Further Misadventures In Recruiting: “They still make Street Fighter?” – 06.24.09

“Do you have Street Fighter?” The conversation floated into my room from yet another group of people I did not know. For once, the revolving door of strangers appeared to be yielding fighting game dividends. A few more name-drops of the franchise later, one of my roommates called me in to partake. “He’ll kick your ass,” he said, pointing to me.

Silently I hung my head in dismay; this was possibly the worst thing he could have said. Presumably this new challenger was not that great, but assessing his skill would be a lot harder if he got scared off and did not even attempt to play. However, this turned out not to be an issue, as he was looking to play a drinking game (one shot per game lost) and decided on SF because “It goes quickly.”

With this in mind, I bowed out and let the rest of the party go on button mashing their way to inebriation. Amusingly, a fair number of the matches resembled this Portuguese TV show, flailing Blankas and all. Fights dragged on, especially once I told them how to perform the perennial scrub favorite electricity. After about 20 minutes, I was challenged and barely eked out a victory on a Dualshock 3; the combination of erratic opponents and pad execution made matches closer than they probably should have been. My roommate ended up being my easiest match, interestingly enough; even though he had no trouble beating everyone else, he knows just enough about the game to be predictable and intimidated.

Shortly thereafter it was clear that interest and sobriety were waning. Smash came out, only to be replaced by Tiger Woods PGA 2007, then Wii Sports, arguably following the deterioration of motor skills. The highlight of the evening occurred when one person noticed the “arcade setup” under the TV and gave me an un-ironic high five; I hoped his amazement and compliments were signs that he too enjoyed fight sticks, but alas, this was not the case. Once again, an evening that began with such possibility ended in disappointment, though it was naïve to believe it would turn out otherwise. Back to the laggy online jungle for me.

Misadventures in Recruiting - 06.08.09

Having company over can be annoying, especially when you don’t know them and they take up video gaming space to watch some crappy late-night TV. Imagine my pleasant surprise then, upon walking into the room, arcade stick in hand, to have some stranger ask “Is that Street Fighter?”

After relating a promising anecdote about staying up all night to play SF with his roommates, he accepted my challenge. While setting up 3rd Strike, my would-be opponent decided to leave for a bit and one of the girls present volunteered to step in. I explained the very basics, set her up with Ryu and started a match. As she threw out punches, I ran into the hits as seemed appropriate and occasionally pitched a fireball or two. She seemed to be enjoying herself, once even accidentally forward-grabbing my Akuma and getting a big kick out of it. Then, as my health meter was nearing bottom: “Even though you play so much, you aren’t very good.”

In retrospect, I probably should not have reacted so harshly; the plan was to let her win anyway, what did it matter what she said? Instead, I annihilated the 80% of her life remaining, going so far as finishing with a jumping Super Art 1, just for that extra humiliation.

What is it about fighting games that brings out this constant desire to assert dominance? Is it the same with all competitive endeavors? Apparently I could not even suppress the killer instinct long enough to keep her playing more than one round. Maybe it was too boring, not engaging my opponent on the mental battlefield and the provocation seemed like a chance for some entertainment. Perhaps her biting feminine wit cut to the heart of my male hunter/gatherer/fighter insecurities, baiting an over-compensatory response. Damn you, AP Lit. More likely, I lose so badly so often that it felt good to finally return the favor…by taking it out on some helpless non-gamer. Yeah, awesome. Whatever the cause, I utterly failed to maintain her interest in fighting games.

Unfortunately, this was not the last of the night’s disappointments. The guy came back shortly afterward and said that his experience was entirely with the SNES version of SFII: World Warrior. Anniversary Edition being as versatile as it is, I tried to accommodate this as much as possible.

However, as the nagging voice in my head suspected, he was not skilled. Trying to learn from the failed experiment a few minutes before, I spent most matches blocking, only punishing bad mistakes and giving advice on how to use some of the characters. At the end of the day though, as the life bars dropped, it was difficult to resist the temptation to super through a poorly spaced fireball (I switched to ST versions after a couple matches). He understandably stopped playing after five fights; no one likes being humiliated or competing with someone so far beyond their skill level that they cannot learn anything from the time invested.

Seems I am not yet comfortable enough with my meager skills to simply sit back and let an opponent have their way. The drive to fight and improve is present the instant my hands touch a controller. Being too hungry to be an effective teacher is a poor excuse, but it is all I can offer at the moment.

In my experience, the best way to play, learn and have fun is to have a sparring partner near or just above your skill level, which explains how he could go for hours with his roommate but less than 10 minutes with me. That way, both fighters can wholeheartedly battle it out over significant periods of time and still enjoy themselves, noticing the nuances of the game and devising ever-evolving strategies to counter each other. However, even in this era of internet forums and ranked online battles, the problem remains finding that person.

To be honest, I am not sure how to use this for recruiting. In my experience, non genre-fans tend not to buy 2D fighters and spread them amongst their equally unskilled friends, unless the game has the marketing push and nostalgic draw of SFIV. Even then, there is no guarantee that the people in question will really grasp, or care, about the depth offered, spend time to improve, or try similar games.

The question of expanding the audience for their games is undoubtedly one that developers and marketers struggle with all the time. In all likelihood, the answer lies in the heart of battle, er, in the hype and excitement generated by awesome events like the streamed Denjin SBO qualifiers. But that is a topic for another post, the ramble is long enough as it is. Obviously I was not expecting these two strangers to actually get into fighting games based on their brief play session, but the mistakes I made with them will hopefully lead to future success with more promising candidates.

