Fighting game community

The fighting game community (sometimes shortened as FGC) is a community of video gamers who play fighting games such as Street Fighter, Tekken, Marvel vs. Capcom and Soulcalibur. The high-level community surrounding the Super Smash Bros. series is occasionally considered to be part of the larger fighting game community. The fighting game community started out small in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s, but it has grown to a larger scale in the 2010s, with many tournaments being held across the world.

The game Street Fighter II: The World Warrior was a huge success when it was released in 1991 and is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time. It refined and made the fighting game genre more popular. Many people played this game at their local arcades, this spurred competition among many players and the Fighting Game Community slowly started to take shape. Although there were tournaments for fighting games, the tournaments were obscure and had insular events. Unlike how it is today, people could not experience a tournament unless that individual was there in person or if it was luckily recorded on video. This all began to change in the early 2000s due to the rise of streaming media websites like YouTube.

With the popularity of the internet starting to become critical in many people's lives it was only a matter of time before it affected the Fighting Game Community. In early 2000, a forum was created called Shoryuken.com which was named after the iconic Street Fighter attack. The site became the main go to forum for many fighting game competitors and it quickly attracted the community to create major tournaments to gather the best players from around the country. One of the most major tournaments that gather players from around the world is called The Evolution Championship Series. In middle of the 2000s the FGC's popularity began to fade due to lack of new fighting games, the overall sales of the genre, and some problems within the community. It was not until 2009, when there was a new spark in the community.

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