Final Week: Fighting Games and Other eSports

James Chen's recent wrap-up post regarding Evo2K10 and the fighting game scene mentions that fighting games have a good chance of surpassing other games (FPSs and RTSs) and becoming the top eSport in terms of popularity and viewer rankings. I myself have never played at a serious competitive level (the only fighting game tournaments I’ve been to are the Rice Cyber Sports tournaments), and I have no experience with fighting games whatsoever besides the Super Smash Brothers series. Even so, I can definitely see Chen’s viewpoint, and I agree with him in that fighting games have the potential to become top spectator eSports.

Fighting games are certainly the easiest to watch from the audience’s perspective. Chen’s comments about spectator confusion in many FPS and RTS games is spot-on; although I have decent experience playing both categories of games, I find that I never have fun watching from the sidelines. The fact that so much information is hidden from the players doesn’t bother you much when you’re playing, since it’s all part of the game and you usually have things that occupy your attention besides just the “action.” As a spectator, however, I’m not watching to analyze every little move the player makes. I like to see action, whether it’s an eSport or a physical sport or a Hollywood movie I’m watching. In terms of the tangible action, I don’t know if fighting games necessarily have the best moments, but they definitely have the highest density of “good” moments, and this is whether the other games fall short.

My biggest issue with watching FPS games, and in particular RTS games, is the length of a match. With fighting games, each round is typically a few minutes, and during the match, you know exactly how much time there is on the clock and how much longer the match might take at its longest—just like in a physical sport. FPS games might drag on for long periods with nothing going on but the players searching around for each other. With RTS games, so much of the time is spent preparing for the eventual clash; I can generally appreciate what the players are doing over these long dull periods, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching every such detail as a spectator. In the time it takes me to watch one complete Starcraft match, I can probably watch 3 or 4 complete Street Fighter or Smash matches (depending on the number of rounds per match.)

Week 11: Nearly Two Decades of Change, for the... Better?

In watching Run it Back: The Road to Socal Regionals, I found it interesting how some of the Street Fighter veterans bring up the different environment in which they competed in the nineties, as opposed to the environment for Street Fighter players today. Many aspects of the game scene have changed since then, a lot of which can be attributed to the humongous affect of the Internet for communication and online play.

One particular difference between the community of the nineties and the community today is the players' openness toward one another in terms of discussing strategies and combos. These days, successful players will frequently contribute character-specific tips and tricks on forums; and in fact, many will record gameplay and/or combo videos, and actually publish them on sites like Youtube. This is a stark contrast to a decade and a half ago, when top players kept much to themselves, guarding their hard-earned, self-discovered combos as if they were industrial secrets.

I definitely think that today's open attitude toward discussing strategies and moves is a better environment to be in from a player's point of view--especially for beginner players. The path to becoming a top-tiered player is still just as much of a climb as it was in the nineties, but today's climbers have the luxury of ascending an already-paved, clearly marked path that is guaranteed to take them at least near the peak. Fifteen years ago, the same path was an unknown trail in complete wilderness, and players trying to make it to the top had no real assurance that the trail they were following was in fact taking them anywhere.

That said, though, I cannot deny that the same open environment detracts just a bit from the excitement of tournament play when compared with the old days. Today, most top players are expected to have more or less the same toolbox of moves, combos, and strategies; very few bother to try unexplored territory when it's so easy to follow in previous champions' footsteps. The thrill of seeing two opponents unleash never-before-seen moves against one another is very seldom there anymore. The early champions certainly had a harder climb, but it was much, much more rewarding for them when they did finally make it to the top.

The explosive growth of online gaming was another significant catalyst of change in the fighting game scene. These days, it's almost trivial to find many new players to test your skills against and to keep your game senses sharp; but the tradeoff here is that you very rarely have the chance to play someone repeatedly, and almost never do you get to know your opponents whom you "meet" across the Internet. The Wednesday Night Fights setup seems like a great idea to bring back a semblance of the arcade days of old, in which players met in person regularly and competed against each other, forming rivalries that led to fierce competition which made both sides inherently stronger. The group system appears to be quite an ingenious format for providing new entrants and the not-so-good players some isolation from veterans so that they stand a reasonable chance of "winning;" for the players who are able to prove their worth, so to speak, they are promoted to the upper tier where they can then go head-to-head against the strongest opponents at the scene.

Week 10: Game Balance

In general, I would have to say that I agree with Maj's remarks regarding a well-balanced game: it's enough to have 4 or 5 "good," tournament-worthy characters in a game, and realistically, the task of ensuring that a significantly larger number of characters are evenly balanced is essentially impossible. At best, game developers might try to manage a large number of characters by making sure that each character has good chance of winning against a subset of the other characters, but this model runs the risk of degenerating the entire game into a rock-paper-scissors battle of choosing the "right" character for a given match. Keeping a small number of characters universally balanced against each seems to be the most viable approach by far.

On the other hand, I wouldn't go so far as to call non top-tier characters "irrelevant." While it might be true that they won't have much of an effect in tournament-level play, weaker or poorly balanced characters play an important role in casual play; and it's the casual play that serves as the gateway for most new players to get into the game. Without the lower-tier characters, it becomes harder for seasoned veterans of the game to give themselves a fair handicap when introducing the game to their friends, colleagues, or spectators.

