fighting games & why I’m reading lacan
Fighting games are philosophically interesting, because they offer a unique perspective on game-theory “games.” To explain what I mean, let me start with a simplified example: a game-theory “game” that might happen within a single round of a fighting game.
Let’s say I’m on the offense, doing a series of moves on an opponent who is currently blocking (usually called a string or blockstring). Let’s say I’m doing a string that has two possible endings. In one ending, it is a true blockstring, meaning, if my opponent tries to attack during it, my move will hit her during the startup of her attack, and I get a counterhit that does a LOT of damage. In the other ending, it is a “fake” blockstring, meaning my opponent can interrupt it with a fast attack, leading to a small reward for my opponent. However, in exchange, if my opponent does block it, I am left in an advantageous situation.
Those of you have who have been incepted by the RAND Corporation and/or Venkatesh Rao are probably already picturing this 2x2:
In theory, we could “do the math” on all possible options that either player has at any given time. After all, fighting games are turn-based games, it’s just that each “turn” lasts 1/60th of a second. In practice, there are way too many options to consider all of them, so the game happens at the speed of thought.
This allows a more psychological level of play, where I can “get into my opponent’s head.” For instance, continuing the example above, if I just used the true blockstring and counterhit my opponent, I might expect her to be more wary of interrupting my string next time, in which case I can get away with a riskier ender. @spilledreality might call this “anti-inductivity.”
This is of course a simplified example: in most games, both players have more options. I might attempt to throw my opponent out of her block, or “reset” to a completely new string, or mix up my opponent between blocking high or low, or do nothing at all; my opponent might do an invincible but very risky “reversal” attack, or use special defensive options, or use more advanced defensive techniques that cover multiple options (e.g., fuzzy blocking, chicken blocking)...although those techniques, in turn, can be countered by various offensive techniques...
You might be tempted to model this as simply updating the probabilities in the payoff matrix. You’re not entirely wrong: most players will do some quantitative analysis when they’re not in the middle of a game, looking at damage numbers and calculating the risk/reward in a given situation. In practice, though, I can’t prepare for every possible situation, and in the moment of action, I can’t remember every possible situation at the same time. Not to mention that some techniques might be difficult to manually execute, especially under pressure! So the pure game-theoretic model turns out to be inaccurate. At the very least, it requires some notion of “mental resources” (see this video), and some notion of risk of execution failure...
...but even with those adjustments, the game-theoretical model feels distant from what most players actually do. I can’t just will myself to do something 37% of the time, even if that’s what the model says. And in other cases, the model might be exploitable. In Street Fighter V, throws do much, much less damage than getting hit...but the advice to “just take the throw” has become a bit of a meme, because players who “just take the throw” will often get thrown several times in a row. When that happens to you, it’s hard not to feel like a complete fucking moron.
Just as how, in physics, different properties can be observed at the quantum scale, the extremely fast time-scale of fighting games actually gives reality to eerie mind-reading qualities like yomi. It’s hard to consistently win at rock-paper-scissors (although some have tried in interesting ways), but high-level fighting game players “get the read on” or “download” their opponents all the time.
This is why I think it’s not a stretch to call fighting games philosophically interesting. The question of whether, or under what conditions, this kind of “mind-reading” is possible is not a new one. In Poe’s 1844 story “The Purloined Letter,” the proto-Holmesian gentleman detective C. Auguste Dupin tells this story about a childhood friend:
“[...] I knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd'; --he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even' guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed "lucky," --what, in its last analysis, is it?"
"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent."
"It is," said Dupin;" and, upon inquiring of the boy by what means he effected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, I received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucauld, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella."
Does this schoolboy’s strategy seem quite plausible? This question, and its implications for a cybernetic understanding of human psychology, would be taken up a century later by Jacques Lacan.
Which brings me to where I am presently.