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.