Hey SRK. I’m a student of Game Design, currently doing a Creative Research module at University, and I took the topic of combat in video games. If you have a derogatory comment about game design degrees, take it to your Twitter. Don’t shit up the thread.
I’ve come here to ask you all about self-expression through combat in fighting games. In all the video games I play, I always desire some freedom in the combat, room for experimentation and no glass ceiling. Its a form of self-expression to me. All of us here, we all play fighting games for various reasons, but I’d like to hear from anyone who loves to play for reasons of self-expression.
One avenue of research I’ve been going down is combo videos. They’re a popular source of sharing knowledge and showing what you can do, but I’ve been wondering if people create them for the purpose of expression. The answer in my head is “Of course they do!”, but I’d love to hear the perspectives of people who think like this. Reasons for everything, from the music, to the characters they pick, to the stages, dummies, editing, format, length, etc.
So do you see fighting games as a source of self-expression? Do you pick your character for this reason? Do you make combo videos for this purpose? Do you play to push out aspects of your mind and personality you can’t express otherwise? I’d love to hear from you below.
I think you hit the nail on the head with combo videos as self-expression. I think it’s probably a good idea to hit up some famous combo video makers out there on twitter or on their youtube or whatever, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Combovideo making is certainly a form of self-expression and very much a creative process. I’ve done some combos for combo video collaborations:
Too me doing combo videos is very much a mental challenge. I like really digging into the system of a fighting game and exploiting certain bugs to create novel results that haven’t been seen before (as, for example, the KOF2002 Combo of Yamazaki vs Joe, which has a mid-combo guard crush, something which has never been seen before that video AFAIK).
Personally I’m not very interested in more artistic sides in the stricter sense. There’s people who care a lot about the composition of combos, the colours of the characters and how they match with the stage, and which music belong to it. I don’t really care about it but Maj certainly does, as does Desk.
I’ve always felt one of the most attractive notions in fighting games is selecting your character. fighting game casts generally have a lot more choices than beat em ups or action games. its a very simple way to express yourself in how you play.
as far as combo vids go, I think there tends to be more room for expressing yourself as a competitor than as a combo video maker, but sure why not? I think its cool that there are people out there who are more interested in the nuances of game systems than mind games. its a nice symbiotic relationship. combo video makers help competitors learn more about the game, and combo vid guys need people to watch their videos.
I agree that being a competitor is just as much ‘expressing yourself’, but in a way I feel it’s probably less conscious.
The way I play, is simply the way I play. And sure the way someone plays says a lot about their personality, but there’s very few people who will change the way they play as a form of self-expression and experiment or something.
Maybe that isn’t necessary a quality of self-expression. But then you could argue that just waking up and going to work is a form of self-expression. shrugs I don’t actually have an informed opinion on this, but maybe it helps the OP regardless.
I play competitive video games in order to beat people up and look cool why doing so.
On the question if it’s a kind of self-expression, I’d say definitely yes. I’d go so far to call games, both physical and mental, a form of art.
Just compare games to art:
Every player or artist has his own style of doing things. There’s not two painters who paint their pictures the same way and there’s not two players who play the same game in the same way.
Sure on a beginner and intermediate level most people just copy and paste the works of known known artists and players in order to get a solid framework for their craft, but as soon as those people get to the higher levels they start to develop their very own distinctive styles that are unique to themselves only, just compare Daigo’s Ryu to Valle’s or Dali’s paintings to those of Max Ernst.
Both spend a big deal of time trying to perfect what they are doing doing chores over and over again, both enjoy it to show their hard work in a presentable fashion (some people keep their shit to themselves though).
And both try to explore and try to break the boundaries of their medium in order to get the best possible results.
When it comes down to it both reflect and manifest their personalities into their art and hopefully become the best they can be in the process.
There’s also this thin line between craftsmanship and art that is very hard to define.
I consider a craftsman someone who learns something to a certain degree with the intention of earning money with it and an artist someone who does something out of a passion that causes unrest inside of him and through doing what he does, he temporarily finds peace.
