Putting the C in FGC

Hello, my name is Chris and I recently decided to start competing in the Atlanta fighting game community. I've been playing fighting games casually for most of my life up until the start of 2018 and I've chosen Tekken, a notoriously difficult game to get good at, as my first competitive game. Join me as I make new friends in the Atlanta FGC, travel to different events in Georgia, make a fool of myself on the tournament stage, and hopefully grow from my experiences.

[puttingthecinfgc]

Iron Fist Interviews: KSU Abstract

This is the transcript of an interview I had on April 18th, 2018 with an up and coming star in the Atlanta Tekken scene, KSU Abstract (also known as: ATLAbstract/GTAbstract). Since both of us are college students that are active in the Atlanta Tekken community, he allowed me to give him an interview and share some of his experiences with juggling a busy school life with competitive gaming. The recorded interview can be listened to here: https://soundcloud.com/user-835177328/april-19-2018-interview-with-tekken-player-ksu-abstract/s-al0nY

Chris: Who are you?

KSU Abstract:My name is Alex Bechke, I'm a third year software engineering student at Kennesaw State University and I like playing fighting games competitively. But, that's not my whole life though, I have other hobbies outside of fighting games. I like martial arts, playing basketball, making games in unity.

Chris: Alright, so as a software engineering student I'd imagine your uh, course load can already get pretty busy on its own. How do you keep that keep that all under control?

KSU Abstract:How do I balance my load between classes?

Chris:Yeah

KSU Abstract: I'm gonna be very very honest. I don't take four classes a semester; I only take three because I don't think I could personally handle four classes. I've taken four classes before-- well, it depends on what kind of classes I take. Next semester I'm taking only three because I'm taking, like, Physics lab. Plus, um, a probability and data analysis course and I don't remember what the third class is. But this semester, I'm taking four because the classes are easier. So, I know my capabilities when it comes to classes and uh, the way I balance school and competitive fighting games is pretty much getting ahead of schedule and never procrastinating. I go to the library about every single day and I'll study even on the weekends. Even on Saturday and Sunday, as soon as I get off of work I'll come to the library and study or do work and work on personal projects. But, um, yeah I just get ahead and make sure I have breathing room to relax and play.

Chris:Damn, son.

KSU Abstract:Yeah

Chris: You answered... like everything. Do you work as well?

KSU Abstract:Yeah I do work, I work at Choi Kwang-Do on Wade Green. It's the headquarters of the world, yo shout out to Choi Kwang-Do. Uh, I don't work there that much though so the work load is not that much there. My job there is I teach adult classes for Choi Kwang-Do. You know from anywhere--actually not even just adult classes. I teach kids too. From anywhere--from age, like, seven and up. Even I teach, you know, people who are fifty. I've been there for a long time too, ten years. Not working, but I volunteered and helped there when I was little. I'll say though, playing tekken competitively does actually help with school because it teaches me how to, like, problem solve because in Tekken there's a lot of things that you have to critically think about. And uh, Tekken is a very deep game and there's, like, let's just say for example-- like if you have a problem in Tekken-- like if there's a problem you face. There's more than likely more than one solution to it. However, in 2D fighting games the solutions are more clear and more, like, straight-up and you'll, like, know how to deal with it. But in Tekken it's on a three-dimensional foreground and there's highs, mids, and lows. It's so much deeper than normally. And also, it does take a lot of stress off too--playing.

Chris:Yeah, I was actually reading earlier that, uh, that student athletes, um, actually tend to perform better in school than people who aren't in sports.

KSU Abstract: Yeah, that's absolutely true

Chris: Do you see any parallels between that and people that are active in the competitive gaming scene?

KSU Abstract: I think it's the mindset too of the athletes and the players because they are very, uh... driven. Their mentality is very driven--they know what they want, like their goals. That's not even just for fighting games or competitive--like competition or sports, but they also drive very hard in academics as well. For instance, I'm working on getting my portfolio and all that ready because I have goals that I'm striving to achieve to become a software engineer when I graduate.

