in terms of a core narrative that kind of ties, um, you know, one fighting game to another to another, the story’s not a critical element. Really, the story is there for the characters, right? When I play Ryu, I’m not just s-saying I like his dragon punch, I like his fireball, I-you know, I want to play as the avatar of a karate guy. What I’m saying is, the character of like, the wandering warrior who’s just only focused on his own self-improvement, that appeals to me. That says something about who I am, that I’m choosing this character over another, right? Um, that isn’t to say that all characters have that kind of baggage, but it’s another way that, that a character can call to you, right? Um, and-and I think the longer you stick around in fighting games as a competitor or as an active player, um, the less appeal-the less the appeal of any given character is. Oh, he lets you do this, that and this other thing. It’s not always just how he plays - it’s also, what does the character say about me as a person? I was, a-a while ago I was joking around with some of my friends on Twitter where I would-I would be making reads on your personality, basically be kind of like telling your fortune, based on who you told me you played in fighting games, right? So, um, and-and it-it’d be a-a-a collection, right? You hand me, say oh, I play this-this guy in this game, this guy in this game, this team in this game, um, and I would start to extrapolate from that, like, how I think you solve problems, the kind of person I think you are, what I think you like having fun doing, right? Um, because people choose fighting game characters for all kinds of reasons, and eventually, when you-when you start looking at the characters people choose in multiple games, you can start to draw a pattern, right? Some people are drawn to the aesthetics - they like the really flashy people, or the people with really unique styles, like visual styles, to them. And then everything comes after that. It’s that becomes the hook that then persuades them, okay, I want to master this character, right? There are others who just, like, you see them and they choose unambiguously the best kind of, what we’d call top tier characters, right? Those are the characters that reward you most competitively for the time that you put in, right? So, if I put in ten hours of this characters versus ten hours of another character, character A is going to be on balance more competitively successful. If I see you picking those over and over and over, then I think oh, you’re a very competitive person, right? Um, but the nature of the character themselves is also part, you know, as described in the story, the plot, the- you know, all-all that stuff, is part of a character’s identity, right? So I play Ryu because the wandering warrior thing appeals to me. I didn’t always play Ryu. It wasn’t until I stopped, I stopped focusing on my competitive success, and started focusing on the path to-to like, actual mastery, right, that I-I-I’d-I decided that playing Ryu was a good fit for me.
