Saturday 27 November 2010

Why Europe is of considered 'Low Tier'.



Slight...disclaimer if you will. The things said in this entry do not apply to all Europeans (You'll KNOW if it applies to you, believe me), but as of now, it's the general consensus in my head and I promise not to prattle on for hours. So, have my quick opinion.

So, this is something that I've been meaning to step on for a while; Why Europe is often considered low tier. "Get the hell outta here with that noise, Francys" I imagine is the phrase that you're about to spew at me, but before you open your mouth, just take a read.
My first major gripe, primarily in the UK, is the lack of a stable scene, tournament or casual; unless you live in London/Birmingham/Manchester, it quite simply does not exist.
This pretty much sums up that without a stable OFFLINE community, your game is going to suffer pretty terribly. Whether it's street fighter, blazblue, hell any game you can take competitively, without that offline practice, you're going nowhere fast.
For comparisons sake, you don't hear much about arcades or large scale tournaments in Europe...ever.
Whereas we look at the US scene...there's tournaments going on in at least one state every week. Not every state has an arcade, yet they still find the time to organize a meetup just to get those all important casuals in. Now compare it to Europe, chances are there's a tournament once a month, if you're lucky.
Yet most of Europe sits there going "Why are we always considered the lowest of the low?" Well there is your answer, meeting up for tournaments, casuals, just general get togethers. It just doesn't happen.

Now on that note, high end tournaments. Off the top of my head, I can think of three that happen once a year throughout Europe:
Super Versus Battle (UK)
VS Fighting (UK)
World Game Cup (France)
Compare that to the US and Japan, where collectively you have Evo, GodsGarden, Tougeki, Season's beatings, West Coast Warzone. The list goes on and on. The play level is exceedingly high at every single one of those tournaments and the unwillingness of people in Europe to travel is also what puts a huge hindrance on their play.
"But it's too far." I'll hear you say, was it too far for Gootecks to go to Japan? Too far for GamerBee to go to Evo? If you know there's just one of the high end tournaments that you want to go to, make the effort. And if you can't make it to one abroad, then kick your local players up the ass into organizing a regular thing.

I know this seems like a bit of a rant, but honestly, it needed to be said.

TL:DR.
Europe is lazy. If you think you can help your scene grow, take steps about it already!

3 comments:

CHUCK. said...

London has WinnerStaysOn every week.

We have Ultimate Clash every month

I think europe just has an inbuilt self loathing due to the fact that there are less "top players" over here. That is true, but keep in mind the size difference between mainland Europe and the whole of North America.

Japan is like another planet so I'll leave that

.Francys Pai said...

What I'm getting at is...outside of London :/ Ultimate Clash and WinnerStaysOn are both London.
Outside of that, the UK doesn't really have anything else going for it.

Europe, you don't hear much about them.

And yeah, North America is pretty big, but in comparison to the UK & Europe combined...there's still space for a huge community. I mean, the players are out there but nothing big ever seems to happen.

Bison-sama said...

Thing about USA is that each 'region' is considered it's own area, and thus, the community is split between mid, west, east, southeast, and southwest, and each of those areas have it's own local community.
I'm with Paipai-sama on this one.

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