Every single fighting game in the Evo2k13 lineup requires an immense time committment! Playing SF4 or MvC3 simply isn’t enjoyable if you can’t perform ultras or basic combos at will. For a newcomer, that’s already days or weeks of up-front practice.
Then trying to play against human opponents multiplies that minimum committment tenfold. Playing competitively in tournaments multiplies it a thousandfold! Even casually watching tutorials and tournament streams takes up entire evenings.
Considering how much time it costs, what is it about the fighting game community that keeps you connected and invested? Also, what’s your biggest concern/fear about where the community might be headed?
Might be wordy, nonsensical and all over the place, but here goes. To be honest, I wonder if I’m even have business answering…
It’s strange for me because there’s a lot that I don’t follow much because it’s either “drama” or that I still have personal issues being around people at times. Not much money also didn’t allow me to travel much. Also doesn’t help when not many play the games I do, but more on this later.
What mainly kept me going are the cool people I’ve met in the few times I’ve been able to travel. EVO ’07 was my very first event and I went Virtua Fighter 5. Not a “popular” game and all, but it was there and I saw the opportunity to go and meet people outside of the 2-3 friends in my area who played. What also kept me going was the game itself even in dormancy and leading up to 5FS. Still rough now with not much people playing locally ontop of what seems to be no interest and this is true for many games.
My fears are that with the growing profit influence and societal trends to latching on to whatever is popular, there won’t be much for “the others” to feel a part of it. I mean, it’s kinda like being left out of any group when you know you have something to offer. That kind of exclusion makes me wonder if I count or have a voice that would be counted and heard among the sea of masses. Granted, with some culture, it’s okay to clash and go against the grain. To compound that, the “community” is often very adamant about “not selling out.” yet, with the way things are moving, what if it becomes everything it tries not be: Money, corporate ideals and the loss of the soul of what it once was and meant. It’s interesting for a “grassroots” movement to be very dependent on companies and there’s been few produced from said movement if they want to be set apart.
What all this seems to promote instead of unity and diversity, but rather uniformity and division with the focus of attention and money, as much of the world runs this day and age.
Yet with all this, I try to have hope and even then, it won’t change that I play what I love even if I’m the only one in my cave that does.
Having had time to think it about it for the past few years, I’d say it’s the cultural exchange aspect of fighting games. The common thread I’ve found in all fighting games is people trying to assert a sort of dominance over the game, via what they bring to the game itself.
As far as cultural exchange, I mean things like this: How Filipino Champ describes his approach to Marvel, for instance. “When I play, I want to win with real skill.” While a lot of this can be contested, what I really enjoy about fighting games is the nebulous aspect to how you can approach them, and how that defines the game different for every player. I’ve been playing a lot of Alpha 2 recently, and whereas I’m willing to write off that game as very different from, say, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, I’ve had to deal with a lot of discussion about how Custom Combos compromise the game. It made me think about what Viscant said at Evo this year, when he said that people try to turn Marvel into something it isn’t, and I think that’s the one common thread that fascinates me when I play: What is my opponent willing to make the game, and how strong/skilled am I when it comes time to face it.
Fighting games are so mutable, match ups and just your competition itself can determine the pace, feel, and nature of the game you’re playing at any given moment. A game can be a friendly match between two shotos, it can be a war of heated attrition between MorriDoom or O Sagat or Dhalsim, it can be a dirty, scummy battle of mix ups with ambiguous Claw Wall Dives or Haggar ambiguous attacks on incoming characters. Sometimes you can have the ability to play a game on back and forth, and sometimes you smother your opponent… and there are many shades in between. People often say that a game changes, but I think what isn’t ever stated enough is that the game changes because players, ultimately, create that change. It’s the players who determine the quality of a fighting game, not just patches or empty promises from developer bulletpoints. The ideal sounding fighting game can fall to pieces if no player picks it up.
What’s most interesting to me about all that, again, is just what I’ll run into in that type of variable atmosphere. “What is the game to my opponent?” Some things really irritate me, others always bring me back. That kind of variation is the essence of fighting games to me, answering that question of who’s strongest and then seeing how and why.
As far as concerns with where the community is headed… I guess I’m afraid of being exploited, maybe collectively, maybe individually.
