Street Fighter x Tekken Message Board older than one year ago

“This is a community that’s, you know, 15 or 20-years-old and the sexual harassment is part of a culture,” said competitive fighting game player Aris "Aris" Bakhtanians on a recent live stream for Capcom's Cross Assault show, “and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community.”

Capcom has since apologized for comments made during a conversation on sexual harassment in the fighting game community, which that quote was pulled from. It was a discussion focused on Bakhtanians, and took place during a recent episode of the company’s Cross Assault reality show. It’s part of a promotion for Street Fighter X Tekken.

Cross Assault started with 10 contestants divided into two teams, Team Tekken and Team Street Fighter. The final four contestants will be determined today, and the last matches begin March 3.

Reader Patrick Sessions initially pointed out the inflammatory commentary, which took place during day five.

Bakhtanians is the head of Team Tekken, and was engaged in a conversation that chiefly involved Twitch.tv community manager Jared Rea. Twitch.tv is hosting the daily streaming of the day-long Cross Assault episodes.

“The views and opinions expressed by cast members in the live internet program 'Cross Assault' do not reflect those of Capcom,” said a Capcom spokesperson in a statement issued to me last night. “As a company, Capcom believes that everyone should be treated with respect. This particular issue was brought to our attention and has been addressed. We sincerely apologize to anyone that was offended by any comments expressed during the show.”

You can listen to the conversation by fast forwarding to one hour and 45 minutes into the following video. A user on YouTube also collected a series of comments made by Bakhtanians on day one.

For example: "Miranda, I wanna know your bra size."

Tensions were immediately raised over Rea's suggestion the fighting game community, once insular and limited but now steadily growing year-over-year, was potentially alienating outsiders from becoming fans of fighting games or the competitive scene because of inappropriate sexual language. Bakhtanians took issue with Rea's criticism.

Here’s a lengthy transcript of their exchange:

StarCraft was brought up several times during the discussion of fighting games role in the larger eSports movement, specifically in regards to what lessons the community should and should not learn from its popularity.

I reached out to Bakhtanians to discuss his comments on Cross Assault, but he didn't respond.

When I contacted Capcom, I included a transcript of the relevant conversation. The company told me the cast and crew had been informed that “any inappropriate or disrespectful comments will not be tolerated during filming.”

Upon receiving the statement from Capcom, I forwarded it in full to Bakhtanians. No response.

And there is one very important fact about this whole story: Cross Assault is not a male-only event. There are two females: Team Street Fighter’s Sherry “Sherryjenix” Nhan and Team Tekken’s Miranda “Super_Yan” Pakozdi.

During the exchange, as matches raged in the background, Pakozdi chimed in about Bakhtanians’ explanation for the pervasiveness of inappropriate sexual language within fighting game culture.

“It hurts the community,” she said.

Everyone in the stream made reference to Keystone events at the San Jose Bar & Grill in San Jose, California, a spot that’s reportedly known for its more crass comments about during play. Pakozdi acknowledged it was an issue during Keystone events, but that it never went, from her perspective, over the line.

“You don’t know where the line is,” she declared.

“My point is is where I’m from, in our arcade, our line may be different than yours,” responded Bakhtanians, “but the point is that fighting games are never gonna be the same as StarCraft, it’s never gonna be the same. You can’t turn basketball into baseball, no matter what you do.”

Rea said sexual harassment was less of an issue in the StarCraft community, a point that others, including Bakhtanians, pushed back on. He conceded. Regardless, he argued, private matches can’t be controlled, but the actions of the participants and audience members raised the real concern.

Again, here’s a snippet:

There was some light discussion after this, but it mostly trailed off.

Pakozdi, who was assigned to work with Bakhtanians as part of Team Tekken, did not simply blow things off. Like many people, she signed onto Twitter and expressed disappointment over the day’s events. She eventually deleted much of her commentary, but it was captured by the same reader who tipped me off to this in the first place.

“I hope my mom isn’t disappointed with all of this shit,” reads one tweet.

“Capcom and the stream teams know and they don’t care. I just gotta wait 2 more days,” reads another.

“I’m not leaving because by contract I have to stay here 2 more days. If it were up to me I would have left long ago," she said.

I reached out to Pakozdi, but she did not respond.

Day six of Cross Assault took place yesterday. Pakozdi played, but if you start watching around eight hours and 32 minutes into the stream, where she's playing as Balrog, she doesn't even attack. She just pushes forward on the stick. This continues in the next matches, where she plays as Ken using the same "strategy."

Essentially, she's given up.

Per the rules of the show, she would then have to face off against John "Dr. Sub-Zero" Rockafeller, who was already eliminated. If he beat her in three out of five matches, he would be "revived."

Instead, she forfeited. Moments after she bowed out, Rockafeller looked over and handed his prizes over to her.

