Against skill based matchmaking?

As a topic we've literally been writing about for over a decade, can there actually be any valid argument against using skill-based matchmaking in a competitive game? I recently watched a couple of youtube videos about this, which discussed an apparently recent 'debate' online about it (although it was the first I had heard about …

Street Fighter V: Competitive Design Review

A quick reminder of how we review competitive gaming design. It's all about the 1, 2, 3: 1. A level playing field. 2. Effective skill-based matchmaking. 3. Accurate and fair skill & result-based ranking. Street Fighter V seems to do a very good job at all of these on the surface. In fact, despite everything …

That feeling when the streamer gets streamed!

After doing a load of test streams myself and of course posting videos and related articles here, I had a very strange experience earlier this week, when I finished a match of SFV online and then saw that my opponent had the title "Streamer" set. "Hmmm" I thought, and I wondered if they were actually …

V-Concerns

I was able to play quite a bit in this last and final beta for Street Fighter V this past weekend, and I noticed a few tweaks and things from beta 3, but nothing too major this time around, and to be honest, it's so close to the actual release that this beta seemed very low-hype …

The road to Saikyo

My epic Dan USF4 adventures have been on a bit of a hiatus recently due to generally not having much time to play, and when I did, being really tired or just generally playing rather poorly. I think my PP dipped to around 500 at the nadir of this... But perhaps inspired by watching EVO …

Agonisers #1

Here's our first Agoners podcast. I hope you enjoy it! 🙂 This episode focuses on a subject dear to our hearts - fighting games, and our thoughts on some current fighting games, and about the latest news on new fighting games that are currently being developed. We also give an intro to Agoners and talk …

Back for more Dantics!

(For how this all got started, read here) Omatase shimashita saikyo fans! I've still been playing Dan whenever I've been on USF4 lately. But I hadn't had any especially good matches for a while that were post-worthy. As my ranking's been rising I've been having some really close fought battles and I've been edging closer …

Kore ga saikyo-ryu da!

I've written a lot before about some of the issues I've had over the years when it comes to Street Fighter 4 - and these days I'd add that I really don't like the later-discovered flaws in the engine like plinking, and I have an insane hatred of near universal defensive option selects like 'crouch-tech'. The …

Xbox One and done?

Naturally we've been following the Xbox One news closely on Agoners. Everything announced so far is barely even related to agonistic gamers' concerns, which is a bad thing in and of itself really. As we've commented on before, Microsoft has been moving on a steady track away from everything agoners care about when it comes …

Hero Academy: Early impressions from the Academy

Asynchronous competitive multiplayer games are something I'm very interested in as they are potentially a very good fit for both my gaming tastes and lifestyle. That's why I picked out a couple at the start of last year as titles I was keeping an eye on. Skulls of the Shogun has recently been released, but …