There’s a lot of heated talk about fighting games from people outside the community, who’s only vested interest is to make a news story to get page views and ad revenue in some cases. Ponder made an incredible statement, one that’s accurate to this day, about how the people making criticisms or commentary about fighting games don’t really care about how we do things. No article on Kotaku or Penny Arcade Report improves my quality of life, and the problems I face just finding competition or a space to play. As lovely as streams are, they are not a true representation of the fighting game experience. The one common thread we have is that we are eventually competitors, anything outside of the game can vary so much, as I described. If that variance never comes to a head, it can often times just be fluff. There are people who come from different situations, different lifestyles… to say that fighting game players are all sexist or need to improve, that kind of statement needs to come from the players themselves, not from people who solely wish to profit on being able to have an opinion without any chips on the table.
Conversely, I think I’m mostly still trying to deal with the label “FGC.” I enjoy fighting games, but I think “FGC” describes something I’m probably on the way out on, which is mainstream competition of games that are still alive. The Cannons fought to make this type of competition/interest possible, which is why Evo is so amazing… but I don’t think I’m playing for those reasons anymore, and there’s something about being drawn into that label that feels wrong to me because of it.
I think moving forward and understanding the games themselves would help players moving forward. The community itself is still in a sort of infancy. If history says anything, it’s that people make a lot of assertions based on faulty understandings. For a while, the United States was said to be cultureless by Britain, and this was just after becoming a nation. What’s the point of that assertion if something is still in its infancy? I guess that’s how I view a lot of the criticisms and push from outside sources at the moment. Fighting games are still developing, despite their robust history… a lot of which doesn’t have much sway other than No-Prize knowledge points. I’m hoping the guys vying for competitive play stay true to themselves, whatever model they adopt.
I definitely had a concern about the “special presentation” commercial on finals day for Killer Instinct- what did we (players/community) get out of that, exactly?
I’m not totally opposed to some commercialization and think to some degree it makes perfect sense- but let’s not sell ourselves short or not realize how prime and coveted such an opportunity it was for a profit-based company, out for us as some demographic. Maybe I missed something, but talk about being in the best place at the best time– if a company is being given all that, then I want to know what’s being reciprocated, at least. Especially when multiple community members have come full circle in not just playing and practicing fighting games, but creating them as well. Not saying we necessarily gotta have it be a constant incestuous focus on, his seeds marry his seeds, how we keep wu tang money, all up in the family but that’s better than a complete sell-out.
From my perspective, fighting games are simply the hardest video games to master. This naturally draws certain personalities and repels others. I keep an open mind about League of Legends and Call of Duty, but friends who play those games literally tell me that they stray from fighters because of the difficulty.
Granted, we could take great strides in making the games more accessible while retaining the high difficulty ceiling, but since most people in the FGC are already intermediate or experts, they have no incentive to demand that.
I meant to post this idea too: on the Sunday Finals day, I think it’d be better to feature the grand finals (top 2) from all side tournaments (or most side tournaments, say, those above a min. # of entrants), even if that cuts into some of the top 8 timeslots of the other main stage games. This way more games get more exposure, and everyone can see the strongest players of each game (and do so without enduring the full top 8 double bracket- many of us have short attention spans esp. for games we’re not into).
In fairness, i think Evo has done a lot to accommodate as many fighting games as possible. Nine different games headlined Evo2k13 and there were like half a dozen simultaneous streams broadcasting live throughout Evo weekend. If you wanted to watch the finals of just about any side tournament, you could find it pretty easily.
SSF4AE2012 had like 1600 entrants at Evo2k13. That means anyone who made it into top 8 essentially won a 200-player tournament. Would you rather show the grand finals of a 32-player side tournament on the main stream?
As for Killer Instinct being showcased on Sunday, i think we all have our fingers crossed that it’ll become another solid tournament game. Yeah, those presentations are always a little rough/cheesy, but so what? I don’t see the harm in providing encouragement to any studio that ventures into making a major new fighting game. It’s a pretty risky gamble, you know?
I have no doubt that it is a risky gamble, esp. pitching to finicky fighting game fans, who didn’t exactly warm up fully to SFXT for example, but their risk is being reduced a whole lot by all the exposure given right before the main event (of a whopping nine, as you note) goes down. I like Nike, but wait a minute. I can imagine lots of other ways to provide exposure for unreleased fighting games at Evo, but if we’re giving them our prime real estate at our primetime, that ought to come at a premium price. I have no idea what was arranged but maybe they could offset Spooky’s costs/some travel/logding expenses, etc.
