Street Fighter IV: Braggadocio Off and On-Line
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Street Fighter IV: Braggadocio Off and On-line Norman Makoto Su Department of Informatics University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3440 USA [email protected] ABSTRACT scrolling fighters beating up opponents), usually had only In its heyday, the video arcade was a social scene to prove two to three buttons. SF2, in contrast, was a head-to-head one’s video gaming prowess. The introduction of a revolu- fighting game offering three separate punch buttons (jab, tionary head-to-head fighting game called Street Fighter II strong, fierce) and three separate kick buttons (short, forward, in 1991 ushered in an era of competitive video gaming with roundhouse). Moreover, it introduced special moves requiring unparalleled complexity. An influx of copy-cat games and the execution with joystick movements of unheralded intricacy. arrival of consoles with capabilities rivaling coin-ops led to For example, SF2’s signature character, RYU, can “throw” the arcade’s demise. However, the release of Street Fighter a fireball at his opponent by moving the joystick a quarter IV (SF4) has brought about a revival. I report on the cultural circle towards the opponent and then pressing a punch button; practices of hardcore gaming that have revolved around SF4. the punch button determines the speed of the fireball. SF4’s release on both the console (which enables fighting others online) and the arcade has engendered a new set of The establishment of this genre of video games brought about challenges in constructing what it means to be competitive a new wave of competitive gaming. Competition used to mean and legitimate in the world of head-to-head fighting games. I vying for the top of the scoreboard; games like Donkey Kong observe that the enrolment of an ecology of technological arti- emphasized seemingly inhuman timing and memorization. facts allows players to translate braggadocio from the arcade, However, SF2 allowed one to claim superiority by simply a central phenomenon in competitive gaming. saying, “I beat you.” There was no prescribed set of steps to win against a human opponent. And, like any other legit- Author Keywords imate sport, head-to-head fighting games required reading Video games, video arcade, discourse analysis, gaming cul- your opponent and reacting appropriately. Soon, national and ture, fighting games, trash talking, hype, Street Fighter IV. international championships were organized, and superstar players such as Seth Killian, Daigo Umehara, Alex Valle, and Justin Wong became revered in gaming circles. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Due to SF2’s immense popularity, a whole crop of head-to- Miscellaneous. head games appeared (most infamously, the bloody Mortal Kombat). Capcom itself was not immune to churning out General Terms fighting games—SF2 had over five different iterations re- Design, Human Factors. leased such as SF2 Champion Edition, Super SF2 Turbo, and Hyper SF2. The next game in the series was eagerly awaited, INTRODUCTION and in 1997 Street Fighter III (SF3) was finally released. SF3 According to Capcom’s May 2009 financial report [12], Street added further to SF2’s complexity, incorporating a new parry Fighter II (SF2) for the Super Nintendo was its best selling system allowing players with good timing to deflect their op- game ever, selling over 6.3 million units. SF2 allowed one to ponent’s attacks. Unfortunately, many felt that Capcom had choose from eight international fighters such as E.H ONDA1, made SF3 out of the realm for normal and casual gamers. As the sumo wrestler from Japan, or D HALSIM, the Yoga mas- a result, SF3 did not translate to the same arcade and console ter from India. It offered unparalleled complexity; the clos- sales as SF2. Seth Killian observed fgamespy.comg: est game genre at the time, smash’em ups (featuring side- Parries [were] sort of the hallmark of SF3...it’s really a hard thing to pull off. When you finally master it, it brings you very close to the game, but 1I will use SMALLCAPS to designate character names from the you’ve got to probably put in six months before you’re even competent at Street Fighter (SF) series. parrying. And that’s really rough. According to Yoshinori Ono, producer of Street Fighter IV (SF4), there was some doubt as to the viability of a new Street Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for Fighter f1up.comg: personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are To start out, at the very beginning the prevailing atmosphere around here not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies was that there would be no SF4. Everyone had given up on the idea bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or because too much time had passed since SF3. Certainly a lot of time had republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific passed since [SF]2, which was the last really popular one...What we were permission and/or a fee. actually thinking was, “Can the Capcom of today—even legitimately from CSCW 2010, February 6–10, 2010, Savannah, Georgia, USA. Copyright 2010 ACM 978-1-60558-795-0/10/02...