One of gaming’s most fascinating communities has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic

By JACOB ANDERSON — arts@theaggie.org

Of the many social scenes to be hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the fighting game community is rather uncomparable. Despite more or less every fighting game released for over a decade offering online play, the spaces in which the games are played “for real” — according to most of the community — remain massive offline tournaments, usually featuring a double-elimination bracket for each game as well as unlimited casual play, art sales, performances, lotteries and numberless other attractions that make bigger tournaments closer in scope to conventions than simple meetups.

For the fighting game community (FGC), playing online isn’t an authentic experience; there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, fighting games are too fast for the internet. Even with solid rollback netcode that many large developers have been slow to adopt, the presence of four or five frames of delay (one-sixtieth of a second each) can be disastrous when advanced techniques and difficult combos can often be frame perfect, requiring hours of training to perform reliably even without that added variable. The fixed speed of light ensures that it is not possible for fighting games to be played online without some amount of delay, and thus offline play will always be preferable for skilled players. 

Secondly, there’s tradition: The FGC has been around since the genre’s formalization in the early ‘90s when arcades ruled the scene — longer than most competitive gaming scenes of similar size. The lack of any requisite fixed cost (viz., a home console) meant that no economic barriers existed to restrict who could play, and consequently, the scene that has persisted to today is much more demographically varied than, for instance, competitive “Starcraft.” The scene’s arcade origins also immutably dictate that the community be oriented socially: something that lends itself to the immediate, communal nature of in-person play rather than that of distant, monitored online play. To the FGC, tournaments are inalienable.

So what, then, happens when this core component of the community is suddenly removed?

The imposition of the pandemic, of course, made in-person tournaments impossible. While the community has continued to exist online, it wasn’t until recently that in-person tournaments began to crop up again — with the requisite safety requirements. Big tournaments such as Combo Breaker and EVO have been either forced online or canceled for almost two years, and while those larger organizations were prepared to deal with the costs of a forgone event, smaller tournaments such as Michigan Masters were forced to rely on community assistance to avoid financial ruin. But these are just the yearly events. Locals, which are the weekly or monthly smaller events that form the community’s spine, have no such visibility, and in many cases it hasn’t been clear whether some of them will come back at all. Locals are what keeps the constituent areas of the fighting game community intact, and as a reddit user put it, “If [locals] start to disappear, it’s the end of the FGC.”

The community’s largest local tournament near Davis, the monthly Capitol Fight District in Sacramento, has been on hiatus (minus one event) since the beginning of 2020 — it’s now been almost two years.

With COVID-19 restrictions appearing to ramp down and certain major events, like CEO, managing to return to in-person play, the future of the community doesn’t look quite as bleak as it did before. If things continue to improve, it’s possible the community might return at an even larger scale, as serious fighting game releases like “Guilty Gear Strive” appear to be pushing up common indicators of popularity like the Steam Charts. Things could actually be better after the pandemic.

So in the interest of optimism, let the rest of this article then be a little valentine for the FGC.

When you walk into a tournament, there’s always a distinct electricity about. Before the bracket starts, players huddle in threes and fours in front of monitors. Lively conversations clutter the air and are burst by the occasional cry of defeat or victory or (usually from an observer near one of the anime games) an articulate shout of something like, “He’s free!” or “Put ‘em in the blender!” The average fighting game player seems to be now in their thirties, and it’s not uncommon to see a kid under 10 running around the tables and ogling the sometimes ostentatious arcade sticks.

Hundreds of people can be cramped into the same room, eagerly staring over the shoulders of players in unflappable states of focus. And when the bracket starts, the stations are cleared and someone calls over the crowd for the silliest usernames you’ve ever heard to play at station eight.

There’s little else that’s like it, and with the amount of fun everyone seems to be having, it’s no stupid question why fighting games remain a somewhat niche genre relative to first-person shooters and the other titans of modern gaming.

But of course there’s a reason: the separation between idly knowing that it’s possible to press down and then forward plus a punch button to throw a fireball and knowing that “236956K” is the numpad-notation translation of the input for Baiken’s “Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2” Kire Tatami Gaeshi rather than my bank account’s PIN code can feel insuperable to a new player. This is especially true when the community has often done a somewhat poor job of consolidating the information actually necessary to progress from clueless rube to fighting-game literate. The barrier to entry is high, so only those with a real drive to understand what it’s all about will usually get past the genre’s first learning stages. 

