Today marks the end of Minna Con mb tournament which will also mark my time to run anymore tournaments.
Just to clarify I will still be playing fighting for games. This just means I will no longer be the active person running the tournament.
I have been running tournaments for the last few years and I personally have been looking forward to just joining a tournament and not worry about things going wrong.
Like to thank the many people who helped me over the years running tournaments. Could have never done it without you guys.
With this I can put down the tag of being a tournament organizer.
Long live fighting games.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Goals, Targets and to get as much as possible out of attending a tournament
Less than 5 minutes ago I posted on Facebook MeltyBlood group with first a goal and a couple of targets to meet before the upcoming Minacon tournament for Meltyblood Actress Again Current Code.
I thought I just want to quickly explain the reason I am doing this.
I realize most people in Singapore don't join tournaments because you know they will not win the tournament. Like "these guys are so good I have no chance".
I mean sure winning a tournament is THE THING to do but realistically there is only 1 winner out of so many players joining a tournament. So what about the folks who like me are not that great, growing old which leads to less time available to grind it out getting better.
For me I would personally set a goal I would want to meet. This round I chose to be place as high as possible using not my main character Aoko and opting for Arche-type earth instead. The actual position I am aiming for is actually at least fourth place in the tournament.
With my goal decided, I set some targets I need to achieve to get myself ready to meet this goal. So I told everyone I want to play 1000 matches with Arche-type Earth and hopefully meet the 1000 matches. What happens if I don't play 1000 matches but 700? That's actually fine. That is how you set targets to achieve then do it. Hitting the target in this case would be great but not always possible. The idea here is to get as many matches in as possible and learn match ups and break my own bad habits.
Second I be streaming my progress. Why to I do that? This is more for helping people see how I get myself. I notice most folks to not know how to prepare themselves for tournaments. So by streaming this I be able to show people how I do it and what I do.
So well with that out of the way, lets see how I place in this tournament.
I thought I just want to quickly explain the reason I am doing this.
I realize most people in Singapore don't join tournaments because you know they will not win the tournament. Like "these guys are so good I have no chance".
I mean sure winning a tournament is THE THING to do but realistically there is only 1 winner out of so many players joining a tournament. So what about the folks who like me are not that great, growing old which leads to less time available to grind it out getting better.
For me I would personally set a goal I would want to meet. This round I chose to be place as high as possible using not my main character Aoko and opting for Arche-type earth instead. The actual position I am aiming for is actually at least fourth place in the tournament.
With my goal decided, I set some targets I need to achieve to get myself ready to meet this goal. So I told everyone I want to play 1000 matches with Arche-type Earth and hopefully meet the 1000 matches. What happens if I don't play 1000 matches but 700? That's actually fine. That is how you set targets to achieve then do it. Hitting the target in this case would be great but not always possible. The idea here is to get as many matches in as possible and learn match ups and break my own bad habits.
Second I be streaming my progress. Why to I do that? This is more for helping people see how I get myself. I notice most folks to not know how to prepare themselves for tournaments. So by streaming this I be able to show people how I do it and what I do.
So well with that out of the way, lets see how I place in this tournament.
Monday, March 17, 2014
What an awful way to do a character review
Let's get elephant out of the way. This character review is awful. Capcom has no money to do this update. Ono back pedaling on the hype of the 5th character after he realized what he had done.
So why the collective sigh from the gaming community in general? It stems from really poor marketing decisions.
First, they shouldn't have reviewed the "good" known characters first. They should have reviewed Decapre first than the rest of the known four character first. This would soften the fact it is a clone character.
Second, they should have reviewed the character in January than now which is a month away from release. The need to balance letting the game stay in people's mind and game being totally forgotten is a hard juggle all the more Capcom should not have held the hype for such a long time. Huge expectations tend to build up over long period take for example Duke Nukem Forever. The game of course never delivered what it promised.
Lastly, everyone could see this is the easiest character to develop for the game since Capcom doesn't have any resemblance of a budget to work.Oh and come on with the hints. We least expected it to be a Bison doll. The issue comes when it resembles too much like one of the characters and putting the label "new" on it. Clones are brought up a lot like evil Ryu though evil Ryu in SF4 has slightly different standing animation, different character models, different properties to some of his moves and overall visually people can tell it is a "different" character. You can't simply lie to people and expect people to take that Decapre is a "new" character when the 3D model and most of the animations are borrowed from Cammy. Even changing the hair model with the same standing animation would make a lot of difference at this point.