$10.00. 361 a business point of view—even justify making fighting games right now? groups often preferred games that were not competitive. Sall Does that fit into our business model? Does that fit into what Capcom is & Grinter [11] discovered tensions with consoles’ visibility today?” So there was a bit of resistance at first. [emphasis added] (keeping the family room tidy) and availability (being at hand Indeed, the issue of legitimacy is at the heart of this paper. SF4 to play) in the digital hearth. Similarly, they note that physical represents a deliberate attempt by Capcom to cater to both games such as Dance Dance Revolution encourage multiple novice and hardcore players. In addition, its release (7/2008) players of varied skill levels to social performance, again comes at a time quite different than SF2’s time. The advent deemphasizing the competitive aspects of gameplay. Indeed, of multiple communication mediums through the Internet only “in extreme cases...would [participants] only play when and the console has given players more options to level-up they were playing competitively against each other.” and banter with each other. While SF2 players were often geographically restricted in finding competition (meeting at In contrast, this study focuses on hardcore players who de- their homes or in the arcade), consoles now allow online play vote considerable time not only to mastering the game but in with anyone that has an Internet connection. On one hand, the cementing the game as canonical. I wish to expand on one nostalgic flavor of SF4 (which takes cues from SF2 more than particular angle of the two aforementioned studies. Voida & it does from SF3) has brought oldies back to the genre. On the Greenberg say, “one gamer suggested that styles of group other hand, its relatively low learning curve and wide release gameplay extended beyond the game console, itself, into the on both the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Xbox 360 consoles has ecology of media...that surround the console games.” Sall attracted newbies to the genre. & Grinter say, “[the] connection between gameplay at home and outside raises questions that stem from our sense that Intimately intertwined with legitimacy is its discourse: “a the division of gameplay, private and public, home and other discourse actively maps out a terrain of possible and valid homes/arcades, probably turns on a variety of cultural prac- statements, sets the boundaries of that terrain and constitutes tices. The spaces available for the different types of play the legitimate objects of study within it” [3]. In this paper, seem inherently grounded in a variety of norms.” With SF4, I examine the discourse of hardcore SF4 gamers who seek there are both public and private spheres (e.g., competitions to establish a discipline. More specifically, I am interested in vs. home play) but the ubiquity of Internet media and com- how players endeavor to legitimize SF4 as the new game for munities is part of an ecology of tools that are constantly as- competitive head-to-head gaming. Like sports, competitive sembled to support the sport of head-to-head fighting games. gaming cannot survive without spectators. And, like sports, gamers often seek to construct and enforce rules and poli- cies that reinforce what they believe proper play is. How ON DISCOURSE ANALYSIS are actors enroled to strengthen the position of professional In this study, I draw on the discourse analysis (DA) perspec- gamers as the spokespersons? Actors may be other players, tive. Because DA has many definitions, I will clarify my but they can include a myriad of computer-mediated commu- theoretical framework. Please refer to Phillips & Hardy’s nication. Secondly, how has the addition of online functional- book [10] from which the following are gleaned. ity changed the face of fighting games? How have constituents attempted to transplant a traditionally offline world into the DA is the analysis of discourse. Discourse is “an interrelated online world? set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemina- tion, and reception, that brings an object into being” (p.3). DA generally favors naturally-occurring-texts (in contrast to RELATED WORK research interviews) which “appear in the normal day-to-day In an overview of video game research, Williams notes [14] activities of research subjects” (p.70). Research in DA is a that early studies often focused on examining the popular methodology that both prescribes a particular perspective on media’s framing of the video arcade as a seedy, dark place for the social world as well as a range of methods for studying adolescent delinquency.