Street Fighter 4 Vs Starcraft 2

Azza

Rock Paper Shotgun have an interesting article on deciding what game to play semi seriously/proffesionally and what makes a good e-sports game.

The author of the article goes looks at SF4 and SC2 and compares there e-sports credentials and why he could not get into one game over the other.

Articles here
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/05/03/talk-sport-street-fighter-iv-vs-starcraft-2/

Anyways I'm sure there is a few people here who plays certain games more seriously than others. What do you look for when choosing a game that you want to dedicate more time than than other games you play more casually?

Overheal

A good hardcore/pro-sponsorship game needs to have extreme anal-retentive game blancing, Options, and should otherwise only vary in the skill of the individual.

Take Counterstrike, it and Starcraft were probably the 2 biggest mainstream sponsor games for years. 2 dozen weapons to choose from, but otherwise each player has the same tools and abilities. You pick a weapon that suits your play style and go at it. Similarly in SC you pick 1 of 3 races, each with a unique play style, and implement your strategy. And SF4 of course has however many fighting toons, each tweaked to a particular style and player-type, but balanced in that each Avatar is every bit as capable as defeating any other.

Casual games don't take game balance as seriously, some of them just take the piss or do something that feels fun. When I plug in zone of the enders 2, Im looking to do something thats flashy and overpowered and could kick a llama to the far side of the moon. And if you look at WoW, outside of arenas, theres just way too many factors to consider it balanced properly for PvP etc.

Jazzy

Quake = Starcraft > Street Fighter

Funky

Balance is by far the most important factor when it comes to choosing a game to learn in my opinion. There's nothing worse than having to pick a certain character/race in a game in order to compete.

SC2 is doing pretty well so far it's impressive how balanced it is for beta, it mightn't be quite as balanced as Brood War yet but Blizz have been pretty good at patching unstoppable rushes so far.

Overheal

and actually it was tank rushing that never saw the C&C series as a proper competitive game

Jonny7

In starcraft they make balance changes according to pro players

That way they keep everyone happy.