James Chen is one of the premiere voices of the FGC. He’s best known for his commentary in Street Fighter and his educational content aimed at beginner and intermediate level players but his impact goes beyond just that. I had the pleasure of talking with James about the end of Street Fighter V, changes in archetypes and the impact of patch culture, and the effects COVID had on the FGC.
So, here I am with James Chen, the FGC commentator. I’m not sure how accurate this is because I don’t know the OG OG history, but at least in my eyes, one of the OG Street Fighter commentators. Definitely one of the voices of the FGC when you think of it. So, thanks for coming on, James. I’m excited about this.
No problem, no problem.
So I guess to start out, are you actually one of the OG voices? Because when you hear about the early days it’s always, obviously a little bit messy, but sometimes it’s like, “oh, I might seem OG but I’m actually second generation or I’m third generation.” But that’s so many years back it all seems the same.
I mean, it’s interesting. I mean, when you’re talking about voices, like in terms of commentary? Yeah. I mean, I was one of the first major commentators for fighting games. That’s not even really OG, because that Street Fighter IV era is very, very late in terms of the timeline of fighting games.
Now I was around and I was playing Street Fighter 2, the original World Warriors. I’m definitely OG, but not. Like I was around playing but I wasn’t tournament competitive until much significantly later. So I count other people as more OG than I am, even though I’ve been around since then and I was obsessed by the original Street Fighter 2 anyway. But I guess I’m OG in terms of when I started, but in terms of actual competitiveness, it came about a little bit later.
That’s always an interesting one with people more established because esports is so fast. One year is, however many in traditional sports. I want to start with a Street Fighter, particularly the end of Street Fighter V, because Street Fighter 6 is obviously announced. We’re in a very interesting time for both Street Fighter V, but also the FGC, because this is almost an era shifting moment. With the transition from Street Fighter, Guilty Gear and KOF there’s all these rollback games coming in, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening all at once within a very small period of time. So the ending of Street Fighter V, what does it mean? What is Street Fighter V’s legacy? And what are we moving forward with?
I feel like Street Fighter V’s legacy, it’s such an interesting one. Because oftentimes, when I talk about Street Fighter V, it’s in a very negative light, right? And I just want to get it established that I think Street Fighter V, the way that it’s ending right now, is one of the best Street Fighter games in a long time. I really think that Street Fighter V has reached a stride that is just really, really solid. But Street Fighter V, honestly, I think for Capcom its biggest legacy might actually have been almost like a ‘teach Capcom what not to do’ situation.
I mean, when we talk about the launch remember, they were trying something brand new, right? Every other version of Street Fighter had been Alpha 1, Alpha 2, Alpha 3, here’s Street Fighter IV, Super Street Fighter IV, Arcade Edition. So they were doing new stuff, DLC, constant patches, and they were really trying to find their way through it. Even the fight money thing really didn’t kind of work out the way that people originally thought it was going to work out, et cetera, et cetera. But honestly, the launch of the game was definitely very rocky. No extra modes in there.
I remember in high school, all the videos of “Street Fighter V could be a good game, but it was too geared to esports. There’s no meat on the bone” and all that stuff. So definitely, definitely a rough launch.
And you compare that to Street Fighter 6, it’s like they’re like, “Okay, we got it, sorry!” Here’s 1000 billion one player content stuff here. But then also, Street Fighter V I’ve often said, was probably one of the catalysts for anti-rollback people in the first place because their rollback was kind of messed up. There’s actually anti-rollback people out there and I think Street Fighter V was a reason for that. And then when Strive came out, and everyone’s like, “oh, ohhhh.”
I didn’t even realize Street Fighter V had rollback netcode. I thought they just had delay based.
