Like, if this timeline is correct, then I see what you mean with pre and post-2000, but it's not like there's a sudden spike after 2009. It just seems to me like the entire "revival" people talk about was entirely from the FGC perspective.

I didn't know what SF was until SFV came out, and that was only because I was watching TBFP videos and had gotten interested in other fighting games again first. The most popular FG among people I know is Guilty Gear, and that's entirely because it did collabs with gacha games they were playing.

That all makes sense, but I guess what I'm failing to understand is how post-2009 is anything comparable to the 90s. I started highschool in 2009 and people were playing Mariokart, rock band, etc. but not a single person ever MENTIONED a fighting game.

If you wanted to play buy a new fighting game and play it with your group of friends, then there was never a span of time when that was difficult. Plenty of good ones came out between 2002-2009. It sounds like the only issue was if you wanted to make it more than that by running events.

The fighting game I played most during that time was Soul Calibur 3, a game which had no competitive staying power at all. But it didn't matter because it was just me and my friends playing rather than trying to make a "scene."

Yeah that's weird I looked up 37 but it auto-shortened it to 3. That's my bad.

But what's becoming clear to me is that "the dark" is largely about the largely Capcom-centered FGC and not "Fighting Games" as a genre.

idk why but when I look it up the graph looks very different.

But I distinctly remember my brother showing me a youtube upload of moment 37 in the mid 2000s. We were both Canadian kids who had never even heard of street fighter and yet we had heard about it.

Evo moment 37, the most iconic FG moment in NA, happened in 2004. People were still playing the games, and non-capcom FGs were still coming out, it's just that only FG people cared. And if THAT is your metric for the dark ages, then you could argue NA is still in it.

I wasn't there so maybe I'm proving your point, but if the point of the "dark ages" is that fighting games went from a cultural touchstone to a hyperniche, then NA was in the dark ages until like, 2020. FGs have STILL never reached the same level of popularity as the 90s. SF4 didn't save arcades.

AWT Finals are in March so they could always announce it then

To me it makes sense if you think of it like fitness. If you regularly go to the gym, you are probably likely more fit than most people, but you could still be the least fit person at the gym. I'm in Gold Master in GBVSR and I can barely even take a round against people with 4k gems.

Yeah, but I think for a lot of fgs out right now the knowledge that a patch is on the horizon makes people anxious to get it. That's why I think that "the balance is good" and "we are due for a patch" aren't necessarily contradictory.

I guess I'm arguing something completely different than people asking for a big shake-up, but I don't think it takes that much for a game to feel fresh.

I mostly play GBVSR and they have mostly been buffing mid/low tiers while leaving the top largely unchanged. The meta has stayed mostly the same, but the character diversity I run into in a given ranked session has gone up. Top 8s look more interesting even if the usual suspects keep winning.

I don't think you need an actual big change to drastically change people's perception though. I don't play SF6 but I keep hearing people complain about Mai and Ed, so just toning those two down would likely alter a lot of the discourse about character strength.

If Capcom said "we like how the game is and there will be no more balance patches ever" then I think more people would look at the game for what it is. But, since they KNOW Alex and Ingrid are coming and that the current state of the game is temporary, they want to get to the next state asap.

I know this is largely about execution, but I do think that the sentiment around SF6 comes from how every knows the game ISN'T done, and so people know that change is coming but are frustrated that it isn't NOW. The feeling of "staleness" comes from the knowledge that new stuff is coming eventually.

That being said, after playing uma musume I am hyper aware of how much matchmaking rng factors into your ability to climb ranks.

The fun of rhythm games, though, comes from the demands of the beatmap and embodying the rhythm of the music. That gets replaced with the awkward rhythm of attacks that are made to throw you off. You get something that looks like an RPG, plays like a rhythm game, and ends up worse than either.