Both are not mutually exclusive, but I’d consider people like DSP (lol), TotalBiscuit, Maximillian etc. to be more on the craftsman side, while people like Daigo, Valle, Sakonoko etc. are more on the artist side in my opinion.
That’s just a distinction I make for myself and it might be bullshit.
There’s also another category of players and people who do other stuff who just want to waste their time doing the same shit over and over again and bore themselves to death over mmorpgs, League of Lesbians and shit, which I call the media junkies.
Those people just need repetitive gameplay and patchnotes to yell about, to keep their minds off their shitty jobs.
I don’t recall if it was Ultradavid saying so directly or if he was quoting someone else (may have been Killian now that I think about it), but he once said something along the lines of, "fighting games are like a debate. I’m out to prove these moves are best, while you assert that those moves are best, and any interaction between players is point counterpoint in the debate."
Heavily paraphrased, but playstyle is definitely a form of self expression. There’s a reason I chose the moves I do in a match, consciously or otherwise, and those reasons are going to be totally different from the reasons you might chose the moves you do in a match.
Yeah it was definitely Seth Killian. I think he mentioned that point in the recent article on SRK where they looked back at his Dom101 articles, maybe also somewhere else, but I don’t know.
Thanks for the posts, guys. Been a little busy with IRL stuff, but I’ll go over what has been said and give it all a think. More posts are welcome though!
And on the subject of play styles as self-expression, there are definitely some concious players, like Aquasilk. His whole game revolves around humiliation, and I love it!
Playing Marvel Viper is 90% expression for me. Almost any hit can lead into a sprawling web of combo possibilities and it gives me a creative joy to have those options on the fly.
My entire reason for fighting games pretty much involves self-discipline, probably one of the more profound forms of self-expression in my opinion, akin to the purpose of martial arts. I’ve never been able to fully duplicate my moves from any given fight, my IQ and OCD pretty much prevents that. I want to go in a completely different person from the last round, able to do something better than I was able to the last time. Fighting games can be a great learning experience for those who are inquisitive and love to observe. There is nothing wrong with using moves you want to use, so long as you realize why they will or won’t work in what situations. How you strive to create your own fighting style depends on your sense perseverance and willingness to make yourself malleable or impenetrable, perhaps even both.
So perhaps I’m just an extremely strange person because I’ve never considered going into a fight anything but conscious, as conscious as possible in fact, so that I can understand myself and correct mistakes in battle, find a new possibility with each and every turn. There are many users here who play a game because there are loads of people playing it. I spend several hours trying to master moves on KOF XIII for PSN, a game that’s supposedly abandoned. And when my 1 of 5 or so KOF friends get on and I get an invite we play our hearts out. Certainly there must be a means of self-expression in that. No form of battle is anything but that, in fact. I would even go as far as saying that you could not perform properly in a fight without some means of expression to reflect how you’ve learned to fight in the first place.
I suppose that means I see the training scene as the biggest form of self-expression, rather than actual play. I personally like to see battles as training too, you can gather far more from a real experience than training on your own, after all. But not everyone learns the same way, so it’s to each his or her own.
When Victor Wooten speaked about how music should be treated as a language and a method of self expression , i imediatly traced paralells with how i view fighting games, specifically how to learn/teach them.
I play fighting games in order to express my philosophy ― “Execution wins games.” or “Execution > Strategy ― ALWAYS”
It feels good to know that my philosophy is the correct, objective answer ― no if, and, or buts. People simply cannot dispute this. So whenever people say that strategy is more important than execution, or that it is the key to winning, I just laugh at them. I do so because there are mountains of video evidence to support my statement.
Execution determines whether you win or lose.
One of the greatest moments in fighting game history, brought to you by Execution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKXij18xS0U
The greatest moments in 3S exist because of Execution.
Parry everything and you win @ 3:58
Execution allows Oro to say ― Fuck Chun-Li (8-2 matchup) @ 9:12. ** If you have the execution, there is literally no downside** to doing the longest, most stylish, most damaging combo possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ZR4LuDgjY
If Tominaga could Parry/Red Parry xx Karakusa whenever the hell he wanted to, he’d be the best 3S player in the world.
