While this seems like a huge problem, perhaps e-sports is really turning into a spectator sport. It’s not like everyone who watches wrestling wrestles, then again there are plenty of football and soccer players. So why is this happening? Do we need to do something about it? And if we do, how do we go about it?

Why is this happening?

The mainstream, the average player, will buy the game, choose a character and fight to get the ending. They have beaten the game. If they enjoyed the game, they will unlock the endings for each character. They will try to collect some trophies. Then in their minds, they have really ‘beaten’ the game. There is nothing else to do, they are rightfully bored and will go play something else.

There are only three ways to retain a player in this scenario: a) present more content, b) lock them in with an account progression or c) give them a community activity such as a chat feature. The aim is for them to become a fan, because when that happens, the developer doesn’t need to do anything else.

a) The game story needs to be interesting enough for the player to try with other characters. The ending or pre-boss dialogues need to hint at other characters’ involvement or directly tell the player to complete the game with those characters. There needs to be rewards for doing so, such as unlocking more characters or the boss character. COTW has rewards for playing EOST but they are not clearly presented to the player at all. Nen Impact has been criticised for having no story mode, when their target audience was clearly not fighting game fans. Street Fighter 5 and KOF 14 had similar feedback at launch. COTW’s EOST mode theoretically has good content (my opinion that the story is terribly mid, is for another article). DLC content is a topic that I think needs much more study. A certain amount will come back for the new characters. This is seen with every fighting game. However these are only the fighting game fans that come back. The only benefit for a mainstream player is another ending, and they would have to pay for it. That’s not attractive. DLC is attractive for invested gamers who want to win or have a new skin in which to win. Mainstream players have already uninstalled the game, especially on consoles where the storage space is limited.

b) SF4 locked in players very well with only their ranking system and rode the waves of nostalgic fans and new.  We still had arcades in this era.  SF6 does this very well too. KOF13’s netcode was to blame for potentially SNK’s most famous title not getting the players it deserved. Kofxv’s ranking system was too harsh while COTW’s is (now) great.

c) SF6 is the leader here with their fully customisable avatars running around in a community sandbox, while T8 went for the Xbox online avatar style. COTW is lacking in this regard.  Recently a player said that nobody played on ranked, everyone was in World Tour Mode.  I’m sure they were joking, but at the same time, I’m sure there’s way more activity in WT mode, not everyone is a fighter, a much larger proportion just want to chill and chat.  KOF16 must have this.

The only problem is that even if a game has all these features, it doesn’t guarantee player retention.  How much money did SNK spend on COTW?  And for what result?  Perhaps it is better just to make an arcade game that people will shelve in a week…

There are a ton of other reasons as to why players are not continually playing fighting games, such as other games on the market, fg fatigue, game balance, work/life balance, opportunity cost, physical and mental problems… I’m not going to write a book about it.  Yet.  Oh wait, I am.  Now the real point is that finding a lack of opponents is very frustrating but we can’t force people to play.  There is still a long way to go before fighting games becomes a more common eSport.  It’s my favourite type of game and it’s just a pity that not more people are into it.

In the next part we will talk about what players should do to help grow their game and why they shouldn’t do anything at all.