Deconstructing the arguments, and potential bait, of someone who really doesn’t like fighting games
The fighting game community, or FGC, had a blast these last few days due to a thread from one @killmikaself on twitter. Even though this is a small account of around 200 followers, the ratio of 3.7k retweets definitely shows that this hit a nerve among fighting game fans.
So, I decided, for the hell of it, to deconstruct each of the tweets in this thread one by one and go over some of the arguments that she lays out. It is my belief that anyone can enjoy fighting games, one just needs the right encouragement, resources, and just the right hook. This tweet, I feel, is emblematic of one of the main misunderstandings that shows up whenever someone outside of the FGC tries to interact with fighting games.
Mika, if you are reading this, I hope I can answer some questions or clarify some things. Or, if this was all one elaborate bait, then well played. I’ll still be writing this anyways since I feel that it can be a resource for people who want to understand fighting game players and competitive mindsets.
Also, disclaimer, I do not condone any sort of harassment or dog pilling on this person. There’s already been enough of that in this thread already honestly.
Also also, I probably won’t cover every single tweet since some of them just rehash ideas or are just jabs at specific games or the people who play them.
to the tweets then
I’m gonna cheat right off the bat here and start with the first two tweets in this thread. Mostly because this is basically her opening thesis and the start of here first point.
That point being movement.
movement is agreeably one of the most important things to have in a video game. If it doesn’t feel good to move your character, then no matter how good the rest of the game is, the game will be objectively bad.
This seems like a reasonable argument to make, but saying that in reference to fighting games misses the entire picture.
Since fighting games are made with VS. play as the priority, movement is often used as a means to interact with your opponent rather than a tool to get from A to B. Movement in a fighting game has to be practical but predictable enough so that it will be fair against your opponent.
A game like Street Fighter can admittedly feel clunky since you only have three possible ways to jump normally; straight up (neutral jump), backwards, or forwards all in predictable angles and timings. A normal platformer presents it’s jumps, mechanics and level design as a challenge within itself. A fighting game doesn’t have that, the challenge is the human sitting right next to you, so the movement has to reflect that.
Do you neutral jump to avoid a grappler’s grab, risking getting anti aired on the way down in exchange for getting a bigger punish yourself? Or do you jump backwards, which can reset the positions but can be called out if your opponent is ready for it.
Leon Massey has an excellent video on jump arcs in fighting games and the challenges presented with them — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1jFEMxGPzk
Even games with more free flowing movement involving advanced or unique mechanics like flying, teleporting, flips, hovering, swinging, etc, are all a means to get in your opponents face in order to do damage. Most of them are designed with checks and balances in mind and are balanced against how the rest of the cast moves.
Some of these advanced movement options can be satisfying in and of themselves. When movement in a fighting game is done right, even though you are technically limited in options due to the nature of balanced versus modes, a good movement system can make it feel like you are ready for anything in the world. It depends on the game you play, A lot of people associate Super Smash Bros Melee with Wavedashing for this reason.
Mika is partly right here. No one is capable of frame perfect reactions or perfect inputs on every combo. But sets are defined by how one person punishes their opponent for their options and the risk involved. If you hit someone because they screwed up a harder combo that’s still on you for giving them the opening to try out their combo in the first place.
What this tweet truly fails to realize however is that there are more skills involved in getting good at fighting games than just labbing combos. Skills like conditioning and mind games, character knowledge, adapting and recognizing habits, dealing with tournament nerves.
Think about it this way. If someone is button mashing on the final boss of the game, they will lose. By the time you reach the climax of a game, you’ve spent enough time with it to understand how it controls and the consequences of what will happen on each button press. Fighting games are the same way but take it a step further. A final boss of a video game expects the same answer at the same timing every time, a human opponent will catch on. Anyone who is somewhat competent at fighting games will tell you that if you are pressing buttons on wake up, you will get clapped every time
“If you always choose the right option, you will lose every time” —Tyler “ Marss” Martins
I’ve already touched on this point, but there are more skills involved in getting good in fighting games. Spamming a character’s bread-and-butters won’t work forever obviously. There’s a reason that ‘flowchart ken’ is a meme.
Adapting to your opponent’s gameplay and learning how change tempo, bait out your opponent, and learning which options you have available at any given moment are far more important than simply using one character’s gimmick.
I guarantee that if an amateur player, playing as a top tier character, were to fight a top player, playing a game’s worst character, the amateur would still lose. That’s because a top player has fundamentals. A fighting game still works with a huge cast of different characters and play styles because no matter how far the strategies deviate, there will always be fundamental rules in how fights operate. Whether that’d be blocking, grabbing, anti airs, poking, zoning, etc.
