FGC Life Lessons

I’ve been enjoying r3m3dy38 over on Instagram, where he’s posting reels comparing success in fighting games with success in other areas of life. He’s doing a great job speaking directly to things that I’ve felt playing fighting games, or sensed in advice from other voices in the genre, particularly Loops.

I picked up How to Know a Person in an airport bookshop and can confidently say that I have learned more about how to know a person from playing Tekken than a book of the same name.

Video games as a medium have been appreciated for their positive impact on learning for quite some time now. As an educator, I was encouraged by the work of James Paul Gee and Constance Steinkuehler to explore the use of video games as a tool in the classroom. Many of the things that make video games fertile ground for learning apply to fighting games; reduced stakes for failure, emphasis on agency and interaction, identity, customization.

But I truly believe fighting games are something special. There are good reasons myself and others see so much overlap between the way people advance or fail to advance in the FGC and how we learn and grow as people.

Distilled Socialization

A fighting game, when taken seriously, is like a concentrated dose of socialization. You are set in a bounded, virtual space with one other person. Your actions are limited to the moves available to your character. You are given the relatively simple task of reducing your opponent’s health bar to zero before they do the same to you.

This does a lot to narrow the situation to the kind of well-ordered problem video games are often designed around, but even before the round begins there’s more to consider. Each player’s character pick defines the limits of what they will be able to do. It may reveal something about your opponent’s preferred style of play. You may have prejudices towards your opponent’s character - assumptions about their gameplan or the type of person who picks them. You might have a historically hard time countering their character. In each case your opponent may be thinking the same about you.

Like a lot of competitive pursuits, your actual physical and mental state is a factor. If you’re tired or nervous you will react more slowly and be more likely to make mistakes. If your opponent can remain calm and collected they will have a distinct advantage.

Above all, your success in a fighting game will hinge on many of the same abilities required to deal effectively with people in other situations; your ability to observe the habits and preferences of others, to adapt in the face of failure, to both send and receive non-verbal messages.

With all of that in mind I’d like to address some of the most important FGC lessons that have genuinely changed how I move through life.

Taking Your Turn

Words that have and probably still are used to describe me would include quiet and passive.

A concept from FGC that I think about daily is “taking your turn”. When a big move is blocked, or a move misses entirely, it creates an opportunity for counter-attack. A core part of learning a fighting game is how to recognize and respond to these opportunities. The turn taking in a fighting game is similar to a foundational social skill; conversation.

When I started being more deliberate about Street Fighter, I was drawn to “hold” characters like Balrog and Decapre; characters with moves that require you to hold and charge an input. This style of play mirrors the most charitable ways people have described me; someone who says little but is worth listening to when they do. I would like to be someone who, though withdrawn, does set things in motion where opportunties arise.

Importantly, if the impression I make on people is going to mirror my preferred FGC archetype, it requires getting active - not letting every chance to involve myself pass by.

Reading Your Opponent

A lesson I have learned and re-learned in fighting games is the importance of listening. Some of the best advice I’ve followed is to just block. To take my eyes off my character and watch what my opponent is up to. Wanting to see your character pull off a string of flashy moves is understandable, but that’s the same as listening to respond instead of listening to understand. Higher caliber interactions come from making the effort to fully comprehend what you’re being told before responding.

My first string of matches against a consistent opponent was playing a friend online in Street Fighter IV. They consistently picked Rolento and for a long time I had no idea how to cope with the mix-ups and Rolento’s overall mobility. That’s partly because I wasn’t paying attention to the mix-ups, the tools in Rolento’s kit, or the options my friend favored. I only wanted to push buttons.

In conversations, I’m often so anxious about if and how to respond that I don’t listen as well as I should and don’t even take my turn. I’m basically mashing in silence. It’s active listening that has saved me both in-game and out.

Conditioning Your Opponent

Related to getting a read on your opponent is conditioning, where we introduce our opponent to moves from our kit and observe or attempt to influence their response. I find conditioning is useful for understanding how much effort is required in a match, particularly when opponents fail to adapt.

In Tekken, if I can hit you with the same low multiple times and you never counter with a mid or low parry, I will keep doing it. If I can hit you with the same high poke and you never stand-block or duck, I will keep doing it. If you always try to rage art at the end of each round, I will block it and throw you until either you stop or I’ve won the match.

When we talk to people, especially new people, it can be hard to judge depth or the potential for connection. Many people say they don’t like “small talk” but getting overly personal with people you don’t really know is weirdo behavior. Building rapport is like conditioning; you throw out a safe option and see how things play out, and you either proceed on to deeper levels of play or you don’t.

A phrase I first heard from a fellow teacher that describes being conditioned that I still think about is “What you allow, you condone”. On the negative side, if you have no response for disrespect you’re conditioning yourself to accept it. When you allow cruelty you condone it.

Never Being “Hardstuck”

This probably applies to any game with skill-based matchmaking, but many gamers appear to be under the impression that if they play ranked matches they are entitled to regular wins and promotions. When they stop advancing they claim to be “hardstuck”. The reality is that at any level of skill you will plateau by design. The only way to break a plateau is to skill up - to git gud.

I have been training calisthenics for a couple years now, and some of the ways that I stay motivated to train are the same things that kept me coming back to Tekken. One is acknowledging the time committment. Being able to tech throws and nail combos in Tekken required hours of deliberate practice, and many matches applying those skills in context.

It took months of negatives and band-assisted reps before I was strong enough for my first pull-up. I never claimed to be hardstuck during that time when I wasn’t get the result I was after for; I knew I had to keep grinding for it. But it wasn’t a mindless grind, either. It was a deliberate process of adapting to the movement both physically and mentally.

What keeps me consistent is not measuring myself against world-class Tekken players or calisthenics athletes, but the progress I make against my own personal best week-over-week. And the focus on that progress, rather than an end result like hitting Tekken God or especially having an “aesthetic” physique, has driven my success more than anything else. Those results - ranked wins, titles, muscle definition, weight loss - may come in time, but only because they follow from deliberate and consistent effort.

Soulful Play

Whether it’s mastering a low-tier character or pressing your favorite button there are good reasons to go off META and just have fun. We lose so much when we fall into the trap of feeling like we have to exclusively play the META and follow a flow-chart for the sake of success.

When we apply that kind of pressure to ourselves in any of our hobbies or in our career we inevitably arrive at burnout. I don’t know that we can always avoid it, or the need to take a break from time to time, but at work and in play what sustains me isn’t the satisfaction of making an optimal choice. It’s fun.

And if I treat every conversation like a life-or-death situation of course I’m going to experience anxiety. When I lower the stakes and make space for curiosity and play; that’s where I find joy in my life.