Them's fighting words!!

We are in the Finals week of the Capcom Pro Tour 2024, probably one of the most exciting times for fans of Street Fighter. 48 players from all across the world will compete at Capcom Cup X, the winner taking home a staggering $1 million, the highest prize in competitive Street Fighter history. It is without a doubt the most globally diverse finals as well, with well over 20 countries represented in the group, no doubt due to the tournamen’s majority competitors coming from the regional World Warrior circuit.

At the same time, there has been quite the debate about the logistics of the finals, some even going so far as to declare them illegitimate or, more charitably, not representative of the true highest levels of Street Fighter 6 play. Part of this is due to the bizarre decision from Capcom to completely seed the group competition randomly, which inevitably lead to some groups, one in particular, to be full of potential winners having to fight and eliminate each other early. But another factor, one that has been said publicly by a few of the more blunt personalities and likely whispered about in private by their more careful counterparts, is that there are too many “filler” matches. In this telling, the group play is full of those who are obviously not up to the general skill level of a World Finals but come from competitively weaker regions, who are only there to be destroyed and potentially take up a spot from more deserving players. The far more representative method for them would be the pre-2020 style Capcom Cup, in which the majority of players came from a global ranked leaderboard, and rewarded those who consistently traveled and placed highly at events.

I won’t defend the seeding decision. The Capcom Pro Tour has always been one step forward, two steps backwards in a lot of its decision-making, something I’ve been critical of for many, many years. The idea that this team, which has consistently engaged in baffling decisions that clearly don’t have the players’ best interests in mind, would do something that silly is just standard operating procedure. I do think the fact that the two South African reps are in the same pool despite qualifying out of the same region is the more egregious example (Caba and MenaRD qualified from two different regions despite living in the same region)than a particularly talent-stacked pool, but these are very valid critiques nonetheless.

But as far as the CPT and Capcom Cup X not being representative of the absolute pinnacle of play – that is so evidently not the point of the circuit, and it feels weird that people keep making that point. It should have been very clear, since the World Warrior circuit was first announced, that Capcom’s current goal is to find the best players from individual regions around the globe and pit them against one another. Much like the Olympics, it’s a way of determining a champion of the world, within the parameters of a particular format.

There are plenty of reasons why that decision would be completely rational and understandable, chief of which is that this method of granting regions guaranteed spots is ubiquitous across the Esports world. It is a truth pretty universally acknowledged that, regardless of skill gaps between the regions, it is more rewarding in the long term to expand opportunity across the globe than focus on the few strongest regions. DOTA 2’s The International, for example, grants 6 spots to specific regions, and has since 2017. Esports teams across other major titles like League of Legends and Counter-Strike 2 will sometimes spend a lot of money to acquire international talent that gives them a fanbase in that player’s country of origin.

More importantly than that, a global appeal for any tournament circuit is going to be far, far more valuable to Capcom. Most of the big-time sponsors that they would want to attract for a circuit like this have products being sold all across the world. The same reason Hollywood will do their best to appease a global audience in films expected to play worldwide, Capcom absolutely wants the players from as many parts of the globe as possible to participate in the CPT. No sport today, professional or amateur, sees having its talent solely composed of a handful of countries as an acceptable standard. The prevailing thought is that you never know what talent might be lurking out there that just doesn’t have the same access to potential success, and there’s some merit to that. The best NBA player today is a man from Serbia who was drafted in the 2nd round and rode the bench at times during his early career. Street Fighter isn’t such a unique talent that you can’t find it in places all over the world, and no brand worth its salt is going to commit such a malpractice as to restrict its reach.

But…Is this a good thing?

Probably, right? SF6 has more room to grow when it comes to international competition, particularly in the MENA region. The Evo Champion is from the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistani players have been in the CPT in the past. It is very appropriate for the entire Street Fighter image to have a global competitor base that gathers every year for a tournament, and even if it’s nudged that way a bit, it’s still true to the ethos. You might even find regions that bring a whole new style of play that just didn’t solidify in the more experienced countries.

