Just curious as to everyone’s opinion on the theory that being good at SF (and other fighting games) is something you’re born with or not. Can any average joe, in theory, pick up the game and, with enough practice, be as good as Daigo or Justin Wong?
And furthermore, if it is a born talent, is it genetic? :nunchuck:
Talent is definately a factor. It’s the same with any type of games. JWong is a beast at every fighting game he plays. I suck at every one, but I’m an avalanche of pain and headshots at every FPS I play. I’m sure that is has something to do with genetics, or the brain, but I’m not qualified to go into that.
But, as always, you need countless hours of practice if you want to do anything big with your talent.
it’s practice, experience, and competition. that’s it!
^ Opinion.
You can’t extrapolate that… if anyone else has ran competitively, you know talent undeniably exists. 14 year olds who have never ran a mile in their lives can dominate 18 year olds who have run thousands.
Maybe “talent” is a broad definition, but Daigo definitely has something that I don’t in relation to fighting games.
Yes, he has years of experience playing at the highest level in THE place to play fighting games. Fuck it, he has exactly what hardly none of us have. '09 is balling to the fullest. Besides, takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in it. As soon as I find the book I’ll provide the exact quotation for it.
FPStud: That depends on the “game” we’re talking about. You can’t compare all traditional sports to SF.
That’s why I don’t like watching track and field sports, where genetics play a larger part than in golf, which was the main talking point in the article, for example.
Stop being insecure about your suckiness
I didn’t read full article, just first few paragraphs.
Track is not really a spectator sport unless you really know what’s going on, and are really into it.
Anyway, Daigo is more than just hours of practice in a competitive scene. He obviously is a natural. That’s inarguable.
Basically talent is definitely a factor, but not a deciding one. Practice, practice, practice.
We might as well start saying that Asians have the highest IQs and black people run fastest now and get it over with.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to look up some of the numerous scientific studies on SF ability being genetic or learned. It’s such an important issue and we should all be well-read on it.
Source please. I’d think someone who has never run a mile in their lives would probably die if they decided to run competitively all of a sudden. How the hell can you assume they’d have the stamina for a race without conditioning for it? Do you know anything about what it takes to be conditioned for track? How can you just spew this sort of nonsense.
Look at the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan. He was anything but a natural. Couldn’t even make his HS basketball team during his first try-outs. But then he got dedicated and started practicing for hours and hours and hours on end. And what do you know, after PRACTICING religiously he became the best of all time.
Most evidence out there points to the fact that people who are extremely “talented” are just people who were more dedicated to their craft than everyone else. There’s a book on the Beatles that talks about how they weren’t prodigies (because there’s no such thing as a prodigy), just a bunch of guys who took their craft more seriously than all of their contemporaries and thus were better at it than anyone else.
Who was the famous classical composer that was composing music at age 10? Because I remember reading that the only reason he was so good at that age was because his father was a composer and made him practice for 10 hours a day since he was like 5 or 6.
Now if there’s no such thing as a sports prodigy or a musical prodigy then there sure as hell isn’t such a thing as a “Street Fighter” prodigy…
It’s called hyperbole. What I’m saying is, 14 year old freshman with no previous running experience are sometimes able to completely crush any competition. Because of genetics. While someone who has been training hard year round all four years will never even come close to that freshman. 99.99% of people, no matter how many miles they run, how much they train, how long they train for, will never be able to compete in the Olympics. It’s all genetics. If you knew anything about running you would know this is common accepted fact.
Daigo just camps arcade after work, people. He doesn’t have anything over you guys except extreme dedication to the game, and maybe good reaction time. He’s been doing that thing where he spends thousands of dollars in arcades since Vampire Savior.
If you moved to Japan, got a job, started playing in the arcades A LOT, eventually you would get as good as Jwong/Daigo IMO. There’s an American dude there right now (Ameriken) who apparently is godlike with Sagat and lives in Japan.
Some people play to win and some play to figure out why they lost 
So you’re saying that two people who have practiced the exact same amount of time and put forth the same type of dedication will be at the same skill level, then?
Not sure I agree with that. God knows I’ve logged in at least 5,000 hours of ST in my life and I’m above average at best. I just feel like I don’t have that “it” factor. I’ll still play my mediocre heart out til the day I die, though. lol
This doesn’t have anything to do with SF. In Street Fighter, it’s all about the hands and muscle memory, unlike running where the body has to be conditioned properly to run.
Mozart was a child prodigy on the piano. I can’t remember when he started composing but he toured Europe before he was a teenager. And yeah, it was because he had all that stuff drilled into him from a young age.
I saw an 8-year old on the news (should be something like “the next lebron james” on youtube) who was an absurdly fast mile runner. His times are probably faster than 95% of the people on this board. I think the video mentioned he doesn’t even run all the time or anything like that. He was just born with a better genetic composition for running.
[media=youtube]pzCdimrNHbI[/media]
He’s 11, but watch that. Clearly some people are born better than others in respects to genetics (hand eye coordination, reaction time, both of which play an aspect in video games).
my talent lies in being above average in every game i put some time into…alas i never seem to get really pro/elite or even exceptionally well at any…
I completely disagree. He puts 4 solid hours of great work in every single day “until it’s second nature” as the reporter says.
You don’t have to spend ten hours a day on something to become brilliant; classical guitarist John Williams was only allowed to spend half an hour on the guitar a day for years. In that half an hour his dad (a guitar teacher) made sure that every movement he made was perfect. And that’s how he got so good; perfect practise.