« Cognitive Dissonance: Wants and Needs »

This head-to-head setup at Northeast Championships 16 was used for 3rd Strike and Super Turbo tournaments. The new year is always a time of false bravado and resolve: people make promises they won't keep, whether to themselves or others. It's hardly just a question of will or intent, because as the old adage goes “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” People are too easily sidetracked by that thing called life, which is quick to pull them out of their dreams and aspirations and send them back to mediocrity and drudgery in the workaday world. Many times what people want just doesn't mesh with the things they need.

Comprised of those very people, the fighting game community often finds itself in the same predicament. People have ideas or complaints they think will boost the popularity of a game or help the scene, but what players want to happen is not always grounded in the reality of what the FGC needs in order to function on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. The argument of head-to-head play versus side-by-side play is one such debate, but while h2h may make some players happy it's not so easy to say there's a need for its adoption.

Needs are essential to survival of an organization or organism, and one thing the fighting game community does need is a standard set of rules and equipment. As of right now, many tournaments use the rules set in place every year by Evolution, but those can be unclear and cause confusion as in the case of Full Schedule's arcade stick. While a unified organizational body, like the NFL or FIFA, is not currently a need for fighters—and wouldn't be welcomed by many players or tournament organizers—a set of enforceable rules and equipment standards is necessary to remove as much confusion, tension and disruption as possible.

For its own part, the wide variation in monitors and tournament setups—with or without headphones, splitters, etc.—is a problem because players should always know ahead of time how they will be playing the game. Being forced out of one's comfort zone when money is on the line can affect player performance and even discourage new players from continuing to compete. Display lag is currently a huge problem given all the different monitors being utilized by tournaments, and while it's easy to find ways to complain at an event, a uniform hardware solution quiets a lot of the noise. Though all of this could never be guaranteed at every fighting game event, larger tournaments or those organized by well-known figures in the community should adhere to agreed standards.

BlazBlue Central Fiction's release at Round 1 in Southern California is bringing players into the game with a head-to-head mindset.Looking at needs in that light, head-to-head play can be seen as merely a want from some parts of the community. The U.S. fighting game scene was founded on side-by-side play in the arcades, and while arcades are largely dead that tradition has carried over into console tournaments. Furthermore, when players practice in home sessions, head-to-head is not the standard. While some people may argue that U.S. majors should move to h2h because of international competition, foreign tournaments have rarely ever granted a format change due to U.S. presence. In fact, the addition of PlayStation pad converters for Tekken Crash's Season 6 Royal Rumble is one of the only such instances I can remember. All of this is not even considering the increased costs for tournament organizers, who will then have to pass the costs onto players, of making each setup at an event h2h.

However, while h2h is not a need at this time it may soon become one. With online play becoming a more prevalent way for players to gain experience or even just practice, and the expansion of Japanese arcade chain Round 1 throughout the United States, h2h may soon become the more common way that people learn to play fighting games. When that happens it will be important to revisit this topic; until then, head-to-head is simply an occasional luxury.

Cognitive Dissonance is an editorial series by IPLAYWINNER editor Paul "SuperFX" Dziuba. Views from this piece are not representative of IPLAYWINNER as a whole.