Chapter 1

A. Background of the Study   

    According to Campbell.C 's article entitled "Well Borrowed Gameplay Elements pushes 'Shadow of Morder' to the Top", some games that has been publicized successfully borrowed gameplay elements from other games or different genres of games. Not only specifically for this game, but a large quantity of developers has been doing  this since the past. This is of course not to blatantly copy them but to build upon the mechanic and evolve it further to fit their very own style.

I quote from Campbell "If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then Monolith Entertainment has just written one heck of a love letter to Rocksteady in the form of 'Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor' “. (http://www.stripes.com/military-life/games/well-borrowed-gameplay-pushes-shadow-of-mordor-to-the-top-1.307609)

      Various gaming genres borrowed gameplay elements from Fighting games. The Fighting game genre is one of the pioneering genres which started videogames. Since games in this style has been developed since the dawn of video game creation, many games has largely used gaming ideas from this genre and integrated them into their games or even used it as a basis for making gaming titles. As the genre itself kept on evolving throughout the videogame history, the gaming industry prospered with it creating more ideas and giving birth to newer types of games that takes this genre as basis for their new gaming mechanics.

                "Every once in a while comes a video game that claims - or is claimed - to 'revolutionize' its genre, to bring it beyond what it used to be, or to 'evolve' it, defining a new step along the generic road it is treading".Taken from Arsenault.D's article that goes with the title of "Video Game Genre, Evolution and Innovation“. (http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/65/125)

  The Fighting game genre is a largely evolved genre  filled with educational materials for the c  reation of newer and more complex gaming elements. Fighting games has been around since the very early stages of the video-gaming world’s rise to the industry. Numerous trial and errors, breakthroughs, and discoveries of never before used gaming mechanics has all been seen by this particular type of videogame making it not only the one of the eldest but also one of the most successful types of game that ever graced the industry.

Fighting games gave birth to competition amongst different communities. Dargenio.A  has stated in his article titled " History of Fighting Games" about the birth of competitive gaming with the introduction of this genre.

  "But, the huge popularity spike that the fighting game genre and fighting game community has seen in the past couple years has set some pretty phenomenal changes in motion. " (http://arcadesushi.com/the-history-of-fighting-games-part-1/)
                

      The genre in its early stages, despite its nature of pitting more than one player to another, didn’t started as a competitive game. It only did when it has evolved enough to incorporate strategy and technique into its gameplay in games like Street Fighter II where the real competition began. The games by then has been largely designed to favor the player who have honed their skill better than their opposition. The said genre is also one of the biggest reason the arcade community has risen to its peak.  But nowadays, due to the advancement in technology, consoles are able to connect players from all over the globe to compete with each other. But it is largely agreed upon by many players that the offline scene the arcade community gives still gives the best experience in terms comfortability and stableness of framerate which online matches fail to deliver.

     Despite the dwindling interest on the genre, because of newer genres being born, Fighting games continues to bring people from over the world together. In a recent article by Lambert.K of Powerleveled, moves done by developers could definitely kill the community by choosing exclusivity in their games.

      "If I could give one word to describe the state of the current console war, it would be exclusivity. To me, that is a dirty word which only serves to hurt the gaming ecosystem."

"Street Fighter IV is one of the best fighting games ever made and completely revitalized the