I can even cite an example from a different fighting game subcommunity, one in which initial low returns begat huge dividends later. When ESL announced they were doing a large circuit for Mortal Kombat X, many people were, like now, very skeptical of the idea to include a CIS regional tournament series and qualifier. Most thought of MK as a game largely dominated by NA and pockets of players in various parts of Western Europe. And initially, those CIS spots and, later, Latin American spots were considered “filler” for players that sometimes didn’t even finish in the top 8. But during and after MKX, it is inarguable that there was a huge surge in international competition for NRS games. So much so that Combo Breaker 2022 for MK11 was won by a Chilean player, playing his own brother in grand finals. There is zero doubt that having spotlights and opportunities for different global regions brought a better range of competition to what had previously been a largely global North-focused game. The extreme upgrade to the game’s online play was probably more immediately consequential, but the ESL MKX Pro League really helped solidify NRS titles as a global game series.

Having said that, I don’t think the idea that it can get in the way of “competitive integrity” doesn’t have its merits. Definitionally, we aren’t going to see hundreds of the best players all compete in an open bracket like we would at something like Evo, and for many that is one of the ultimate ways of determining who is the “best” player. Region-locking parts of the CPT off means that, yes, there is going to be less room for qualifiers in regions like NA, Western Europe and East Asia – longtime stalwarts of high-level play. While we’ve had players from those areas that are very good, the odds that Oceania, South Africa, and other underserved regions may not be chock full of highly skilled players is likely. The Last Chance Qualifier this year was a certified bloodbath, with nearly as many high-level competitors as one would see at any of the offline premiere majors on the circuit. In the end, there are a ton of recognizable names with huge runs at tournaments and invitationals consistently throughout the year who did not qualify. In that sense, Capcom Cup X is absolutely compromising the absolute best-of-the-best matches in order to adhere to its format.

My question to those who would voice that criticism would be: when aren’t we compromising for the sake of format? There are plenty of people who would say that having a tournament where pools are Bo3 is illegitimate, because the “better player” can’t be determined in such a short set. This is usually the starting point for a set of increasingly meaningless digression into what the “better” player truly means, hardly any of it is intellectually satisfying. As a common rule, most people can argue that on one particular weekend, a player can be the winner of a tournament and not actually the best player. Some prefer to take an average of performances across a calendar year and compare who was the most consistent, some like to view hard tournament wins as proof, and on and on it goes. Ultimately, no one really argues that winning one tournament is indicative of any solid answer, and that it is, at best, compelling evidence.

If that’s the case, what makes CCX any different? It’s a format with specialized rules which are naturally going to exclude certain elements that may get in the way of truly determining  who is the best player. There are plenty of global competitive events that use specific qualifiers, which may include countries with, on average, less talented competitors than others, rather than simply look at the depth of previous winnings. Even so, I don’t think anyone would argue that a global tournament isn’t prestigious, even if they personally value a particular title more. Are the Summer Olympics the final word on what nation or individual athlete is solely the best in the world, or is it just a heavily weighted data point as debate rages on forevermore?

A tournament format will never be the optimal setting for determining who is the best, particularly in the view of true lifers. Maybe one day we will get the 64-man invitational that is made up of 16 groups doing a ft10 round robin with a points system that includes bonuses for sickest read and cleanest footsies, I don’t know. But until that day comes, we’re kind of stuck with what we have, and if that’s not good enough, then nothing ever will be.

Like it or not, it seems that a view of the pre-2020 style CPT, with its global ranked leaderboard and premiere/ranking event style, is dead for good. The folks in charge have decided that the region-locked WW format is more equitable and fair, and there have now been two years in a row where the event has largely worked out. I understand the criticisms – I have my own – but at the end of the day, all of these circuits are about playing to the format and giving yourself the best chance to win. That used to be by traveling to literally every tournament and trying to get your ranking points just high enough to qualify, and now it’s likely going to be through traveling to different parts of the world, and staying there to do online events in order to advance to the finals.

Will we know who the best player in the entire world is, bar none? Of course not, because no one ever has a set-in-stone opinion about that, in any sport, literally ever. Getting hung up on that is silly, as the obvious logistical end-point of your view would be that all tournaments are illegitimate ways of determining who the best player is. If you want to play the Esports game, you have to toe the Esports line, which is that with big money comes big interest from around the globe, which has to be valued and respected. No, it’s not going to be in the interest of determining once-and-for-all who is the best at Street Fighter 6, but it is going to make it more likely that $1 million prize pots are more common, which is what I think people would prefer more. If the price to pay for that is entertaining the idea that a teenager in Calcutta could rise up from the World Warrior tournament and beat Daigo and AngryBird and MenaRD in lieu of winning the Capcom Cup and a million dollars, it’s probably fine.