Street Fighter IV: Fighting Games Casual? Or, Capcom Lies To Everyone

Street Fighter IV is here.

I could probably just leave it at that, because anyone who reads gaming blogs can probably fill in the rest for themselves. I obviously won't though, because... Well, I don't have a reason. Pure, unmitigated verbosity, I guess. It's a trait of mine.

The hype machine has been churning overtime on this game for quite some time now. Websites, magazines, and blogs have been covering the release non-stop. Capcom, the developer and publisher of the game, has already sold two million copies in less than two weeks. The hardcore fighting game crowd seems to have embraced the game wholeheartedly, with very little in the way of reservation. Online battles are easy to get. Trash is talked, strategies are learned, and character tiers are being debated.

I don't think it'll last long, though.


A little background, just so we're clear. Capcom has been promising that Street Fighter IV will appeal to both the casual AND hardcore crowd. They've been marketing the shit out of it, up to and including several prime time television spots and an extremely shady tie in movie. Interviews with Ono, the producer at Capcom, have promised that even non-fighting game fans will find something in Street Fighter IV that they can play and enjoy. The marketing seems to have worked: people who haven't picked up a fighting game since the original Street Fighter II are buying the game and playing it online (They're all playing Ken or Sagat, but we'll get to that later).

So what's the problem? Fighting games are in the spotlight again for the first time in years, some of the new players will develop a long-term love of the genre thus adding some desperately needed new blood into the community, and online matches are plentiful. That doesn't seem like a bad thing, but my problem isn't with the here and now. My problem is with the future. Namely, what happens when all the hype dies away and people wake up to the realities of playing a fighting game against people who've been constantly immersed in them for well over a decade? What happens when people realize that a casual fighting game is an oxymoron? What happens when they're tired of being repeatedly raped online by people they don't even know?

I'll tell you what will happen. After losing to a Blanka MK cross up combo into EX Roll into Ultra for the fiftieth time, they'll put that shit on the shelf and never touch it again. They'll go back to Call of Duty, Halo, or Gears of War, and that will be that.

"So fucking what" is the expected response from any given fighting game nut, and I tend to agree. If you can't handle the heat and so on. Losing all by itself isn't a bad thing as long as you learn from it, and let me tell you: I'm like a fucking Rhodes scholar over here. That only applies if you have a genuine desire to learn the system and improve, though: it takes a long time to understand all the ins and outs of any given fighting game. More time than many owners of Street Fighter IV are willing to invest. It's a strange situation that anyone with an interest in gaming culture should take a closer look at, because nowhere else is the dichotomy between 'casual' and 'hardcore' gamers so painfully clear.

First, let's just dispel the myth that Street Fighter IV is in any way 'casual'. In many respects, it's the most technically demanding Street Fighter game yet released. Throws are mapped to a two button press input, a la Street Fighter III. There are not one, but TWO 'super meters', which can be used in a variety of ways. There are 'focus attacks', which are mapped to another two button input and have several important uses. Combos through canceling have an incredibly tight and no-nonsense input requirement: one frame in most cases. That's 1/60th of a second. The simplified control scheme that HD Remix introduced has been removed, returning to the old school system(although simplified controls do exist for a select few special moves). You can dash forward or backwards, you can power up certain special moves to go through hyper armor(what the hell is that!? I hear you ask, but never mind that for now), you can choose to quick stand after being knocked down, and you can kara-throw. That's a short and incomplete list of the technical aspects of Street Fighter IV's fighting engine.

Are you with me? Where the fuck is the 'casual' in that?

I play online quite a bit. There are two different 'pools' of players that you can choose to play with: 'Ranked' and 'Player'. I play in 'Player' matches, because all the people still in 'Ranked' are lying, lagging, disconnecting shits who think that 'battle points' are actually some form of legal tender (We'll get back to them in a moment). Playing online is a bizarre situation, because the online community for Street Fighter IV is a wild mix of experts, lying cheating whores, and players brand new to the game. The mix isn't exactly an even spread, either. The vast majority are of the 'lying cheating whores' and 'brand new' variety, and they both play either Ken or Sagat exclusively.

Let's take a look at an average Player Match. A sort of play-by-play.

So here we are, in the pre-game lobby. I can see my opponent's name, connection strength, and whichever 'title' and 'icon' he may have decorated his name with(these are items that can be unlocked by doing certain things in the game. Sort of digital bling). Every new match is a complete and utter crap shoot, and it represents a strange moral quandary. I'm playing the game to win, but the person I'm facing might be brand new to the genre. He or she might just need a bit of encouragement in order to genuinely embrace the game and eventually become good enough to join the community proper. Of course, I'm not just going to throw a match. I experience a weird moment of metal discord, which immediately vanishes when the person hits ready, takes us to the character select screen, selects Ken and just spams fierce shoryuken all day, every day. My goal is clear at that point. Kill them. Kill them so hard that they pick Sagat.