Once those travails are done, however, the world opens up; the limitless intricacies and considerations present in high-level play become observable. Knowledge of what’s actually happening on the screen serves to separate fighting-game players from the rest of the world. This barrier is what makes membership inside the FGC unique, and it’s possible even that a desire to preserve that uniqueness dissuades some players from making the information necessary to join the community readily available.

If fighting games come back bigger than ever, that would be a great thing. Fans have often been defiant in their insistence that it’s the greatest genre of video game — if nothing else, it’s managed to catalyze the creation of one of the most singular hobbyist communities around today, one strong enough to weather the temporary destruction of the thing often said to be its very center. 

Written by: Jacob Anderson — arts@theaggie.org

The show may not be the most deep, but it is undeniably entertaining 

By CLARA FISCHER — arts@theaggie.org

This article contains spoilers for season three of “Too Hot To Handle.”

“Too Hot to Handle,” the crossover between “Love Island” and “Big Brother” that nobody asked for, has returned for a third season. I’ll admit, reality TV isn’t exactly the pinnacle of human development, but this show is definitely a guilty pleasure that’ll keep you entertained from start to finish.

The premise is fairly straightforward. A group of conventionally attractive people in their twenties are essentially lured onto the show under the impression that they’ll be participating in a free-for-all, expenses paid dating show for the summer. However, at the end of the first episode, the hosts reveal the actual reason they have been invited to Turks and Caicos.

The singles are told that there is to be no physical intimacy of any sort, including kissing, heavy petting, sex and “self-gratificiation.” Every time a rule is broken, money will be deducted from a $100,000 prize fund meant to be allocated to the cast member that has benefited the most from the retreat.

These rules are laid down and enforced by Lana, a talking cone that acts as co-host of the show, along with narration by real-life human Desiree Burch. Lana also has the responsibility of determining the finalists who she feels grew the most in their time on the island, one of which then gets voted as the winner by their fellow retreat guests. 

It’s hard to keep a show this simple entertaining for multiple seasons in a row. No matter how charming the British slang and surprisingly progressive workshops are, the series wouldn’t be nearly as successful as it is without the pure, unhinged oddity of its cast. From Patrick, the super-buff Hawaiian that unsuccessfully attempts to serenade the girl of his dreams, to Brianna, the California girl whose late arrival onto the island caused quite a stir, there would be little reason for viewers to tune in if it weren’t for the personalities of the cast. 

Toward the end of the season, the prize fund hits zero for the first time in “Too Hot to Handle” history after a brief stint where Lana pretends to be offline as a test of the guests’ progress. Naturally, as soon as they assume that the omnipotent cone is no longer watching, they proceed to spend the funds still left over in the pot in a single night. 

This attests to the ultimate question at the heart of the show — are the stars actually gaining anything from this besides notoriety and a chance at their 15 minutes of fame? Is it possible that “Too Hot to Handle” has ascended beyond trashy reality TV into a program that actually will better a small part of society?

The answer is more than likely no, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to watch. With only eight episodes, the series is easily palatable and enjoyable in a “What am I watching right now?” kind of way. Some of the more absurd one-offs and the tacky editing style made me laugh so much that I don’t think it could be considered ironic. 

It is interesting, though, to see a visual representation of the phrase “sex sells” being displayed so prominently on the screen. I’m not sure what exactly the show’s success says about society, but there’s no time to think too deeply about it when you’re fixated on the fallout from the latest love triangle.

Written by: Clara Fischer — arts@theaggie.org

The Arts Desk’s weekly picks for movies, music, podcasts and television shows 

By MARGO ROSENBAUM — arts@theaggie.org

Movie: “The French Dispatch” dir. by Wes Anderson (2021)

I love Wes Anderson movies for their odd, artful style and color. “The French Dispatch” is one of Anderon’s best, but I am biased — it is a journalism movie. Many journalism movies glorify the lives of reporters and follow a sensationalized adventure as the writers uncover a hot story, but this film focuses on the beauty of the stories themselves and provides an honest representation of the lives of journalists. Structured as a series of vignettes, the movie details the closure of a fictional American magazine set in a 20th century French city, bringing to life the narratives of the magazine’s final articles: an obituary for the editor, a brief travel guide and three feature articles. The audience is engulfed in the distinct world of each vignette: French neighborhoods, a prison, a college student revolution and the kitchen of a prized chef. Seemingly content in their thrilling but lonely jobs, the journalists appear as genuine representations of the artful, crafty people in the profession, who are dedicated to capturing the lives of others through photography or even just words on a page. The reporters themselves are beautifully ordinary people who are beautifully unordinary storytellers, as illustrated by the detail and imagery of the narration unfolding on the screen. “The French Dispatch” is a magnificent movie full of impeccable storytelling. 

