>>59251829The FGC, and devs, have been riding high lately thinking their genre is going to go mainstream, but frankly it's fucking delusional to think it will. The harsh reality is the FGC's culture, from the top down, heavily discourages newcomers to the genre. Skill levels in the FGC are like weight classes in boxing, and even if you go to a locals, you're just expected to square up and spar against people in Andre the Giant's tier, when you're basically a midget. It's why players drop off so fast, and how SF6 now has less players than even Monster Hunter World. The games demand insane levels of practice, patience, and mental fortitude to get good at, with basically zero reward compared to something like CS:GO's prizepools, and even at locals you're typically playing against people who are leagues better than you and have been playing for at least a decade.
They act like they're super welcoming, but nothing about actually playing them and joining communities around games/events actually is. The onus is all on the newbie to learn, and the only real measure of progress you get is a number going up. The core gameplay loop never changes, you just get better at it and learn more about it, but at the end of the day you're still effectively doing virtual fencing for months to years on end, depending on how much you play, to break past the "local highschool sports" level of skill. It's not like the FGC figureheads even disagree with me, I've heard plenty of people joke about how breaking past that point requires "not touching grass" and they know it's true.
The "community" part is also a fucking joke. I spent nearly a year bringing the best setup, bringing games people requested, bringing spare controllers and going out of my way to try and bring anyone who was less skilled than me up to speed. I got tired of how much the games demanded of me (time and effort), gave up, stopped going to my locals, and not a single one of them even noticed I stopped going, despite regularly talking to me. So the one saving grace of "one of the last bastions of IRL interaction with people sharing your interests" is a fucking lie too