Chris: Also, you don't wanna fall behind in school, so you can keep playing the game.

KSU Abstract: Yeah, exactly. School is always the number one priority and then family, and all that-- then Tekken. I know I put school in front of family, it's kind of messed up that I do, but it's just facts.

Chris: It's your life, man

KSU Abstract: It is my life; it's unfortunate that I do, but...

Chris: Do you have any tips for people out there that are, like, busy in college and maybe they wanna get into competitive gaming?

KSU Abstract: Yeah, my tip is do not-- never procrastinate. You can never procrastinate because if you procrastinate you won't get any of your school work done and then you'll end up playing fighting games competitively or practicing and um... you won't have time to do your school work. You're gonna end up missing assignments, falling behind on sleep-- sleep's very important as well. You need to have time to sleep. So, if you fall behind you won't do well in school--if you focus too hard on fighting games. So, just make school the number one priority.

Chris: Alright, you got any plugs?

KSU Abstract: Any plugs? Uh, is this anonymous? Well--I mean, it's not, you already asked me for my name.

Chris: Anyone you want to shout out?

KSU Abstract: I just wanna shout out everyone that I play Tekken with offline. If it wasn't for the people I play with offline, I wouldn't be anywhere right now in Tekken. No way I'd have as many friends as I have now. I've met a lot of amazing people through the scene and through competitive Tekken and, uh... I've been given a lot of opportunities. So--meeting people who are also software engineers as well like, uh... famously known Atlanta player named Speedkicks, aka Stephen Stafford who is a software engineer as well. Me and him talk about getting a job, and job hunting, and internship type stuff. So, there are a lot of helpful people. But yeah, mainly everyone at KSU, Aaron Williams, Roland, and Red, and Chris, everybody. Aram and Spencer--there's too many people to name--there's ridiculous amounts.

Chris: Alright, that'll wrap up the interview. Thank you for your time.

KSU Abstract: Yeah, no problem, Chris. No problem, Melonball. Take it easy, man.

[puttingthecinfgc]

How I Set Up My Twitch Stream

I don’t know whether it’s been mentioned on this blog before, but up until a few weeks ago I couldn’t play and practice Tekken 7 at home because my laptop was far too old to run the game. If it weren’t for the fact that I live in the Tekken capital of the United States, I would never have been able to continue playing the game and improving as much as I have, despite not having the game. That changed when I finally got the money to build the first desktop PC I’ve ever owned. As I’m now planning to start streaming my game play to keep track of my progress in Tekken, I thought this was an appropriate time to make a post about how to set up a stream on Twitch. At least, how I set up my stream. Step 1: Download OBS

OBS stands for Open Broadcaster Software and it’s a free and open-source streaming/recording program that will allow you to stream to Twitch. There are other programs that you can use for this, but OBS is widely used because it’s free, it doesn’t take long to learn how to use, and it gets the job done.

Step 2: Configure OBS

Last year, OBS was updated to have an auto-configuration wizard which made the set up a lot easier for me. When you first open OBS, the program asks you if you would like to run the auto-configuration wizard and if you click yes, it will run a series of tests to decide the optimal configuration for your system and internet speed. It will automatically set up video, encoding, and streaming settings as well as the best server for you to stream to. Although I must mention that the auto-configuration tool doesn’t account for system usage while a game is actually running. Therefore, it’s recommended that you run the game that you want to stream while running the auto-configuration wizard.

The recommended max bitrate for streaming on Twitch is the lower of 3300 or 80 percent of your upload speed. However, I know that a lot of people on Twitch struggle to watch streamers who stream at 720p, 30fps, and a 2000kbps bit rate because their internet isn’t the best (I’m one of them). Twitch grants quality control settings for viewers, but only as the resources to do so become available. Twitch partners get the highest priority for this feature, followed by Twitch affiliates, then everyone else. I’m neither a partner nor an affiliate, so I configured my settings at 540p, 30fps, 2000kbps with the CPU usage preset set to “fast.”

