Language of the game.

In the past few months I've had a friend grow an interest in fighting games, and somehow not by the volition of me. If this happened maybe a few years earlier I'd be more than ecstatic to help them ease in the genre, and while I still do have that excitement to help someone get into fighting games, that excitement in my head is more like, a caution; because me being experienced in fighting games gives me an air of ignorance that feels impossible to shake off. There's a million things I already know that i can't unlearn; and It's hard to put myself in the shoes of a beginner.

The concept of Fighting games being a language is something I constantly think about, especially in the hiatus' I take from the genre. A language thats weird, verbose, and maybe unintuitive; yet awesome in the way it connects you to all types of people as long as they play the games too. I feel like even if you get it a little, you get it alot. But maybe the intial barrier to understanding these games is hard, I think? Maybe the language is easy to understand, but its hard to apply that language to the game itself. Or maybe something can understand the game inside and out, but communicating it to others is a struggle; which is moreso my case.

Does someone need to understand fighting games? Course not, and I don't mean to imply to shame anybody who just might not care with what I said, or that what I'm doing is unsolicited. But connection is important, and it's a testament to the genre that even with a relatively low playerbase, it can still feel so lively no matter how you play.

My friend initially started out with Blazblue: Central Fiction and Under Night In-birth 2, the former I'm very acquainted with, and the latter, I never sank too much time into. They had fun, but got frustrated at not being able to understand the combo structure on their own, which is completely natural, anime fighting games can be executionally demanding (no matter how hard they try to simplify it.) They didn't have the greatest motivation to keep moving on in either game.

However, they did end up wanting to try Street Fighter 3: 3rd strike, and immediately took a liking to it. Touting that it's alot easier to pick up and play (agree), and the mental stack being a lot lower. They understand the neutral of that game alot faster than with the previous 2 games, and enjoyed how you didn't need to do combos... Which isn't really true, but I understand when you pick up an SF game, you can press buttons and just have it "work."

Execution is something I'm always prepared to talk about, because to me, these are the sole immediate hurdle whenever a friend plays for the first time. Buttons are buttons, but a hadouken input might not be the most intuitive when you see it the first time. In some games, combo structure can also be a huge hurdle, and seeing the notation for one in an anime fighter may be no different to seeing moonrunes.

I always found it interesting the contrast in what my friends think of anime fighting games compared to more grounded games like Street Fighter. It's always hard for me to gauge whether one game is harder than the other, to me it's more like apples and oranges even if fundamentals from either games can transfer over.

Alot of what I talked about with my friend post match or during our conversations about fighting games to be interesting, the more perspective, the better, As someone who's been playing for years versus someone who only picked it up and the last few months.

To me, I think my friend "gets it" which makes me happy.

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