Before a video essay: A meditation on Fighting Games
[Trigger Warning] This is a late stage edit to advise you that this meditation reads like a technical manual. There isn’t much I can do about that; it is a technical manual. I did everything I can to give it as much care and devotion as I can. I even watched a test reader laugh. Reader discretion is advised.
First: why a meditation on fighting games? Why a meditation? Why fighting games? I’ll start by answering the second: it was an accident. Why a meditation? It was on three occasions that I learned stage presence; and the first was stand-up comedy. However in all of my years I have never shaken my one great weakness; I was schizophrenic the entire time.
It’s an odd thing to me that I think I’m always a contradiction of having fun; never able to express or share it, but always amused. Honestly I would take a silver tongue. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine the distance you enjoy from my own sorrow? I welcome you to laugh at my discomfort, but with this disclaimer: if ever someone at sometime must rise in revolution against you, perhaps because you took this liberty to laugh at them, never say I didn’t do you a favor here. Now you are free to walk about the cabin. Okay? Ok. You may have heard of the magic circle, a fire magic of storytellers, and comedy certainly has that; but comedy starts this thought differently: The crowd is waiting to be told. Upon a golden path laid with the engineers segway is the tour of perfect stops. To the comedian, the stage is an enlightened teachers perch; and their material is the path to enlightenment. I meditate alot. Be my audience?
It is popular to compare the fighting game to the essential skill battle: two fighters walk in, and only one walks out. A fighting game epitomizes the contradiction of multiplayer gaming: you have all of the tools of the power fantasy, but none of the advanced permissions of a thrill designed virtual garden. A fighting game revolves around the meta-struggle that is in a fighter learning to fight because they may one day be locked in a life or death struggle; and at that time, they would prefer to have the other fighter take that fall. In homage: The fighting game revolves around ‘making the other guy die for his country.’ In brief: A fighting game is about winning fights.
My opinion following here will be unpopular just in how impossible it sounds under the stress of populist evolutionary focus: The fighting game is a leader in diversity; and I would say that because the fighting game pioneers the narrative that fighters everywhere share having one direction, but they come from many origins. Fighters are tailored to war because those who get rough don’t usually do it because they feel rowdy, they usually do it because one day they expect to fight. One day they expect to fight, and the better fighter wins that day. Fighters do it to be killers. Murder death kill murder death kill murder death death deathly death death kill. The fighting game revolves around the idea that there are many ways to break your opponent, but one goal: The slumped over and passive opponent is the pacified antagonist. The conclusion I reached was to put the opponent down hard, fast and nasty. How that is to be done is the very picture of subjectivity.
There are two ranges that are safe in a fight: retreat and touching. It is normally up to the fighter to determine which to occupy, but in a fighting game that decision is made for you. As time passes, the time that permits spaces to be filled with dangerous things grows; and in a fight, dangerous things certainly do find purchase and grow.
Every tool applied brings an opponent closer to submission; but the opponent is equipped to do the same to you. Interrupting an opponent means they cannot use their tools against you; but the opponent is much more delighted to be interrupting you. …than the contrary. Those dangerous things multiply the number of ways a fighter can be made non-reactive. Each of those things must be resolved before the fight is over, and so the opportunity costs of the fight grow; and with each step toward helplessness, the opportunity budget for creating spaces to end the fight diminishes. Subjectivity: what they have influences what you have, and the opposite as much true too. Therefore: preparations should be made in advance and brought for premeditated use. Practice your basics, Prince Zuko.
The attacker must plot their time between their assault domain and their relief domain. These should be supplied by a division between a fighter’s consumption and their industry. The consumption is windowing wisely when one can do nothing and, alternatively, when one can do something about it. This is when I’ll join someone by providing you the names for these times as advantage and disadvantage. The third phase I will relate to you here is the time popularly called neutral. Here my study may divert from common practice: I will divide the neutral game into the two points of assault and relief.
- In assault, an attacker must practice domain zoning, setplay, and damage options.
- In relief, a defender must practice denial zoning, guarding, and interruption options.
Now I will relate what my method was able to structure into this essay. For assault:
- Zoning is an attack that makes attacking a zone of space or time perilous.
- Setplay is an attack from a zone of space or time.
- Damage is the sweet, rare indulgence that is peril if not prepared well. Damage can be applied in upward to 50% of a health bar with nearly any character. The answer is to have the options ready and to use them lavishly. The answer is hit confirmation, and a practice discretion for those times.
And for relief:
- Defense is an attack upon a zone of space or time.
- Overwatch is an attack that makes attacking from a zone of space or time perilous. This is why I separated zoning into two parts. This is zoning also.
- Retreat is an action intended to conserve resources behind a defense. This is what I mean by interruption.
Innovation in a fighting game revolves around the development of a passion for diverse methods of using available tools and combination options. The fighting game strongly depends on a fighter being able to access their usable toolkit, and so depends heavily on players using their practice mode. The game of a fighting game exists in trading time and space with an unfair negotiator. You must supply yourself with as much time and space as possible, as well as remember the use of the resource bars. The resource bars is so important it got this one sentence. To negotiate these resources, the attacker must first practice seeing the fight in incoming news. Watch the opponent and amuse yourself with the meaningful subjectivity of locations, placement, options and spacing.
I believe I should remind you of the beginning of this essay: Remember to win. Remember to win as quickly as possible.
However remember that every opportunity has a price. There is a cost in time and space for everything. An opponent cannot be attacked directly; their defenses must be attacked instead. The gates must be opened before they become vulnerable. To this purpose: big machines must be made. Practice mode must be used. When the victory of a fight has been satisfied, you have at last removed the influence of reasonable complaint from those who would not negotiate, and the war machine was a part of the effort. When the space of a conflict zone is well used, the space won is well connected to a patrolling intelligence agency, and the spaces outside are bounded and demarcated to protect those who would negotiate. There is no longer a need to fight.
The laudable matter is that between two killers is that between two killers, one killer was left standing in the end. The fight will have, in the end, been won by the smarter fighter, because in matters of luck, it is popularly said in the FGC: We take those.
So take your easy, cheap and dirty wins. With that, take this too: there is also something else cheap and easy about the FGC; they are as awesome as community as you might find anywhere else. So I’d like to supply you here with a piece of advice that didn’t fit into the essay: satisfaction pattern recognition manipulation is one of those tactics that work on fighting gamers when they talk about mind games, and satisfaction patterns recognition manipulation can also build community.
Keeping the capacity for violence while living in the embrace of community is that hero scout chunk of carved granite that we love to forget and loathe to hate: the generic one. JOIN THE FGC TODAY! With that, I am allowed to champion a point of that the duty of killing is best left being over when its over. I am pleased with this outcome.
