So I finally got around to finishing up watching most of the matches I wanted to watch out of the MLG Winter Championships and came to the conclusion that fighting games do have a shot at being top competitive games.
I mean, when I look at games like Uncharted, Call of Duty and Starcraft, the audience can't take in all the information at once. With shooters you're stuck with one character from one team and have to be watching from their perspective until they decide to change it. This causes you to possibly miss out on key moments of strategy/hype/victory because you can't possibly know where a big moment will commence or how well coordinated they are from just one point of view. This leads to having the announcers fill in the void by telling you what's going on and being excited for you. With RTS games, you're stuck on one view that is constantly moving and they more or less know where they need their camera to be for the action, so you can more or less take everything in because of how slow paced the game is. The problem is that it's slow paced and very much so. It's audience has to come to terms that you're going to have enjoy 15-20 minutes of pre-made building plans before any action even takes place and when it does, one definite strike could spell doom and that's the end of the round. No comebacks, no large scale comeback, he just blew up a few units and some factories, ggs and that's the end of the story.
When you compare that to fighters, it's instantly more recognizable, that it doesn't take an announcer, multiple HUDs, map screens to tell that someone is getting bodied. In just one screen you can tell how much health, meter and rounds they have earned in one look. You can also tell that that combo was very difficult to do and just made that a real match. Basically, if someone is pummeled repeatedly, you can easily tell they're losing. You don't have to keep track of their APM, factories or how much shields and rockets they still have. Honestly, I have no idea how people can watch competitive Starcraft, but then again I don't understand how people can watch FĂștbol either.
I truly believe that if fighters keep pushing the envelope and be forthcoming to newcomers, fighters can succeed.