 Step 3: Add a scene

OBS utilizes something called “scenes” which are built out of all the elements you want to broadcast to your viewers. Usually you want your scene to include: the game you're playing, your webcam's video feed and possibly your PC’s desktop.

Just click the plus sign at the bottom left of the Scenes box, name the scene and click “ok.”

Creating a scene is easy: Just right-click in the Scenes box and click Add Scene from the dropdown menu. Name your new scene and then click OK.

 Step 4: Add your game

There are three different ways that OBS uses to capture gameplay: Game Capture, Window Capture and Monitor Capture. Window capture will stream video from an individual window, monitor capture will stream whatever is happening on your monitor, and game capture will stream video from a single game. Since Game Capture is the only option that will capture video from full screen games, and I play Tekken in full screen, this is the option I went with. For this next part, you want to make sure the game you want to stream is running. Don’t forget to make sure the scene you created is selected, then you can click the plus sign in the bottom left corner of the Sources box and click Game Capture.

Name the Game Capture anything you want, then select the game you want it to capture (the game has to be running for OBS to see it).

Step 5: Put your Twitch key into OBS

In order to get the capture to stream on Twitch you need to find your stream key at https://www.twitch.tv/user/dashboard/settings, click stream key, click show key, click “I understand,” copy and paste the key into the stream key box in the stream section of OBS.

Step 6: Click “Start Streaming”

You should see it come up on your twitch channel now. There is a preview feature within OBS that you can use to test everything before you go live, but personally I just did a test stream on Twitch and deleted the VOD after since I had no viewers anyway.

 That’s all there is to it; if I can do, it you can do it. You can check my stream out at www.twitch.tv/scottmelonball. I might possibly start streaming Tekken 7 gameplay after the semester is over.

[puttingthecinfgc]

Choosing a Main

Now that my first big tournament is behind me, I’ve taken some time to reflect on my overall progress and place in Tekken 7. I said in this post, “all in all [Final Round 2018] helped me learn more about myself as a player and opened my mind to more characters and strategies to fit my play style” and I’ve since identified myself as a defensive player that focuses on: keep out, whiff punishment, pokes, and range 2 (long ranged) spacing. For this reason, I’ve taken up Asuka Kazama as my secondary character and I think now is a good time for a post about choosing which fighting game character to play. Aesthetics Usually when you pick up a fighting game there’s one or a few characters that will catch your eye, either by way of looks or their fighting style. This is how I chose most of my fighting game mains and it’s how I chose my main in Tekken 7, Master Raven. It may not be the best way to choose a character if you already have an established playstyle in fighting games, but it’s really easy to stick with the game when you have a character that you can identify with or one that just has a fighting style or appearance that is attractive to you. Hit the random button If no character grabs your attention from the beginning, it’s best to get a hands-on experience with each character to see how they feel to you. You may not get a full understanding of that character’s general game plan by selecting random and playing them a few times, but you’ll at least know how it feels to move with them and what their basic moves feel like. I didn’t end up playing Asuka by hitting the random button, but I must say if I judged only on looks I would’ve missed out on playing a great character. Counterpicks After you’ve decided on a main character, you’ve been playing them for a while, and you’ve developed a deeper understanding of the character, you’ll be able to see your character’s weaknesses a lot more clearly. For a secondary character, you can’t go wrong with picking up a character who can deal with characters who can exploit your main’s weaknesses. Know yourself If you’ve been playing fighting games for a while and you already know what your play style is, don’t hesitate to pick a character that compliments your play style well. I avoided Asuka for so long because I assumed she was boring due to the lack of flashiness in her move set. Now that I’ve accepted I’m a more defensive player and tried her out, I’m having a lot of fun playing her.

