Fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken have been a part of my story ever since I was a kid. I remember mashing out E. Honda’s hundred hands slaps on a Super Nintendo controller and slamming buttons on a PlayStation controller to get Eddy to perform capoeira flips on my older brother’s clearly inferior Jin Kazama. Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Street Fighter 3 combos captured my imagination later on in life, then the release of Street Fighter 4 changed everything. Fighters were no longer just a genre I messed around with on occasion; I had found a near infinite well of self improvement and game design to feed my hyper-fixations.
After years of cutting my teeth in competitive gaming and game design with various ARTS developed in Warcraft 3, I felt disillusioned with the whole ordeal. Riot Games and Valve gave me ample reason to no longer feel I had a place in their communities, leading me in search for a new community to call my home.
My interest in fighting games expanded rapidly and soon spilled into my personal life. I began converting friends to Marvel 2, Mortal Kombat 9, and Tekken 6, before finding a place I felt welcome in the fighting game community (FGC) writ large.
Skullgirls, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, and King of Fighters XIII were where I laid my head as I found out more about the smaller, more niche segments of what fighters had to offer. In collaboration with a life long friend of mine, Angry_Lil_Tuna, we began hosting fighting game events at his college dorm. The attendees were mostly fresh faced Smash players who didn’t know a pixel from a polygon, but we still had a fun time and I was inspired to keep exploring what tournament organizing had to offer.
I ended up befriending a local TO, a old head Marvel 2 player from California who moved to the East Coast for work. Working with them, I was able to watch their events grow from small local gatherings in an old warehouse to slightly larger tournaments with multi-state representation, albeit still in a dingy warehouse. Unfortunately, the organizer ended up moving again for work, leaving behind a void in the southeastern MA scene that wouldn’t be filled for at least a decade later.
As my interest in Skullgirls grew, I was able to find a post on the game’s forum about folks looking to gather and make the ride up to Boston for a tournament at Game Underground (GU). This would happen to be a very fortuitous decision to ask for a ride, because it led to me meeting two of the nicest people I’ve been fortunate enough to know in the fighting game community: Zidiane and Sharpie, aka the artists formerly known as FGC Dad & FGC Mom.
Meeting folks like Zid, Sharpie, Lucky D, Alex Smith, and others in the New England scene made me feel incredibly welcomed and lucky to be introduced to such friendly community members.
After getting scolded on Twitter by a prominent Skullgirls player for replying to one of their posts about finding a hotel despite not attending said event, I realized I might not need to spend more time looking for people I might vibe with in the Skullgirls community. I thought, “I might as well cut my losses.”
And I’m glad I did because one of main pillars of that community happened to (allegedly) be a racist turd. Oof.
At this point, I decided to take a break from organizing and going to events. Tuna and I learned Under Night and Granblue, before stumbling upon Virtua Fighter V thanks to the release on PSN. These newer games put a fire under my ass to get back into playing in person instead of just lagging combos in training mode.
I didn’t exactly enjoy my time playing Under Night against higher level players, but I loved playing against friends at a similar level and learning together. Granblue wasn’t my cup of tea, but Virtua Fighter captured the attention of the old man spirit inside me.
Tekken has always been my vibe, but Virtua Fighter cut out all the crap that I found distracting and left me with the pure unadulterated feeling of not being very good at a fighting game with clear instructions on how to improve. Tuna introduced VF to our new local as well, so the future is looking bright for in-person Virtua Fighting.
In 2018, I had a heart-to-heart with myself on whether games and game design were going to be a healthy part of my life going forward. I felt I had spent enough emotional energy and money on games just to have them and the people associated with them disappoint me. I ultimately decided that games were a part of me despite the negativity that they’ve brought me throughout life. The caveat was that I would only focus on game design as a hobby and not let any one community dominate how I feel about the hobby as a whole.
