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traversingthefgc · 7 years

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Getting into the swing of things.

It has been a while since I have posted here on this page, and as the title suggests...I have been a bit out of it.

Since I last posted here, quite a bit has happened! I mean, it has only been a year, but much has changed! In the scene, in my life, all for good and or bad.

I am going to recap the year for myself, so feel free to read along.

When I posted my last post, I had hoped to continue to post about my three days at Cannes Winter Clash. Summing it all up, I hung out with a group of guys from Lyon, 3 of which were whom I roomed with. They were the highlight of my weekend. A close second was the various media I got while there...I preformed 3 interviews, which you can see below, and took a lot of footage, none which I have posted unfortunately.

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Also some cool city shots too. Hands down the best part about attending tournaments in Europe is experiencing the local culture, the same could be said about any international travel, but the EU takes the cake for its story book scenery alone.

After that, there was Redbull Kumite 2016 in Paris.

This was a stellar event. It was the event of the season for me, when you think about what that would typically entail. It has production value, atmosphere, community support, and effort put forth by a real corporation. It showed me what “esports” would be like with the FGC. There were only a couple of issues, being on how limited it was.

The tournament was “only” 256 players. This is a respectable number of entrants...but the idea of turning friends away from playing isn’t something that you see in a volunteer ran event. This was certainly the case here, were entrees were sold out in under 15 minutes or something like that, but you might have well called them tickets.

Second, was the introduction of a VIP area...there were many discussions about this in the past when individuals used to complain about the idea the MLG had spaces like this, and that it didn’t jive well with the general spirit of the Fighting Games Community. However fast forward today...and it feels like the mentality might be shifting...

As I said though, those were the nit-picky items for the event. This could have been a huge change in how involved I was with the scene after losing the drive due to the events of Team EBAR. However while at the event, I lost my main memory card of photos and footage. This killed me...though I still came out with some prized shots, so it wasn’t a total loss. It was a hard lesson learned as well. Other professionals told me to just use one really large card. One commented it is awful when one fails, but in nearly 10 years of photography, he has only had 1 fail on him. This knowledge came after the fact, because who thought that a memory card would have fallen out of a coin pocket in my jeans...

After that, I was tapped out. As I said, losing most of my weekend’s work really hurt the drive for me. On top of that, I tried to play with the guys at the EBAR, but I hated being called a scrub by abrasive personalities (only a few in particular, but of course make up more then half of the dedicated force there), in a language that isn’t my native tongue (all is fine until you start to understand a few key words...), so I stopped going around and visiting them.

It could have been a lot better...

Then, around November, we came upon the one year passing of the attacks in Paris. This drove me to put out the “We Stand Together” video I filmed at Street Grand Battle. I didn’t have it fully edited in the way I wanted, but I needed to get it out there. The reason I wanted to make the video was due to the racial backlash that came out of the attacks. Fast forward another year, and it is the same thing. In the ramp up of the 2016 elections, there were a lot of racist comments being tossed about. I wanted to remind the community to that we were different, and that is what makes us great. I also wanted to respect the contributors for their time that they took to do the video with me, so I put it out there, as it was.

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Despite it being a rough edit. It still gets the point across well. I hope to do better in the future.

Fast forward to Christmas of 2016, I was coming back home, and the first thing I got to do was attend NEC17 in Philadelphia. That’s right, we got the band back together! Almost all of the team came out (14 out of 16 members since 2010), and we kicked it! Being back into a tournament environment that I grew to love, surrounded by friendly faces and great games, it reminded me how much I want to be apart of the scene. Even if that means I have to pay train tickets and travel ridiculous distances just for a few weekends , because that is all I can afford...I want to do it. I want to be apart of it.

So this obviously points to the fact that NEC was a flat out success. The Philly area won its own major with Punk bringing it home in SFV (I prefer SF5, but what ever). I got to see my team, talk a lot of the talk, walk a little bit of the walk. I got to meet a another player dedicated and excited about Garou! He and Joe had met at Evo 2016, and he flew out here to play on the cabinets always present on the East Coast. I got to drink with the East Coast KoF crew once more. I also found my new game going into 2017 which I would like to play. Guilty Gear...and Garou, always Garou.

And so we arrive to today in February of 2017.

There are many tournaments that I won’t be making it to this year. Cannes Winter Clash, European Street Battle are two I know I am missing due to a birthday and a wedding of two different important people that I can’t miss.

With that said though, I am trying to pull away from a focus on Street Fighter...this could be killing my chances at an “eSports” life, but I think I put enough time into games that I don’t enjoy that much...mainly since SSF4AE.

So I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to play a game I want to play.

Nice part is that I will be traveling to Prague next week. I will meet up with some guys in the community there, talking shit and pressing buttons. They also have a regional tournament coming up called “Button Czech!” Love it. I hope to learn more about all of that while there.

So stay tuned for more stuff. It has been a fun ride, and I hope to continue it. Thanks for reading, and I’ll catch you all next time!

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