No, it’s been rollback this whole time. And that’s the thing, right? Rollback when programmed correctly is extremely, extremely efficient. Street Fighter V’s problem, that’s why you get the jumpy. That’s why you get a lot of the choppiness when you’re playing online because in delay based netcode that wouldn’t happen. In rollback netcode, what it’s doing is it’s rolling back and going, “Oh, this is actually what the state of is supposed to be,” so it snaps it into reality, basically. But if two players get desynced, then one person keeps getting updated and the other person is just fine. And so that’s what we were seeing a lot of in Street Fighter V. And so Japanese players, they were always just playing on delay base netcode just fine. But even when Strive came out, Japanese players were like, “this is what rollback is about? Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.”
Street Fighter V, also, they just did a lot of things. And towards the end of the game, they really let the game flourish a little bit more. They started getting more creative, they even started trying to add a lot more visual, basically eye candy stuff into the game a little bit. Moves would cause a little bit more zoom in, more screen shake, and stuff like that. Because early on Street Fighter V, presentation wise, is also very bare bones where you see something like Tekken 7, they went into the zoom encounter. Hence the slow motion, the black and white trades. They really focused on the presentation and Street Fighter V left that behind at first.
The biggest thing to the biggest thing was that Street Fighter V was designed as a game to exist as <not Street Fighter IV>. So the original Street Fighter V was designed because people were like, “I hate this in IV, I hate that in IV,” and they’re like, “All right, we’re gonna make a Street Fighter game that takes away everything that you hate in Street Fighter IV.”
It was a response.
Yes
So does that make Street Fighter 6 a response to the response in a sense? Because you look at it, and it’s oozing that style. I haven’t played Street Fighter IV and I didn’t touch Street Fighter V that much, so mechanics wise I’m not going to pretend to know something I don’t, but it almost seems like Drive Rush is almost calling back to the Ultra Combo a little bit. Correct me if I’m wrong.
The best way to put it honestly, is that no, Street Fighter 6 is not a reaction to Street Fighter V. Which is good. They seem to be trying to create their own vision. I mean, the whole Drive Gauge is just completely brand new and really just a very unique kind of thing. Exhaustion is really unique and that’s the important thing. So when Street Fighter V came out, it was more just like, let’s try to take away the things that were wrong with IV. But I don’t think that they had a true vision of where the game was gonna go.
As the game started developing through the years, though, the developers really started getting an idea of what the game was about, and why now, towards the end, it is in such a solid state. And like I said, I think Street Fighter V is one of the more enjoyable Street Fighter games and I like it better than some of the older Street Fighter games. I like V more than I like IV in retrospect at this point. And I know a lot of the IV fans are gonna be mad at me, I’m sorry. [laughs]
Again, I think they learned a lot of important things. And a lot of that is applying to 6 not as a way of like, a Rise of Skywalker kind of apology for an apology kind of thing.It’s more just like, okay, I see. We need to have a distinct vision for our game from the get go. This is what we want to do. And I think they’re doing a good job with that so far.
That’s Street Fighter, which is obviously a game you commentate in. But you also commentate in others, like Guilty Gear, for instance. How is the transition? Fighting games are very different from other esports. So if you tried to commentate Valorant and CSGO the same it just wouldn’t work. Some fundamentals would transfer over but they are distinctly different. Is there that same challenge with fighting games? Because Street Fighter and Guilty Gear, presentation wise, very different. Is there that same challenge?
Oh, Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I learned that very early on with Marvel vs Capcom 3. Commentating Street Fighter IV was like, “Oh yeah, okay. Oh, I’m pretty sure what he was trying to do here was bait out this DP because the last time he…” you know? And then Marvel you’re like, “Oh what he was-” and then something else has happened? “What? Oh! Then- huh? OK-.” Different games definitely require different kinds of paces. You can’t do as much analysis on a Marvel game because it’s just too fast. There’s plenty of analysis to give, but the game is just too fast, you cannot take the time to do that.
