The game 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. During the mid-1990s, a Street Fighter II tournament scene had coalesced in various cities across the United States. Highly competitive communities formed naturally in Chinatown Fair in New York City, Super Just Games in the Chicago area, and the Golfland arcade halls in Sunnyvale and Stanton, California. Players were also finding each other and discussing strategies through the internet on message boards. In 1996, the "Battle by the Bay" was conceived in order to quell debate over who was the best Street Fighter player in the country.
2000–2009: early years
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.
2010–current
After nearly a decade, Capcom announced the development of the next installment of one of their most well-known fighting games, Street Fighter IV. The game received a lot of positive reception from major game reviewers and the FGC. Street Fighter IV brought life back into the FGC by not only rejuvenating the popularity of fighting games, but also creating an influx of new players into the community and increasing the number of competitors. After the success of Street Fighter IV, new fighting games began being developed and the FGC expanded with more tournaments. The tournaments even started being live-streamed with Twitch so many people can view the tournaments. There are also sponsor-ships from franchises like Evil Geniuses, Broken Tier, and Mad Catz, which pays players for free advertisement. Despite the rise of other competitive video game genres, a phenomenon known as Esports, many members of the FGC have rejected the label of "Esports" on their community. The overall size of the community remains a very small proportion of the fighting game market overall. Some of the genre's biggest selling games, such as Tekken 5, Super Smash Bros. and Mortal Kombat X, have sold in excess of 5 million copies. In contrast, the same games might only attract 1,000-2,000 entrants at a large tournament. Typically some 20-30% of players fight online. Over the last decade, esport organizations have also dedicated resources into garnering attention for the fighting game community by signing top players in a multitude of genres, such as eUnited signing professional Super Smash Bros. player Ezra "Samsora" Morris.
Culture
The fighting game community has been praised for its racial diversity compared to other gaming communities. However it has also been criticized for sexism. A highly publicized incident of sexism occurred in 2012 on a live streaming event, when Street Fighter x Tekken player Aris Bakhtanians made comments about a female player's bra size and other inappropriate remarks, leading to the female player dropping out of the event. Later, during an interview with Twitch he is quoted as saying that "sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community." He later apologized for his comments.