Most moves among the cast will serve similar purposes. If multiple characters have a DP in Street Fighter and the player knows that DPs can be used to anti air, then they’ll be able to use DP to anti air no matter which character they play.
This is partially the reason the FGC likes to divide characters into archetypes as well. for example, grapplers who are rewarded for landing grabs, zoners who wall players out with projectiles, shotos who reward fundamental skills, etc. Even if you don’t main some specific character, if you under stand the basic of their archetype, you can build off their established game plan and you’ll still be able to utilize them well.
In this way and as I’m sure you’ve seen. it’s like learning a musical instrument. Say you’re a clarinet player and you want to move to saxophone. Since playing clarinet well requires understanding scales, rhythm, embouchure, fingerings, etc, you’d be able to transfer these skills to learning saxophone, allowing you to have a head start and potentially become competent faster.
If asked to play for a band or orchestra, you’ll probably stick with your main, the clarinet. But you’ll be a more well rounded musician with a better understanding of the music you will play with experience from having experience with the saxophone.
Mika claims that having characters with fundamental designs similar to the rest of the cast is a bad thing later on, but I’ll get to that. One tweet at a time.
It’s fascinating to me that Mika hits the nail on the head with this analogy but then uses it to say that this is a limiting factor. I think that this idea is looking at character selection from the wrong angle.
To continue on Mika’s driving analogy, learning more advanced mechanics and character specifics is more like moving from an automatic transmission to a manual transmission. You technically don’t need to know how to drive stick in order to drive, but it is good to know.
That being said, Every professional racer will definitely know how to drive with manual transmission. Hell, anyone who is even somewhat passionate about cars and driving will at least, hopefully, be familiar with manual transmission.
Mika’s analogy is like saying ‘you need to get good at using manual transmission’ when the reality is more akin to saying ‘you need to get good at driving.’
I think the problem with this sentiment is that you overestimate the base experience needed to play a fighting game character once you have some semblance of fundamentals.
I personally had this problem, I wanted to be the best solo Wolf player for Smash Ultimate, or the best solo Ranno for Rivals of Aether. Playing other characters seemed to be a hindrance to my play. However, acknowledging the rest of the cast for those games, characters that thrive off of different goals and game plans, allowed me to round out more of my fundamental skills that translates back to my main characters.
The difference is I started getting better at Smash Ultimate and Rivals of Aether. Not just one or two characters in those games.
Here’s the part from when I mentioned that Mika said characters playing similarly was a bad thing.
Before I go over some of the main argument, I’d just like to acknowledge that Alien was arguably one of the best character’s in Mortal Combat X. SonicFox pretty famously won EVO 2016 after switching to Alien last game.
As for how Alien was underwhelming as a character adaptation, I’d like to here more of what Maki would have wanted from this character or how it should’ve been designed. Alien, at least in my opinion, matched his movie portrayal pretty well with the prehensile tail, rushing down the opponent and furiously biting and slashing at them, summoning drones and face huggers, his x-ray special has the second interior mouth digging into the opponent’s skull. It’s supposed to be this ruthless monster that will stop at nothing until its prey is dead and I think its play style hits that mark pretty well. If any alien players want to chime in and add to that or even to let me know how wrong I am, please go ahead.
Even if Maki were to agree that alien should hit those marks, the real argument was that Alien was neutered in some way in order to make him into a fighting game character. Despite, being a literal monster, he still has to stand on two legs and face its opponent per the design of Mortal Kombat and its characters.
And honestly, I get why that can be frustrating as a viewer. Smash deals with that type of design as well, some characters are literally gods or close to it, yet they still have to fight on even playing fields with the likes of Mario.
Even though cool is subjective, there are a lot of factors that come with a character’s adaptation and implementation in regards to a game’s balance and game feel. Maki is correct in saying that too much diversity can make a game suffer as diverging mechanics can create gameplay that is incomprehensible to lab and respond to, however diversity that enhances a game’s base mechanics can create something special.
I know it can be weird to say that the actual character doesn’t matter as much once you actually start hitting combos and setups with them, but fighting game characters become much more interesting, at least in my opinion, when you are hitting mixups, setups, reads, hitting something no one has ever seen before. The character becomes less important once we see who’s winning with them, who’s pushing them, who’s posting new data and theory crafting.
A character’s character is more of an introductory point to the concept of fighting games as a whole. No one expects Alien to be 100% recreated for a fighting game, but once you hit one cool setup and gotten that ‘hook’ Alien’s character won’t matter since the perspective will have shifted to actual competitive usage with a character’s aesthetic that you happen to like as a bonus.