And then, of course, every fighting game has a different mentality, different strategies. As a commentator you do want to break down a lot of the fighting games in a very similar way, the fundamentals as you were talking about, right? For example, in Street Fighter V, the core mixup of Street Fighter V is the attack/throw/shimmy mix up. And so if you commentate this game, you have to understand what that core mix up is in order to commentate it properly. Otherwise, you’re not going to be noticing the right things.
In KOF the core mix up really is the, if you watch a Dandy J video, he calls it the KOF zone. Which is this short hop, regular jump, dash up, poke at the short hop, range. Most of the characters follow along this neutral and if you don’t understand that about KOF, you’re gonna miss a lot of the things the players are trying to go for. Tekken for example, the mix ups is basically, mids are good launchers but they’re usually punishable, highs are safer but you can duck under them, and lows generally don’t do a lot of damage. And you’re just supposed to kind of eat a lot of lows, things like that.
And so if you don’t understand the core mix ups between the different games, you can’t commentate it. You can narrate it, “Oh! he got a hit,” but if you really want to dive deep, I’ve commentated fighting games that I don’t really know before and I can kind of get away with it with those fundamentals. But those are not games that I’m seriously trying to learn. For things like Strive and Street Fighter, the ones that I really want to commentate and do a good job on, these are the games that I want to be known for. Yeah, you got to do the studying. You got to know the characters and you got to know what the general strategy is for the game overall.
Just having that basic fundamental knowledge, at least a few layers deep, so that you can actually talk about the interactions and the adaptations.
And also honestly, it helps so much to actually play the game. Because then as you’re getting hit by stuff, and you start realizing what’s going on, you gain a lot more insight into what’s actually happening.
I found that myself in Siege when I was an analyst. I felt the best in the work I was doing for my team directly after I had to stop playing because I was still in that player mentality of “Okay, I know exactly what’s going on in this situation. This is the pressure we’re feeling. This is the expected response from the attacks. And this is their expected response on the defense. And not doing that [the expected response] is important, because that’s why it works” and all those layers worked because I was still in that mentality. Now, it’s harder because I’m not playing at that same level anymore. I’m washed sadly.
I mean, look, I’m kind of washed in fighting games too. But you know, I’ve been playing for, like I said, since Street Fighter 2. 2 decades now of playing fighting games. So needless to say, it’s kind of second nature for me at this point.
Yeah. Actually, I want to ask because I’ve seen all the educational content you make, does trying to break it down for a beginner to intermediate level help keep you up on your game as well?
Yeah, actually. The old adage is, you never really learn something unless you can teach it to somebody else. For me, when I try to teach it, I’ve done First Attack content, which is what the educational series has been called, and I have gone through like seven different, maybe not seven, but like three or four different iterations of rebooting and starting over and trying to explain it again in a new, different style. Because there really is no blueprint for teaching fighting games. We’re making it up. We are the people making the blueprints.
And so, yeah. Years and years and years of me trying to reassess how to present fighting games. And I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp on it. And I think the latest first attack series I did was okay. My biggest problem is I’m just too damn wordy and all my videos ended up being an hour long and nobody wants to sit down and watch hour long videos on YouTube these days. So, yeah, I need to figure out how to become shorter.
I was talking with Krakatoa from Dustloop about that and his content creation process. And he said the videos forced me to stay short, because otherwise I would talk for ages and ages and ages and using the videos and having to edit them forced me to do that. So it’s interesting to hear like, you’re in the same boat. And I’m pretty sure when I tried making video essays, same boat as well. So I think it’s just a problem of the medium.
Let’s put it this way. One of the first things that I did to educate people was write FAQs, right? Like that used to exist on GameFAQs.com and stuff like that. Might be before your time.
It was. Came up with Krakatoa, same deal.
And my FAQs were very popular and very famous for being like 200 pages. My CvS 2 guide is literally in Word at 10 point font, over 200 pages long. Back in the day, that was considered strength. That was considered like, “Oh, God, this is the Bible, all my information here. This is great.” So the more you stuffed into it, the better it was. And that’s how I’ve always operated. And now in the YouTube age, it’s like the exact opposite. And it’s so hard for me to shake that now.