[puttingthecinfgc]

5 Tips to Prepare for a Major Tournament

Now that I’ve been to my first international tournament, I thought I’d share a list of some things I did to prep for the event as well as some things to consider in the future.

Get a good night’s sleep

Not getting enough rest before the big event is a pretty good way to makes sure you show up late to your pools, thus disqualifying yourself in any match that you failed to show up in time for. Aside from that, Tekken is can be a very mentally taxing game and you want to make sure that your brain’s gears are fully rotating during your matches, just like resting before an SAT. Lastly, major tournaments tend to be an all-day event and you wouldn’t want to fall asleep in the middle of the venue.

Eat

This one ties into the first tip. I don’t know about everyone else, but personally, it can be quite hard for me to focus on an empty stomach. It seems like a no-brainer, but between the long duration of each event, the overpriced venue food, socializing, hype moments, and the volunteer hours (for those who are working the event) it’s surprisingly easy to get low on nutrition. I recommend catching breakfast on the way to the event and scheduling a specific time to get lunch as soon as the tournament schedules are posted.

Stay hydrated

Your brain is composed of 73% water and being dehydrated can cause a headache. If you suffer from small bladder like I do, be sure to go to the restroom before your pool starts and after your games if you can because there’s no bathroom break once the match has started. A wise man once said, “if you wanna be a champion, you gotta learn how to hold that shit” -Aris "Aris" Bakhtanians

Hit the lab

In my experience, I found it helpful to find out who I had to face in my bracket and if possible, find out what characters they play. Make sure you can recognize the character’s key moves/strings and how your character can deal with them. You get all the bonus points in the world if you can train against people who are experienced with the characters you will have to face in your bracket. I went 1-2 at Final Round 2018, but the reason I managed to beat the one player is because I specifically trained against his characters and I knew what to look out for.

Fear no other player

It doesn’t matter how famous your opponent’s skills are in your community, completely ignore their name. Your perception of your opponent’s skill as a player should never hold you back from trying to apply your game plan and going for mixups that usually work. I learned that the hard way when I fought against El Negro Piripicho in the Master Raven mirror; his knowledge of the character scared me into playing too safe and I never got my pressure started as a result.

[puttingthecinfgc]

I didn’t take any pictures when I went to Eleague, so I made sure to get some pictures at Final Round 2018. I present to you, in the pristine quality of 5 different cell phone cameras, my Final Round 2018 photos.

KawaiiFaceMiles (right) and myself (left)

From right to left: Daryos, JDCR, and myself

El Negro (right) and myself (left)

Jeondding (left) and myself (right)

From left to right: Daryos, Saint, and myself

The winner of Final round 2018, the holy Knee (left) 🙏 and myself (right) featuring Chanel to Knee’s right and Kkokkoma to my left. Also, that might be LowHigh’s head directly behind me, but it’s hard to tell in the picture.

The best Xiaoyu player in the western hemisphere, P.Ling (right) and myself (left)

Blackbeard (left) and myself (right)

Bonus picture: Low Tier God (left) and myself (right)

[puttingthecinfgc]

My Experience at Final Round 2018

This is somewhat of a late post due to my getting buried under mountains of course work this week, but it would be a sin for me to not share my experiences at Final Round 2018. For those of you who don’t know, Final Round is Final Round, LLC’s annual fighting game tournament that has been held in Atlanta for the past 21 years. This year’s tournament, Final Round 21, was a major event in which the Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition tournament was a Global Premier event of the 2018 Capcom Pro Tour and the Tekken 7 event was a Master tournament of the 2018 Tekken World Tour. As a well-established major tournament, Final Round is expensive to get into, but I cheated the system and entered for $10 by volunteering. This year, Tekken had 297 entrants and most of them where what I would consider to be strong players.