A quick digression: I understand the 'Ken' dilemma, which has become something of an onus for genuine Ken players in the fighting games community. Many new players pick Ken out of familiarity: everyone knows how to throw a fireball or mash out a dragon punch. Most of the other characters have different and more complicated controls that require charge times, odd directional inputs, or split second timing. Not so with Ken. When I started out playing Street Fighter, he was my 'go to' guy, but the number of new Ken players online is truly absurd: five out of six matches will be against Ken. They're usually not very good. Being called a 'Ken player' is almost, but not quite, an insult to some folks. It's a quandary.

Getting back to the match. Ken players don't have a deep understanding of the game they're playing. They're in strange waters, and they don't know about the crocodiles that lurk there. The match starts, and I start working. They scream in rage when I pull a cross up on them. "I was blocking!!!" Yes, but you weren't blocking high. They hurl their controller when they get thrown for the fifth time after a whiffed dragon punch. "Throws are cheap!" No, they're not. You just need to use them yourself. They rend their garments when they finally get to use their Ultra, and fail to land it because they were an entire screen away. "These Ultras are useless!!" No, they're not. You just broadcast like CNN. Two rounds, two victories, and we're back at the pre-fight lobby.

About three quarters of the time, I get booted from the room at this point. If I don't, they usually pick Sagat or Zangief(top tier characters with no bad match ups), and still lose. If they don't pull their ethernet cord from their console(actually a pretty big problem, we'll talk about that in a minute), or quit to the desktop in the middle of the match, I definitely get booted now. There's nothing satisfying about any of this. It's just the way it goes.

Casual folks just want to play and have fun. They want close matches with a lot of exciting back and forth. They want showy visuals. Winning as many matches as they lose is nice. They are playing the wrong game with the wrong people, and as we get farther from the date of release, it's only going to get worse. There is a significant minority of people who are playing online who are very very good at fighting games, and anyone who plays against those guys is not going to have a good time. They're going to be humiliated, and that doesn't exactly encourage replay.

Let's pretend that our new Ken player decides that he wants to play 'ranked' instead. The crocodiles in THAT water are a far more evil and cunning variety. If they thought 'player' matches were bad, they're in for a rude surprise. Ken is about to come head to head with that most wily and accursed of God's creations: The Wild Internet Disconnector.

Capcom decided that instead of a win/loss ratio determining ranking on the leader board, they would go with a new system: battle points. You earn battle points by defeating opponents, and you earn more battle points depending on the difference between your total and your opponent's total. Not bad in theory -you never see a 'loss' percentage unless you go looking for it- but just like Karl Marx, Capcom forgot one very important detail: people are assholes, and they want to think that they're better than you.

Let's pretend for a minute that I've been off my game, or I'm drunk, or I'm sleeping or something, and the Ken player wins a match. As I see that final dragon punch take me out, I shake my head, hit 'ready', and get back in the game. I take my losses if I earn them. It's only fair if I expect people to do the same for me. In 'ranked' matches, that doesn't happen. People on 'ranked' take their 'battle points' very seriously indeed, and would much rather pull their internet than lose any of their precious Digital Penis Enhancement Currency. They refuse to lose. They drop to the desktop, or yank their cord, if they think a loss is even a remote possibility.

Let's pretend that our Ken player has done well for himself and is just about to win a match in 'ranked' after a series of humiliating losses. He gleefully watches his final dragon punch ineffably connect, and just before the "You Win!" payoff, the result of hard work and painful learning... He get's a 'connection lost' message. No battle points. No win. Our Ken player realizes that his options in 'ranked' are either to lose, or to not win. He takes the disc out, breaks it, and puts Call of Duty back in. And that's the end of that.

Street Fighter IV is not a casual game. It is serious business for serious folks.

I'm sure than in six months, online games will be harder to come by, and the average level of skill amongst those who are left will increase. The number of new members of fighting game forums will drop significantly, and many of the recent members will abandon their accounts. If there's a Street Fighter V, it'll sell well, but not quite as well as Street Fighter IV. The community will go back to being a small online niche of hardcore technicians, and the fighting game renaissance of the early twenty first century will have come to a close. We'll be back where we started.

So much for 'casual' fighting games.