Andrew Douglas

Miscellaneous

Traversing the Physical and Digital Veils in Fighting Games

Traversing the Physical and Digital Veils in Fighting Games

The fast-paced thrill of a fistfight is not something most gamers get into on a regular basis (hopefully), but digital combat is a very common pastime in the gaming sphere, especially in fighting games. Fighting games are a popular genre of video games, since their origins in arcades with long running series, such as Street Fighter, releasing games from the 1980’s all the way to 2024. Having traveled far from their arcade game roots, fighting game input systems, once arcade joystick and buttons, have also evolved. One fighting game, Arms, released by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch in 2017, has a unique input system and game experience, which sets it apart from other modern fighting games.

Using Steve Swink’s Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation, I will observe the unique input system of Arms compared to a more traditional fighting game, Guilty Gear: Strive¸ describing the phenomenological experience of play using Brendan Keogh’s A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames as reference. Finally, drawing connections between input system resistance and my cognitive connection to the characters I play, I will describe how Arms’ less resistant control system lends a greater connection between player and character.

In his book, Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation, Steve Swink classifies six aspects most useful for analyzing the feeling of interactive games: Input, Response, Context, Polish, Metaphor, and Rules. Input refers to both the physical controller and the mapping of the controls: how the buttons are laid out, what they feel like, and what they do. Response refers to how a game or game system collects and reacts to the player’s input. Context is the creation of a game world around the player, or why the player character is performing their actions, while Polish refers to the audiovisual effects which form the connection between game actions and their Context. Metaphor constitutes the connection between game ideas and real-life ideas or experiences, and how player expectations interact with game world behaviors. Rules are the designed aspects that control how entities in a game interact with each other, for example: rules of combat, whether turn-based or real-time, rules of physics, rules of economy, or rules of time (Swink, 85). Both Arms and Guilty Gear: Strive (GGST) are very similar in Context, with characters fighting each other one-on-one; Polish, using similar fantastical elements to dress their fighters and attacks; and Metaphor, each player bringing expectations of a fight (two fighters, one winner is “last man standing”, wanting to hit your opponent, etc.). The games differ in Response, as inputs must be much faster and more complex in GGST to behave as intended, and Rules, as GGST has much more complicated rules, options, and interactions. However, the greatest difference between these two games lies in Input, simultaneously the most important aspect for playing the games phenomenologically.

Guilty Gear: Strive offers two methods of input, keyboard and controller, which are the standard options for modern fighting games. During my playing, I chose to use a controller, specifically the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. Using this control scheme, two-dimensional character movement is controlled using the left joystick, while the A/B/X/Y buttons are used alone or in combination for attacks and other inputs. The game is very responsive to joystick input, and precise, minute inputs are needed to use special moves.

Arms takes advantage of the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons for the “Thumbs-Up Grip”, where one Joy-Con is held in each hand, the player moving them in three-dimensional space to perform movement. The player moves their character around the fighting arena by tilting the controllers forward, backward, or to the side, in unison. Similarly, to control the character’s punch attacks, the player must physically “punch” with either arm, extending their arm out quickly, further tilting to sway the punch right or left. Jumping and Dashing use the Joy-Con shoulder buttons, pressed with either thumb. This system is a lot slower, but the three-dimensionality provides more movement options, while the physical nature puts a lot of attack skill into the player’s physical ability and how they choose to move their wrists and arms.

Looking at these two different methods of input, important consideration can be made in the context of Swink’s chapter on Input. Swink considers “the layout of inputs on the device, the tactile feel… its weight, the strength of springs in joysticks…” (Swink, 85), which together form the input device. Considering these elements, developer design decisions dictate exactly which buttons must be used, and for which actions, “[defining] what sensations of control are possible within the game” (Swink, 86).

The Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is heavy, the joysticks are springy, and the buttons are hard and clicky. When playing GGST with the Pro Controller, any delicate movement in the joystick will cause game response, and I must carefully move my left thumb to move as I desire. When I take my hand off the joystick, it returns to the neutral position. The buttons must be decidedly pressed, considering timing and the position of my right thumb, to use the exact attacks in each combat situation. The majority of input requires just these two fingers, the entirety of your play dictated by small movements. In conjunction with GGST’s responsive, fast-paced game, input using this controller must be precise, as any mistakes or lapses in hand-eye coordination are opportunities for an opponent to punish.

Playing Arms, however, most of the input is non-tactile and instead kinetic. I must keep my hands up during the entire match, my wrists ready to turn in, move sideways, or punch out, depending on my response to my opponent’s actions. Movements are big: my hands being brought together, moving to the right or left of my body, or throwing out punches as I mock my character’s attacks in real-time (or do they mock my actions?). These large kinetic inputs leave a larger margin for error, and in conjunction with the game’s simpler rules, mean that I have more time to respond in each situation, and physically responding is easy and intuitive. In fact, after playing several matches, I stopped thinking about how to move my hands, and instead thought entirely in game actions. Blocking was no longer “put my hands together”; I was no longer inputting a game action but defending myself from an attack. Attacking was no longer “punch this hand forward”; I was punching my opponent with each movement.