Offer absolutely everything, absolutely everytime

I bought Guilty Gear X2 as a freshman in college. I had only previously played a few fighting games (Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage). At the end of my Freshman year, I was made president of the gaming club on campus (a title I held for some time). And so, Guilty Gear became a part of the club's weekly routine. Every week we would play video games, and every week we would have a TV with Halo 2 (and later, Halo 3), a TV with DDR (later Guitar Hero, even later Rock Band) and a TV with Guilty Gear X2 (later Accent core). As President, I was constantly introducing myself to students who would walk in. I would show them around our club room, invite them to play any games or choose one we weren't currently playing, and then always (ALWAYS) invite them to play Guilty Gear. Oftentimes they would refuse, stating "I'm no good at fighting games."

And I would always immediately respond that I, too, was terrible at fighting games, I just knew the basics pretty decently. Not a one of us had any great skill in the fighting game genre. Everyone thought I was good, and my constant response is that I only appeared to be any good because I played the game a lot more than anyone else. I had a better grasp of basic strategies because I went into training mode and spent time with every character. But I never really went anywhere extraordinary, and neither did any of the rest of us in the club.

I never thought of being a top player, or anything. I just wanted to play Guilty Gear with dudes. I friggin' loved Guilty Gear XX. A whole lot. I asked anyone who came to visit the club office for a match. Anyone coming to a club event. Even people doing other club activities. And I knew, even before asking, that my enthusiasm for the game would shine through and win people over. I convinced several of my friends (and the club itself, besides) to buy copies of Guity Gear in one incarnation or another. I actually convinced people who played a few matches to go into training and mess around more, and sometimes they even listened to me. Various friends eventually found a character (sometimes two!) and learned some basic combos or at least special moves that they liked to use. It never got very complex, and I didn't expect anyone to really stick with it. If they bothered to play at all, it was a huge victory.

But one of my friends ran with the hobby. I knew I had reeled him in good when he bought a Tekken 5 arcade stick (which he is now far better at using than I am). And now here we are, writing a blog about how great this genre is.

The Opening Demo: An Introduction - 06.04.09

While practicing 3S execution last night, my new roommate, let’s call him Ryan, walked in and asked “What’s up? Is that Street Fighter?”

“Yeah, SFIII. 3rd Strike.” I replied, distracted as CPU Alex finished the round with yet another Boomerang Raid. “Huh. What system is this for?” As I considered how to answer his question without coming across like even more of a nerd, sitting on the floor with a Tekken 5 stick and a CPS3 emulator, it occurred to me that perhaps my grand designs for transforming my housemates into sparring partners were doomed from the start. Despite the polite inquiry, he was clearly not looking to learn how to play.

I decided to go the console route: “It was an arcade game ported to the Dreamcast, but I also have it for PS2.” “No way, this is a PS2 game? I’m surprised because it looks so crappy.” My heart sank, even if he was accidentally correct. “You know, 2D,” he continued, “I thought it would have been 32 or 64-bit.”

My first thought was to take umbrage at the mid-90s Sony-executive mentality that inexplicably regards the third dimension as inherently superior, but that would have been counter-productive. I then considered pointing out the gorgeous animation and mentioning how the art style overcomes the technical limitations of the board, but it did not seem worth the effort. If he wasn’t struck by the game’s aesthetics, no amount of explaining why he should appreciate sprite-work was going to change his opinion. Instead, I shrugged and kept playing.

“Nice,” he complimented, as Akuma’s low fierce finished the next round and I accepted the praise without clarifying it was supposed to have been a Dragon Punch. “I wish I was good at video games,” he lamented.

This last remark struck me, because, as you probably gathered from the blog name, I am in no way a good player. However, that innocuous, offhand comment really speaks to the issues facing the genre and community today. Fighting games have grown dramatically more complex since the heyday of SFII, but even back then, relatively small differences in ability resulted in severely unbalanced matches. Depth is necessary for a fighter’s longevity, but it can easily discourage new players from trying to learn. The number of times I have invited someone to play Street Fighter, Guilty Gear or Virtua Fighter, only to be declined with some variation of “I suck at these kinds of games,” is rather disheartening. You can’t get better if you don’t try. I can’t get better if you don’t try…

I am a scrub, a n00b, a fighting game neophyte and almost resigned to staying one. Don’t get me wrong, there is no shortage of enthusiasm; I play frequently, lurk on SRK and Dustloop, read character guides, follow gootecks’ podcasts and the Dogface Show, study frame data and watch entirely too many match videos. All that is lacking is the most important element: superior opponents, preferably in the form of an accessible arcade scene. Recently discovering GGPO and 2DF has been an incredible boon, but as any tournament veteran worth their salt will tell you, there is no substitute for live, lag-less competition.

For such a crappy player, why blog about the area of my in-expertise? Mostly, I hope to give a different perspective on the scene. In my experience, new players are often insulted or ignored, which only serves to shrink and weaken the community in the long term. Granted, some of the scorn is deserved and not everyone helps themselves as they much as they can, but I want to show that not everyone who makes stupid, beginner mistakes is hopeless. Or maybe not; after all, I am just a scrub.

As for Ryan, it was wrong to dismiss him outright, without even asking if he wanted to play; this is exactly the kind of exclusionary, elitist attitude that needs to change. How can we expect to keep the games we love healthy without a steady stream of novices to bring new thinking, styles and commercial success? Of course most of them will not stick around for long; fighting games are an inherently niche hobby that require a dedication anathematic to anything mainstream. But maybe, just maybe, if a greater effort was made to reach out to new players, we could make more converts and really revitalize the genre, instead of just using them as short-lived punching bags.

I certainly would not be as engaged as I am today if not for the enthusiasm and determination of another friend…