On the same note look at the character review for Dead or Alive 5 Kasumi Clone phase 4. People were not too impressed by it but collectively nobody felt like it was that much of a negative. Why? Simply because Tecmo Koei did not try to hype this extra character as new. Prior to this Kasumi they did review a totally new character from ground up which is Marie. There is some good will there and people can understand they are getting something more not less.
Overall really stupid and awful marketing decisions by Capcom which will take away more good will they accumulated from the past memories of the well crafted games they used to make.
So why the collective sigh from the gaming community in general? It stems from really poor marketing decisions.
First, they shouldn't have reviewed the "good" known characters first. They should have reviewed Decapre first than the rest of the known four character first. This would soften the fact it is a clone character.
Second, they should have reviewed the character in January than now which is a month away from release. The need to balance letting the game stay in people's mind and game being totally forgotten is a hard juggle all the more Capcom should not have held the hype for such a long time. Huge expectations tend to build up over long period take for example Duke Nukem Forever. The game of course never delivered what it promised.
Lastly, everyone could see this is the easiest character to develop for the game since Capcom doesn't have any resemblance of a budget to work.Oh and come on with the hints. We least expected it to be a Bison doll. The issue comes when it resembles too much like one of the characters and putting the label "new" on it. Clones are brought up a lot like evil Ryu though evil Ryu in SF4 has slightly different standing animation, different character models, different properties to some of his moves and overall visually people can tell it is a "different" character. You can't simply lie to people and expect people to take that Decapre is a "new" character when the 3D model and most of the animations are borrowed from Cammy. Even changing the hair model with the same standing animation would make a lot of difference at this point.
On the same note look at the character review for Dead or Alive 5 Kasumi Clone phase 4. People were not too impressed by it but collectively nobody felt like it was that much of a negative. Why? Simply because Tecmo Koei did not try to hype this extra character as new. Prior to this Kasumi they did review a totally new character from ground up which is Marie. There is some good will there and people can understand they are getting something more not less.
Overall really stupid and awful marketing decisions by Capcom which will take away more good will they accumulated from the past memories of the well crafted games they used to make.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Gaming is giving me anxiety
I keep a list of video game news related websites to visit through feedly (I was using google reader until it google decided it should die). Because websites run on hits so headlines tend to be as sensational as possible which often makes going through the news harder as you need to take more time to decide if this is just not as truthful as it makes out to be.
I have to say though the practice of reading gaming news is giving me anxiety. An example would be the news about Index holdings going bankrupt and the brand Atlus might suffer. As a fan, this drove me nuts waiting for some company to buy out the Atlus brand. Then there are kickstarters of games in genres I really like which might not make their kickstarter goal.
Then there are games coming out for Japan and in my head would be praying hard for no online locked DLC. Hell best if there were no DLCs for it so I will not have to worry or bang my head against the wall if some good content were cut so the publishers can make more money.
This practice of reading gaming news and constantly worrying if a certain game comes out, your favorite game company going bust etc. is giving me more emotion fatigue than I would imagine. I guess this explains why some folks have just upped and went "Nope old games are the best".
The practice of a developer and publishers constantly trying to make their fans worry and anxious over the state of their games and saying stuff like "well if so and so game do well we will make / localize the sequel" is seriously driving me nuts.
Do I really need a guilt trip for wanting a game I like to be release? It is even worse like Nintendo exclusive games as there is no Nintendo in Singapore. When I hear games like Shantae or Phoenix Wright going digital only, I bite my tougue and try to find a way to get them and again worry over the fact the games are tied to my hardware. So once my 3DS dies so does my games.
Again do I really need this sort of anxiety from just wanting to play games I like? There are lot more things like dealing hackers / griefers in online games, screaming kids on xbox live and people forcing you to take a stand on games because its sexist or too violent.
The list goes on but boy just thinking about this gave me an anxiety attack.
I have to say though the practice of reading gaming news is giving me anxiety. An example would be the news about Index holdings going bankrupt and the brand Atlus might suffer. As a fan, this drove me nuts waiting for some company to buy out the Atlus brand. Then there are kickstarters of games in genres I really like which might not make their kickstarter goal.
Then there are games coming out for Japan and in my head would be praying hard for no online locked DLC. Hell best if there were no DLCs for it so I will not have to worry or bang my head against the wall if some good content were cut so the publishers can make more money.
