WHY I LOVE WHAT MAKES GAMES SPECIAL
Finding my own beautiful game.
I ’ve never been much of a sports gal. I never understood football fans who would erupt into ferocious cheers every time a goal was scored, and loudly bemoan the opposition for doing the same. I never appreciated the camaraderie between these people who shared a fiery passion for the game. Then I attended my first fighting game tournament.
It was VS Fighting 2018, an annual event in Birmingham. I’d long been a lover of fighting games – one of the first games I played was Killer Instinct Gold on the Nintendo 64, and Soulcalibur II remains a firm favourite of mine. I’d never sought out other fighting game fans and my desire to immerse myself in the community dissipated as I grew up.
That all changed when I joined my university’s fighting game society in 2018, and a few months later I was standing in the Millennium Point building, taking in the most electrifying atmosphere I’d ever experienced. Walking around the dozens of setups, seeing friends and foes alike go head to head in games like Tekken 7, Street Fighter V and Dragon Ball FighterZ was great.
It didn’t matter if it was top players fighting for their throne or total newbies who’d picked up the game two weeks prior, every match felt significant – both to the players and the spectators. I felt the intense stress as someone dropped their combo, and screamed with elation as players made the comeback of a lifetime as elimination stared them in the face. I jumped at the chance to return to VS Fighting in 2019.
Then, y’know, the pandemic happened and offline tournaments ground to a halt. Players had online tournaments to fall back on, but it wasn’t the same. There was no atmosphere, no player-to-player banter, no crowd cheering and chanting. It’d be like watching Messi play FIFA 20 on Twitch. Interesting enough it was but nowhere near as good as the real thing.
Three long years went by until I finally returned to VS Fighting in 2022, and man had I missed it. I reunited with friends, made new ones and watched a butt-ton of Tekken 7 and Soulcalibur VI matches. Not only did it make me realise how much I’d yearned to return to the community, it made me realise I was done with being a bystander. I wanted to compete.
A TRULY TERRIFYING EXPERIENCE BUT ONE THAT I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF
Would I ever win? Hell no! That wasn’t the point, though. I had found myself engrossed in a community that was willing to share their strategies, hype me up and actually turn me into a good fighting game player. I wanted to take the thrill I’d experienced as a spectator and take it to the next level.
I spent a few months learning as much about Tek
