Capcom wants to take Street Fighter full esports – but its latest tournament licensing agreement isn’t going down well

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For my money, fighting games should be the ultimate esport. If you were to throw a League of Legends or Call of Duty match up on the screens in your average bar, those who don’t have at least basic video game literacy will be lost. There’s a complexity in the camera perspective, in the actions, in the breadth of things that can happen. Fighting games are the opposite, with a simplicity that’s practically primal.

Some games, like tag fighters, get more complicated. But at its core, this genre is made to be spectated by just about anybody. At the most basic level, it’s two people beating each other up until one of them can go on no longer. Super bars and the like might be a little confusing to total newcomers, but the purity of a side-on perspective and character health bars make this genre the most broadly understandable for widening the audience of spectators of competitive matches.

I really, thoroughly believe this. I’ve seen it myself, even, when I used to help run very small-scale tournaments out of a local pub – the old geezers propping up the bar (the regulars) would find their interest drawn. They’d begin to watch, and begin to ask questions. I think short of games based on real-world sports that there’s a base cultural understanding of already, fighting games are uniquely positioned. They could be the breakthrough mainstream esport.

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