This practice of reading gaming news and constantly worrying if a certain game comes out, your favorite game company going bust etc. is giving me more emotion fatigue than I would imagine. I guess this explains why some folks have just upped and went "Nope old games are the best".
The practice of a developer and publishers constantly trying to make their fans worry and anxious over the state of their games and saying stuff like "well if so and so game do well we will make / localize the sequel" is seriously driving me nuts.
Do I really need a guilt trip for wanting a game I like to be release? It is even worse like Nintendo exclusive games as there is no Nintendo in Singapore. When I hear games like Shantae or Phoenix Wright going digital only, I bite my tougue and try to find a way to get them and again worry over the fact the games are tied to my hardware. So once my 3DS dies so does my games.
Again do I really need this sort of anxiety from just wanting to play games I like? There are lot more things like dealing hackers / griefers in online games, screaming kids on xbox live and people forcing you to take a stand on games because its sexist or too violent.
The list goes on but boy just thinking about this gave me an anxiety attack.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The strange era of gaming
This is really a strange era of playing video games. You know hooking up a video game console to a television and playing games on the game console.
Recently someone asked me what I was playing for fighting games. I said "you know I am still playing Meltyblood". His response was "oh" and being surprise at me still playing it. Probably surprise people are still playing it.
His response and expression left kept me thinking for sometime. It kept me thinking why he was surprise that I was still playing the game.So that thought really lingered in my mind. As I go through gaming news, video game forums and playing games, a few possible reasons for his surprise came to mind.
If I would go onto steam and load up the new game titles, the first 100 new titles I could only recognize only about 20 of them. There is such a huge library of games, there isn't any reason to keep playing the same genre of game or even the exact same game.
So why do I still go back to playing the same game?
The best way I can put it is, to think of it like listening to your favorite songs or music. You love that song or music, naturally you would listen to them now and then. I can say the same for games. I like a certain game naturally I would go back and play it again. From this perspective you would realize it is not one bit strange or surprising.
Still I am not that into new games recently. Well not that into triple A games. In fact recently I got into collecting old games(still buying new ones of course).
For me the big budget games are getting less interesting and no longer catered for me.This is probably a side effect of getting older, you tend to want to play the games you are familiar with. Sadly the genre that appeals to me are no longer being developed by the bigger companies. Strangely I don't mind it that much as indie developers are stepping up and filling the gap.
You must be thinking "alas the internet brought about great things like Indie developers, early access and Kickstarter to save gaming from running into the ground by grey design". That is the good part about the internet which you must remember the down side.
The upside of people doing good is people doing bad things. Oh how playing video games have grown and include people of all walks of life. There are always bad eggs somewhere doing bad things in general and they represent the groups of communities even if we do not see them as such.
Yes I am talking about people behaving really badly or doing horrible things at tournaments, lan parties, game events etc. For me the fighting game community has become the butt of the gaming communities in general and being both vilified and crucified because of a prominent incident that happened. I do not deny that the incident was bad but being on the internet also means that everyone remembers it and it is hard to shake off that image.
The sad part about the whole thing is the whole gaming communities suffer from the same problems as well. It just happens that the fighting game community is the scapegoat of the whole thing and people feel it is mostly alright to point fingers at them giggling at the butt monkey in the room.
The times when I was younger playing video games amount friends you know around the neighborhood Talking about them, trading secrets. Advising people to avoid bad games.Those times are gone. What a strange era for video games.
Recently someone asked me what I was playing for fighting games. I said "you know I am still playing Meltyblood". His response was "oh" and being surprise at me still playing it. Probably surprise people are still playing it.
His response and expression left kept me thinking for sometime. It kept me thinking why he was surprise that I was still playing the game.So that thought really lingered in my mind. As I go through gaming news, video game forums and playing games, a few possible reasons for his surprise came to mind.
If I would go onto steam and load up the new game titles, the first 100 new titles I could only recognize only about 20 of them. There is such a huge library of games, there isn't any reason to keep playing the same genre of game or even the exact same game.
So why do I still go back to playing the same game?
The best way I can put it is, to think of it like listening to your favorite songs or music. You love that song or music, naturally you would listen to them now and then. I can say the same for games. I like a certain game naturally I would go back and play it again. From this perspective you would realize it is not one bit strange or surprising.
Still I am not that into new games recently. Well not that into triple A games. In fact recently I got into collecting old games(still buying new ones of course).
