The announcement could not have been more jaw-dropping. After 4 years of providing some of the most competitive weekly fighting game tournaments the world has ever seen, Alex Valle revealed the earth-shattering news leaving his guest Mike Ross at a loss for words.
One of the biggest weekly competitions hosted in the Southern California region or what fighting games aficionados know as SoCal was seeing the end of an era one that would now be coming directly to your door step...online. To further understand why this move is both a scary and exciting endeavor one only has to look to Level|Up Series president Alex Valle.
For years, Alex Valle and other members of the SoCal fighting games community lead the charge in cultivating the region of fighting game players making them formidable amongst the rest of the country. Alex, who is a legend in his own right, has continued to show that age is not a factor as he has consistently made top 8 at many of the major tournaments throughout the state.
It can easily be said that no one understands this community better then Valle, so when he announced that his staple fighting game offline competition was going online it came with a lot questions...questions that I felt compelled to ask and Valle most graciously answered.
Often times online competition is met with a great deal of disdain and not very respected amongst the community. This is partly due to the fact that offline play is greatly superior to online due to its' 0ms ping connection amongst other things. When one input can mean the difference between victory or defeat or a tactic that would never work in an offline setting gets used to pull out a win, it's not really a wonder why online gaming is just not the first choice when it comes to leveling up your skills.
Though many online warriors have competed offline and become successful in tournaments, in the end they too realize that in order to get to the next level, they to need to come offline. Despite this being the case, it goes without saying that online has, in fact, increased the offline scene greatly. After the release of Street Fighter IV, major tournaments started to see a huge increase in attendance.
This can no doubt be attributed to the fact that more people were playing online and with that seeking more information about not only how to improve their skills but test their skills against other players in a tournament setting as well. As we come into the next generation of Gigabit connections and improved netcode, it is not to far fetched to believe that we will, in fact, see more online competitions in the future no longer being able to distinguish the difference between online or offline.
Alex Valle and the Level|Up Series crew are placing their bets on the future and there is no telling how well this change is going to be received. Despite the Level|Up series crews latest venture, they are not the new kids on the block. Panda X Gaming has been running online tournaments and exhibitions as earlier as 2012 and plans to ramp up their productions for the new year.
Change is often times scary. For some it's the possibility of losing something that is near and dear to them, for others, it is the excitement and potential of the unknown. I tend to lead on the latter side as the future can lead to the possibility of even more people getting involved in fighting games. Increasing the competitive scene online may just lead to fighting games finally getting to a level that games like Leagues Of Legends and DOTA 2 have already managed to obtain.
It has greatly been a hope of mine that more people feel encouraged to play fighting games hopefully in the year 2015 fighting games will finally be at the fore front of competitive gaming.
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