A Culture Of Combat 

6:28 u spelt fallacy wrong

Video essays that are edited and animated with this much love, care, and attention to detail are the best things to exist on the internet

Bro when did you become an editing god?!! This is definitely a thing to be thankful for.

I'd like to note that "has a clear and defined goal and failure state" is _also_ a thing you can say about most sports, as well as about rhythm games. It seems like this is _the_ quality that most games need to have to be engaging at a gameplay level.

IMO, it's not about combat, it's about conflict. Most forms of human entertainment require a conflict, otherwise there's nothing to become invested in. Combat is the simplest and easiest form of human conflict. Want to make a movie or tv show more exciting, throw in a bit of physical violence. Everything from a character slapping another character to a full blow fight in the street is physical conflict, and it immediately gets our attention. You may not know what's going on in a movie that your room mate is watching, but if a character gets hit, there's a good chance you'll notice. I think you skipped over sports and racing games a bit too quickly because those games demonstrate the phenomena. They are conflict with out combat. Untitled Goose Game for example is a stealth game that keeps conflict, but rejects violence. Getting shooed out of an area in UGG or dying and restarting a mission section in MGS are functionally the same thing. I think games focusing on combat are just a limitation of the medium and current gen tech. It's hard to have a character drama with today's AI. You can do it (I'm looking at you visual novels / Detroit become human), but I think it will be a while before games can effectively engage in social or psychological conflict, but I strongly believe they will at some point, because not everyone wants to play a game with combat.

Considering how much you kinda write off the influence of real sports and sports games, I think it's worth noting that the cultural idea of "games" usually involves two opposing forces in conflict with one another, and the kinds of games that don't - whether they're solo experiences like Sudoku or Solataire, or groups cooperating towards a shared goal - typically aren't as popular. Credit that to the more engaging spectator experience that lets them be major pieces of culture, or whatever, i don't know or care. Adding a more fantastical element, such as explicit violence, is a logical progression when you're moving those kinds of games into a fantastical realm. Also at least from my own impression and probably more stereotypical than factual, but the kinds of sports that involve direct confrontation have a bit more of a reputation for rowdiness, aggression, and even violence. This kinda hints at a connection between the two, and could even be related somehow to the idea that both sports and games are typically seen as more "masculine" activities,,, i don't know man, this is just a good video that's making me think about things.

Just finished the video - I definitely think this is one of the best vids in a while. However-im not sure im entirely sold on the limitations games historically had being the prime determinant in creating the modern landscape of combat-centric games. If we look at another industry, like hollywood, we see that the industry became increasingly dominated by combat since at leasst the 80’s, to the point that almost all the billion dollar grossing movies are combat centric (whether superheroes, star wars, whatever). It seems like society just moved towards combat in entertainment for whatever reason. Not that this is new (the ancient epics like the illiad, etc. hold similar appeal), though movies at least were far less combat centric till the early 80’s

A culture of combat, man, these ideas you’re pulling out and making into videos are awesome, you go above and beyond regular analysis. While having a style of your own, and that’s admirable. Thanks Leon!

As others have pointed out, i think the most enticing thing about combat and what makes it so popular is the conflict inherent to it. Conflict sets stuff in motion and develops interest in the viewer. This is why action shows create more engagement than slice-of-life shows except maybe when the latter has a story-progressing moment once in a blue moon. It also explains why sports are successful and not just an outlier as the focus on combat implies. Almost every sport is conflict, between teams or individuals, direct or indirect, some with more combat put into the mix than others (and then there's contact sports, which ARE combat). Sure, these sports games ride on the popularity of their real-life parallel but they wouldn't be as popular if they didn't replicate that conflict they associated with (along with the branding). Plus, combat is so successful because it's the most direct and easiest to implement form of conflict. Psychological or ideological conflict is also possible but it's more complex and has a way less unilateral perspective. The conflict around a superhero registry requires understanding both sides' positions and how their lives would be changed by it. Maybe you'd compare it to a real-life equivalent to relate to it better. But a punch to the face? Everyone gets it and most importantly, it makes dough.