Week 9: Community Unity

In his EVO 2k10 wrap-up, James Chen has a fair point that Street Fighter IV's popularity can only be a benefit to the fighting game community as a whole. Certainly, unifying fighting games and getting individual communities to support and feed off of one another is an admirable, and generally pretty good, idea. However, I disagree with the analogy that the fighting game community can truly become similar to the poker community.

While there are many, many variations in poker with different applicable strategies during gameplay, each variant uses the same foundations, and picking up one kind of poker once you know another is only a matter of mastering the different nuances that make up the new game. I don't see fighting games as having the same properties. Sure, there are fighting games that are very similar to one another; but there are also fighting games that are as different as night and day (just compare Street Fighter IV to Super Smash Brothers Brawl). Both games allow you to attack your opponent to land damage, but mastering either one of these games does not make it easier to master the other any more than mastering Texas Hold'em helps you to master SSB Brawl.

I don't disagree that the different fighting game communities should embrace each other, but it should be more of a partnership or alliance than a true merging of the communities. Rather than emulating the poker world tournament, the fighting game communities should organize somewhat like the various sports games do during the Olympic Games (EVO 2k already comes pretty close to this philosophy right now). In this way, the smaller communities can benefit from the popularity and exposure gained by the fighting game community as a whole, but they can still remain independent communities devoted to their games of choice.

Week 7/8: Communities, Part 2

I find it interesting that a community receiving so much praise due to their presence and attitude at EVO 2k7 would be so berated only a year later for their presence and attitude at EVO 2k8. (Actually, this is probably not really surprising--a year can be quite a long time with notable effects on any community, and people are, well, people after all.)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that too much control over a game is a bad thing; I actually think that it adds value to the game. If you allow the players to customize options to their liking, it becomes easier to adopt the game in different settings, tailoring it to different target audiences each time. When I play Smash in a casual setting, I prefer to have items enabled to add a bit more variety and randomness to the game. At the same time, if I'm playing in a highly competitive environment, I tend to prefer items being disabled. In the former case, I like the fact that items might affect the game enough to let different people win who might not normally win; but in the latter case, I certainly don't want that kind of interference in a match of skill.

Now, that said, I'm quite frankly disappointed that the items decision at EVO 2k8 led to so much drama between the organizers and the Smash community. Sure, the items tend to add randomness to the outcome of the game, but if those are the rules, then the players might as well just deal with it. Maybe the player who has the best technical skill won't win, but the player who has the best ability to adapt to the situation will win. It might become a different sort of contest, but at the end of the day, it's still a fair contest.

Ironically, it's this same kind of random variable that SFIII:TS could use to reinvigorate itself. James Chen mentioned in his EVO 2k8 wrap-up that, despite an active, strong community, SFIII:TS feels like it has reached the highest level of play the game will ever see, with the same two characters dominating pretty much every top-level tournament. Alas, it's not possible to introduce items into a game post-hoc (this is another win for Smash: since it's so highly customizable, there are plenty of directions in which the game could grow even if it reaches this sort of plateau). However, it might be worthwhile for the community to try something new as a way to force players to try different strategies and techniques. A soft ban might be just the thing--but I'm personally not a fan of soft bans for reasons discussed in a previous post. As another alternative, the community might try to organize some lower-scale tournaments that outright ban the use of the top 3 characters (Chun Li, Yun, and Ken). This should get players to explore new dimensions of the game--as long as they don't shun the ban like the Smash community shunned the presence of items.

Week 6: Community Spirit

In his Evo 2007 wrap-up blog post, James Chen draws attention to the excessiveness of some fighting game communities (such as Street Fighter III: Third Strike), asserting that the game might even be way too popular for its own good. Admittedly, if a game has too many not-so-good players, they can quickly fill entire tournament brackets, which effectively shields the entire community from the top players.

This is definitely a problem, but I don't believe that the community needs to take special measures to remedy the situation. For a community suffering from the aforementioned bloat syndrome, the biggest problem is that players lose motivation to improve just because their current level is "good enough." But this also means that it's easier for someone in the larger community to surpass the local champion; and as long as there community remains strong, someone should find motivation just from the fact that it's a reasonable and quite attainable goal to defeat the local champion. With any luck, such active rivalry for the title of "top of the lower tier" can drive the lower tier's collective skill higher, closing the gap between them and the higher tier of the "really good" players.

In essence, the "large excess" Chen refers to is very much like a clone of the whole original community in its infancy--just larger. Over time, this community should mature and reach the same levels as the previous generation as long as the community remains strong. (And if it's not strong, the larger community will stagnate without ever getting better; this in itself will induce a drop in motivation, leading to disinterested members leaving the community. In this case, the community might thin itself out.)

That said, I completely agree with Chen that a strong community makes a strong game. Without such a community, a game will receive much less exposure, attracting much fewer new players, leaving much of the game unexplored. No matter how good the game may really be, if this inherent "goodness" is not discovered by the masses, the game will always be forced to stay on the sidelines, overshadowed by the titans that are regulars at Evo2k.