I want to transition because I thought it would be an interesting question to ask. We see gradual shifts in the way fighting games are played and designed. There’s a whole discussion about fighting games going easier, oh, we don’t have half circle motions anymore in Guilty Gear we have quarter circle. Project L is rumored to be one button specials and all that stuff. But I want to talk slightly more meta. Are we seeing archetype shifts as well? Has the traditional zoner changed from the Street Fighter 2 days to the Street Fighter V and soon to be Street Fighter 6 days? Has the Axl matchup changed from +R to Strive?
I mean, yes, a lot. A lot. Honestly, Zoners used to be way more annoying than they are in most fighting games these days. And again, they never dominated a lot of the games that they were in, so it’s not like they were broken. It’s just that there is this mindset. Unfortunately, one of the difficult things about fighting games is when Street Fighter 2 was out, and this is the big advantage of the earlier games having these kinds of archetypes, there wasn’t really much competition. And I’m not even talking about fighting games, I’m just talking about video games or things to do, hobbies, right? That’s the thing.
So in Street Fighter 2, Guile was the best character in the original World Warrior. And he’s a zoner of epic proportions. Like, you want to talk zoning back in the day? Guile in Street Fighter 2 World Warrior was one of the most difficult zoners to crack, period. Such a pain to fight them. But that’s the thing, that was the only fighting game. So if you want to play, that’s what you learn to do, you learn to fight it. And these days, it’s just like, I fight against the good zoning guys, and you’re like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m gonna go play another video game. I’m gonna go play another fighting game. There’s a lot more that I’m gonna go do. I’m gonna go read a book, I’m gonna go outside and hike. There’s so many things for people to do these days that isn’t playing the game.
And so, it’s hard for the devs because they could make these great zoner characters. Look at the NRS games, for example, Injustice 1, Mortal Kombat 10, Injustice 2, they were known for having some of the most brutal zoners in all of fighting games. NRS was not bashful about making zoners, especially in the Injustice series. And then you go to MK 11 and all the zoners disappear. There’s only one real true zoner left in Cetrion. Everybody hates Cetrion and everyone considers her the best character in the game. I mean, she’s really good, but people also hate fighting her and all this stuff.
And so yeah, you have really seen a disappearance in zoning. I mean, Dhalsim is another one of those classic zoning characters and in Street Fighter V he probably has the best rush down in the game. Dhalsim has just ridiculous offense, you know? And it’s like, wait, what?
I’ve seen so much Dhalsim hate from Brutus’s Twitter timeline.
Yeah, as Zangief players, yes. Yes.
I feel like he’s got a right to have a chip on his shoulder. But it’s funny to see.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m a Zangief player too at heart and so trust me, I’ve been dealing with Dhalsim my whole life. When they put Necro in Street Fighter III I was so angry. But yeah, even if you look at Guilty Gear, Axl, probably the only true true zoner in Guilty Gear Strive right now. There’s other characters with zoner qualities but most characters kind of rush you down and blow you up. Most of them profit from getting you in the corner and blowing you up. So again, Guilty Gear, another game that was known for having some brutal Zoners in the game, doesn’t seem to be there that much anymore.
And in fact, on the opposite end of the zoner list is grapplers. There is a lot of grappler hate out there. And so yeah, you don’t see the grapplers playing in the particularly same archetype as much either. Which is why, to be honest with you, I love DNF Duel so much because they definitely threw in some crazy zoners, although they’re not that strong. But there’s a lot of good variety of archetypes in that game.