For me the big budget games are getting less interesting and no longer catered for me.This is probably a side effect of getting older, you tend to want to play the games you are familiar with. Sadly the genre that appeals to me are no longer being developed by the bigger companies. Strangely I don't mind it that much as indie developers are stepping up and filling the gap.
You must be thinking "alas the internet brought about great things like Indie developers, early access and Kickstarter to save gaming from running into the ground by grey design". That is the good part about the internet which you must remember the down side.
The upside of people doing good is people doing bad things. Oh how playing video games have grown and include people of all walks of life. There are always bad eggs somewhere doing bad things in general and they represent the groups of communities even if we do not see them as such.
Yes I am talking about people behaving really badly or doing horrible things at tournaments, lan parties, game events etc. For me the fighting game community has become the butt of the gaming communities in general and being both vilified and crucified because of a prominent incident that happened. I do not deny that the incident was bad but being on the internet also means that everyone remembers it and it is hard to shake off that image.
The sad part about the whole thing is the whole gaming communities suffer from the same problems as well. It just happens that the fighting game community is the scapegoat of the whole thing and people feel it is mostly alright to point fingers at them giggling at the butt monkey in the room.
The times when I was younger playing video games amount friends you know around the neighborhood Talking about them, trading secrets. Advising people to avoid bad games.Those times are gone. What a strange era for video games.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Remember the last MeltyBlood tournament about not practising? I lied
Well it isn't exactly that I lied about not practising. I didn't exactly tell the full truth. Yes I didn't practice combos setups etc. What I did was watch and remember the matches I had before with the local players.
Basically I spent the night prior thinking about how every player played and their habits.
I also checked out how a match up for certain characters are against C.aoko are like and strategies against them. I didn't write them down though (if the tournament occurred recently I would actually write them down. Well more on that next time).
I figured if I will not be finding new tech within night why not do the easier thing and study match ups.
So I got 4th place with C.aoko and nearly beat everyone in the 10 v 10. I am happy with that at least.
As for not sleeping the night before. Yeah I really didn't sleep the night before. That was no lie, it was really difficult to keep myself going during the tournament. It was worth it at least in this situation.
Basically I spent the night prior thinking about how every player played and their habits.
I also checked out how a match up for certain characters are against C.aoko are like and strategies against them. I didn't write them down though (if the tournament occurred recently I would actually write them down. Well more on that next time).
I figured if I will not be finding new tech within night why not do the easier thing and study match ups.
So I got 4th place with C.aoko and nearly beat everyone in the 10 v 10. I am happy with that at least.
As for not sleeping the night before. Yeah I really didn't sleep the night before. That was no lie, it was really difficult to keep myself going during the tournament. It was worth it at least in this situation.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
French Bread Behind the scenes (11)
I thought I will just summarize what they said here so I don't need to repeat it again and again.
First off this stream which they have on a near monthly basis usually talks about what they are doing, sometimes interviews with other developers (mainly fighting games) or even unofficial unveils. They also answer question sent to them via a form you can fill up
Today happens to be another unveil episode.
First a lot of questions directed at them regarding the long combos. If you have no idea, check that youtube link out. Their answer is they are working on it. Interestingly near the end they said they reluctant to use the burst mechanic to do stop long combos.
They also unveiled they are releasing a new version of the game and not a patch. The new version of the game is called Under the Night In Birth - EXelate.
Here's a blurry screenshot of the new title screen Narita tried to show using his smart phone. With that he also unveil a new character for it.
Chaos is a character which uses stands like a Jojo adventure character. His stand is more like a creature he can summon.
There are also questions about the consumer edition (aka console port). They say they are working on it and the programmer is working hard to bring it over. As a teaser he showed us this.
And this
He did tease of something else they are working on but he didn't say much about it.
And that's the summary of the stream. The next stream will happen mid June, they will announce the date on their twitter account.
First off this stream which they have on a near monthly basis usually talks about what they are doing, sometimes interviews with other developers (mainly fighting games) or even unofficial unveils. They also answer question sent to them via a form you can fill up
Today happens to be another unveil episode.
First a lot of questions directed at them regarding the long combos. If you have no idea, check that youtube link out. Their answer is they are working on it. Interestingly near the end they said they reluctant to use the burst mechanic to do stop long combos.
They also unveiled they are releasing a new version of the game and not a patch. The new version of the game is called Under the Night In Birth - EXelate.
And that's the summary of the stream. The next stream will happen mid June, they will announce the date on their twitter account.
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