"Many of us have grown up with video games, but videogames grew up during the cold war." - Ahoy

Leon whipped out the Funke editing and I love it

The culture of combat in games is something that I been genuinely thinking about for years Thank you for making this video

14:06 I think most of your points made earlier in the video also explain the appeal of racing games! A tug of war between dexterity and potential failure, the peril of crashing, losing, underperformimg

Now I want a co-op game where you have to beat an arcade game while holding off hordes of zombies

I think we also naturally enjoy combat due to survival urges, y'know, the same reason animals play with each other, combat in games can give us a safe way of engaging in fights for survival and also gives us the pleasure of conquering said fights. I think that as much a history contributed to our current situation, we are naturally drawn to combat and conflict, if even for a little bit.

10 seconds in and I'm already amazed, i love you Leon

The 3D sections of this video are a welcome addition. Also, yes Before Your Eyes is a fantastic game. It's one of those games I can't believe exists because it's so outside the norm but so good.

Leon definitely leveled up his video editing skills for this video

Good talk. I feel one aspect left unexplored is other genres of storytelling. For example, in books classically conflict drives the story. Very similar to games. So you could say that's more a human storytelling thing, rather than just being limited to games..

I like how combat makes me feel

I think the way game mechanics influence what stories they can tell is really interesting. Because so much of conventional game design is built on a fail state paired with increasing challenge as the game goes on, you end up with a ton of games that directly (mega man x, ocarina of time) or indirectly (most games with skill curves lol) have themes of “you grow stronger and overcome challenge” and “you were weak but now you’re strong.” It’s part of why killing God is a trope in JRPGs, because RPG mechanics lend themselves to “kill monster, level up, kill bigger and stronger monster” and who is the biggest and strongest and most dramatic monster if not literally God? But this means you end up with a surplus of games that focus on this one theme of becoming more capable. And like, I like these games, I like to become more capable of dealing with challenge, but I’d also like to see more games use their mechanics to tackle some more interesting thematic ideas that literature and film can do. But I probably won’t end up playing em anyway bc boring art game I want to punch things

This is such an interesting discussion subject, holy SHIT- I was definitely aware of this pattern with video games but I never really tried dwelling on it. Cool. Great work on the video man, always glad to see you doing your thing.

I think the opening is maybe a bit seeing a pattern and then not getting the causality entirely right. I think it is a lot more important that the people making games just found action stuff really cool so that's the kind of stuff they tried to make. Kinda like how the people making games like Rogue or Nethack just really liked DnD and those games were a way to sorta get to play old school DnD when you couldn't get a group together. I think a good reason to go for this explanation rather than thinking about the specific challenges and failure states and all that, is because the most popular movies and series and so on are also all about "combat" or as they call it "action", and they don't have failure states or dexterity challenges or anything like that. And also plenty of different games with combat in it have completely different sets of challenges to portray those. So basically the reason games are about combat is because up until like 50-60 years ago it was not unlikely that you would die in violent struggle, and also in 1824 a Prussian Junior Officer named Georg Heinrich Rudolph Johan von Reisswitz made the version of his fathers game Kriegsspiele that would become the default game for training the Prussian army generals, and thereby make complex tabletop games be about war for the next 200 years. Okay that was a lot of maybe kinda sour stuff to read, I hope it's still convincing for me to say that I really liked the video.

This channel is literally the quickest rise in quality and proficiency over time I have ever seen on this website. It’s honestly incredible. Keep it up, glad I can say I’ve been here since (near) the start

Bro the animation is fire.

For the record my idea was something ive been thinking of every now and again. Basically a cardgame like Legends of Runeterra or gwent but with spaceships and more strategy involved. Since the cards would be in 'combat' I guess that counts Also, the title in this case primes the mind for fighting games too

Love your video essays, the animations you made elevate it even further, they really appreciated

Even in physical (tabletop etc) games, we see combat a lot Combat sports, tabletop roleplaying games, heck: EVEN CHESS involves combat in it's thematics as it represents a war.