Well, when you throw everything to 11, I guess even the zoners get to have their fun too. I remember having a lot of fun with shenanigans with Grappler. Just take a few shots of tequila, just go “I’m going to armor through this one too.” I actually did have an interesting question though. Because at least back to FPS’s there’s almost like a circular wave of meta works, where you’ll have a rise of like a super tactical team. In Counter Strike the big example is 2018 Astralis. They’re like, “We have contingency for everything, no matter what situation.” And then when they fell off, the immediate follow up team was Team Liquid, who’s the American, “We’re just gonna run and gun. And you know what, I’m feeling the vibes so I’m gonna buy a Deag this round, and I’m just gonna swing that dude, I’m gonna headshot him and I’m gonna keep going. We use our utility horribly, but we just out-skill you.” There’s this kind of cycle. And we’re kind of going back to the utility cycle, at least in CSGO. Is there that kind of cycle in fighting games, or is it different because of character archetypes, and all that stuff?
Yeah, the character variety usually drives it more than anything. Like I said, for the most part Street Fighter V, when the game first came out people were trying to play it like Street Fighter IV. And collectively it worked because everyone was doing it. But as the game got more and more figured out, people really started discovering the throw/strike/shimmy meta of the game, the core strategy of the game. But once that got established, it kind of stayed that way for a while. Now, they’ve done a lot to improve the game in terms of having more neutral and stuff, but your goal is to put the opponent into that kind of mix up situation, right? How you get there via neutral depends on the character, but the characters do drive the meta a lot more.
And in fact, what you see a lot in fighting games is the cycles and the trends tend to be which characters are the most popular. So like, during the middle of Street Fighter V, Karin and Cammy kept alternating between who was better and you would see a lot of these players just shift between them, whichever was stronger. And now currently, Luke is like the easiest character to be very strong at. So you see a ton of Luke players out there now, right?
So, again, the meta for fighting games tends to follow characters a little more so than it does, changes. Because that’s the thing, people have gotten so good at fighting games, and there’s just so much information, training modes, things that we didn’t have back in the arcade days and such, that people can figure a lot about fighting games really, really quickly. And because all the characters are so vastly different, we figure out what the general strategy for the game is and then through the characters you get the refinement. And so that’s where a lot of the cycle comes from in fighting games.
That raises a question. If it’s more character defined of like, who is the easiest character to be good at, does that take away from, at least from an outside perspective, the old FGC where you just deal with a sucky matchup or whatever, and you eventually lab your way to a solution? Thinking back to that BBCF Noel tech that’s a month or three old? The game’s been out for however many years, but they finally found this tech and it helps bring Noel from a low tier to a mid tier. But then in modern games, it’s more patch based. Do you think we’ve lost a little bit of that adventurous spirit to find the solution just because oh, well, next patch we’ll get it?
Yes and no. So there are a lot of low tier heroes out there that just will not leave the characters. And a lot of that is loyalty that I mean, I used to pick low tier because I just wanted to prove that I can beat you with the worst character in the game. Right? And yeah, that was fun. And then you always have the option select if you lose, “well my character sucks!” So there’s always that thing.
For games like Street Fighter V, there are characters who are not considered the best, but you will just have these people try to keep playing them. The other thing too is that patches are so erratic, that a lot of the time you can’t sit down and just trust the devs to fix it. Like the Alex and the Ryu players had been hoping for Ryu and Alex patches for the entire lifecycle of Street Fighter V. And although you would get little buffs it was never enough to really make a difference until finally, the very last patch six years later.
So there are a lot of players out there who will keep playing low tier. I mean, I play Lucia. I don’t think she’s that strong. She’s good, don’t get me wrong, no one’s bad in Street Fighter V except Zangief. And I would always hope for cool new buffs during the patch, but I would never rely on it. You know what I mea?n I’m not here like, okay, next patch I’m good. It was just a, next patch they’ll probably give me more tools that I didn’t really ask for kind of situation.
