I think is the most accurate is, um, it was, there was largely people of color playing fighting games, um, at least to-to a-to a, uh, a degree that we don’t normally see, um, in kind of other video game communities. I think it’s because people of color made the fighting game community, right? Uh, the Cannon Brothers, the two, the twins, actually, that uh, organized some of the first major tournaments in California, and then the United States, right - um, they uh, founded shuriken.com, which is the-the, you know, one, kind of, one of the fighting game community nexuses. It was-it was, for a long time it was kind of the center of the fighting game community. Um, and they-they launched Evo, and the tournament series started is like the B series, which then turned into Evolution, right, which is the - basically, the world championships for fighting games. They’re both black, and so, I think that it says something when major kind of community institutions in your, you know, in this particular subset of gaming, um, are kind of owned, operated and run by people of color, that it make, that- you know, the-the-the barriers to entry that you might see elsewhere in the industry aren’t necessarily there, right? Um, so - yeah, like in-in my mind, really what it was was, uh, people of color kind of came together to architect a lot of the institutions that the fighting game community now rely on, right? And, this is happening in a space where, you know, Capcom, the other developers and publishers kind of didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to for a long time. Um, Capcom is very recent in its kind of, you know, in its dedicated support for the, it-for the Street Fighter community, for example. Um, in the early years of Evolution there would be like, you know, maybe they’ll bring a-a-a new build of a game to try out, or maybe they’ll-they’ll kind of like, they’ll just let it happen, right? They won’t interfere. But, uh, for a long time, it-the fighting game community was just us trying to put together a competitive scene, trying to learn how to set up streams, and I mean, before we could do live video streaming, we had DVDs of tournament footage that Evo would publish every year and sell for like 30 or 40 bucks or something, right? Um, we really did build this, um, and so I think that re-, like, that just made it much easier to create an inclusive atmosphere and an inclusive community in that respect, right? Um, and personally, I love it. Like, I love that um, you know, you kind of, you alluded to class, and ethnicity is the kind of, the defining markers of the fighting game community’s diversity. I like, there is - it’s-it’s really nice that if I walk into a fighting game community event dressed like this, people will look at me funny, right, because I am way overdressed to go to a tournament.