Week 4: Bans

I must say that I am slightly amazed at the concept of a "soft ban"--well, perhaps not at the concept, but I'm amazed at the fact that it works.

I firmly believe in the philosophy that bans, once initiated, should be concrete and strictly enforced in tournament-level play. (Informal matches do not have any clear way to enforce bans, short of an agreement between the players, but that's another topic entirely.) Soft bans, while enforceable, seem to lack this "concreteness"--not in the way the game is played, but in the very enforcement of the ban itself. What should happen if a player breaks a soft ban? What if that player wins, possibly due to the fact that he or she used a soft-banned tactic? Does the player qualify for the title of champion, since he or she was simply playing to win? Did the use of the tactic prevent a marginally better player from winning, simply because the latter felt compelled to obey the soft ban? (If so, then the user of the soft-banned tactic gained an unfair advantage simply by taking advantage of the fact that his or her opponents held themselves back from using the same, or similar, tactics.)

That said, I don't have any qualms about "hard" bans whatsoever. As long as the game has an accepted set of rules available to all players, with clear consequences if those rules are broken, then it's a fair game. Take the hard ban on using Akuma in American tournaments of Super Street Fighter Turbo: if a player attempts to use Akuma, he or she is disqualified. Period. Whether the ban on Akuma was warranted or not is a separate question; but as long as it's made clear whether he is or is not banned, the tournament rules are clear and absolute. If the ban seems unwarranted or unfair, some other tournament will probably not have that ban. (If all tournaments do, it's probably for a very, very good reason.)

Week 3: "I Got Next"

It's hard for me to say whether I side more with Gootecks or Long Island Joe in terms of their philosophies toward gaming. I certainly do not share Gootecks's devotion; I don't think I could give up a lot of things in life to pursue a game like Street Fighter in the manner he did. In that sense, I guess I could say I side more with Joe.

I do think the rivalry going on between the East and West Coasts is beneficial to the community. Some might argue that it divides players and leads to unwarranted disputes--this certainly may have been the case, particularly earlier on. But where it divides players into one of two sides, it also unites players who fall on a common side of the border. In the grander scheme, the rivalry also fosters competition, and there can be nothing better to push players at the top to keep improving. In a sense, the rivalry keeps the game alive.

Week 2: Survivor Scrubs

Recognizing the "scrub" mentality in your opponents  during any sort of competitive situation and playing to this advantage can be a powerful asset, just as Richard Hatch demonstrated in Survivor. It definitely paid off in his case--but it was a very, very risky move.

Rich's original strategy to form a voting alliance was definitely the right course of action, at least by the Playing to Win mentality. Survivor had no rules outlawing such tactics, and a successful alliance would increase its members' defensive and offensive capabilities precisely where it mattered most. The only problem with the strategy: members on the alliance were bound to make quite a few enemies among the scrubs outside of the alliance.

If Survivor had been run in a pure "last-man-standing" fashion, this would not have mattered. But it wasn't purely last-man-standing; competitors who lost didn't disappear forever. It was the very people that were voted off who would ultimately decide the fate of the finalists. Rich played the game very well to make it to the final round, but his plan could easily have backfired in the end if the "scrubs" he took out with his "dirty" play held a bad-enough grudge against him. That said, he pretty much had no other choice but to try to convince them one last time that he did the right thing in doing everything possible to win. It was the only edge he had against Kelly, after all; she was the better candidate by every other criteria, especially from the scrub players' point of view. Fortunately for Rich, that single edge was ultimately all he needed...

Week 1: Playing to Win... So Where's the Fun?

In his online book, Sirlin claims that "playing to win" is not entirely incompatible with playing for fun. In fact, he argues that the effort and tactical gameplay exhibited by a player concentrating on defeating his or her opponent is every bit as fun and rewarding as playing the game for its amusement value alone.

Now, I have played many a game wherein winning was the last thing on my mind. Okay, maybe that's not entirely the case, but I have certainly had my fair share of games where my inexperience dictated that I play by button-mashing instinct just to try to survive for as long as possible, and maybe land a few hits on my opponent if I get lucky. Did I win? 99% of the time, no. Did I still manage to have fun? Naturally. Why else would I still be playing Super Smash Brothers to this day?

I would argue that there is fun to be had from just fooling around in even the most competitive of games. I may lack the skills and experience needed to claim victory at the end of the match, yet I still manage to find satisfaction from getting those few hits against my opponent.

That said, I don't disagree with the idea that experts fighting each other at high levels of gameplay still find fun in doing so. Why else would they go through so much trouble to reach such a high level of mastery and still keep improving? The sheer amount of dedication these players put into their game excludes any other ulterior motive as a possibility. Social recognition can be gained in much easier ways; trying to become regional champion at Street Fighter is far too much trouble if you are only in it for the glory. (Those who try are only likely to become scrubs unless they discover the fun of the game for themselves.)

The bottom line is that there is all kinds of fun for both beginners and pro gamers alike. They may not share the same definition of fun, but they each get their enjoyment out of the game, whether they've been to more tournaments than words in this post or if they're only picking up the controller for the fourth time in their lives.