TV Show: “The Book of Boba Fett”

As a big fan of Star Wars, I have high expectations for any new additions to the epic franchise. The show features Boba Fett: the feared crime lord and former bounty hunter. Set after the events of “Return of the Jedi,” the show follows Fett’s recent rise to power in Tatooine, which was once controlled by Jabba the Hutt. Featuring new characters in addition to those already introduced in the Star Wars universe, “The Book of Boba Fett” even features some beloved oldies from the earliest movies (hopefully, not too much of a spoiler). While I enjoy watching anything related to the Star Wars universe, so far I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of “The Book of Boba Fett.” While true Star Wars fans (including myself) might say “I have a bad feeling about this” and could pick apart how much of this show is a “Disneyfied” version of Star Wars, I still find myself staying up until midnight on Tuesday nights, when the show is released on Disney+. With classic scenes of the speeder races, the bar and the spice trade, Disney accurately captures much of the magic of the Star Wars universe. With more episodes to come, I am looking forward to seeing how the rest of this series pans out. 

Album: “Jubilee” by Japanese Breakfast (2021)

Michelle Zauner, better known as Japanese Breakfast, has created some of her best work with the release of her third album, “Jubilee.” True to Zauner’s classically bright and bold style, the songs on this album are absolutely mystifying and transfer listeners to a place of insight and imagination. With her honest, authentic lyrics, she said the songs are about youthful optimism and the constant struggles to feel like ourselves. As she puts it, the album is about “fighting to feel.” Released in the midst of the pandemic, this album brought me joy when I was at my lowest over the last year. Anyone who listens to her music finds that each song holds a distinctive story and sound: Some are bold and bouncy, while others are soft and meditative. No matter how different each song may appear, the album is held together by Zauner’s strong, poetic voice, which shines through on each track. My favorites on this album include “Savage Good Boy,” “Tactics,” “Slide Tackle” and “Kokomo, In.” After following Zauner’s music for years, I saw her band perform at Ace of Spades last fall. Such energy and warmth showed through in her performance, as she boogied up against her bandmate’s back (who happens to be her husband) under the mirrors and lights of the stage.

Podcast: “Ologies with Alie Ward”

I have written about Ologies in the past for The California Aggie, but my love for this podcast bears repeating. Ologies is the perfect podcast for shameless nerds — like me — to learn about 120 minutes worth of information on a typically very random but absolutely awesome topic. Who knew I needed to learn about crow funerals, hagfish and space junk? Each week, “Ologies” listeners are treated to a new “ology,” a subject of study. The podcast covers classic science topics like wildlife ecology and mycology, as well as those that are not always thought of in a scientific manner, such as decluttering (oikology) and gratitude (awesomeology). Alie Ward, or “pod-dad,” as she calls herself, covers science in a comical yet accurate manner that all audiences can enjoy. As an aspiring science writer and communicator, I look up to Ward and her ability to have insightful conversations that are relevant and conscious of topics and struggles in the world today. Ward hosts a variety of amazing scientists and experts on the show and makes an effort to showcase diverse voices in the field of science. Even science celebrities have made appearances on certain episodes, such as those on science communication (pedagogology) with Bill Nye the Science Guy and TikTok (tiktokology) with Hank Green, a man who helped me and many others through biology. While it was hard to narrow down my favorite episodes, eating wild plants (foraging ecology), sharks (selachimorphology), trees (dendrology) and UFOs (ufology) have been some of my favorites. Combining humor with excellent interviewing skills, Ward’s delectable podcast equips listeners with a portfolio of facts on anything from “dancing spiders” to “very cool worms” (kinetic salticidology and planariology, respectively). 

Written by: Margo Rosenbaum — arts@theaggie.org