Following my own advice, I left my goals and expectations at the door and I played every moment the best that I knew how. Unfortunately, my tournament run ended quickly as I was seeded in the second pool of the tournament and I lost two in a row after winning my first game. Although I’m sort of disappointed by that, I am content with two things: I beat LordIceman826 in tournament, and I got taken out of the tournament by Shaolin. For context, LordIceman826 is a well-known figure around the Atlanta Tekken scene and he’s currently ranked higher than me on the ATL Tekken House power rankings. Honestly, the player tier list doesn’t bother me; I just want to prove that I don’t belong in D tier. Also, Shaolin is a player that I mentioned in this post. For some reason, my pride would rather have me be taken out by a fellow Georgia player or one of my FGC heroes than a random player from out of state. What I’m not content with is losing to a Paul player; I’ve never beaten a Paul player in tournament. That character is my kryptonite.

The best part of the tournament for me was playing casual matches with a few prominent players as well as some of my fellow Master Raven mains, the top two highlights being: getting destroyed by GEN1US (Paul player) and El Negro (Master Raven player). All in all, this tournament helped me learn more about myself as a player and opened my mind to more characters and strategies to fit my play style.

It’s sad to know that Final Round 2018, which was my first final round, was potentially the last Final Round. If this is true, I’m sure Georgia will have another major fighting game tournament to take its place, but I can’t help but think “everything I touch dies” after this.

[puttingthecinfgc]

The Psychology of Competition

In my first post I mentioned that I had been thinking about the nature of competition and why people compete in the first place. In my short search thus far, I’ve found that the jury seems to still be out in regard to the psychology of human competition and why people willingly enter competitions. At this point, I think I may have come up with more questions than answers in my search. Especially when I think about how many countries around the world are almost entirely cooperative in comparison to the United States.

In A Theory of Social Comparison Process Leon Festinger asserted that “there exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and abilities.” He went further to suggest that we judge our own abilities by comparing them to the other people’s abilities and any comparison, good or bad, can have an effect on how we view ourselves. The desire to close the gap between our own skills and the skills of the people around us can awaken competitive behavior essentially as a way to protect our ego.

In Vying for the Prize, a presidential column for psychologicalscience.org, D. J. Siegel said that the need to compare our own skills to the skills of other people is so strong that we can end up with an unstable subjective evaluation of ourselves if there are no people around to compare ourselves to. Thus, the abilities of the people around us is an important point of reference and tool used to better understand ourselves.

Social comparison theory attempts to explain the human need for competition via two categories: individual factors and situational factors. The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective by Stephen M. Garcia, Avishalom Tor, and Tyrone M. Schiff says that the literature regarding social comparison theory has historically focused on the three individual variables that increase comparison concerns: performance dimension (i.e. sports, income, academics), similarity (similar people tend to display more comparison concerns), and closeness (comparison concerns tend to be higher between friends, siblings, etc.).

More recently, the importance that situational factors have on social comparison processes has been looked at. For example, incentive structures are situational variables that commonly trigger the social comparison process. Fighting game tournaments would fall under the “zero-sum” section of incentive structures, meaning someone else has to lose in order for you to win. Aside from incentive structures, three more situational factors that affect competitiveness have been identified: proximity to a standard (power rankings or other performance milestones), number of competitors (comparison concerns tend to decrease as number of competitors increases), and social category fault lines (comparison concerns tend to be higher in a competition between an American and a French than one between two Americans).

In short, I got maybe half of the answers I was looking for; I still have no idea why social comparison concerns manifest more strongly in some than others. I’ve known many people that are very competitive, but they never felt the desire to enter organized competitions. I’m also more confused about why some people are compelled to play in tournaments while others are content with staying online warriors considering “proximity to a standard” is likely the motivation for both. Hit me up in my ask box if you have answers, because I’m lost.