And then you start learning fundamentals and it comes back around and yada yada that wasn’t the current argument. Moving on
But there is reason to be optimistic when it comes to fighting game characters. Players who are dedicated to fighting games can get together to create updates to characters. A good example is Project M/+ which updated the mechanics and movesets of smash characters while keeping them all viable and competitive.
It may shock Mika to know that Fighting games are inherently social experiences. If all the fighting game experience Mika has is playing through single player modes then I could see how this could be as biased as it is.
But to anyone who is curious, go to your locals. A lot of getting better at fighting games is meeting people who also want to get better and push you to be better. (shout outs to the North Country and CHILL Gang)
The smash community has already been through a lot in regards to the allegations that arose over the summer. The smash community has become the butt of a joke and a bunch of disheartened fans and players probably won’t here the end of it for a while. Jokes and jabs about it are just sad. The events were tragic and bringing it up only grows harm, move on.
back to the topic at hand after that low note,
Smash has actually been the most balanced it ever has been while maintaining character diversity. Even though Nintendo as of recently has been adamant about supporting competitive play, the main development team and balance team have actually put in noticeable effort to make sure that the entire roster can at most be viable. The development’s consultation from Japanese top players can help attest to that.
As for practicing other character’s, this is just a rehash that allows me to reiterate that fundamental skills do indeed carry over between the fighters. It may take a little bit of practice, but smash in particularly has a simple enough control scheme that learning a character’s basics won’t take an exaggerated 100 hours.
For a cast of fighters as big as smash’s even just a few matches against a character can let someone know what to look out for and what a fighter is capable of. This was because Smash was designed to be an easily accessible party game, so recognizing the different moves doesn’t actually take much effort.
Improving at fighting games means improving against other people. A boss in Dark Souls is hard yes, but it’s predictably hard, everything a boss does has an answer. You will beat Dark Souls eventually, and if you ever decide to replay it, that boss will have the same attacks and patterns and can be mastered.
I don’t think I need to show you the math that beating thousands of people is greater than simply beating your computer. even just beating one person is greater than beating your computer.
With a human opponent, you might technically have an answer for whatever they do but it goes deeper than that. They might be baiting you, they might setup something harder to deal with later, they might make one soft read and run with it.
It’s always changing too. People find new strategies, new players start taking names and redefine what we knew about the game. Someone might start doing something with an obscure character and suddenly make them top tier.
Being good at a fighting game means knowing how to adapt, make changes to your game, journal your improvements, talk with other players to know what’s going on, why some options work or not. It’s slow, piece by piece. It’s little epiphanies that add up.
Most fighting game journeys start like this. You are fighting someone else in a fighting game, the other person is winning but they are doing something you don’t know how to. When they win you have two options, you either
- Complain and moan, then go onto twitter and salt post about how fighting games suck. Or
- ask them how they did that. Or how to beat it.
option 2 tends to spiral into the initial learning curve that comes from fighting games. Learning one move leads to learning combos, which might lead to winning. All the while, if the hook worked, these little achievements keep people going, pushing to be better.
A fighting game is also consistent and predicable, doing the same button press will put out the same move. But that doesn’t mean you won’t get punished for it by your opponent.
Most modern fighting games have an answer to get out of combos. For example, just tech the throw.
Even older fighting games with actual infinites still require that someone lose an interaction in order to get combo’d.
Final note on this type of mentality, no one is require to use more effort than they need to in order to win. It’s always your responsibility to find an answer and execute it. Even better, just ask them about it, they’ll probably be happy to let you know what you can do to get out of it.
It’s a unique experience, it has it’s ups and downs in all honesty by I still believe that it’s a positive experience that helps facilitate a positive mentality and life skills. It’s personally given me an avenue in which I can self reflect and set goals. Even though it sounds inane to have that come from fighting games its still a useful life skill to have regardless of whether you play them or not.
I know that sounds like I’m talking nonsense but I’ve enjoyed my time and I enjoy learning new things with people I enjoy being around. And then taking their money.
Fighting games can be done in tandem with other games and hobbies. Watching youtube, tv, or just hanging out with friends in a vc while practicing combos is just as much a valid gaming experience as trying your hardest at a tournament.
I think it would help if you, Mika, were to genuinely want to try one, I’d go into it not thinking of it as a video game for relaxation, but like trying out a new hobby. I’d find one game that you like the look of and try and learn something, anything.
And then see where it goes from there. You might get washed, you might win, who knows. I know it’s obviously not for everyone but it’d be better than prodding the FGC for salty reactions.
I understand that if you read this and come out feeling justified, like every salty FGC tweet proves you right, this piece included. All I ask is for a shift in perspective, to learn something new, to admit you don’t know something and come out the other end a wiser person. I don’t want to be overly pretentious but I think it’ll be worth at least something.