Ok, SF4 (and probably MVC3) can keep all top 8. But if there’s a tenth and eleventh game that doesn’t get the main stage treatment at all, because the eighth and ninth games need time for all of THEIR top 8s, I’d rather give more exposure to more games/scenes on the main stage.
Also, I think it’d be good to show more short video vignettes about the top players in each tournament, right before their matches, like short clips of “here’s some highlights of how they got here”, and even a little backstory etc. Stuff that could be edited and prepared well ahead of time (seems like there’s a lot of video editing talent across the community, probably a few in film school). The commentating has gotten better over the years- it really seems like there is preparation that goes into things like being able to rapidly explain the action as it happens and why a player just did what he did, why his opponent must watch out for it, etc. So if a vignette can introduce or set that up to support the commentating, maybe more of a hook into the action about to unfold.
and I’m sure all that takes even more logistics and planning and headaches for the already massively compacted fiasco and chaos that running Evo in only 3 days must be. :)
I keep coming back because fighting games are an art form. I love playing them, and I love watching the best in the world play them to their fullest (known) potential.
My biggest concern about the community is how much its changed regarding balance. MvC2 was the most broken game out there, but it was also the most hype. Its a race to land the first hit though. Then MvC3 comes out and people cry about Sentinel lock down when they never alpha counter (crossover counter?), cry about Sentinel’s health and when he gets nerfed he becomes basically nothing once people figured him out, get upset over 100% combos but everyone got hype when someone landed one in MvC2, complain when infinites are discovered but again they got hype when someone landed on in MvC2, and get their panties in a bunch over some Morrigan fire balls but no one cared when you had every projectile all 3 of your characters could make on screen at once in MvC2. People even complained about vanilla SF4 Sagat, but how many times did we see him win a major in contrast to other characters? Compare him to other dominant characters like CvS2 Sagat, how many majors had him on the winning team? People constantly want games patched rather than learning how to play them.
Yesterday i randomly found myself looking through this NeoGAF thread about 2D fighting game backgrounds. It’s amazing how many of them drew a sort of nostalgic reaction from me. When you’ve been playing fighting games long enough to start competing in tournaments, there’s a lot of details and experiences you grow to love and internalize. Sometimes we forget how deep those hooks go. Anyway, random observation but it seemed relevant.
On the other hand, this weekend’s VxG tournament was kind of a disaster. Poorly organized, low attendance, laggy monitors, sketchy happenings with pot bonuses, side tournaments being canceled, staged UMvC3 finals, etc. (What really sucks about that last bit is Chris G made losers finals extremely fun to watch, then threw it all away in grand finals by taking it one step too far. Why does that kid like shooting himself in the foot so much?)
But the worst/saddest thing about the event was the stream monster reaction to Jessica Nigri (who i guess is a gaming celebrity or something). Somehow she ended up doing SSF4AE2012 commentary with Gootecks, and she was okay at it as a non-expert, but honestly seemed out of place. Anyway she was cosplaying as Rikku from Final Fantasy, which means she was basically wearing a swimsuit on stream.
So i’m sure you can imagine the cringeworthy, sexist shit scrolling by at 20 lines a second. Honestly i couldn’t watch it for more than five minutes. At one point, she said she wanted to check stream chat on her phone, and the entire room immediately started typing stuff like “NOOOO!! Don’t look!” Fortunately, she couldn’t get the app to work so at least that bizarre crisis was averted.
All i can say is i’m glad stream chat isn’t archived. How the hell did we get here? How do you even imagine a social construct this surreal and dysfunctional? I can’t think of any historic precedent for how fucking weird unmoderated stream chat is. If you were describing it to someone 25 years ago, what would you compare it to?
Seriously, picture Jesus or Thor reading stream chat when an attractive woman walks by on camera. They’d have a difficult decision to make about whether stream chat is humanity – because if they decide it is, then it’s probably armageddon time for planet Earth.