“I would like to donate everything to Super_Yan for being an angel,” he said.

Bakhtanians also contributes the website Avoiding the Puddle and the site’s associated Twitter account.

“esports,” he wrote last night.

Previously, however, he did have his own personal Twitter account. What’s listed in his bio?

“*crag* you.”

Capcom’s on-again-off-again romance with the PC seems to be firmly set to ON at the moment. Not only is Resident Evil 6 slated for a PC release this November, but Street Fighter X Tekken is set for PC in May. 11th May to be precise. That’s a strange two months later than the console release, but it’s still an interesting release for a platform that isn’t exactly overwhelmed by ‘fighting’ games. We’ve got the five new PC screenshots below.

(more…)

While the PlayStation 3 and Vita versions of Street Fighter X Tekken are seemingly jam-packed with platform-exclusive characters, it looks like the Xbox version will be stuck with the original roster, reports Xbox 360 Achievements. Street Fighter guru Yoshinori Ono recently told the site that while Capcom was "in discussions" with Microsoft regarding the possibility of special characters, "we weren't able to decide on a character because of differences in timing and things like that."

Had a deal been reached, Ono said he would have liked to include either Marcus Fenix from Gears of War or Master Chief from the Halo series. Personally, our vote would have gone to "banana guy" from Kinect Sports.

Capcom seems to be trapped in a recursive nightmare of late, a Groundhog Day scenario that nobody at the company can quite to figure out how to break out of. Most every time Capcom makes some significant announcement about one of it's products, the fires of the Internet's rage begin to burn anew. It doesn't matter if it's definitively bad news or not--as soon as the press release, video, or tweet goes out, someone finds something terribly wrong with the situation, and the vitriolic comments start flowing. No matter what the product, no matter what the situation, Capcom just can't seem to get the fans on its side.

Take the most recent example, pertaining to the company's 2012 fighter Street Fighter x Tekken. This is a game that fans have been excited about for a while, and it's easy to see why. Though it appears to be approaching the genre with a simplified structure, at least compared with the last couple of entries in the Street Fighter franchise, the action is nonetheless extremely competitive, fast, and thrilling, and not in that dumbed-down Marvel vs. Capcom 3 way, either. For people who found the high level play of Super Street Fighter IV a bit too much to handle, it appeared that a game perhaps geared toward them was on the way. And on the other side, the fighting game super fans looked excited for a new Capcom fighter to pick apart and analyze ad nauseum for the sake of potential tournament play.

Then New York Comic-Con happened.

At NYCC 2011, Street Fighter series producer Yoshinori Ono and Capcom community manager Seth Killian were on hand to demonstrate the latest announced feature of Street Fighter x Tekken: gems. Essentially assignable power-ups, gems are context-sensitive boosts that can be activated during a fight provided certain conditions are met. One example might be that during a fight, an attack boosting gem will only be activated if a fighter hits two special attacks successfully. There are gems in categories of defense, attack, speed, cross-gauge, and assist. Apart from the main categories, there are apparently a whole host of sub-categories that further make the whole situation altogether confusing. How confusing is it? Watch this video of Ono and Killian demonstrating the system for the first time, and see how well you can suss it out.

To a seasoned fighting game vet, maybe that description makes a good amount of sense to you. Me personally? I went boss-eyed about halfway through.

What is immediately decipherable is the reaction to this new gem system. To say it's been mixed would be akin to calling the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand a "problematic situation." Debate has been heated in the weeks since the NYCC announcement, with more than a good chunk of that debate falling on the side of those who believe the gem system is a game-busting decision. Much of the criticism seems especially directed at Ono's comment that this new system is designed to bridge the gap between the hardcore and the casual players, perhaps inferring that a newer player could somehow purchase techniques they'd otherwise never manage to pull off.

Making matters more complicated, several packs of gems will be released as retailer-exclusive pre-order bonuses, or as exclusives with the Special Edition release of the game. Others may be released as DLC, causing some to accuse Capcom of creating the system as a ploy to force players to pay their way to victory.

Normally I don't make it a habit of reporting on random Internet rage, because it's random Internet rage, and generally, it's best left to its own devices to suss itself out. However, I was struck yesterday when Killian came out and gave an interview to Gamasutra yesterday, specifically in an attempt to quell the rage regarding this new system.

On the subject of game balancing:

And on the money issue:

It's a completely reasonable explanation that nonetheless hasn't appeared to do much to quell many of the fears of the players. In part, it's because of this next comment on the status of the gems as DLC and pre-order bonuses exclusive to certain retailers.

That reads like the half-answer of a man generally unsure of things, not necessarily the kind of messaging one might want to try to get across to sooth a searing fanbase.

