« Cognitive Dissonance: Subjectivity »

The debate to ban Kokonoe rages online and her game is still two months away from its North American release. BlazBlue: ChronoPhantasma launches in the United States on March 25, but by then it's likely that the DLC character who is causing such a fuss will be deemed unplayable in U.S. tournaments. It has already been a long and somewhat annoying road, but make no mistake banning characters from tournament play is something that is never done lightly. Tournament organizers want to have enough evidence that they can be sure they aren't simply removing one top-tier character so another can take its place. They need to be sure that the character in question is “breaking” the game.

Sadly, this is something that can never be proven. This is because, as a decentralized body of small scenes and tournament groups, there is no objective set of rules that determines when a character has indeed overstepped the bounds of simply being high tier into broken territory; every decision people make is subjective. Even when Damien “Damdai” Dailidenas convinced the HD Remix community that Akuma needed to be banned, some people still argued against it. Looking back on that decision now, it seems that banning HDR Akuma was the right decision for the game's lifespan, but that's about as close as anyone can get to saying it was objectively the right choice.

Certainly, HDR Akuma had a tool set that made playing against him a frustrating, demotivating match for many players, and similar has been said about Kokonoe. It's what Magic: The Gathering players used to call a “negative playing experience,” and that term alone was used in many circles when talking about banning specific cards or combos from MtG tournament play. However, there's a fine line between an unwinnable situation and one that is very hard. That distinction is important because for some people the latter is what motivates them to play fighting games. That is where the fun is for them.

The idea of fun is why trying to ban characters in any game has problems. Some players enjoy “fighting against the mountain,” using a comparatively small set of tools to outwit and defeat players using much stronger or top-tier characters. The enjoyment for those gamers is in seeing that they can do it, proving that they are good enough to overcome whatever matchup is not in their favor. Yet for other people the fun may be in putting similarly skilled characters against each other, knowing that they can pick a favorite character and not be crushed immediately by the game's tier system. Both these and many other definitions of fun are all completely valid, and ignoring even one of them is likely to send an off-putting message to players. Even now, competitors hoping to ban Kokonoe say she is causing players to quit BBCP and hurting the potential for future players to learn the game on its U.S. release. Their message is clear: BBCP with Kokonoe in it is not fun, and thus not a game they want to compete in or play.

And that's where the argument circles back to tournament organizers. Tournament rules have never been based strictly on “fun” because it is too subjective; cries of cheapness have been dismissed in the community for years. If a certain character or strategy was in the game—other than Super Turbo Akuma, it should be noted—it was allowed, and for console tournaments if it was in the arcade version it was legal. With the rise of console gaming, however, tournaments no longer have definitive rules. Downloadable content in the form of characters, stages and patches has altered the playing field, and TOs are left trying to make judgments on each new piece of a game as it is released. It is not an enviable situation, as each TO knows that any and every decision they make could cause at least one group of players to consider staying home.

That is the tough reality; there is no real answer to the dilemma of banning characters. The only possibility is tournament organizers unilaterally making the decisions on their own, and telling the community it's up to them to show up or not. When the prize pot comes from the players and not the tournament or other outside sources, though, that becomes a much harder sell. After all, who wants to put their money on the line to play a game that isn't fun?

Cognitive Dissonance is an editorial series by Paul "SuperFX" Dziuba. This piece doesn't reflect the overall views and opinions of IPLAYWINNER.