There are at least 20 perfects in this video alone.
Double Perfect @ 7:20 & 14:25
Theoretically, Tominaga would never lose and would win all tournaments, just because he is the only Makoto player that can execute the 100% on a consistent basis.
The ultimate goal of every fighting game player ― To win with double perfects, ALL THE TIME, EVERY TIME ― WITHOUT FAIL!
This is what every player should strive for.
Double perfects, brought to you by Execution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4wAaQug4HQ
Parry everything and you win ― with double perfects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v-46Y3iwcA
@"Shin Akuma"
I don’t think it’s as black and white as “execution > strategy”. OK, so this is all theory fighter but I’d say that execution is a strategy multiplier, that is better execution can increase the damage output afforded to you by the strategy you are acting out. However a sufficiently good enough strategy can beat any level of execution (in theory).
In reality the two go together, amazing strategy with no ability to enact it is useless, and likewise Desk tier execution with no strategy to give the executional feats context is also useless. It could be argued that parrying in and of itself isn’t hard executionally, after all it’s pressing one direction, so someone who can’t get max damage due to an executional limitation could still parry everything and win with double perfects all the time. Again, theory.
Please don’t take this as me being argumentative or defensive. I think this is an interesting conversation and I fully accept I don’t have world class execution (or strategy for that matter). I will say from my own (limited as I’m not a “pro”) experience, i find strategy to be highly valuable, especially when outmatched in terms of execution. If I know the opponent can convert a certain attack into x% damage, then my strategy has to adapt to shutting down their ability to land said attack and even baiting it because I know that’s what they want to land on me.
Anyway, nice vids. I especially liked the Ryu Vs Dudley exchange at the beginnning of the first or second video. Amazing play.
On topic: I really like games that give you a level of customisation in terms of gameplay for self expression purposes. Marvel team building is a great example of this and in a similar way, character/Arcana selection in Arcana Heart 3 too. Then there’s stupid but fun stuff like making matching clothes or themed teams in Marvel 2.
Putting execution over strategy is what gave us SFIV. Now before anyone mentions anything about the large reversal window and input shortcuts lets all remember that this is a game with arbitrary 1 frame links. This makes combos harder to do in IV, to the point where even stuff that was easy to do in previous games now required 1 frame links. In addition to this, the large reversal window and input shortcuts actually contribute to this, since you’re almost guaranteed to eat a reversal if you miss your link and drop a combo. Now, combine this with a hackneyed cancel mechanic with an obtuse input (FADCs) which is more often than not required for the games biggest damage options, and the requirement for all sorts of different option selects (thanks to the games loose input buffer) and you can see why I (and a few other folks) say that the game has a higher barrier of entry in terms of playing competitively than other games, like 3rd Strike.
Now compare this to 3rd Strike. First up, getting damage in that game is so much easier, since all most characters need to do, is to simply hit confirm into super art. Playing Chun, cr.mk leads into 40% thanks to how easy it is to cancel into SA2. Then there’s the OS, or more precisely, the relative small number compared to IV. Yes, we have stuff like SGGK and DED, but these aren’t really as necessary to win consistently compared to IVs many weird OSes. Then there’s the game system itself, thanks to parries and other mechanics, 3rd Strike emphasizes yomi, or the ability to read your opponent more than plain execution. As IglooBob has stated, game and match up knowledge is more important in 3S. Now consider that an option like parry helps good players better respond to the match up since it punishes repetition/predictability. This means that players do need to know the match ups and their characters at a deeper level than usual to allow them to adapt on the fly. Nothing is absolute in 3rd Strike, sometimes busting out the “wrong move” at the “right time” can win you the match.
There is no way you don’t self express while fighting, everyone has different style in fighting games, because everyone has a different mindset, which is reflected through moves you use, some people(Like me) just see games differently in general and to show that, videos with original content are born
When playing i kinda like doing nonsensical shit, like instead of doing an anti air I’ll keep punching. Its funnier when my opponent keeps doing something silly and i justkeep punishing them.