And i know it’s not a simple subject. I mean, let’s start from the beginning. Some designer or artist thought it would be a good idea to send a Final Fantasy character into battle wearing a fucking swimsuit against enemies with swords and guns. That game shipped and became popular enough that instead of considering it weird, girls started dressing up as Rikku and going to conventions. VxG held a cosplay competition and an internet-famous girl wearing a swimsuit showed up, which kind of makes sense considering VxG was on a tropical island. Then someone thought it’d be fun to invite her to commentate a fighting game that she obviously didn’t know much about, knowing what the stream monster reaction would be. Then the stream monsters acted like drunk construction workers at a strip club for a solid ninety minutes.
Every step of this process is weird. Every step! Where do you even try to stop it? Because anyone who tries to stop it at the last step is more than a little naive about how difficult it is to curb anonymous internet behavior. Are there any success stories to point to? I’d love to know, because i can’t help feeling like something has to be done. This shit is embarrassing.
@Maj
If this was a low regarding events, part of me is wondering how or why this event got the endorsements it received from Capcom itself, I think that the only solace you can take is that if humanity really had to die for the actions of 5-6 thousand viewers with nothing better to do than watch the fighting game equivalent of a Minstrel Show, we’d need to seriously question the people making judgments on humanity.
I don’t think it’s even “the beginning” when you say some designer thought it would be a good idea to sexualize a character, because the “why” for that is the beginning and we’re clearly not talking about that. We’re where it impacts the fighting game community, and I think a majority of us do know that it’s shameful. The Super Turbo stream for Evo had a player going “Let me see if I can get some cute girls on camera so ya’ll can rate them” and some other awkwardness and the stream chat was in a unanimous “please stop” until he started talking about the game.
Two entirely different experiences and games, I understand, but there was no moderator there either. I think the types of events going on were going to attract their respective parties, in this case I feel VxG was the worst of the worst and it attracted people waiting to stare or point and laugh at an event that was clearly and openly done to promote monetization/profit motive for Caribbean tourism.
I think what’s most damning to me is how this game had some bizarrely official endorsements, especially from Ono and Combofiend. I think it’s atrocious how validated this event was in spite of it being a known joke. I can’t let that slide at all. Before we even get to how willing folks are to monetize the spectator, we had a whole step before that. Some important people either had a price (successfully paid), or were just completely oblivious to how not just anyone should be able to throw an event.
Oh it’s not a question of how many viewers choose to take part in stream chat. A hell of a lot more than 5,000 people have acted (or would act) like deplorable idiots in an anonymous chat room. I’m pretty sure i’ve said some stupid shit on IRC back in the day too. But i can’t imagine stream monsters acting like trolls at the grocery store, or family dinner, or at work. The stream chat environment obviously brings out something grimy.
The question is whether that bile still counts as humanity (in which case humanity has problems) or whether Jesus/Thor would be able to ignore it on some technicality like entrapment (in which case we need to modify the construct). Anyway i was just trying to present a different way of looking at the situation, because it’s pretty easy to become desensitized to this stuff when you’re surrounded by it for so long.
Maybe what we really need are better ways of tuning out stream chat. Maybe the chat box needs to be hidden by default, and clicking on it brings up a warning prompt that asks you if you’re sure you want to read the meanest comments people can type. Or maybe streams need two chat rooms: one that’s heavily moderated and one that’s unmoderated, so trolls can have their sandbox while the rest of humanity can ignore it.
Part of the challenge is that if you don’t give trolls adequate space to roam, they start looking for creative ways to invade/ruin your day. So the “one true stream chat solution” probably has to make them somewhat content too.
Regarding “the beginning” – obviously my little timeline can go much further back than Rikku’s design, but you can keep asking why forever until you lose perspective on the issue. I just picked a reasonable starting point, but yeah, Rikku in a swimsuit sells games. At any rate, i don’t think girls in skimpy clothing will become ineffective marketing tools anytime soon, so that step isn’t going away.
As for Capcom backing VxG, i don’t know if you can blame them. The prospect of government or any large organization sponsoring fighting game events is too tempting to pass up. On paper, it could’ve been awesome if it was run more professionally, and maybe two years from now it will be better.
But i think someone like ComboFiend is trying to do whatever they can to bring good things to the FGC. I’m sure he saw some warning signs and had some reservations leading up to the tournament, but ultimately felt like it was a chance he had to take. For what it’s worth, the stream was actually pretty good when he was on the mic.
