i wanted to write about my experiences with going to fighting game locals and why i think it's cool
the first fighting game i ever really got into was blazblue continuum shift, the second in the series (the version i played came out in 2010). i had a friend that liked it, so i picked it up to play with her. coming from mostly playing melee casually with friends, that was my first "traditional" FG experience. (hell of a first game to have, in retrospect.)
i played with a couple of friends for a while, but eventually they fell off of it as other things appeared in their lives. the bad ps3 delay netcode also didn't help. not wanting to make the arcade stick i hastily purchased feel like a waste, i decided to look into the local scene in San Diego when i moved there for university.
i had to go on the dustloop forums to find it since this was 2012 or 2013 (it's mostly used for the wiki now)- and i found people talking about it, a small thread with only a handful of users posting in it. the meetups at the time were just a few people coming over to this one guy's house and setting up consoles and monitors in his living room. i posted in the thread and got the address DMed to me, then went to the next meeting that they would have.
i am always arriving at things early, so i was the first guest to arrive. i sat down and played some matches with the host and instantly started feeling like this guy. i was WAY less good at the game than i thought i was from playing against friends. it was a very eye-opening experience. (i later found out that the person i was playing against was the admin of dustloop!)
i still had a blast just playing casuals, trying to learn, and hanging out. i went back nearly weekly for almost three years, trying out whatever games people brought to play and watching the scene grow, eventually needing a new venue because putting that many people in a living room wasn't reasonable. i carpooled with people to go to larger tournaments that were farther away in the LA area. i feel very nostalgic thinking about our 11pm trips to in-n-out or dennys after the meetups. since that time, i've always tried to be involved in local FG scenes. the locals i attend now are fantastic!
when you're going to something weekly and playing with others, you will sort of get to know them even if you don't talk to them at all. you learn how they play, you learn what sorts of things they struggle against and where they get their fun from in the game. people start to recognize you, too!
if you're invested in getting better at whatever game you play, whether it be for competitions or just doing better online, you can learn a lot faster playing a long set of games against someone sitting right next to you. your opponent can give you tips or tell you about openings that you're missing or your predictable actions that they're able to punish. playing long sets lets you learn a lot about fighting one character and keeps you from relying too heavily on any one of your tricks (you can get away with this sort of thing in a first to 2 setting like tournaments or ranked online play). almost everyone who shows up to play their game is looking to help people get stronger and raise the collective power of the scene.
i've always been kind of a quiet and withdrawn person, and even if i can't vibe 100% with every person that plays my games, we all showed up because of our shared interest so i'm able to have a good time anyways. it's community babey!!!
not every area has a local scene- your nearest one may be quite a ways away from you- but if you do have one, i really recommend giving it a look. it's probably less scary than you think it is, especially if your ideas about what the FGC is like are based on old viral videos.
if you don't have an accessible local scene then a lot of the feelings i've described can still happen through discord communities, but you have to put in a bit more effort asking for games or joining games.
i really enjoy the natural social aspect that competitive games have, and fighting games have a lot of that in addition to just being a whole lot of fun!!! go become a shonen protagonist like me
ty for reading if you made it this far!
