Did your friend take up fighting games on his own or at your insistence? Because if it was the latter, you’re probably doing more harm than good telling him to stick in it. He sounds like he’s just slumping, and that happens to everybody, but don’t guilt-trip him into staying in it when what he really needs is a break. He’ll only have less fun getting beat if he thinks he’s doing it out of some sense of obligation. Let him take a break for however long he wants (yes, that includes indefinitely) and see if he cools off a bit. If he comes back, he’ll come back because his enjoyment of the game outweighs his frustration at losing, rather than because he doesn’t want his friend thinking he’s a bitch. He has to want it, not you, and if he really doesn’t want it, then you’ve got no right to push it on him. That only makes things worse.
And yeah, I kinda agree with Jagger. Online is really one of the fastest ways to get sick of ANY game that you want to play seriously. On top of the lag issues, you don’t feel any connection to the people on the other end, you’re just gloryholing with some other bored fuck who you’ll likely never play again. There’s not an ounce of respect involved on either end, winner or loser, unless you know the guy personally. The winner will laugh at the anonymous loser’s incompetence, and the loser will hate the SHIT out of the smug anonymous fuck who beat him, as well as being pissed at himself for LOSING to said nameless fuck and his nameless fuck gimmicks.
For these games in particular, it is MUCH more rewarding to seek out people in your area for ranbats, practice sessions, small tourneys and the like, because you can always chill with the people who beat you (or who YOU beat) afterwards. It cultivates respect in both directions, and it softens the blow of losing. It’s a very helpful reminder of the importance of the human element in these games, and it really helps you to remember that there are more important things in life than winning at a videogame. You also level up MUCH faster by playing with other people, because the game feels less like a chore and more like, well, a game. As long as you’ve at least practiced your punishment and BnBs so that you can do those on autopilot off a clean look, you have a lot more time to concentrate on learning footsies and spacing and the like, which are much harder and more frustrating to duplicate in practice mode or learn online. Me, I still lose every other match I play, but I have a lot of fun doing it AND I am actually improving at a fairly good pace. Suggest this to him, but again, you cannot force him, or you know for DAMN sure he’ll never want to play again.
See, here we have part of the problem. How bad does this guy actually want to play these games? Is he even that interested to begin with, or was he kinda dragged into it? Using language like “you’ve gotta (verb) him” really doesn’t help my impression of what’s really the problem here, which is that a guy who doesn’t really want it feels pressured into grinding. And what it all really comes down to is that there should be no shame or video-game deficiency associated with not really wanting to play fighting games.
These games are not for everyone, but that’s not really a sign of weakness so much as it is personal preference and natural talent. Me, I’d be lost in a game like Starcraft because so much of it is resource management and thinking ten moves ahead (versus SF’s three), and I’m sure I could easily find somebody who’s aces at Starcraft but is garbage in SF because of the different dexterity requirements that I have (more or less) met. I’m not really a worse person for sucking at his game, and neither is he for sucking at mine. If your boy isn’t feeling SF, don’t put on airs like you have to save him from certain scrubdom. There are far worse character deficiencies a man can have than sucking at Street Fighter. Let him retire with dignity if that’s what he really wants; there is NOTHING stopping him from changing his mind and coming back later.