To follow up on the recent Facebook post…
It would be an understatement to call World Warriors’ existence up to this point “difficult”. The site itself launched last year as what can only adequately be called a false start, a rushed attempt to get the forums open in response to what appeared to be the imminent closure of the Shoryuken forums, followed by a full-site launch that was probably mitigated by the surprisingly muted release of Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (which I was kind of counting on being a much bigger deal than it ended up being).
Traffic never really picked up, and after Evo 2018 and a moving process wore me out more than I cared to admit at the time, video curation and site maintenance ground to a halt. I’ll own that, as motivation can be very inertia-based and I didn’t take very good care of mine. Yet, a year on from all that, the site is still here, and yes, I do still want to do something with it. It’s a concept I believe in very much, and the time away from it has given me a fresh perspective on how to go about it.
The first thing I want to announce is the shift in focus on how we cover the still-evolving titles in the genre. There really isn’t much point in having Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 in the video library as learning tools when the games are steadily evolving. Any given balance patch can render every match in the database obsolete. That isn’t to say World Warriors is dropping coverage of ongoing titles, but there will be a shift in how it is done, and if all goes according to plan, it should allow for even further coverage of current titles. (I for one would LOVE to bring podcasts back to the FGC. It’s been too long.)
This frees up two spots for games to be supported in the video library, and I’ll make that three with the announcement of discontinued support for Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, which will remain in the library, but will see no new additions to the database. It just doesn’t seem like there’s any new content to add for that game. I have nothing substantive to announce today about what games will be taking those spots, but when there is an announcement, expect it to extend to the video tutorials as well, just like all the other games featured here. In the meantime, of course, while I do have games I’m leaning toward (MK9/X, KI3, FEXL once the updates settle down, to name just a few), I’m open to suggestions with very few that would be an out-of-hand “no.”
Finally, I still really want to hear what you all want from a site like this in a broader sense. Feedback thus far has been sparse, and I’m very curious what else could be done to spark traffic to World Warriors.
Stay tuned. Things should start happening as we get closer to Evo weekend.
-Patrick
#WeAreWorldWarriors