“Fighting games are hard”. It’s the rallying cry of people who are new to fighting games, don’t play them much, and a lot of people otherwise. To a lot of people, fighting games are these arcane experiences, wildly difficult to engage with, impossibly difficult to understand. Understandably, this does sort of chafe with a lot of fans of the genre, because in their eyes, fighting games aren’t that hard. Sure, they can demand a lot at a high level, but understanding how to play low level beginner slapfests with your friends isn’t that much of a struggle compared to other genres. And anyway, any competitive game at a high level is just as hard as fighting games, so it can’t be fair to single out this one genre, right? This has some truth to it, to be sure, but it does ignore the reality that yeah, fighting games do tend to get more flack for their “difficulty” than most other genres, and that’s got to be for some reason, right? Yeah, I think there is a reason, and what I’d posit as the most likely reason is the fact that fighting games work off such a different logic of control compared to most games.
Most games follow a consistent logic of control, even if we don’t realize it. Across genres, the way in which the act of moving around and taking actions works is actually pretty consistent, and it’s part of why playing a few games means the next game you play becomes much easier to pick up. Think of the most basic 2D platformer: the original Super Mario Bros., even. The way these games tend to work is that you use a stick or d-pad to move around, and then the other buttons are reserved for actions apart from movement. Left/Right in Mario makes you move around, and A/B lets you perform separate actions to basic movement, like jumping, running, fireballs. This general logic holds true across so many of these games, from Sonic to Megaman to Celeste in a modern sense. Now, think of a 3D platformer, a more modern genre, like Mario Odyssey. Again, movement and action are considered fairly separate on a basic level. Obviously, there’s a whole new axis of movement, but it’s still really easy to understand that a control stick will move you around on a basic level, and then everything else relates to actions separate from basic movements. These games often do have movement options separate from this: Mario Odyssey has the hat bounce and dive, for example. But in terms of basic, intuitive movement that will get you going on the simplest of levels, these 3D games still follow the same logic as older, 2D ones. Movement and action as separate functions in your basic, beginner level traversal. And going further on, how about a first person shooter, like Call of Duty? Again, shooting, gadgets, and similar are all completely separate from what is going on with your basic movement with the left stick (or WASD). All you need to know to start feeling in control is that one set of inputs is for movement, and another set is for everything else. I’m empathizing the basics, because of course most games don’t stay this simple, and many games combine these inputs and actions in complex, interesting ways. But when you’re talking about intuitive control that gets you going out of the gate, this logic almost always applies. It’s why a platformer fan picking up a FPS for the first time is not going to be totally lost, because they understand that the rules of how to input beginner interactions are going to map onto this new genre in more or less the same way.
Fighting games do not work this way, not by a long shot. Movement and actions in this game are tied together, with the same input method, for a lot of stuff. Blocking? Gotta hold your movement back. Jumping isn’t a button, but it’s up on your movement method. Special moves require specific motions, again, on the movement input. This really messes with the internal logic and muscle memory people have built up, one that applies to like 90% of games out there. From the very start, this genre demands a basic level of interaction involving a fundamentally different relationship between movement and different actions, a more combined one. The input normally reserved for movement separate from action is suddenly inherently tied to a huge amount of actions: I can’t even think of another genre where holding a movement direction is a defensive action by itself. All the stuff you’ve learned about how games work gets thrown out the window here, and it’s like all of a sudden you’re playing your first game again, working your way around the basic ideas of function and interaction. Not to mention, many of the required inputs don’t have an analogue from other genres either. Like, sure, holding a direction to block, you’ve held directions before, but no other genre will ask you to perform a quarter circle or z motion with such precision on a consistent basis. This doesn’t mean that fighting game motions or the ways in which you move are inherently harder: I happen to think none of this is that inherently hard, and that most people can learn even weird motion inputs much faster than they think. But it’s such a different framing to different genres that it throws what you feel your confidence level with games is out the window, and that’s demoralizing and frustrating to a lot of people. We all build up a sense of self-identity and maybe even a bit of self-worth around our skill at stuff we enjoy, and it’s nice to feel like you’re in control of games. Breaking that sense makes a genre feel very offputting to a lot of people, and it’s understandable why! Feeling like you’re not in control is not an enjoyable feeling to many!
