Cry Wolf said:
-Seraph- said:
The depth of a fighting game lies entirely in its mechanics, just like strategy games, and hell even sports games. Not every game or genre for that matter needs to have an expressed depth in its story or characters and all that jazz because that is not the purpose of the game. These are games purely about 1 on 1 challenge, everything else is merely a secondary focus, because really...why are you playing a fighting game for the story? Those are nothing more than glorified tutorials and flavor text to give characters some personality.
Complexity
does not equal depth, and a game driven solely by mechanics with no meaning is inherently shallow. While narrative can achieve depth in a game it exclusion does not preclude it. Rather, the problem with Fighting Games as a genre is they do not utilise their mechanics to create anything but challenge.
Complexity does not equal depth, but it most certainly can create depth. The idea in video game development though, is to create as much depth as you can with as little complexity as possible. Street Fighter is so huge because it does follow this idea more closely than other fighting game series. Compare Street Fighter to a new-school fighting game series like Guilty Gear, and you'll find that Street Fighter is actually very simple in its mechanics.
But you know, sometimes people want to play very deep, and very complicated games. These games don't do as well as more accessible games in the market, but they have their place. The Arc System Works games are like this. BlazBlue and Guilty Gear are nowhere near as popular as games like Street Fighter or Tekken because they incorporate so many more game mechanics, but they have a niche of players that love the sort of gameplay the added mechanics create.
Cry Wolf said:
-Seraph- said:
You are still wrong in calling them shallow because you focus too much on the "violence" of the game, and not the mechanics at play. Really, calling Street Fighter or Smash bros "violent" is true on a superficial level, but people don't actually PLAY them for the violent aspect of them. These are games after all, where mechanics are generally the most important aspect of the game while everything else is generally a secondary purpose.
No, I'm not. I'm calling them shallow because their entire purpose is to create a challenge based on the glorification of violence.
Its game mechanics are purely designed to achieve this goal. Challenge in and of itself does not equal meaning and without meaning we do not have depth.
TL;DR - Complexity does not equal depth.
If you're basing a game on one-on-one combat, of course we're going to have some violence.
But anyway, like many other people I know, I certainly don't play fighting games for the violence. I play for the deep, intricate gameplay. Though, of course, if you really want to experience what a fighting game is all about, you need to play with human players. What keeps me coming back to fighters is the thrill of psychological warfare. Anticipation and conditioning are key in fighting games.
With the exception of Ultra/Super/Hyper combos or Instant Kills, fighting game mechanics exist largely as tools for you to defeat your opponent. Mechanics like dashing, parries, rolls, double jumping, and instant blocking are definitely not purely designed to glorify violence. They're there for balance, and there as tools for the player to use. You can completely imbalance a game by removing a mechanic or two.
Fighting games nowadays almost
need to be competitively sound if they want to be successful. Take Street Fighter X Tekken. That game flopped because it resonated so poorly with the fighting game community. Capcom has been taking steps to fix/rebalance/re-tool mechanics to serve the game. Capcom is trying to better the competitive quality of the game, not the violence. No one wanted SFxT because it was violent/flashy. People are only warming up to it now because of Capcom's recent efforts to improve the game.
Arc System Works is another company that knows that depth is the greatest selling point of a fighting game. This is why they add/remove game mechanics in there games to find the perfect combination for competitive play. BlazBlue's changed mechanics a couple of times already, and BlazBlue looks to change and re-do more mechanics in BlazBlue: Chronophantasma.
Fighting games aren't about challenge created by their mechanics. Fighting game developers nowadays are trying to make their game mechanics easier to understand. Tutorials are becoming more commonplace, and move commands are becoming being simplified. Persona 4 Arena is a prime example of this.
Some fighting game mechanics exist for spectacle, but most fighting game mechanics exist to create balance, and deep, strategic gameplay.