Further reading:  Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison. Human Relations, 7, 117–140. Garcia, S. M., Tor, A., & Schiff, T. M. (2013, December 9). The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective. Retrieved from pdfs.semanticscholar.org:https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/091c/1174c9c3c70757d27800092825472a0820a3.pdf Hutson, M. (2015, October). Why We Compete A scientific look at people’s obsessions with besting their peers. Retrieved from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/why-we-compete/403201/#3 Siegel, D. J. (2010, November). Vying for the Prize. Retrieved from psychologicalscience.org: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/vying-for-the-prize-competition-in-large-and-small-groups

[puttingthecinfgc]

5 Ways to Overcome Tournament Nerves

Since I live in an area saturated with seasoned Tekken tournament veterans, I have the privilege of being able to pick their brains and receive advice in person. Here are some of the ways of dealing with tournament nerves that I’ve gathered from more practiced tournament players and a few from my own experience. #1 Focus on the present moment

I can’t remember who told me this, but someone once reminded me that “the previous game doesn’t matter.” It kind of sounds like a dumb advice when you first hear it; especially if you just dropped the round winning combo, you lost game one without winning a single round, or your opponent took the final round from a wake-up rage art when they had only a pixel of life left. Many people let moments like this replay in their head and it can negatively affect the way they play in the next game by stealing their focus. One thing that separates strong tournament players from everyone else is their ability to maintain composure and keep their thoughts in sync with what’s currently happening. This is the strongest way to prevent tilt: a poker term for a state of mental/emotional confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a less than optimal strategy (usually over-aggressive). In fighting games tilt can also manifest in the form of muscle tension, input errors, and dropped combos.

#2 Don’t think about your goals

Obviously, it’s important to have goals as a way to motivate yourself to keep playing and provide benchmarks that make it easier for you to see your own improvement. However, in a tournament setting, thinking about your goals can put an unnecessary amount of pressure on you that might make you more likely to “tilt” after a bad round. Having goals is fine, but when it comes time to play your matches, leave your goals at the registration table and focus on the present moment.

#3 Ignore the crowd behind you

Fighting game communities in the United States tend to get a little loud and it’s common (especially in Atlanta) for the crowd to get actively involved in the match by trash talking or making noise. If you came with friends, they’ll probably be yelling and hyping you up too. Don’t let it distract you from finding out your opponent’s game plan and shutting it down. Don’t let the people rooting for your opponent get in your head and put you on tilt. Furthermore, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to perform better than your friends.

#4 Take a breather during the break

Make sure to use the loading time between games to think about what your opponent did that worked, how to counter it, what you did that worked, and how to abuse it. You may also want to think about how your opponent responded to your poking patterns, your movement, any habits they may have, any weaknesses in their defense, and any gaps in their offense that you can punish. This process known as “downloading your opponent,” should be occurring at all points of the match and you should have an idea of your opponent’s general play style after just the first round, according to Hoa "Anakin" Luu. In a tournament setting, you should take every second available to you at the rematch/character select/stage select screen to think about these things and shrug off the mistakes you may have made in the last game.

#5 Go for easier combos

In the first tip, I briefly mentioned that stress or “tilt” can cause your muscles to tense up. Sometimes the onset of this kind of stress is inevitable, but going for the less difficult combos is one way you can reduce the effects it has on your game play in clutch situations. Especially when you know the easier combo is enough to kill. As a friend of mine once said, “the most optimal combo is the one that you won’t drop.”