But the other thing too is, back in the day a lot of the low tier heroes, especially in games like Third Strike and MvC 2 and Super Turbo, these games like that you get players who are amazing with low tier characters. I love playing Cammy in Super Turbo and she’s de facto the worst character in that game. But I can win some difficult matches because I’ve taken the time. The thing about it is I wouldn’t say the patch culture has changed it as much as the esports culture has changed it, okay?
For example, Street Fighter V Season 1, Xian, who was one of the best players from Singapore, really loved Fang. Fang sucked in Season 1. And this is the thing is like, you’re playing in these tournaments and there’s a lot of money on the line. And there’s also the seeding points to get into Capcom Cup and the grand prize of Capcom Cup was like, $250,000. Which for fighting game players is stupid amounts of money. We don’t make that kind of money in fighting games. Literally life changing money. And so there’s no impetus for someone like Xian to try to make it work with that character. He is an Evo champion, he’s clearly good enough to be in the upper echelon of all fighting games. There’s just so little motivation and reason for him to stick out with a bad character like that.
So I would say the esports culture has changed it more than anything, because even in ST these days, they’re one of the US players, a guy named Silentscope88, he’s taken up the mantle of Cammy in Super Turbo just because there’s not a lot of money on the line here. It’s like I’m gonna play this crappy character because it’s about fun and I like the character. But even if we went back to Super Turbo, like people are used to in Third Strike. I mean there are some god awful characters in Third Strike but people will play them. Soon as you start throwing $100,000 on the line? Oh boy, you would definitely expect to see people stop playing those characters and to have people start complaining about how bad their characters are a lot more.
That does raise the question though, that’s for the low tier. What about that high tier? Happy Chaos is the easy example there, where it’s like, is there even a way to lab that out? Or is there just you gotta suffer until a patch hopefully smites them down from the heavens?
I mean, it depends on the game. Right now, the most egregious example of this is Krohnen in King of Fighters 15. Like this character is, if he’s not on your team you’re wrong. Especially in a team game, right? So in a game like Guilty Gear, Happy Chaos is admittedly very difficult to use. But also, if you really, really, really like Potemkin, you’re just gonna play Potemkin. Godspeed to you because Potemkin is awful right now. But in King of Fighters, if you really, really, really love oh, let’s just say Ryo or Robert. It’s a team game so you put Krohnen on the team anyway.
So you just have a room?
And so yeah, I mean, a lot of the time, you kind of do just have to hope or you just learn to fight them and just learn to deal with it. Right? The fortunate thing about Happy Chaos is there’s not a ton of them, although I think the Happy Chaos army is growing. Because, like I said, Happy Chaos is not an easy character to use, but once used correctly, just absolutely… You know, the new patch came out, I’m not sure exactly how strong Happy Chaos is right now.
But honestly, with characters like Krohnen, yeah, you either just learn to just fight him and be okay with it or if you can’t beat him, join him. Or just wait, hopefully for the patch lords to come down from the heavens and smite him kind of thing. And so yeah,, they just released the new patch notes for KOF 15. I don’t think Krohnen was deleted, but I think he was weakened. We’ll see how it pans out when it comes out in four days.
To close out, I wanted to talk about the FGC in a post COVID world. Because for CSGO, and a lot of the big esports, that completely changed the landscape. The FGC, a lot more grassroots, a lot less corporate in a lot of ways, for better and for worse. Obviously more grassroots, and a lot more community driven. How does the FGC look in a post COVID world?
The most important thing that COVID really did, the silver lining of COVID really is the proliferation of rollback netcode. Because you look at what happened with the fighting games during the pandemic, Granblue Fantasy Versus had just been released before the pandemic. Everybody was talking about how this was gonna be one of the next big things because it’s got a big company behind it with a lot of money. It was simple, so people could learn it, but complex at the same time, it was beautiful, et cetera, et cetera. Then the pandemic hit. Granblue Fantasy Versus has delay based netcode and basically Granblue Fantasy Versus kind of fizzled. It fizzled, right? I mean, obviously there’s a great community out there that still plays it but man…
It got kneecapped.
