IN LOCKDOWN, THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ENTERING AN ONLINE TOURNAMENT IS AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH.

Online versus offline is a bigger difference for the community than you might think

Collectively, the fighting game community considers the offline and online scenes to be two separate entities, with online play normally seen as inferior to offline. This is due to the conditions of the netcode on a majority of games and the fluctuating quality of everyone’s internet.

They’re almost entirely different experiences.

This is important when we consider the general move to online tournaments that has taken place: it has created a fracturing within the community where the group who often attended offline tournaments have either moved to the online scene to keep up with the competition or moved genres completely or chosen to finish a backlog of games. There are a lot of people in the fighting game community, for example, using the downtime to play Call Of Duty and other MMORPGs.

THE HEAT IS ON(LINE)

Even with this in mind, online tournaments have grown exponentially. Most games available in this generation have had an online tournament sometime in the past three months. The number of people entering an online tournament is at an all-time high, especially with offline event organisers now hosting their tournaments online. This is happening across Europe, Asia, North America and in the Middle East. If you look hard, there is a weekly tournament happening every evening. This includes games like Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat 11, and more. Online exhibitions have stepped up to be more consistent, and now the new Capcom Pro Tour format is entirely online, joining the likes of EVO in moving various things online.

While it’s accepted that the seriousness of competition online isn’t at the same level as it is offline, online competition is increasingly accepted as the norm during the pandemic. With the new standard of competition set to look like this for the foreseeable future, top players have spent time using social platforms to drive up online events and engagement. This is the community’s way of making sure fighting games are not left behind. It might not be quite the same, but the scene is rising to the occasion.

WRITER BIO

A fighting game player turned organiser for fighting game events in the UK, Rayokarna and the NGI Events team specialise in niche Japanese titles, and have been grappling with tackling more online as the offline events slide on by.