Fighting Game Locals
It can be hard to meet people offline once you break out of the education system. But one method I’ve found that’s good for getting me around other people is going to fighting game tournaments. My fixation on fighting games only reached the level it’s at now due to them being one of my main ways of finding social events.
Naturally the massive once a year fighting game tournaments get a good amount of press, but I’m not talking about those. There are tons of smaller ones that meet on a monthly or weekly basis. They’re not events you fly out for, they’re for the local community. Which is why they’re called locals.
Instead of some grand arena with stadium seating, the average local takes place in whatever space people can secure (often a gamestore of some kind). People will pack in as many systems and monitors as they can, because having ten people crowd around one set up is far from ideal. The more instances of the game you can have run at once, the more efficient the tournament will be. Often it’s down to competitors themselves to bring additional game systems and monitors.
When I attended a weekly fighting game tournament at my college I was one of the people who brought a set up, including a monitor. I had a whole system devised for carrying all the needed equipment from my dorm room down the street to the local while being able to open the doors myself. Was probably the most physical exertion I’d get that week too if I’m being honest.
The pay off is that locals are also a chance to play friendly matches with people before or after the tournament. You can enjoy going head to head without the pressure of a bracket behind it. This is when you really get to connect with people I feel, since you’re not cut short by the logistical needs of the tournament. And with no tournament stakes you can chat while playing.
You also get the space to develop a minor reputation. Just showing up regularly will have people notice who you play as and go ‘oh yeah that’s one of our Millia players.’ For the online scene you’d need to be very good to be anyone of note, nobody will notice anything you do generally.
Another way to express yourself at a local is your choice of controller. The expectation is that you bring your own. You can do just fine with the standard controller for the console being used. But there are also controllers called fight sticks modeled after arcade cabinet controllers, or controllers that eschew sticks and levers entirely, using buttons for everything. Or you could go with something more unusual like a steering wheel controller.
Thanks to the bring your own controller nature of locals, you can easily go to events for games you don’t own. I’ve played in tournaments for plenty of games I don’t have and had a blast doing it. Takes me back to when I’d go over to a friend’s house and we’d play whatever they had.
Although not everyone who goes to locals views them in the same way I do. I had an interesting reminder of this during a night with low turn out for a Guilty Gear Strive tournament, where I was informed that a lot of people had stopped playing the game outright due to it facing server issues and people wanting to focus on a game they could grind matches in full time. Meanwhile I don’t even have my own copy of the game.
The thing about locals is that they’re local, pretty much everything about them depends on who and what is in the area. Not just the overall culture but also what games get played. My college for example had Super Smash Bros Brawl tournaments due to having a few people who were into its oft overlooked yet still active competitive scene.
Sometimes it feels like getting into fighting game locals in college had a bigger impact on me than my classes. It’s something I can draw on to connect with people wherever I end up. That’s the beauty of it to me. In a world full of online and global communication fighting games have helped me be part of a local community.