Yes, it definitely got kneecapped the most out of every fighting game. You could talk about some other games like SoulCalibur 6, but people were already complaining about the netcode long before the pandemic. And what happened was that Dragonball FighterZ didn’t have the rollback netcode. Then Strive came out and it was just like, oh, this is very important. And in fact Strive in the first beta was delay based netcode. They [Arc System Works] only switched to rollback because of how much everybody said it was one of the most important things in all the public surveys that they took out events and stuff like that. So they actually went and retrofitted the game with the rollback netcode and it came out, and it’s the best selling Guilty Gear and everybody was talking about it.
It got KOF to pivot, they’ve actually admitted that they were delay based netcode at first, and they had to change the rollback. Now Arcsys is just like Oprah with rollback, right? I mean, they’re bringing it to Dragonball FighterZ, they’re bringing it to Xrd. They’ve already brought it back to all their old games. Samurai Shodown, SNK is now trying to put rollback in Samurai Shodown.
So the pandemic, the biggest benefit is that it really has changed the culture of the FGC. I often make this comparison, when we went from arcade to console there was a lot of like, “Oh, you console players don’t know what it’s really like, you aren’t real players. If you can’t win in the arcade it doesn’t count.” And there was a long time that that was offline versus online, right? Like, “Oh, if you’re playing in this laggy environment, whatever. You suck.”
The old “you’re an onliner” deal. That’s eternal across every game.
And now, because of a lot of the recent discoveries of PC fighting games having better refresh rates, and overclocking your controllers, and doing all these things to improve. Now, actually, there’s people who could be losing in an offline match and be like, “Man, see me online when I can actually play in an optimal environment.” And honestly, that’s what rollback has brought for us is that we have that ability. I’ve talked about this a lot with a lot of other people, but if you look at Strive for example, Guilty Gear Strive is the best example of this. Japan has always been dominant in almost every fighting game because they have the culture. You just go in the arcades, and you play and you have the best players, and sure they’re across the country. There’s East versus West Japan and stuff.
It’s a small country.
I live in California. California is as big as Japan. Almost. Is it? [Googled: it is] I gotta look up the area difference now. But I mean, I remember a long time ago on the newsgroup days, someone was like, “Man Valle and John Choi are so lucky because they both live in California and they get to play each other all the time.” I’m like, “dude,it takes 6 hours to drive.”
But if you look at Strive now, because of rollback netcode the best players out there are playing each other all the time. And what you’re seeing now is that the US is actually one of the if not the strongest in Strive, right now. With players like Umisho, blowing everybody up with Happy Chaos and stuff. And that’s one of the things that the pandemic has brought for us is the proliferation of rollback netcode and the culture of online fighting games. Discord, fighting games, and labbing with friends and stuff like that.
It’s kind of like the arcade culture, because you would go to the arcade and play your friends all the time. But now your friends can be anywhere in the country. And it’s such a powerful, powerful tool that, if anybody out there at this point in time is like, “Oh, these guys are online fighting game players, wait til they-” No.They’re just wrong. They’re just wrong, because we have way too much evidence right now that the people who are good at online are the same people winning offline because the online is so much better.
And honestly, online before rollback has always been for fighting games, just like a [pffff] kind of thing. We would never take it seriously because we’re peer to peer, right? That’s the thing, like with CSGO and all that stuff you’re always talking to the server. So if your connection is good, you had a good time. If someone in there had a bad connection, they suffered.
In fighting games both of you suffer for one person’s bad connection. And I think, also just the fact somebody like EndingWalker, which we didn’t get to get to talk to too much, but like their success. They were seen, at least from my understanding, as an onliner until they won like what, their first, second event they ever played in person? And it’s like, that’s Street Fighter. That’s not even the good rollback if you want to go that far. So at what point you have to say, you know what maybe the onliners are just good at the game?
