B-Hop ⚜

The fundamental disconnect in Competitive Fighting Games is the gap between competitors and performers. The Twitch era convinced a generation that spectators grant relevance and fund the legacy. This is a delusion. Champions take relevance in the bracket. I won my first world title in 2006 at 18 years old. There were no streams or bracket cheerleaders. I achieved 5 world titles in my first 7 years of competitive activity across EVO, WCG, and DOATEC. I outlasted an elite international field while the current personalities were still in the audience. Now we have top players backstage rehearsing choreographed sequences for the main stage then admitting on the timeline they were just "pressing buttons for fun." That is a recital, not a tournament. This scripted entertainment approach is ruining the scene. When you treat rehearsed theater like a religious experience where you are being talked to like a toddler on a morning cartoon show. The public disagreement you see is just clout chasing from an echo chamber. They move the goalposts to protect a culture of mediocrity. They will devalue a high profile invitational full of world champions as "just an exhibition" to devalue the prestige of a win at an event like the Master Showdown, but then reach back 11 years to find an exhibition loss to use as a receipt. They try to frame technical criticism as a "social issue" just to avoid what I am saying. If an event has prestige, you show up to win. I don't care about the show or the performance. I am here for the reality of winning. People making jokes about blue check revenue, asking if I am okay, or telling me to "work on myself" are just avoiding what I am saying. I have a 20 year receipt of dominance. I don't need the pennies from Twitter impressions or the simulation's approval to be relevant. My hardware is the receipt. Stop worshiping choreographed performances and put respect on REAL execution.

Marathon is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's an incredibly good game, but the more casual audience seems to be avoiding it. But if they dumb the game down, it will be considerably worse and I'll likely stop playing it. It's basically a phenomenal game that doesn't appeal, I guess, to a wider audience. I'm not sure what exactly the solution is, maybe it's better strategic marketing and creative efforts to onboard new players. I'm not sure. But dumbing the game down would likely fix nothing. You might get new players to temporarily try it, but then they're playing a considerably less inspired game and will bounce off it. I also think the truly bizarre pre-launch hate campaign was SUPER weird. Like, gamers can be such strange people and I say that with peace and love. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a global predisposition to hate a game the way I saw it with Marathon. People were literally parroting the exact same sentences for months, almost like they had talking points and were collectively regurgitating them. Like the places where gamers hang out (YT, Reddit, Twitch, X, etc) had posts or something hating the game that circulated so much that people just latched onto them. I dunno. Either way, it didn't do the game any favors. I'm not sure what the best path forward is but good marketing and a positive outward image might help. And the vault wipes are definitely a good thing, that's totally necessary. But I think diluting the game to make it more palatable is the wrong play personally. Short term gain maybe, but over time will actually hurt retention I think.

When Tekken 8 dropped , there were lots of new faces pulling up to the local and enjoying the game. Some even went to events with us and it looked like the scene here was steadily growing . Nowadays , we’re barely getting enough to run a bracket each week