The Pure Game Design of Fighting Games 

As someone who plays fighting games, I applaud you for this video. The only thing jong is that you do not need to know frame data to be good. The importance of frame data varies by game and many pros don't even memorize it.

That's cool and all. You know, sometimes I forget fighting games have any multiplayer modes. I always used them as movie makers or scene directing tools. You can tell great stories utilizing a game's mechanics! Especially once you learned an AI's primarily patterns. This was always more fun to me than spamming meta and grinding the same viable tech repeatedly.

this video is so good and its nice to see someone from the 3D side of the community talks about fighting games and skill level, i hope that more people will watch this amazing video

Great video! I'm a big fan of fighting games, Tekken especially. Though I do have a gripe with it, that some other games in the genre also share, that it could improve upon. My main gripe is that Tekken takes itself too seriously and doesn't have a space to chill out in the game. A good real world analogy is when learning martial arts, you will never go full out during sparring or you will constantly damage yourself or your opponent, instead friendly play is incentivized by proper teachers to build up your knowledge and let you experiment with moves and get more competent. Friendly sparring and fun play in Tekken online play is almost non-existent, only done by players volunteering to teach their opponent. The only online modes are broken hardcore ranked play, random casual play, that is sometimes fun and the tournament mode that is fun, but cumbersome to setup, so not many players play it. With no good place to to play (friendly), more players get stressed out playing the game and usually stop playing online or quit the game because they get some sort of PTSD playing online. For upbringing new players and having a place to play casually and release stress from hardcore modes or just coming back from a hard days work is what Tekken needs. More modes for online like Tekken 3 ball mode, team battle, online practice, Akuma hakuden training and other modes where you can learn and experiment with different characters while having fun. Sorry for any grammar mistakes, English is not my main language. P.S. 0:53 *sliding in epic Tekken 3 Jin theme*😎

One of the best videos I've seen on that matter!!! I love watching videos like that hope I find more like these in your channel and would love it if you also speak more about Mortal Kombat!

you deserve more subs

amazing video, you really made me appreciate the fighting genre even more than before!

ive started playing dbfighterz since the last month and booy, does this video rings truth, i have not winned a single set since started playing but punishing a dash with a 2h or landing a combo feels so good. what a great video.

Great vid! I always try to imagine what's the next big fighting game mechanic that will shake up the scene or make a series unique but it keeps me blinded from what has come in the past. This video showed me that trying older games might teach me more about it's future! Subbed!

Man your videos are awesome, keep up th good work

I wasn't expecting it... slow start, but it builds up: damn... *THIS WAS A REALLY GOOD VIDEO.* Thanks, I really enjoyed it! 😁👍

Fighting games could be the best genre of game on the planet, but as you said, the biggest thing holding them back is that they don't teach players well enough. Tekken Tag 2 took some great first steps with Fight Lab/Combot...and then abandoned all of it for Tekken 7. Such progress.

great video

It's interesting what you said about the low ceiling entry and depth because I think this is what MK11 is.. That's why veterans hated it while new players like me loved it. It is not that hard to pick up but pretty hard to master. I'm also sure that most of the people that were complaining that it's a noob game haven't learned to do flawless blocks all the time.. the game has depth but you can also play it even if you're new.

That point about low execution = lower skill ceiling and higher skill floor makes absolutely zero sense. First of all, they are not mutually inclusive. You can have one without the other. The required input for an action does not necessarily change the game design itself. Secondly, a designer's desire to lower the physical execution barrier is not for the sake of increasing the chances of a lower level player defeating a higher one - obviously. And I don't believe there are many designers who are trying to achieve that. The point of removing certain barriers is to simply let more players play the game, especially long term. It's not about "leveling the field" or "making them better". It's obvious that the fighting genre is heavily based in tradition, Moreso than almost any other genre (or perhaps all of them). With it is a lot of archaic design, and while archaic, it mostly still works. But, it also has had a very difficult time bringing in new players who stick with a game long term. Removing barriers that aren't strictly necessary to the game's design can successfully lower the skill floor while keeping the ceiling in the exact same place. This is the only purpose of removing execution barriers. Even if it did somehow make pro players beat beginners more easily (which doesn't make sense, because we are already talking about players who have already mastered complex execution), it's a non-issue. That's the point of the genre. The goal shouldn't be to change that, simply to allow a larger number of players to try the game, and stay with it longer than they would have if they were the type of player who wouldn't want to commit to mastering complex physical execution. Then, they could potentially have the desire to become better, even becoming one of the pros. When done properly (its hard but it's possible), the game could have a larger audience, but more importantly, a larger long term audience.

Haha, how prescient that I was just commenting about fighting games on another video. If you're ever playing Tekken I hope to bump into you 👊 Really happy with your breakdown of the nuances of fighting games. They are such an interesting experience, and it is very difficult to explain all the levels involved in making it so cool.

Wow- waxing funny and personal feels new for this channel. It was executed well though, felt refreshing, and added a lot to the video. There's no death of the author anyway, so it can't hurt to lean into the medium of the personal channel a little, right? Although I do also appreciate the more neutral academic research stuff, and that's sorely needed in the vg discussion space.

Which was the 1st game that introduced frame data available to the players? I played MK2 & MK3 when I was a kid on arcade but back then I was too little and didn't care about that now that I got into fgc again with MK11 I found out that there is frame data which is a bit complicated but really helpful.

Never been in to fighting games now I have to try

You showed a pic from Fantasy Strike and mentioned David Sirlin but didn't even mention Fantasy Strike! That game shows perfectly that fighting games don't need high execution, complex mechanics and long move lists to be deep, strategic games. In fighting games you need to learn execution, data and strategy (includes yomi/adaptation). Out of those three things strategy is definitely the most interesting part and Fantasy Strike aggressively focuses on that. You get to the real meat of the game much more quickly than in other fighting games and you're still going to get absolutely stomped by the top players! Tekken is also far from beautiful imo. There is way too much bloat. "Combos were originally a bug" is widely misrepresented. It's more that during Street Fighter 2 development, before release, they discovered that combos existed, not entirely on purpose. Then made it on purpose. It's clear in the code that it was planned for and a real thing by the time it released.

asymmetry takes away from skill, hard execution takes away from skill.

i actually thought gg was endearing, good game was like a endearing salute for me that i took with a win or loss, i think it depends on the person probably not, but thats how i felt.

I feel like I have learned a lot but also learned nothing

I highly disagree that a physical skill is necessary to raise the ceiling of a game, and it's incredibly ablest of so many who think that making every fighting game super difficult to physically perform, alienating anyone who doesnt have the dexterity or motor functions to pull of these rediculous motion inputs. yes, they are ALL rediculous. You shouldnt need even a quarter circle to a make a game complex. GNT4 is 90% directional input with only a few characters having motion inputs and is incredibly skill intensive because it's about resource management, not some arbitrary finger waggling skill. Managing your meter for offense and defense, comitting to an attack or being cautious. I've seen some people argue that making a move have more complicated motions artificially lengthens the amount of input, thus making it take longer to pull off, balancing it. you can achieve the same result simply by charging a move up first. If the expected amount of time needed to perform some pretzel input is 2-3 seconds. You can just make a move require a few button combos, combined with holding a button down for 2-3 seconds. there, it took the same amount of time, and required far less physical limitations Demanding that the majority or all characters in a fighting game all use motion inputs to keep the skill ceiling high is nothing but gate-keeping

Nice vid, but... Its not l want looking at!