one book i read recently was a book called "conflict and suspense" by james scott bell, and it outlines one idea in writing that you generally want to have your stakes be some kind of "death". and it outlines three kinds of death: -physical death -professional death (loss of job or some kind of status) -psychological death, or as i like to call it, "dying of cringe" (donkey kong's banana horde is a good example. he wants his bananas back mostly because they're important to him. same with knuckles and the master emerald.) the idea is that a story is more interesting if you follow somebody willing to strive for their goals and will not stop at doing so, and where failure has permanent consequences for them. just like in the game, in a narrative that isnt video games. and in stories, permanent consequences are just... easily depicted as literal death, since thats just natural. good examples of other fail states with permanent consequences are stuff like "will phoenix wright save his client"? "will jill be able to pay rent and save the bar from closing down"? "will cooking mama fuck up the ingredients, and have to drive to the store to buy another dozen eggs"? stakes like that are TECHNICALLY not permanent consequences, jill could still find a place to live and cooking mama can just buy more eggs, but it implies that its a loss off progress in their lives thats significant to them. they all care immensely. what happens when even literal death isnt a permanent consequence? you get something that ends up like dragon ball, which some people criticize for not permanent consequences when they can just revive everybody. the audience reacts similarly to a certain scene in DBZ abridged, where after the main character supposedly dies, tien flat out says "why do any of you care? we can just wish him back." flat out, "we dont have a reason to care". and that means no stakes. there are workarounds to the issues with dragon ball, like making the conflict something different (can dbs broly calm down without having to die?), or taking away the reset button, or goku making the conscious choice to not get brought back. but i digress. the point is that the characters need to care. wrestling is a great example of conflict, and iirc its the oldest sport in history. look at any main-event wrestling match, and they'll hype up their match to be the MOST IMPORTANT WRESTLING MATCH IN ALL OF HISTORY FOREVER!!! the way wrestlers hype up their matches not only implies that you should care, but that the wrestlers themselves care, and that losing will be a huge shame to their career, and to themselves. would leffen vs chillindude be as memorable without the diss track beforehand? what if instead, chillindude said that it would just be a friendly match and hed be happy to see his best friend leffen win? what if he never told us that he cared? would i even have taken note of that match? i guess what im trying to say is that so many video games find death and combat to be the source of their conflict is because it was ALREADY normalized, in both fiction and real memorable events. and this whole time, the most important fighting game was our real lives...

This was fantastic. The animation and editing adds so much value to the message. I can only imagine how much time you put into all this. Thank you 🙏

Excellent. Takes a point and meticulously breaks it down to every little detail. You summed up everything in a minute at the end, which makes the fact that this video is half an hour even more impressive in comparison.

Bro what is this JUMP in editing all a sudden this is awesome!

God damn I'm so glad I found your channel early on. It's been a wild ride seeing you go from "guy who talks about guilty gear and other fighting games" to an established video essay creator making incredibly high quality stuff like this. It's great to see the funke/noodle inspired animation and continued experimentation with your videos, underpinned by your continued excellence in scripting. The beats hit fast and keep the videos consistently engaging. Great work once again

Man this is really well done! Editing is insanely clean (one of my favorites is just the little transition from melee's 4:3 to GG's 16:9 at 1:56). Really like the visuals you crafted too, it's crazy to see how your content has evolved over the years.

Whoa... this is an amazimg video essay. Best I've seen in months, in fact. Thank you!

Yeah, I've too been thinking about why combat and death are so prevalent in not only video games, but basically all forms of fiction, and in my opinion the aswer is pretty simple: The concept of death is an integral part of a human mentality and stands for the worst thing that can happen to you (by default). Fear of death is engraved in every human since birth. And precisely because of this, death is everywhere. The driving force behind any narrative is conflict. The ultimate form of conflict is combat. And combat ends in death.

The Advance Wars tank in this video’s thumbnail got me thinking about something important. Off the top of my head, here are the top five best tanks in fighting games: 5. Either Jacky or Jeffry has an oxygen tank (for scuba diving) that they can equip in Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, if I recall correctly 4. The tank that you can wall-combo against in Tekken 6 (Urban War Zone) 3. Blitztank 2. The tank that Alex Valle was wearing at the 1998 SFA3 World Championship 1. Politank Z from Waku Waku 7 Injustice 1 does have a small propane tank you can hit someone over the head with (Metropolis museum) but it detonates about as violently as a standard-size water balloon, which honestly just feels surprisingly underwhelming, and especially in the context of the rest of that game. I feel like DOA almost certainly must have a big exploding gas tank somewhere in the series, but I don’t know for sure so I can’t include it.

