Kicking… Tail, In Fighting Games

You know what was fun, back before there were MMO games (or the Wii) to make an essentially solitary hobby a social event? Street Fighter tournaments. A bunch of people would pile into a den or a basement, throw on Street Fighter, and duke it out. There were lots of different kinds of players at one of these events. There were the Game Masters, who bragged about being able to kick your ass with any of the available characters. There were the Specialists, who studied one particular character and its associated moves, mastering the most complex and thumb-spraining sequences. There were Strategists, who analyzed every fight to develop “if/then” patterns and plans.

Then there was me. The most feared archetype of all. I was… the Button Masher. I had no idea what I was doing, and I utterly lacked the dexterity required to execute the fancy moves. Well, intentionally anyway. I could pull off the most astounding routines by crushing every button on the controller at the same time.  I also got really excited and shrieked like a cross between a hyena and a banshee, which could throw off anyone’s concentration. Finally, I was subconsciously convinced that if I lifted the controller up very high, my character could jump, and if I lunged to the right, so too would the avatar. You couldn’t predict me, plan against me, or even think while you were fighting me. I was undefeated for weeks.

So it is with much nostalgic joy that I note that fighter games seem to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance. At the end of last July, we saw the release of Soulcalibur IV. Mortal Combat vs. D.C. Universe came out in November. And Street Fighter IV released last month. (The old 2D Street Fighters are now on the Xbox Live Arcade.)  Today, we at GamerDNA are going to take a brief look at how that niche is performing.

By the way, we didn’t exclude Virtua Fighter because it wasn’t awesome enough. We decided that it wouldn’t be a fair apples-to-apples comparison with the other three games, though, because the ’08 Xbox release was actually a port (albeit one with bonus  features) from an ’07 release on another platform.

Mortal Kombat and the Soulcalibur franchises have remained in the public eye since their introduction in the 90s. Street Fighter, which first appeared in the late 80s in coin op arcades, took a ten year break after the last iteration of Street Fighter III hit the shelves in 1999. That is, the Street Fighter franchise took a ten year break – Capcom continued to produce games featuring the characters themselves in the interim. Still, for the purposes of market awareness, MK and Soul games kept their brand front and center in a way that Street Fighter did not.

Mortal Kombat’s current game is as every bit a spin off as the interval Capcom games were, featuring as it does the crossover characters, but has the franchise name on the box. No doubt the intent was to keep the franchise in our collective gamer minds, and to boost sales, but compared to the other two games, the result was probably not what Midway was hoping for.

Street Fighter IV is off to a great start. We’ll come back to this in the future to see how it held up.

Meanwhile, what else do we know about these games?

Here I must first confess that I make these charts with Excel, and that I am totally incompetent with common graphics programs. Seriously, I only recently learned how to resize images. Therefore, in place of the delicately colored Venn diagram you should be getting, you will have to use your imagination.

What kind of overlap do we see amongst the three newest fighting titles? Is “fighting games” like the “MMO” bucket, wherein fans of the genre usually try all the available options?

The pool for this set of numbers includes everyone who played at least one of our three games. As of yesterday:

Soulcalibur has the edge by this yardstick, having been out the longest. Even though Street Fighter was just released a few weeks ago, there’s already some strong overlap between players of Soulcalibur and Street Fighter. A decent number, 7%, has already sampled all three games. The lowest scoring category was of those players who tried both Mortal Kombat’s latest offering and Street Fighter. I admit to being a bit surprised. Ancient and decrepit gamers such as myself will recall that back in the early to mid 90s, people did tend to pick one of the two franchises, and have noisy arguments about the superiority of one versus the other. I would venture to guess, however, that there is an entire generation of gamers that don’t remember this somewhat ridiculous debate, and combined with the older gamers who never gave a hoot in the first place? I expected a little more overlap than a meager 4%.

Not having tried the new MK, I can’t say if it’s because the crossover title is being perceived as too niche, if there’s a quality issue, or if fighting game fans are simply not aware of the title at all. Certainly I remember seeing plenty of ads for Soul and Street, and not for MK. But my anecdotal experience is not data, so I welcome your comments.

But before we get to your two cents, we’ve got one more tidbit, just for fun. Steve the Data Man mined the traits that our members assigned to these games. Here’s what came back as far as what people liked the most for each game:

Soulcalibur IV: “Character Customization,” “Weapons,” “Arcade-y”
Street Fighter IV: “Competitive,” “Old School,” “Strategy”
Mortal Kombat vs DCU: “Fatalities,” “Super Heroes,” “MK Characters”

You can see the strong thread of nostalgia working for all three games, with the whole old school arcade FATALITY thing. Also, just a hunch, but it would seem the super hero crossover is limiting that nostalgic appeal for the MK franchise fans. Not everyone wants chocolate in their peanut butter.

Finally, we have a glimpse at our members’ favorite characters:

Soul: Kilik, then Ivy
SF: Ryu, then Chun Li
MK: Scorpion, then Joker

Well, as an old Street Fighter champion, I can totally see those results making sense. Even though Chun Li was way better. And I’m afraid my most recent experience with Mortal Kombat was, um, the movie. Which had a bitchin’ soundtrack, so don’t even make fun of me. Anyway, the point is you guys need to speak up! Tell me more about these characters, and what you think is making one game more popular than the other.