http://theknightsofgaming.com/2012/12/16/why-fighting-games-are-bad-for-gaming/
This article was recently posted up and has gotten a little bit of notoriety for supposedly calling out the bullshit that the fighting game community is ‘known’ for. I’m an 0’9er in the sense that I only started playing fighting games with SF4, but I was watching and incredibly fascinated with the scene before then. Through my four or five years of watching this scene grow and prosper, I have seemingly missed most of the problems that this dude brings up.
First off is the misogyny, which is existent in only the loosest interpretation of the word. The thing with this ‘boy clubz r bad’ mentality is that it is less about the masculinity and more about the fact that insulting each other and having a joke at each others expense is normal, which doesn’t bode well for a lot of girls. My ex-girlfriend, for example, would constantly make fun of me while we played (jokingly insulting my masculinity) and I would insult her back, gender related jokes included. She didn’t take this harshly and understood that it was part of the shit talking repertoire and we continued on happily playing our games.
What I have noticed, though, is that our community that seemingly shares the same mindset, comes with a lot of outside flak. We get called misogynist, racist, insecure and insulting to name just a few, all because we shit talk and get hyped about things that are going on. Sure, you have a few people that go a bit far (people that are relentless with their harassment and race) but for the most part, it’s just directionless shit talking to make it a bit more exciting. Does that make it a boys club? No, it makes it a ‘like having fun’ club.
The second thing is the inclusion of the common point that we seemingly aren’t inclusive for new players, which I personally think is just plain wrong. When I was just learning how to play fighting games, I asked many people in the scene for help and didn’t get called names of any nature or excluded purely because of my queries. What I did get a bit of flak for, however, was constantly going WAH THESE GAMES ARE SHIT I CAN’T DO ANYTHING WHY IS THIS GAME SO FUCKING CHEAP RRRGH which quickly got remedied by people (rightfully) telling me to settle down and practice properly, instead of getting frustrated at my losses every time.
The funniest thing about his point, however, is that he used the notorious ‘real nigga’ video as a basis for this point. I watched the videos where he was playing and he put up quite a good fight, but the shit talking wasn’t nearly as extreme as I would have expected. There were insults thrown in there, sure, but ultimately he definitely had thin skin to start crying and making excuses for his reaction. How many times, honestly, can you say that you’ve seen a dude break down and cry in an arcade? I’ve seen people cry due to lost games maybe once, and that was usually out of frustration coupled with LARGE sums of money on the line.
What this all boils down to, however, is this weird view that people are getting of our community. I know a lot of mainstays want this to remain a niche and hidden club, but how do you feel about the negative view that we get just by playing this genre? How do you feel about the way that people assume that we are all pseudo nazi, femme bashing rapists that hate fun and new people? Personally, I find it sad that people are missing out on such a rewarding set of games strictly because of a few bad apples that (conveniently) get publicized and paraded in front of everybody, but I’m more interested in hearing how you think the scene is portrayed to the mainstream audience.
