Fighting Games Friday: The Pandemic Is Another Argument for Better Netplay

There’s been a movement to get fighting game developers to take online netplay more seriously in the last few years, which I’ve highlighted in detail in prior posts. The audience is done tolerating middling-at-best online play through existing developer netcodes that have been around since the last console generation, which rely on input delay to measure lag. They instead prefer rollback netcode, which rolls back gameplay to measure lag instead of inputs, because it’s better to potentially lose hits than have a whole fight that feels underwater. Several developers have listened, the latest of which being Arc System Works with the upcoming Guilty Gear Strive. But there are several more to go.

Yes, better netplay would be great for fighting games in general, but we’ve recently experienced another reason why it would be worthwhile for developers to implement it in their upcoming games: The COVID-19 pandemic.

Every fighting game tournament planned for this year from March on has been cancelled, with the last big event of note being Evo Japan 2020 in late January. Thanks to how easy it is for the Coronavirus to spread, group settings are a no-go unless the organizers want participants for a death cult. Fortunately, no organizers have felt that way yet (unlike other prominent faces in certain countries, especially the USA), but it’s tough to see how even tournaments later in the year can still happen. This has, sadly, included Evo 2020, an event that will move online.

If only it was easier to provide an online alternative, though, a virtual tournament to take the experience online. This solution wouldn’t be perfect considering the tournament community atmosphere can’t be replicated virtually, meaning it would suffer from the same hurdles as other events that have need to adapt to social distancing. But it would be something.

I know I’m not proposing an original idea here; some fighting game tournaments have already occurred online. Several have happened for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Blazblue: Central Fiction. As nice as these were, they would have flowed better with improved online play.

But there’s no chance they’ll be implemented for those particular games. Nintendo wouldn’t for Smash Ultimate because the team doesn’t pay as much attention to online communities as other fighting game developers do, while BBCF is old enough (it released over three years ago) that it wouldn’t be profitable for Arc System Works. But it’s something both the Smash and Blazblue teams should keep in mind for their future titles. I can’t imagine why the latter team wouldn’t if it’s implemented well in Strive.

Online tournaments haven’t been anywhere near as prevalent thus far due to online play in general being unpredictable, and players themselves sometimes having finicky connections. Case in point (though not entirely video game related): Some players withdrew from the Professional Darts Corporation Home Tour when it moved online thanks to their WiFi being too spotty for them to participate. That could happen with fighting games, but the chances of that are lower. Any player who cares about playing online knows that WiFi is not good for online matches, let alone tournaments. An online fighting game tournament wouldn’t have as many issues due to most players knowing what a good internet setup is, but there’s always someone who wants to play with fire.

We’ll hopefully not have another pandemic, at least on this scale, again in the near future. Yet, the combination of better online play and online tournaments would be a boon for the fighting game community, even if it’s only an alternative. The community will have to maintain their pressure on developers so that larger ones like Bandai Namco and smaller ones like French Bread (of Under Night In-Birth) can implement it in theirs — though Arc System Works could help out the latter.

Speaking of Arc System Works: Zooey released in the Arc-developed and Cygames-published Granblue Fantasy: Versus this week. She continues the trend of Versus’ DLC characters in being tough to learn, but mostly rewarding. Twitter couldn’t stop mentioning how some of her corner combos and juggles are very similar to Sol Badguy’s from Guilty Gear, just in case anyone thought this game didn’t inherit any DNA from Arc’s main series.

Zooey will be the last DLC character for a while, as the second season of characters, staring with Belial/Chaos Bringer, won’t start arriving until the fall. This seems like a long gap given how previous characters were releasing within weeks, but it’s actually quite normal. Keep in mind that it takes a lot of effort to create characters for fighting games, with the developers creating move sets and making sure they’re properly balanced. That’s bound to be even harder while working during a pandemic.

Speaking of the pandemic: It’s also been responsible for the shortage of fighting game news, something likely to continue as it hinders developers from working as fast as they can, if they can still work at all. It’s a rough time for almost everyone at this point, but it’s important to maintain patience and empathy when it comes to entertainment creation. We’ll get back to “normal” one day soon.