Then again, if Killian sounds weary, he's got good reason. This is hardly the first Capcom fire he's had to put out in the last couple of years. Whether it's questions of expansions going to disc instead of DLC (Super Street Fighter IV or Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3--pick your poison), issues surrounding some of Capcom's more questionable DLC practices, or the straight up PR disaster that was the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 for the 3DS, Killian and everyone involved with Capcom's community management has essentially been under constant fire. By this point, you'd half expect that everyone over there hides under their desk before clicking "send" on a press release.

Think I'm being melodramatic? Let me put it this way: during San Diego Comic-Con this year, just a short week after the announcement of Mega Man Legends 3's cancellation, a rumor went around the Internet that a fan had walked up and punched Killian in the face. Absurd as that sounds, my Twitter feed was clogged with retweets and commentary on what could have sparked such an attack. Of course it turned out to be a total lie, but because of the animosity drummed up prior to the show, people easily believed it was true.

As with most problems, the issue at hand is likely a good bit more complicated than pure blame on the publisher itself, nor is it easily dismissable as typical Internet rabble rousing. Capcom fans, perhaps above the vast majority of other publishers, tend to be an extremely passionate lot. One reason for that likely stems from the fact that Capcom tends to put out titles in more niche-oriented genres. Fighting game fans are often up in arms about something, so it's of little surprise that something as potentially game-changing as this gem system has upset them. Anything that fundamentally changes the field of competitive play is typically scrutinized, perhaps often beyond reason.

Another thing that makes Capcom unique is its sense of community. Every publisher and developer has a community manager these days, but few video game communities are cultivated with such passion and fervor as with Capcom titles. Killian's work on behalf of the company's fighting game franchises borders on obsession at times, and the amount of community outreach the makers of Mega Man Legends 3 did before its unfortunate demise was pretty much unheard of. Games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft have impassioned fanbases, but there is usually a sense of distance there that enforces the notion that these games are at the whim of the developer, not the fans. With Capcom, it's almost the opposite. You talk to anyone involved in the early development forums who saw Mega Man Legends 3 get flushed down the crapper and go swirly, and they'll talk about that game as if it were their own. Even now, months later, MML3 fans haven't quite gotten over that whole situation--a fact probably not helped by the constant reminders by departed series creator Keiji Inafune that he would really like Capcom to keep the series alive.

It is, in a way, a problem of Capcom's own making. By engaging the community with such regularity and intensity, the response back to them becomes amplified by several orders of magnitude. It's a classic damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

But back to Street Fighter x Tekken for a moment; it's worth noting that not everyone sees this addition of gems as a total disaster, or at least not the one the loudest online posters seem to believe it is. Plenty of players seem intrigued by the possibilities of what gems could be in the context of the game. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Killian himself seemed legitimately excited by the possibilities inherent to the system:

Some agree, though a subset of that group sees potential for another problem, one that's actually the polar opposite of the most popular topic of discussion.

Noted friend of Whiskey and current TwitchTV community manager Jared Rea remarked to me yesterday during an IM conversation that while the intent may be to try and give newer players a new route to accessibility, the likelihood of the converse happening is far more likely.

"The problem with systems like Gems in Street Fighter x Tekken is that they tend to achieve the opposite affects that designers are seeking," he said, "As they tend to overly complicate the process of punching another dude in the face. While it's not a genuine comeback mechanic, we've seen this situation before with Ultra Combos (Street Fighter IV) and X-Factor (Marvel vs Capcom 3), where a new gameplay system is introduced with the intent of making the game more accessible to newer or lesser skilled players, but really all it does is reset the gap on a larger scale and the rich tend to get richer."

Occupy Wall Street metaphor aside, he does seem to have a point.

"Gameplay mechanics like Gems are a lot like giving a civilian a sniper rifle," he added. "Yeah, they might shoot someone's eye out but they lack the tools to maximize its potential. Put it in the hand of a trained soldier, however, and the damage that weapon can inflict is far more significant. So while you can argue that a Gem like auto-block or some sort of massive power buff may make things easier for a new player to mount a convincing offensive; just imagine when you give those same tools to the likes of Justin Wong or Daigo Umehara."

Whatever the intent, it's safe to say that Capcom has a long way to go toward convincing would-be Street Fighter x Tekken players about the value of the gem system, especially among the competitive fighting game scene, where tournament directors are already grumbling that they may have to out-and-out ban gems from tournament play, depending on how accessible they are to everyone. Most tournaments tend to ban DLC anyway, but this is a bit of a different case.

Similarly, it seems like Capcom is a long way from where it was a few years ago, riding the wave of good feelings following the release of the original Street Fighter IV. There was a time when the company seemingly could do no wrong. Nowadays? If the vocal portions of the fanbase are to be believed, it appears wrong is all they can do. It's a PR problem that Killian and crew are going to have to tackle head-on; otherwise, this infernal roundelay of negativity they keep finding themselves in will just keep repeating itself, over and over and over...