@Maj
It’s a given that people do take anonymity as a pass to act up, but I brought up the number of viewers in conjunction with the different types of streams because I think there’s something to say about understanding the types of environments it’s going to happen. To say that someone wanting to say sexist crap and that they’ll get away with it will happen in every stream chat is generalizing the issue in a way that isn’t productive to me in a discussion. There’s no data to that, there’s not even an analysis of different streams and approaches to running their stream chat.
If you’ve ever, say, watched JoshTheFunkDoc’s stream, he has very clear rules about what he will allow in stream chat, and they are enforced. Period. In the Super Turbo stream, while there was no clear moderation, it was clear, if you were there, that people were not willing to put up with some socially awkward topics of conversation like “Let’s get some women to objectify”, this was from the pool of people that you say are “going to act up”, they weren’t trying to have it, so what can you say about that in regard to how you’re approaching this?
I think that it’s clear that there’s something in humanity that causes it, but I also feel it’s not worth trying to understand at the current source/topic of conversation. People bring their baggage from the world to stream chats, sometimes en masse, I think it’s more productive to at least try to engage that and let the trolls have other parts of the internet but instead stream memes have been fostered because it’s convenient and, frankly, it gets subscribers and views.
If you’re going to bring up how people are being horrible in some of these situations, why gloss over something like that? I’m certainly not desensitized to it to not think about the fact that people have to risk ad revenue/subscriptions/viewership for doing some of this stuff. Hiding the stream chat is avoidance, and I’m not really sure that’s a viable solution by itself when there are people who tackle the problem directly. It’s already too easy to be selective about who we speak to on the internet, is it really worth acting like it’s okay that it goes on if we turn a blind eye to it, rather than at least admitting there are things that just aren’t done?
As for Capcom backing VxG, there’s too much that was known by observers to make it a question of who whether they should look bad for endorsing something so shady. Especially when they have a liaison/representative like Combofiend who would have the capacity and who’s job it would be to know, MONTHS in ADVANCE that Triforce was heavily involved in this event and the things he was saying about it. “Evo Killer”/”Lots of Money”, we’ve been here before with other events, but it isn’t as if Triforce is some kind of new blood in the community who has some unknown agenda.
And with that, stream aside, how was VxG going to be a springboard or even a step toward that given what we know about Empire Arcadia and the organizers? If this is an experienced community, looking past someone with “credentials” like that doesn’t really speak well to that experience. It’s puts that experience into question, regarding whether or not they’re willing to do so solely to turn a dollar.
I guess if I want to put my final word in on Rikku’s design. If you’re going to say “Let’s start from the beginning”, there are better ways to go about that, because I don’t think it’d have spiraled on forever… we’re clearly talking about video games, it’s probably not hard to say that the industry supports that because it’s in our culture. A corporation gave that design the final go-ahead, it’s clearly not just up to a designer as far as what makes it out the building. It can’t be so as simple as “some guy drew a picture.”
I’ve seen the JaySmooth video about letting trolls have a space to play, but I wouldn’t be so adamant about stream moderation if it weren’t for the fact that, frankly, streams are the face of the fighting game community. If we’re not going to address the stream chat, which isn’t damning if we don’t do anything other than make it easier to turn off, then where ARE the things we can stop before they start? Again, it’s not like the members of this community didn’t know what Empire Arcadia has been about, least of all Triforce.
Um, this conversation is going a bit off the rails. I don’t look at VxG as a springboard to anything. It might’ve been, but it isn’t yet – unless it creates precedent for more government sponsorships, which might be nice.
However, it is another prestigious event on the FGC calendar, and unless you’re offering to run a comparably funded tournament yourself, i don’t think it’s fair to claim that all the players who attended/spectated it would be better off without it. It still represents a lot of work and a lot of external resources being brought into the FGC, with help and optimism from people like ComboFiend.
I don’t know what JaySmooth video you’re referring to, but a lot of your solutions seem to be about turning down opportunities and telling troublemakers to go away. That’s great if you’re trying to maximize “purity” without caring about the size of your audience, but it doesn’t work if you’re running one of these events and trying to make money. It’s not like tournament organizers have figured out how to make huge profits so they can start turning people away.
Those two streams you mentioned honestly seem like special cases. How many concurrent viewers did they average? Obviously the ST audience is the oldest demographic in the FGC, and the Evo ST stream skews even older because you have to really hardcore about ST to watch it while SF4/MvC3/IGaU/etc. are being streamed.
