I would describe a fighting game player’s ability tends to fall in three major categories. Um, one is execution, right? That’s your physical ability to create the outcome you’re looking for every single time, um, and within there, we have uh, I guess, the kind of, the-the-the static form of execution, which is your ability to reproduce combos or setups. Um, we-in the community, we kind of refer to that as set play. The idea is that, if you navigate, it-it, and this-this changes depending on the game you’re playing, but um, some of it is your ability to kind of memorize these strings of setups well in advance, and then reproduce them flawlessly on a stage with, you know, thousands of people watching, right? Um, the second aspect to execution is what we call the neutral game, and that’s your ability to uh, to land that first hit, right? You’re jockeying for position - it’s kind of like jousting, or it’s like being around the jab range for boxing, right, where um, you’re-you’re trying to land that first hit that then lets you uh, start your momentum and start kind of unleashing all your bag of tricks, right? Um, so execution absolutely is a vital part of every game, but they’re not, it’s not the only part, like you mentioned. There’s stra-strategic aspects as well. Um, so the second category that I would-I would kind of categorize a fighting game player’s ability is uh, the research, right? How much homework do they do? Um, because each game provides us with a-a unique set of problems, right? You have, each character is different, and um, even from game to game, like Ryu in Street Fighter changes in every single iteration of Street Fighter. Um, so the-the game gives you a set of problems, and tests your ability to solve them, right? And this is the part that I would describe as, it’s-it’s like game design, but in reverse, right? Where a game designer’s trying to make a rich competitive play space, as a competitor, I want to make my-my opponent’s experience as miserable as possible, right? I want him to feel like the game he’s playing is super-unbalanced. It’s-we call it broken, right? Um, I want him to feel like, everything I’m bringing out that I’m hitting him with, he has no idea that the game would’ve allowed for this kind of, like, ridiculous one-sided, you know, butt kicking. Um, and that is fundamentally about your ability to break down the game into a series of systems. Um, it’s about figuring out the intricacies of the engine itself, and figuring out where, like the programmers themselves might have missed something, right? Um, I’d say the-the famous example is uh, in Street Fighter Alpha 2, for the U.S. um, championships, there’s a player named Alex Valle, he’s very well-known now, um, he was-he was a staple of the Southern California Street Fighter scene back in the day, um, and he had a technique that he saved until the finals, um, when he was going up against the Northern Californian champion, John Choi. Um, it was a technique which basically, if you didn’t realize exactly how it worked, um, he’d be able to hit you with an unblockable combo that-for about 70 percent of-of your health bar, and you wouldn’t be able to do a dang thing about it. Um, so he brought it-he brought it out, and he successfully hit John with it. Um, but what was amazing was, John adapted. On the fly, right? So this was uh, one man’s ability to break the game engine, right, to create an outcome which the-the developers had never anticipated or designed for. Um, he saved it all the way till the finals of our national championships, um, and then his opponent actually understood what happened when it happened to him, and was able to adapt his strategy on-on the fly, right? And that gets into the third aspect of-of the games, of the fighting game player’s ability, and that’s your ability to read your opponent, right? Um, ultimately, like, the-the character you pick, and your execution, your combos, in a fighting game are like the cards you are dealt in poker, right? They are the tools, but the cards will not win you the game, right? Because you’re not playing against the cards, you’re playing against another player. And so it’s your ability to expose someone’s blind spots, right? Your ability to sense patterns in their behavior before they can, um, and your ability to-to disrupt those patterns at just the right moment, right? And that’s what John is incredibly good at. Like, he’s-he has never been the most mechanical player - this is-is John Choi, that’s the NorCal champion here - um, he has never been a-a fantastic executer in the sense that other people are, and he doesn’t really research the games in the depth that he used to, but he’s, his ability to read a player is immaculate.