Visual novels are a key example of how history has this effect, since early Japanese games made it very easy to implement these kind of systems, which in turn led to them being a much bigger trend in Japan in contrast to the rest of the world

These videos are criminally underrated

The adventure/quest/point-and-click genre was, for some reason, relatively popular on PC during the 90s. Most of these games had little to no combat involved and I have great memories of them (notable examples: The Neverhood, Gabriel Knight, Monkey Island). It's hard to believe that this genre was ever popular, harder to believe how quickly it disappeared, and very reassuring to know that it's somehow survived thanks to the indie movement. Side note: it's also very weird to notice how many years have passed since I was a kid playing these games

Funke 2???? Good video, love seeing your style evolve. I don't even care about fighting games but you're so fucking interesting that it never mattered?

i love seeing your content and editing style constantly improve

My mom was always hyper worried about me playing violent games, and she’s surprised that the games I have the most hours on today are games like Farming Simulator, Stardew Valley, and MLB The Show. Combat is inherent to gaming, but it isn’t why I play them. I’m only a few minutes in, but I am very excited to watch this. I love video essays, and in school and university, I LOVED essays because they gave me an avenue to express my thoughts. Even if you get burnt out with animating and editing, your medium is an extremely enjoyed by those that want to consume it. Keep it up, dude.

pikmin combat: YEET THE LIL GUY

The editing on your videos has always been amazing, but this time it’s downright insane!

can you do a video about how fighting game players tend to smell bad

I don’t know if the choice of Kirby’s Adventure as the b-roll when Leon talks about “push and pull” is an intentional reference to Masahiro Sakurai’s frequent use of the term in his videos, but I’m inclined to think he knew what he was doing given the “combat evolved” joke right before, and it got a chuckle out of me regardless.

This year I’m thankful for this video

i love your videos leon and it’s so cool to see your content grow; keep up the awesome work gamer.

gaddam the quality of the video for the length it goes is mind boggling, especially how fast you put these out. Amazing work, take care of yourself and beware of burning out.

You may not have put the game titles in the video but thanks anyway for putting them in the description. Most youtubers would of gave up on it by then so Thank You! Ganna give Marble It Up a try.

23:19 hey, i'll have you know that "wow cool guns" was a very deliberate design decision for those early id software games! there's specifically an anecdote about how, when John Romero heard the sound effect for the chaingun in Wolfenstein 3D for the first time, he was literally blown away and fell out of his chair lol

It has been fantastic to see the evolution of your production value in your videos since the beginning, this one had a lot of effort put into it with the 3d animations (love the lil' bear). Nice going mate

This is one of the best video game "video essays" I've seen. Not only is it an interesting observation/thought, but the points are well thought out.

This is such a good video on a lot of things. Yet somehow it feels like it's only talking about one thing alone. THAT is an impressive feat

man you have been absolutely killing it recently. keep it up!

Really well made video. I've noticed recently that almost all games I play have some kind of combat in them and wondered why that is

Great video! Always a joy when you upload.

u r the goat of video game essays

Your style of editing and animation reminds me of Funke good stuff

i saw some winks to sequelitis, loved it great job you massive leon

love the new aesthetic style, clearly wearing your inspirations on your sleeve in the best way

Damn Leon, I already liked your videos a lot, now you gotta crank up the production value like this? You're making it impossible to not be one of my favorites now! Keep up the good stuff man

I've heard a lot of flippant comments of "why are games always about fighting? more game devs should make non-violent games", but this is the first analysis I've seen that really goes into explaining _why_ fighting is so prevalent. Well done!

Bro I'm not sure when I subbed but I'm glad as hell I did. Top notch content, very interesting subject and superb presentation. Cheers Leon, keep up!

Bro you just keep on getting better. your videos never let me down.

Damn Leon, haven't watched you in a while but moving away from doing exclusively fighting game content really raised my interest again. Great editing, interesting topics.. way to go, man.

The crazy thing is, this isnt just limited to video games! The first media we know of? Cave paintings, which often depicted people hunting. First myth? The Epic of Gilgamesh, where the titular Gilgamesh kills tons of things. I think its just a natural human feeling to be interested in combat

One of your best yet ; )

Man, once sentence in and you're already on the razors edge. great vid

Dude, awesome editing!

10:53 I UNDERSTOOD THAT REFERENCE

leon jesus this vid is amazing thank you so much for this content

Never seen someone else reference lovely planet before thank you Leon

26:11 I feel personally attacked!