If you want to rewrite the Rikku paragraph, be my guest. It sounds like you’re just arguing to argue, and we’re falling into the oldest internet trap of bickering over details. Is it relevant why Rikku was designed the way she was? Do we really have to talk about it? That step is pretty damn far from anything the FGC can do to improve stream chat.
As far as that whole Rikku, now nonsense, goes, I wasn’t arguing for the sake of arguing. I took issue with what you said because of how you said it. “Rewrite the paragraph”… whatever, dude. I just wanted a fair shake at where I was coming from on that and I guess I took that. I was being critical of what you said, because it matters to me if I am speaking with someone, it’s English. Say what you want and how you want to, I guess.
In regard to VxG, this is actually its second year in rotation… however, the lead up to it has Triforce being quoted as billing it as an Evo Killer, okaying dates weeks after Evolution has run. Doesn’t seem like much consideration was made regarding the pocket books of realistic competitors/number of participants. Outright endorsing the event given what was known strikes me as foolish given what was known about its dates and organizers, as well as the fact there’s plenty of videos on YouTube. I mostly know this because it was hard to escape the “DA BEECH” meme that resulted from all that bad promotion.
The alternate streams I mentioned, FunkDoc’s stream covers speed runs, usually averages about 3-4 hundred. Super Turbo had about 1-2k if I recall correctly. If the numbers those streams pull is an issue, then I think it’s telling about how important monetizing these things is and if the stream itself isn’t willing to be grown up about it, then they’re going to be enabling and monetizing something ugly.
The main Evo stream had chat bots that moderated well enough, especially in regard to flooding and such. That’s a gigantic stream compared to any of the two examples I’ve used as far as micro moderation, but I brought them up because I found VxG to be fairly comparable in terms of tier of viewership numbers. I think I saw it hit 5k max while I could stomach the trainwreck. If they’re going to run a stream but can’t provide that kind of filter while billing themselves as a large event, there’s a lot of things that come to question in my mind, such as why you would be willing to endorse something like that in the first place by giving it your stamp of approval. Just does not seem like any sort of sensible gamble to me.
I think I’ll just admit now that I have no idea why you were saying Combofiend or Capcom were gunning for government legitimacy/sponsorship when we were talking about VxG. Not sure I have anything to say about it now.
It’s clear these events have to have some time on the ground to build rapport with the community, but I think it’s not a good look to try to fast track off big names and promises of cash, and then endorse that.
Okay, let me be clearer. I think stream chat is weird. I think the whole experience of live broadcasting/spectating a semi-pro video game tournament does some weird things to everyone involved.
Part of that can be fixed with stricter moderation. Is that all it takes to enforce manners? I don’t know. Will it actually lead to more viewers in the long run? I’d certainly hope so, but again i don’t know.
However, i don’t think a speedrun stream of 3-400 viewers and a special-case ST stream are entirely valid counter-examples. In fact, i think if you put a Rikku cosplayer on either of those streams, the equation changes drastically.
Now obviously as a product, twitchtv is not finalized. It’s still pretty new, so i’m sure it’ll evolve dramatically over the next few years. All i’m saying is that a few design tweaks to the current layout could alleviate some of the FGC’s continued shortcomings in interacting with it.
As for VxG, i’m not defending it as a well-run tournament. It’s easy to find flaws in hindsight. They clearly tried to take some ill-advised shortcuts to compete with established majors in their 10th+ years. If they return for a third year, i hope they learn some lessons from this and don’t become bitter from all the negative backlash (which is easier said than done).
However, i will defend ComboFiend’s optimism in supporting VxG, because sponsorships of that magnitude don’t become available to the FGC every day. You don’t always get to dictate terms to a foreign entity that’s offering resources like a venue, paid trips, housing, pot bonuses, etc. Sometimes you just have to take a risk and take the bad with the good. Placing all of the blame for the stream monster reaction to Jessica Nigri on VxG is not an entirely fair assessment of the issue either.
Not even sure where to begin with the “English” comment. Man, that Rikku paragraph subplot is getting kinda ridiculous. Haha it’s like we’re having a HerV fight for no good reason in the middle of an otherwise nice discussion.
Apparently a bunch of prominent tournament organizers got together and drafted anti-collusion rules to be enforced at just about every upcoming major. That was fast! They might be tricky to enforce, but i think it’s worth trying. And as an added bonus, it led to some pretty funny comments.