I began working on a new project in 2019 that aimed to combine the hectic fun of tag team fighting games with the strategy of board games. Creating a Discord community and promoting the prototype got me thinking just how little experience I had managing a community of gaming enthusiasts. I figured given my project wasn’t in a rush to publish, I might as well get some practice in managing the expectations, communication, and promotion of someone else’s game.
A Twitter post by Mattrified Games caught my attention in 2019. It showcased an online rollback net code prototype he had created called MerFight. The game had roman cancels and street fighter ex-style chain supers, so I was hooked from the get-go.
Then COVID hit and all the positivity from going to locals and meeting people in person was over… For a while at least.
Eventually, I befriended Matt and helped him manage his Discord community, run tournaments, and promote Merfight. This included driving from Massachusetts to DC to help Matt demo Merfight at MagFest. I slept in my car overnight due to the rain and showed up a few hours later than expected, but it was a great time overall.
Besides play testing Merfight, I was also allowed to contribute my voice to the game’s announcer. This marked an item off my bucket list and helped inspire me to work on other voice over projects, including the trailer for MegaKnockdown.
I was in an awkward position as Merfight’s unofficial community manager, mainly due to both not being part of the actual team for the project (Matt is a solo dev and I respect that) while also putting myself out into the internet to absorb the negativity and vitriol from gamers. Negativity from within the Merfight community was rare, but it hurt even worse knowing that I was exposing myself to it for the love of a community that seemed to have grown tired of me as a person.
I tried playing both sides of the equation; unfortunately, being both an avid fan and a community manager mixes as well as oil and water. If I made a suggestion for the betterment of the game/community, folks would accuse me of overstepping my role or wanting to turn the game into my own rather than respect it for what it was. If I gave half-hearted joking suggestions from the perspective of a fan, many folks would act as if I was trying to be the Wormtongue to Matt’s King Theoden, whispering untruths into his ear.
This made engaging in the Discord outside of an administrative role feel like a lose-lose situation. The fact that I would often be the most active person on the Discord only made me feel more like a loser who wouldn’t shut up about something no one really cared about. Mattrified’s games are worth fanboying over, but I didn’t feel good about myself either being or being perceived as that fanboy.
The straw hit the camels back during a stream when a combination of folks associating me with Merfight and me wanting to talk about the game led to both streamers scolding me for bringing it up when another game was meant to have the lime light. My comment was intended to be light-hearted and to my opponent, but instead it was read aloud on stream as if I had wanted to upstage the broadcasters
The reaction to my comment made me realize I didn’t need or want to spend time playing games with folks online if I’m going to be perceived, justifiably or not, as an obnoxious fan. I try not to let folks’ opinion of me bother me, but I am tired of being online where everything can be misconstrued willfully or otherwise, even with folks I generally vibe with.
ComboBreaker will be the last event I travel for out of state, and probably the last event I attend for a while. I don’t know how I’ll be getting there or even if I will still have a hotel room when I get there, but I want to at least see the people I appreciate in person before spending more time at locals and with other hobbies (This was written before the event, but since it’s been a while, I’ll mention that ComboBreaker was great).
Will I still be playing fighting games? Absolutely! But I don’t think I need to expend much more money or energy on trying to contribute to the fighting game community. I’ll be glad to contribute to individual projects, artists, or niche communities; it’s just the capital F. G. C. that I’m done with for now.
The fighting game community will do just fine without me. I’m glad I was able to meet such kind and lovely people, work with some of them on incredible art, and make lasting friendships, but I am disappointed that I’m once again in search for a gaming community where I feel welcome.
I’m hitting the age that could easily be the middle of my life without being technically middle aged. With the world how it is especially, I’ll be spending more of whatever I have left on my partner, my pets, what remains of my family, and on my loved ones near and far.
Part of that redirection of energies includes me streaming more on Twitch and uploading the VODs to YouTube. Having a routine outside of my professional work has been incredibly fulfilling, as has being able to talk to my close friends each week, and share games with folks in chat.
If you’d like to be a part of the experience, feel free to stop by whenever I’m live.
tommgoldrick.com 