I've never seen a video with such a density and diverse quantity of screen clips from incredibly influential games I've loved, than this one right here. Subbed for this reason alone, and watching and hoping for some more of the same to come. And the overall topic of the video is cool too, but I have little to say to it, because of just how struck by overwhelming visual nostalgia I am right now. :)

Conflict makes stories, stories are about changes in hierarchies, combat is the highest and most direct level of conflict and changes in hiearchies. Its not that surprising that we gravitate towards stories with combat. All the most popular games up until video games were sports, which is pretty much simulated warfare were teams could participate and the winner can bedecided without the other side having to be dead as a win trigger.

this is fucking incredible man, love this direction. keep making good shit, youre one of the best on the platform rn

A CULTURE OF COMBAT ...

Every video is always so consistently good, in comedy and information

Dude the animation is actually insane!!

Man you went from making really good videos somehow tied into Guilty Gear that I wanna watch into making literal essays about video games that I wanna watch. Literally, it's like 12:43 in the morning and I'm only just now going to sleep. Worth it for this

Your editing style is amazing, very underrated

absolutely loved it start to finish, amazing video!

God, the animation here is such a perfect fit for your whole style. I hope it's not a one-off presentation choice Speaking of decisions, this is one of those essays that had me like "My mind has been actually blown"

Leon i could watch your little teddy bear animations for hours its so cute!

your content has come such a long way, this is great man!

The production quality of this video is through the roof.

This culture makes games like subnautica so refreshing. In a world where most games value systemic military supremacy like EU4/rimworld or mechanical skills that emulate real life combat like aiming a gun, it’s nice to play a game focused still on danger but not on fighting. You’re prey with little hope of slashing your way through most threats, so you have to adapt in ways that really tickle your brain

i think something that makes combat so pervasive in fiction is that it's frowned upon in real life. killing something in a game (usually) amounts to little consequence - other than forward progress - that can't be easily resolved, and there's something inherently fun and cool with video games in being able to do things outside of reality Running a business (such as in management sims), driving (such as in racing games), dancing to/playing music (such as some rhythm games), etc. are things that most people *can* do in real life. Games in those genres introduce other elements that make them cooler by virtue of spectacle, not everybody can own a theme park, be a Formula 1 driver, perform on a stage to thousands of people, play in a huge sports team etc. but the basic mechanics of those are (relatively) accessible to the average person and won't have much negative impact on one's life On the other hand being a gangster with a kill count in the hundreds, fighting waves of people on the streets, most combat in general is either something that is (a) illegal (b) gets you killed (c) inaccessible to most people (d) all of the above, and games let you have those experiences without the real world consequence of course there are fringe cases like wrestling, boxing and UFC for example, that end up in that first category (not everybody can be a Muhammad Ali or a Hulk Hogan but there are amateur leagues for those things), but i think the difference is that those are regulated sports where the goal is not to kill but simply to fight the best (whether judged, by forcing a surrender, or knockout), and they also end up in the second category where the "base mechanic" of those sports would just be picking fights with people in the street, which of course comes with the aforementioned conseuences

So many good games referenced, great vid.

All Leon's videos I had watched prior were a bit older, so I was surprised when I booted up this one and a FUNKe Study began to play

🏰When battle is joined, let all men of good lineage think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms, For it is better to die than be vanquished and live ....I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout *"On! On!"* from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds, And groans of *"Help me! Help me!"* And when I see both great and small Fall in the ditches and on the grass And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts! Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities But never give up war! -by Bertrand de Born (12th century)⚔

Pheonix is my favorite arcade game of all time, thank you for being one of like 5 people I’ve ever seen reference it

your editing skills has been insane lately. love you sm leon.

I’ve been watching those sort of 3d cardboard animated spaces in Noodle’s videos too. Still have no idea how it’s done but it looks sick as hell 👌

Gonna be honest I love when Leon posts a new video they are always a banger always entertaining. Great video as always

Animation at the beginning was amazing. Great essay. 👍

Team Sport rpgs are something I’d really like to see more of. Though really team sport games in general. I feel like there are a lot of new types of optimal and creative strategies that can be played around with that can’t be done in combat scenarios.

Wow, some of this feels like Egoraptor's old sequelitis series. Remember that? Remember Ego pre-Game Grumps? Loving the structure of this video mate, keep up the good good.