So most of you on the MLG forums and the SRK forums would have noticed there is a petition doing the rounds trying to get people to sign it so MLG VIP Sundance DiGiovanni can have something to show the Capcom big wigs when he visits them to try and secure Super SFIV for the MLG 2010 season. This is the video message posted by Sundance HERE.

Sundance is aiming for around 10,000 unique signatures, and as I type this the petition has just over 1300, so well short of the goal even after a few days of the petition appearing on two major forums with a huge amount of members (MLG forums has 3,711,751 members || SRK forums has 101,408 members). So why the low numbers?..

When you first hear MLG is thinking about picking up Super SFIV, you would think fighters would be over the moon about it. You get heaps of exposure with MLG being the premium competitive gaming organization in the world. Plenty of media coverage will bring Street Fighters into the spotlight and help them get some sponsors just like those Halo players. Not to mention the nice cash prizes from the regular season and the national finals. If the Tekken 6 and Brawl prizes are anything to go by, then you are looking at these sorts of winnings.

2010 Pro Circuit Tekken 6/SSBB Prizes
By Lies | Published: March 2, 2010 7:19pm EST
Regular Season Prizes
1st – $2,500
2nd – $1,500
3rd – $1,000
4th – $700
5th – $500
6th – $350
7th – $250
8th – $200

National Championship Prizes
1st – $12,500
2nd – $7,500
3rd – $5,000
4th – $3,500
5th – $2,500
6th – $1,750
7th – $1,250
8th – $1,000

Those are some impressive numbers any way you look at it. Now we know its not all about the money, hype is very important to fighters, and with the main stage layout of MLG there will be plenty of spectators to build up the hype, so again I ask.. why the low number of support?

Main stage picture source - MLG website

I wanted to find out what the SRK forums had to say about this news considering it is the biggest Street Fighter site in the world. So thanks to Freakinlu linking me to a few SRK threads on the matter I started to get an idea why there is surprising low numbers.
Threads - Help bring SF4 to MLG stage || Bring SF4 to MLG!!! || Official Petition to get SF4 on to MLG

ISSUE 1: Seems like some of the issues are about a problem that happened in 2005 between the MLG and EVO where some or all? of the winners didn’t receive their prize money. Now I don’t know too much on the subject and I won’t pretend that I do, so you’re going to have to ask some of the old school SRK members about it to get the full story. If you manage to get the story, please feel free to post it in the comments to help us all catch up.

The following was posted on SRK by Gran_Calc who is also in the Sales Operations department of MLG.

A lot of this is a repeat of what I wrote in a thread at Tekken Zaibatsu, but here goes:

When I first heard about MLG back in 2004, and I read their primary objective was to grow professional gaming–that is, standardized direct competition in video games–so that it would reach a mainstream level, it reminded me of StarCraft and how big it was in Korea (not to mention how far ahead the players are in terms of skill level). Here was MLG, trying to pull off the same thing in North America but for multiple games. Thanks to my brother, I was familiar with EVO, the major tournaments, and all of the local tournaments across the country that have been running for so long.

I made a promise to myself to get involved with MLG and try to get a spotlight for fighting games. I grew up playing Street Fighter, and with the new life that SF4 injected into the scene, I started competing in tournaments for SF4 and HDR last year. I’ve played in over 30 of them over the past eight months. I’ve won two local tournaments, placed top 3 in more of them, and competed in a few majors as well as EVO, of course. I made it out of pools at EVO but went 0-2 afterwards, losing to Rex0r, who pre-qualified for EVO through Midwest Championships, then gootecks on main stage. At Summer Jam in Philly, I finished top 24, followed by a top 32 performance at Season’s Beatings 4 (where I was close to beating Daigo in the 3v3 tournament but ultimately choked like so many others), and a top 16 finish at Winter Brawl in Philly last weekend (and a mere 5th/6th finish in HDR out of 12 players, ha). Aside from revitalizing my own competitive fire, SF4 also brought that promise I made to myself back to life.

Well, I did manage to get involved with MLG. I work in the Sales Operations department for the company, and I used to be the Community Manager a few years ago. I’ve laid low since 2005 as far as getting fighting games added to the Pro Circuit is concerned, mainly because of what happened with Tekken 5, a situation that never should have happened. It happened for two reasons:
- relative youth of the organization and lack of established credibility
- delays in prize payments (financial issues)

Things have changed a lot in the nearly five years since. For one, we rectified the prize payment issue at the start of 2006. We haven’t had a single late payment since. We are a corporation, however, and the prizes won at corporate-backed tournaments aren’t issued until 6-8 weeks after the prizes have been claimed. By “claim,” I mean prize release forms and W-9′s filled out. The way we’ve done it over the past few years is that we hand the prize checks to the players at the next event. This ensures that the players receive their prize checks–no chance of things getting lost in the mail, wrong address, etc. This means that if you finish in the top 8 at our first event in April (Orlando, Apr 16-18), you will be handed a check at our second event in June (Columbus, Jun 4-6). If a player can’t make it to the next event, then the prize check is mailed to them shortly before the next event takes place.