None of this is bad, or a flaw, I want to be clear: just because a game genre is unintuitive, does not mean it automatically has failed. The design space around tying movement and action together is incredibly valuable, and creates so many cool and interesting scenarios. The classic matchup of Ryu vs. Guile has been created in part because the very motions you have to do to execute their special moves influences the balancing and dynamic around the fight, and it’s a thing of beauty. Yes, it’s unintuitive and completely different from how most games handle interaction, but that’s why fighting games having such a different input paradigm is important: the difference makes these games unique in genuinely good and enjoyable ways. Anyone who claims these differences make the genre worse is flat out wrong. At the same time, though, the highs and interesting design space that experienced players immerse themselves in can make it hard to remember the initial barrier to entry harder, I think. It’s easy to claim that fighting games aren’t inherently harder than other genres, and it is true: high level shooters have just as much skill going on as a high level fighting game, for example. But fighting games require people to learn a different mindset in terms of basic interaction, and yeah, that is going to frustrate new people! Fighting games get this reputation as being especially “hard” because of this initial barrier to engaging, because nothing else can prepare you to engage with the basic control scheme. This is what I think new players mean when they say fighting games are so much harder than other games. It’s not technically true, but in reality they are struggling to engage much more than other genres, and this unintuitive control scheme is probably why. The lack of ability to feel like you can do an action on command with the skills you already have makes the game feel a lot harder! I think it is important to understand this perception of difficulty as probably stemming from this entry barrier, and to freely acknowledge said entry barrier, because nobody is helped by denial. Saying “fighting games aren’t that hard” to someone who feels like they can’t control the genre properly is just unhelpful and pretty tonedeaf. A better understanding of why new players struggle and being able to explain why they might be struggling can only help.
There’s also the fact that 1v1 is just not the most ideal environment to learn a new control scheme in, really. Going back to Mario: imagine someone is totally new to games, and the first game they play is Super Mario Bros., which probably was quite a common occurrence. There is a lot of space and time given to a new player, and no inherent pressure at every single moment to execute on the game’s controls. A new player could realistically just jump around in the first small area, learning to understand what all this movement entails, how A and B are separate from the directional movement, and nothing will jump out and stop them from the slow process of internalizing this paradigm. The player is in full control of when to move forward and experiment more with the level design. This makes learning easy to not feel overwhelmed by, basically. What about other games, what if someone jumps into a multiplayer lobby in Call of Duty? Well, these games have design space to not put the player in instant, overwhelming danger. Spawn points are usually placed far away from where an enemy can get to, and players as a result have some breathing room to get a handle on the controls, and control isn’t ripped away from them by getting shot for at least a little bit. Safe spawn areas are a staple of shooter design, and I think they really do a lot to help players learn the controls even if they decide to just go straight into multiplayer. Fighting games, though? You’re 1v1 against an opponent, you cannot get more than walking distance away from them, and their whole goal is to beat you up and take control away from you in this relatively cramped, enclosed game space. This is akin to Mario throwing an endless stream of enemies at you in the first area of the game, a denial of a safe learning environment that is easy and obvious to everyone. Most fighting games don’t give players a comfortable environment to engage with the controls at their own pace, and no, training mode doesn’t count. When people say they’re overwhelmed or feel like they don’t understand what’s going on, this feeling likely stems from the inability to escape an in game threat, no matter if it’s against a real person or a CPU. This is something that game design and better modes could fix: I particularly like the sidescrolling brawler story mode Granblue Fantasy Versus uses as a lower intensity way to start understanding the controls. But regardless, it’s not a surprise to me that new players call this “hard”. Maybe it’s not technically true, but when they’re frustrated and feel out of control due to a lack of experience, it’s not a surprising conclusion.
What I think is important at the end of the day is that there be some wider understanding as to why people call these games hard, and why they’re struggling. Too often, I’ll see experienced players try to offer the advice of “oh, it’s not that hard to learn, all competitive games have a high skill ceiling”. While that is true, it’s missing the point, frankly, and pushing people away from a genre they might enjoy. Wider understanding about the struggle to get with this new control scheme paradigm and why new players struggle can only help, I feel. When communities understand that their genre uses a radically different control scheme compared to almost every other game, and that new players are probably feeling a disconnect between their usual level of competence and what they can do here, that mindset is going to create much healthier onboarding, I hope. The conclusion we should draw here is that this design around controls is really good and should stay, but at the same time, we also need to acknowledge that there’s almost no way to prepare for this genre, and that community and game design efforts should probably shift to find ways to give people time, space, and above all, understanding in the process of learning. Nobody is helped by saying “just push through” or “every game is hard” when their experience is so disconnected from how they usually feel competent at most games. An understanding tone that acknowledges their struggle, why it’s normal and not a them problem, and some specific advice could go a long way towards making people feel more confident. And I think that’s worth a lot.
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