Capcom has made an announcement on the official side, confirming that the New Challenger Edition of the Street Fighter series is going to be released along with the 3rd Art Contest a few months later, which is really great as the community is fond of such events. Not only are they going to let the players design the loading screens, but those will be the actual loading screens that you will see whenever a fighter is chosen by a player in SF6. This is really wild if you stop for a moment and think about it. The competition is set from the 30th of November, 4 PM PST, to the 31st of December, 3:59 PM PST, which means that artists have only a month to send their works.
The Street Fighter 6 creators’ team will first filter the artworks and then the public will vote for the finals. In the end, only one image for each of the 28 characters in the game will be picked. That means the total number of artworks that will be eventually featured as New Challenger screens during the game and chosen by the public will be 28. The chosen art is far from the random online gallery—your art will actually be in the game.
The community’s response was, to be honest, not so unanimous. Some users were really happy while others saw it as a way for Capcom to tell players to do their work for them. One user, for instance, called DubC_FGC.comments, is sarcastic when saying “Content outsourcing to the community since you guys aren’t releasing anything??” Ouch!
Another user named “StrongestIdiot” pointed out: “Capcom makes their fans do all their content challenge”. It seems that there are many Capcom critics out there who say the company should have the whole team dedicated to game maintenance instead of having the artist competitions.
The issue of money was also literally brought to the table among the participants. Artist mgosketches told his thought “These contests are very fun but I think it would be fair to give money prizes to the winners 🤔 I’m sure most of us spend 10+ hours on the art,” and that is a good point. Crafting good quality art is very demanding and time-consuming, and even though having one’s work in the game is one of the greatest rewards, it would still be nice to get some monetary compensation. Garywizard120 agreed and continued the conversation with another user saying, “It makes so much sense yet they don’t understand 💯💯💯😕🙄😒😑”.
On the contrary, there are players who do nothing but cry for new content. ArtificialHolly wrote, “Thanks but could we get a balance patch with drive rush nerfs?” and if you are one of the SF6 players, you can probably sympathize with that a lot. Leo2Allan was even more direct: “Next patch, it will be fun or it will be stupid?” And BustinMayo had probably the most chaotic vibe with “YES YES YES, now please update the fucking game (and also stop doing ppv)” which… wait, what was I saying? Oh right, the art contest.
Some of the artists are already beginning to draft their pieces. KatzuyaSagara told another user “De hecho, ya tengo lista una ilustración lista!!!” which means “Actually, I already have an illustration ready!!!” So the diligent artists do not waste their time at all. Meanwhile, Everydayfumetto stated, “I tried several times but I was never selected. 😔” meaning that for every winner there are plenty of talented artists who don’t make it to the finals.
There is a concern that the voting process might be unfair. User tmma1869 commented, “Please don’t screw this up. I am begging you. Don’t let that Kimberly fiasco happen again” which seems to refer to… some mistake that happened in a previous contest? The specifics are not clear but the tension is strong.
And as usual, the character requests are there. One user humorously questioned, “If I draw poison will you add her to the game?” which, I must admit, is a pretty good question. Although, most likely this is not the way character selection works. Tangentz_00 on the other hand, asked, “Ya’ll can’t wait until Alex and Ingrid release?” implying that some players are more interested in new fighters than the new art.
It is really interesting to see this contest proving the same thing about how Capcom approaches community engagement. They really have opened a direct channel for players to play on Xbox.
