Electric Underground Podcast

Are Fighting Games Improving? EVO 2023 Extensive Discussion with Quash
(Guilty Gear XX Player).
In today's epic video, Quash and I discuss the past, present, and future
of fighting games, leading up to our thoughts on EVO 2023. And for the
first time in a long time, I'm actually interested and excited to watch
it this year. As of late I have been playing a lot more Tekken and
Virtua Fighter, but I'm also interested in a lot of games being played.
We go over our thoughts an avalanche of topics, such as: The decline and
future of 3D fighting games, Sales vs Tournament entries, Steam Charts
vs Tournament entries, the homogenization of game mechanics, the
importance of netcode for upcoming pro players, sluggish UI Design, the
issues with online Matchmaking, the function of rank modes and why they
need fixed, Differences in perception in JP and NA scenes, is the EVO
gladiator format still the best, or should they start to look more into
leagues? The Final Year of Tekken 7, should Marvel happen every year,
the sleeping giant that is the Street Fighter IP, the uncertain fate of
Project L, the importance of graphical presentation, my love and concern
for Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive, and so much more.
The games and tournaments we discussed are:
Street Fighter 6 - 7k entrants
Guilty Gear -Strive- 2.4k entrants
Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate - 449 entrants
Tekken 7 - 1.5k entrants
The King of Fighters XV - 666 entrants
Melty Blood: Type Lumina - 554 entrants
Dragon Ball FighterZ - 838 entrants
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 - 1.3k entrants

Shmups VS Speedrunning, Natural Vs. Fan-Made Meta | Ft. @neoxaquas .
Today's topic has been a subject that has fascinated me for a long time,
the difference between shmup scoreplay meta and speedrunning time meta.
What's interesting is that for a long time, I've heard speedrunners
talk about scoreplay in the tone of an outdated style of competitive
design. Like if you watch the history of speedrunning video by Karl
Jobst, he describes score play as essentially the ooze from which the
glory of speedrunning was born. This makes some sense if you only look
at speedrunning from their community perspective. However, over the
years I have become more skeptical of community / fan made meta (see my
discussion of the subject with the Crimson Blur about Melee) and in
today's video I am joined by Aquas who is the perfect guest on the topic
as he has world records in both speedrunning and shmup score play (a
rare accomplishment!). We cover a variety of fun topics, including his
world record progression in Pink Sweets, and the heart of the
conversation for me is what are the strengths and weaknesses of fan-made
meta, like speedrunning, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of
natural built in meta like scoreplay. In the end, I find that I greatly
prefer the natural meta of scoreplay (and fighting game tournament play)
because it is less arbitrary and prone to manipulation from fellow
players and outside forces (besides the developer). However, this
doesn't mean that I don't think speedrunning in itself isn't a cool
idea, and I even offer what I think is the best solution for the issue
in the form of what M2 Shottriggers have been doing with their shmup
ports. Imagine if Nintendo actually put some care into their wave of
ports and re-releases, and included speedrunning modes and leader boards
in their ports. Also I love that Aquas brought up how heavily nostalgia
plays into a speedrun game's popularity, because there are tons of
speedruns that I think could be fascinating (Dead to Rights Super Cop),
but sadly the non-nostalgic games tend to be extremely under-explored.
That being said, there are also issues that can rise up from relying
solely on the natural meta of a game, like Battle Garegga and its
infinite milk, so again I think this is where having robust ports with
patches really smooths out a lot of issues, other wise competitive score
play is going to rely very heavily on replay analysis and community
leader boards and we've seen enough "I GOT A CHEATED RUN PAST THE MODS!"
vids for a lifetime.

The Crimson Blur, Has Smash Melee Sabotaged Itself?This is a FANTASTIC
Conversation, even if you aren't plugged into Melee we discuss a lot of
relevant topics about game design and competitive integrity. In today's
episode,  @TheCrimsonBlur 
and I talk about the current state of Super Smash Bros Melee and have
an open conversation about many of my thoughts and critiques of how
things are going in competitive Smash right now. I have followed Melee
for over a decade now and in this time I think the scene has become
increasingly insular and unable to see some of its decisions and ideas
from an outside perspective, so I think if you are a fan of Melee or not
this conversation is going to be a breath of fresh air outside the
usual talking points that you hear repeated on Twitter and on streams
over and over.
We cover a lot of subjects, but some of the main topics are: Who is
Melee's REAL father? As I feel Sakurai is heavily over-creddited for the
creation of what we love about Smash 64 and Melee. The nature of Melee
as being a community made meta, rather than a natural meta, and how this
leads to a lot of more radical decisions when it comes to rule sets
(even going so far as to modify the game itself). I talk about the
current culture of smash, that obsesses over the e-celeb aspects of its
players and personalities, but largely ignores the actual tournament
organizers and people who support the scene's infrastructure. Of course
we touch on the Nintendo vs Melee community controversy and I share my
thoughts on how the community should study Nintendo's motivations more,
rather than always relying on social media and fan backlash to protect
itself (which I do not believe will work forever). We talk about the
recent ruleset changes to ban wobbling and add edge grab limits, and how
I feel that these rule changes are reactionary and targeted, rather
than being a fair case of assessing outliers in a ruleset.
Then there is the sanctioned cheating that is occurring in the ruleset
in terms of allowing macros and input processing in the Smash Box as
well as the Goomwave. I explain my philosophy behind genuine hardware
mods (physical mods) vs cheating mods (introduction of electronics and
input processing) and remind the world that Blur, many years ago,
predicted these issues but was ignored.