I mean, Umisho was the other example of that. Umisho was only online, Combo Breaker was her first event. She got second place in that event beating a bunch of good players. And then she won EVO, which was the largest Guilty Gear Strive tournament ever. Now granted, there weren’t as many foreign players at either of those events. But still, she was beating veterans and all the other newcomers alike. So Umisho and EndingWalker are the two premier examples of these online players coming in and showing their stuff.
And to be fair, that player existed before. If you look in the past, even with Xrd with bad delay based netcode, LostSoul was exactly that kind of player. Eventually got third place at Evo, like highest ranking American player in Xrd ever at Evo. But that was even when online was bad. So the inkling was there, that showed you that a lot of online play can make you a strong player. Even Punk is a good example of that. When he first showed up in Street Fighter V, he was just the online warrior in IV and V and then he just burst onto the scene.
Online definitely got a lot of bad rap and discredited a lot because it was very easy to discredit. Because the experience was extremely not optimal at all. But the amount of knowledge and experience you gain from playing online is unparalleled. You cannot get that kind of experience in any other environment, even if you have an awesome local arcade. Because you can still only play the people local to you, but now it’s just like, I want to learn how to fight this character. Let me go talk to the best Axl player who lives in California, and we’ll play anyway even though I’m East Coast.
Yeah. Okay, this has been a great talk, but I don’t want to keep you too long because we’re running on…Oh, my God, 40 minutes!
Yeah, I mean, these kinds of things. Like I said, I could talk about this shit forever. And you can tell I love talking about it. Because again, fighting games are my passion. And as a historian, I like to talk about this kind of stuff. So no worries.
Well, maybe we’ll get a part two or something. Who knows? But just to close out for this one. Is there anything you’d like to close out with? Any messages to anyone?
Usually, when people ask me this, in terms of fighting games, and it’s tough because I often say if you want to learn fighting games, they’re really really really hard to learn. And one of the conversations that I always get into with players from other esports is that, “whatever man, you’ve never played FPS’s or MOBAs. They’re just as hard and dadada.” And I’m like, yes, you’re right. To get to the point where you are one of the best in anything is going to take as much dedication.
But fighting games are a solo effort. And there’s such little information out there to help you become very good. The online modes, you just sit there and look at your rank go up and down, mostly down probably, and you’re just like, “ugh, why am I even? I could be doing something else man. Like I could be enjoying myself.” Fighting games are a very very tough genre to get into. Very hard road for yourself. They force you to look deep within yourself and a lot of times, because again, one of the greatest things about fighting games and for a lot of games as well. But if you’re using Poison and you can’t get out of like, gold rank for example, iDom’s not using a different Poison than you are, you know? iDom is using the exact same Poison you are and he’s winning every tournament he’s in and getting second place at Evo. So literally the fault is with you.
There’s no crosshair or sensitivity to change this time.
Yeah, there’s no leveling, no better gear.
Yeah, there’s no escape. The mirror’s right next to you.
Yeah, but the main thing, the reason why I point this out, because a lot of people are like, “Stop it James, stop scaring people from playing fighting games dadadada.” But the reason why I mention this all the time is because once you get to that point though, once you start figuring it out, and the game starts making sense to you, you will not find a better sense of reward than fighting games. I mean, honestly, once it starts clicking, and that first match you play where you’re like, “Oh my God, for some reason, I know everything my opponent’s going to do. This is sick.” There are so many lightbulb moments in fighting games and as you go, you’re like, “I figured out fighting games!” and then a month later you’re like, “Holy crap, I was wrong. Now I figured out fighting games.” and then you just keep doing that. It is absolutely one of the most rewarding experiences that you will ever have. So it may seem discouraging at first but if it is something that you want to try to get good at, I definitely encourage you to stick through it and hit me up. I’m definitely down to help teach people. There’s a lot of people, BrianF, Sajam, Zaferino, there’s a lot of good teachers out there. So don’t give up.