[puttingthecinfgc]

Shout-out to Shout-outs: My Experience at Gwinnett Brawl

Last weekend I had the opportunity of going to Gwinnet Brawl, “northeast Georgia's premier monthly fighting game tournament series,” as described on their twitter. It was the second time I had been there; the first was about 3 years ago at a Smash 4 tournament. So, it was cool to go back and see a few familiar faces there. However, what my friends and I were focused on was the Tekken tournament. If you didn’t know, Georgia has some of the strongest Tekken players in the United States and many of Georgia’s top players can frequently be seen at Gwinnett Brawl. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), MIC_ATL was out of town, Big Boy didn’t have money to pay the entry fee, Jio was nowhere to be found, and Boss Juice didn’t enter the tourney. And, of course, Speedkicks and Anakin don’t go to local tournaments. Even with most of Georgia’s top players missing from the tournament, it was still a tough competition, and that’s before we even mention Pokchop. We still have to mention Tekken veterans such as Shinkuur, Mr_96atl, and Shola. Not to mention Georgia’s strongest up-and-comers: A-A-Ron, Abstract, Hands On Sight, InIt2WynneIt, Shaolin, and Fabo.

As you could imagine, as an inexperienced player, I didn’t make it as far as I wanted to in that tournament. But, I’m actually happier about my performance at Gwinnett Brawl than the other tournaments I’ve played at so far. I ended up with 17th place out of 27 entrants and got taken out by Shola and Fabo; They placed 2nd and 7th, respectively. Fabo took advantage of my inexperience with the Paul matchup and destroyed me. On the other hand, my games with Shola didn’t go as terribly and I was just 1 round away from taking a game off of him. I also got the chance to play casual matches versus Boss Juice and Big Boy; Boss Juice taught me ways to deal with the King matchup and Big Boy taught me a lot about Tekken in general over the numerous games we played.

For me, the greatest thing to come out of the whole experience was Abstract winning 3rd place. Abstract is a good friend of mine, one of the people who got me into Tekken, and that Gwinnett Brawl was the first big local tournament that he won money from. Abstract came up in the tekken scene with people telling him many discouraging things that I won’t mention, but he never gives up. Through his hard work he’s gone from getting beaten by people who don’t even play Tekken to being mentioned as the next generation of ATL Tekken along with the other up-and-comers I mentioned.

Is there anyone in your local scene that inspires you? Do you have any tournament veterans or new blood in your scene that you would like to shout out?

[puttingthecinfgc]

I never considered myself to be a very competitive person. I was never much into sports, I didn’t enter many contests growing up, and despite music being the only thing I consider myself good at, I turned down almost every opportunity I had to participate in a music competition or talent show. Needless to say, picking up a competitive game as a hobby is somewhat out of character for me and when I had to play live on stream against one of the best Tekken players in the country for my first tournament match I should’ve wondered what I was doing there in the first place. It was a relatively big tournament with many strong players such as: MIC_ATL, formerly one of the best King players in the United States, Sims, an Atlanta tekken veteran, Kayash one of Atlanta Tekken’s young talents, Pokchop, a veteran who is currently one of the 8 best players in the United States, and HandsOnSight, a friend of mine who also happens to be one of Georgia’s strongest players. Meanwhile, I was there with limited Tekken experience and no tournament experience. I was outclassed and out of my comfort zone, but I wasn’t uncomfortable.

Recently I’ve started to think about the nature of competition and why people compete in the first place. For some, it’s the drive to prove they’re the best at something. Others seem to just enjoy the activity and want to see how far they can push their skills. I’d say I fall in with the latter at the moment, but in my self-reflection, I’ve learned that those reasons are just the initial things that pull a person into the competition. People continue to compete for the community, the friends that they get to make, the places they get to travel, the rivalries, the history and the storylines, the content creation in the community, even the drama and the trash talk. The decision to start competing has afforded me the opportunity to make friends I probably wouldn’t have made otherwise and bond more with some of the friends I already had. These are the reasons for my lack of discomfort at that tournament; I can only improve from here and I got to meet new people. Of course, going to a tournament makes your areas of needed improvement a lot clearer which is of the utmost importance for a person trying to improve their skills, but just think about how much the biproducts of the competition can enrich your life.

Are you the type that naturally enjoys competition, or are you more likely to do your own thing and avoid competing with others? If you’re the latter, I challenge you to enter a competition. Maybe you can relate to some of the things I mentioned.