Follow Blur at: https://twitter.com/OXY_Crimson
Awesome thumbnail by  @boghogSTG

The Tragedy Of Fighting Games. Perhaps a spicy video, but I think it's
important to keep it real (sometimes). Today I am talking about one of
my favorite video game genres of all time, fighting games. Fighting
games are in my top three alongside shmups and beat em' ups. I have been
playing fighting games in a competitive and then semi-competitive since
around 2010 or so, so I've been around and plugged into the genre for a
long time. Today I am discussing what I like to call the tragedy of
fighting games, in that no matter how good a fighting game is, no matter
how much the player base loves that individual game, all fighting games
are doomed to an early appointment with the grim reaper. Even games
that have longstanding player bases like Super Smash Bros Melee and
Street Fighter 3, Third Strike (or even Street Fighter 2, Super Turbo)
cannot continue onward into future generations and be played in a full
competitive manner. What I mean is that just being able to match make in
a game every now and then is not good enough. In reality most fighting
games are only intensely explored and played during a five year window
or so, and then that game is put aside for the next iteration of the
series.
What I find tragic about this though, in the literal sense of the word,
is that this fate is inescapable from what I have observed. No matter
what approach a developer or fan base take, the end of the game being
played at full capacity seems fated. I go into specific detail of why
this is in the video.
So this video is not meant to be a critique or warning against the
genre, but rather a somber celebration of what makes the genre so
special and also, ultimately, tragic.
I thought it would be fun to discuss this video in light of the upcoming
releases of Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6. At this point I am fully
planning on playing Tekken 8 unless it is some kind of abomination, and
my interest in the Street Fighter franchise as it is currently being
made is gone. But I think I will review and discuss both games here on
the channel as I think that will be interesting, as fighting game
reviews from impartial experienced players are rather rare. I also am
really into Guilty Gear XX Accent Core right now as well as DOA, so I
plan on doing some vids about those games in the future as well
Thumbnail made by me this time! Though  @boghogSTG  still helped with advice on how to touch it up.

GAME CRITIQUE IS DEAD: Why Reviewers SHOULD Be Skilled Players | The Definitive Discussion. Today is a very special video where  @boghogSTG 
and I discuss the current (and awful) state of video game reviews and
critique. This isn't just a bunch of empty complaining, however (at
least I hope so). Instead we discuss the nature of what is good
critique, what is the role of the critic vs reviewer, what forces
influence critics and reviewers, both conscious and unconscious. We also
make our strongest case for why video game reviewers SHOULD be skilled
players, why this is an important value a critic should strive for, and
how being a skilled player not only improves reviews, but also is an
important asset for game developers as well. We also get into the topic
of access journalism that we see IGN and the major game publishers
engaging in (such as IGN infamously "forgetting" to review Cyber Punk
2077) and how the video game review space has more in common with the
Yakuza than it does open artistic discourse. Sphere Hunter may be
invited to Capcom events, but she's not at the IGN level of access to be
allowed to review the game before the release date. Imagine all the
NDA's that level of access would involve.
Talking about IGN, eurogamer, Polygon, Kotaku, and Gamespot is one
thing, but we also get into what is the role of the youtuber in this
equation and how even if the youtuber is not directly being contacted by
game publishers, he is still being indirectly shaped by the marketing
of AAA games and their vocal fan bases. As a result, we see a cyclical
trend of hype marketing around releases like Resident Evil 4 Remake, The
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (and soon to be Tears of the
Kingdom), and Bayonetta 3, where all the reviews are going to fall in
line with the marketing. And if you are more critical of these games
during their release window, prepare to be hit by the hype train, which
is not going to be a fun experience. As a result, I think we've seen a
shift in the youtubing meta away from the over the top reviews that we
saw in the Angry Video Game Nerd era of gaming youtube. Instead, we are
now in the fluf**** era, where youtubers take games that are already
hyped and highly anticipated, and then just dial the hype levels up even
higher (as we see on Maxamillion Dood's channel). So now all average
games are *amazing* and all good games are modern masterpieces.