MLG has also grown quite a bit since 2005. We’ve brought more sponsors on board, our venue spaces have gone up from under 5,000 sq. feet in 2005 to over 50,000 sq. feet in 2010, our company staff has quadrupled, and our live stream numbers have increased 100 times over compared to 2005. We’ve learned from our mistakes, and we’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t. MLG is ready to try its hand again at fighting games. We’re going to do what we can to give more attention and exposure to Tekken 6, and we want to do the same thing for SF4. We’re asking you to give us a chance and help us out in building up community support and turnout at events.

While I don’t work directly with the league part of MLG, I would advise them when it comes to treatment of SF4, the community, and the players. If SF4 were added to MLG’s Pro Circuit, we would look to the SF4 community, players, and tournament organizers to determine rulesets and sort out other issues. I’m a tournament player myself, so I understand firsthand how things work, both from a grassroots standpoint as a competitor and from a corporate standpoint as an MLG employee. We want this to be authentic, and we want this done right. To my knowledge, no players have been forced into signing any bad contracts.

EDIT:
I agree that online play is not an accurate gauge of skill, especially when compared to offline play. I rarely play SF4 online, and I only do so when a friend asks so that he can try some things out. Online play wouldn’t be used to seed the top players, as they wouldn’t need to compete in online qualifiers. This is how MLG’s Pro Circuit tournaments are seeded (in order):
Current season Pro Circuit (event) rank points
Past season Pro Circuit (event) rank points (not applicable for Tekken 6 this year)
Online Qualifier rank points
Random seeding

We actually use a more complicated system for titles that have been on the Pro Circuit for multiple years, similar to the rolling points system that tennis uses. In tennis, points expire after one year (not after one season)–for example, if I earn 100 rank points on November 1, 2009, those 100 points will expire after October 31, 2010. Our rolling points system is based more on events rather than calendar year. Anyway, one event rank point will always have more weight than an infinite number of online points.

Things may be different for Super depending on how things turn out, but for Tekken 6 at least, the first MLG Pro Circuit event in April won’t have an accompanying Online Qualifier, so online performance won’t be used to seed that event. For players who go to that event and place well, their performance at that event (and future events) will be used to seed any following events in which they compete. For the first event, we will make best efforts to seed accordingly. We would do something similar for Super at its first event, even if there is an accompanying online qualifier.

Now how can this issue be fixed?. First off, if that “prize money” has not been paid yet, then I think the first move from the MLG to try and regain the respect and trust of some of those members who still hold a grudge on the 2k5 EVO issue is to pay those winners what they deserve and what is rightfully theirs. According to Gran_Calc’s post, this has already been done.

ISSUE 2: Another issue that was brought up is the MLG is all about the money and doesn’t really care about the players. Some members think that MLG only wants to pick up SFIV because of how popular it has been lately. But according to the MLG, they have been trying to get SFIV since it was first released but Capcom has said no to MLG picking it up. Why? No idea, maybe Capcom can tell us? or maybe someone is lying to us?

What do you guys think? You guys think MLG is all about the money and will throw SFIV and its players to the curb if the spectator attendants and stream numbers are not high enough? Or do you believe the MLG is trying to grow and help gamers actually make a living from games (If those players put in the practice or are naturally talented of course)?.

ISSUE 3: Some people believe that with MLG giving away so much prize money, players will feel underwhelmed by smaller tournaments prize money and might just stop going and supporting those smaller tournaments.

Personally I would like to think this won’t happen. The fighting game community (FGC) are an awesome bunch and one of the best communities I have ever been a part of, even though I only really got involved a few months before the SFIV release, but I have been playing SF since Turbo during the snes days with my brothers like most others.

Issue 3 brings me to the next issue that I too have been wondering about.

ISSUE 4: If SSFIV really does take off with MLG, and some top players get huge contracts, does this mean they won’t be able to attend other major SFIV tournaments? and with that sort of prize money, would they actually care?
With so much money on the line, will top players share their secrets with other players like they do now, or will that change and players will keep the secrets to themselves to have the edge?

I’m more then happy to support the MLG push for SSFIV, but only if the move helps the FGC grow and not kill it off. If it does kill it off then I assume all those who have signed the petition or shown support for SSFIV in the MLG will regret ever doing it and sending the FGC back to the stone age and destroying all that has been done up until this point.

On the bright side Melee was a huge part of MLG in 2005 and till this day it is still has a huge following and has many tournaments all over the world. Now Brawl has been picked up and so has Tekken 6, so I guess we can wait and see what MLG does for these communities.

Have I signed the petition?.. Yes I have. Do I think the petition will work?.. Not really. It is basically going to come down to the MLG and Capcom. I love my gaming and especially my competitive gaming, I have no problem in admitting how jealous I am of the competitive gaming scene in countries like America, Korea, Japan, and a few European countries. Australia is slowly trying to catch up and we dream to one day have something as amazing as EVO, MLG, Devastation, SBO, GODSGARDEN, Seasons Beatings, and many others, so in my view, the more events the better as long as they all work together and not do any stupid moves like hosting events on the same date as another major tournament/event. Help each other grow, help the community as a whole grow. Show the world why the FGC is one of the best gaming communities out there and something like the MLG picking up SSFIV won’t change that.

Written by EXC355UM

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