winners have been picked, good luck to the winners in getting educated up.
It took longer than we expected, but we have finally awarded the first ever Evo College Scholarship! The response was enormous; in our first year we received over 500 applications. Thankfully, the number of PPV viewers for Evo 2012 have allowed us to add one additional scholarship. So for 2012 we will grant two $10,000 awards, along with a special $500 creative grant! An enormous THANK YOU goes out to all our online viewers and to Capcom, Namco, Warner Bros, and Atlus for allowing us to run the PPV.
Source - http://shoryuken.com/2012/10/24/announcing-the-10000-evo-scholarship-winners-for-2012/
Atlus announces the Atlus Fighting Championships for November
No Capcom games, no Namco games, no NetherRealm games, just good ol' The King of Fighters XIII and Persona 4 Arena courtesy of Atlus and Mad Catz and streamed by Level Up Series http://twitch.tv/leveluplive More details to come in November
http://www.levelup-series.com/levelup-presents-atlus-fighting-championships/
MLG picks up Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for MLG Dallas - Fall Championships (November 2-4)
In a much anticipated move, Major League Gaming has dropped one Namco game for another, with Soulcalibur V stepping aside for the new game TTT2. Tekken has had a history with MLG, Tekken 6 having a successful run in the past. Will this be as successful? With MLG's new efforts in fighting games it's going to be interesting to see
- If TTT2 can repeat what Tekken 6 did
- If Tekken players will turn up to Dallas
- If the MLG fighting game stream can actually break 1000 viewers, with it's many adverts, esports production and wub wub wub
When "One woman’s battle against the anxious masculinity of the fighting-games scene" isn't what it claims to be
I've seen an alarming rise in the amount of abuse of women in gaming articles recently, while it's disheartening to read these stories, I believe that the more it's reported, the more sexist idiots will get exposed and shown the error of their ways, one I especially enjoyed reading recently was the story of the Black Cat cosplayer who embarrassed and humiliated a bunch of childish sexist interviewers at last week's New York Comic-con. http://beautilation.tumblr.com/post/33538802648
The next article to shame wrong doers is Maddy Myers piece about her fighting game adventures - http://thephoenix.com/boston/recroom/145892-one-womans-battle-against-the-anxious-masculinity/#ixzz2AGeCw78L. This article was brought to my attention by none other than Giant Bomb's own resident anti-FGC staffer, Patrick Klepek in his latest "Worth Reading" article, with the intro in linking to the article (and a direct quote) "It's too bad some ugly seeds continue to give the fighting game community such a bad reputation."
I gave this article a read (which begrudgingly clicked to 5 separate pages, come on people, this is 2012!) and I can confirm I'm in agreement with Maddy that what she went through wasn't very pleasant and unfortunately it's seen commonly in many geek subcultures.
A couple guys come up and try to make conversation with me. They both ask the same questions: "What are you doing here?" "Why did you come?" They seem genuinely curious. My response — "I just wanted to play" — doesn't satisfy either of them. They keep asking that same question with different wording. So I say "I don't know" until they go away.
Another guy walks up and asks if I have the next game. Sure, why not. He tells me it's his first time here; he's got a stick with him, and he looks excited. He asks if I've been here before, and I admit I have. "You're a regular!" he exclaims. I laugh. No, not exactly.
As I'm reading this, a theme starts to emerge, which is cemented by the 4th page. These guys are not the fighting game community, they are random gamers, no different from the ones who we all receive hateful messages from on XBL/PSN. Take this section from page 4:
I lean against the doorway and watch people play for 10 minutes. While I loiter, no one asks if I need help or seems to notice me, but I don't mind this so much; I'd rather be ignored than stared down, and I enjoy watching the game. Finally, an employee asks me what I am doing there. I ask him in return if the store would consider organizing an Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 night.
Turns out, the game nights get dictated by corporate, he explains, so they don't even have copies of UMvC3 on hand. "If we did have a copy, you could play it," he says.
"What if I told you I had a copy right here?"
By now, the guys in the room have turned around. Several stare at me in bewilderment.
"Oh, shit," says one of the male players, "I bet she's a pro."
"I'm definitely not," I say, laughing. "I'm just not very good at Street Fighter X Tekken. I thought I might convince you guys to play this instead if I brought it."
"How did you even know this was happening?" someone asked. "We just saw the store and came in."
"Oh, I Googled around for fight nights, and this was one that I found," I said. The guys look at each other. I can't tell if they're impressed or freaked out. A little of both?
My game's title screen flashes over the TV. More guys walk into the back room with exclaims of interest.
"Marvel vs. Capcom? I love this game," says one of the newcomers. "You all play this game? You guys all have Xbox?"
One of the other guys points at me. "I only have a PS3, but she has an Xbox. This is her game."
The newcomer stares hard at me. "It's your game?"
Time to go through the motions. "Yes." "You play this game?" "Yes." "You play video games?" "Yes." "You have an Xbox?!" "Yes." "Whoa! You gotta give me your gamertag!" "No, thanks." "What? Why not? You have Xbox Live, right?" "I do, just . . . no, thanks."
The guy turns and walks right out of the store. He doesn't come back.
The guy who pointed at me says, "That was weird."
"It wasn't that unusual," I say. "Not for me."
"Oh, right," he says. "You're a girl who plays video games. And that's pretty weird." It's not a compliment. He says it with a hint of concern in his eyes, as though he's letting me know that I have a symptom of some larger, mysterious disorder.
Now other than the ignorant comment at the bottom about Maddy apparently being pretty weird and the creepy guy who left, it seems quite clear to me that this entire thing is amateur hour, a "fight night," put together by some store employees and not a fighting game community event. Labelling this as "bad seeds" of the fighting game community is a mistake on both Patrick and Maddy's part.
Thank you for reading once again!
Log in to comment