For both games, I feel a deep connection to the fighter character, facilitated through the input system. However, this is felt to a different degree, based on differences in the games and their controllers. My own identity temporarily abandoned, I was placed in the game arena for each match. But if I take on the identity of a fighter, who exactly am I?

Character rosters are my favorite part of games. This is a common sentiment among fans, with large online buzz created whenever a new character gets revealed for games like Guilty Gear: Strive, or the ever-popular Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Expansive rosters of diverse fighters allow players a wide variety of character choice, and many fans find their “main” among these rosters, or the character who they primarily play, or are most skilled using. The player/main relationship can be a tight one, with many bonded players buying merchandise of their main, or generally being large fans of their favorite character, in addition to the game itself. Furthermore, fighter archetypes, such as “heavy”, “brawler”, or “zoner”, allow players to find mains across games, gravitating to archetypes they enjoy playing.

In GGST, I play two characters, Testament and Giovanna, Testament being my main, and the reason I started playing the game. Testament is a zoner, fighting from a distance, who uses their scythe to outreach their opponent. Giovanna is a rushdown fighter, who tries to overwhelm her opponent in a flurry of kicks. While playing Arms, I was drawn to two characters, Misango and Lola Pop. While every character in the game is a zoner, Misango, equipped with his Skully fists, has exceptionally long range, while Lola Pop uses her Clapback fists to provide a shield, creating a sword-and-shield like playstyle.

I was drawn to these four characters for different reasons: Testament for their goth aesthetic and zoner playstyle, Giovanna for her rushdown playstyle, Misango for his zoner playstyle, and Lola Pop for her clown aesthetic. Overall, I feel most connected to Testament and Lola Pop, and in analyzing my main characters for these two games, I will select these two.

Throughout my play, I was reminded of Brendan Keogh’s A Play of Bodies, and his experience playing the role of Iota in Tearaway. Keogh describes “[navigating] a humanoid creature with an envelope head named Iota through a papercraft world… [walking] past cardboard trees… [picking] up items and throwing them around” (Keogh, 1), much like I, as Testament, swing my scythe, teleport to my opponent, or send out my raven; much like I, as Lola Pop, inflate myself like a balloon, set up a shield, or grab my opponent for a final knockout. However, also like Keogh, “‘I’ do not do these actions” (Keogh, 1)- I am sitting, my controller in my hands, observing my screen and listening to the game audio, performing the desired actions with my fingers or hands. However, the system of character/player separation is not binary, but analog, as the degree of input resistance determines how much the game pushes back against me, and in Arms, with less control resistance, I feel more connected to the actions of my character, and the character themselves.

When analyzing the relationship between player and controller, Keogh describes touching his PlayStation Vita, and how the Vita “touches [him] back”, as “small springs under the Vita’s buttons [constantly] pushing back against [his] thumbs” (Keogh, 4). Ultimately, video game controllers are both the means for the physical player to interact with the digital world, and for the digital world to interact with the physical player: “We intermingle with videogames. We poke them, and they in turn poke us back” (Keogh, 4). The Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is very resistive: the buttons are clicky, the joystick snaps back to neutral position, and the shoulder buttons are fast and responsive. The joy-cons, however, are much less resistive: there is no “neutral” position for the motion controls to snap back to, and the two shoulder buttons are soft and light. Because of this difference, the experience of playing GGST pushes back against me much more than playing Arms; whereas the harder I go into GGST, the more resistance I find, I can fully immerse myself in Arms with little resistance. The barrier between the physical and digital world is less tangible, and therefore the connection between player and game world is greater.

The greater connection between player and game also extends to player and character, and I very much felt this while playing. In GGST, different attacks are used by combining button inputs, which must be memorized, the resistance of the buttons and the sensitivity of the joystick making this a task that must be practiced. When I play Testament, I know when to use longer range or faster attacks, and my muscle memory takes over, but this is still only muscle memory. In Arms, the motion controls are intuitive, and the lack of neutral state means I must stay engaged the entire match. When playing Lola Pop, her movement mimics my own, and I do not have the resistance of the controller to provide a basis for immersion- I must create the entirety of gameplay myself.

This system is not digital, there is no “immersed” or “not immersed” state, and therefore the degree of resistance increases the analog metric by which one is immersed in the game: the motion controls of Arms facilitate more immersion, they do not create an immersive state. In describing his play experience in Tearaway, Keogh explains, “I embody Iota, but I do so partially. My embodiment straddles worlds where I am partially Iota and partially ‘me’” (Keogh, 13). Like Keogh, when playing both Testament and Lola Pop, I have one foot in the worlds physical and digital, the input controller allowing me to lean into both worlds as I choose. The lesser degree of resistance provided by the Joy-Cons and Arms’ motion controls removes another tactile barrier, allowing me to lean further into the digital world, taking on more of Lola’s , or any other Arms fighter’s, identity.

Ultimately, the lesser degree of resistance in controller input, using the Joy-Cons and “Thumbs-Up Grip”, allow players in Arms a greater level of immersion when compared to traditional fighting games, such as Guilty Gear: Strive. As explained by Swink, Input is a crucial metric to measure the feeling of video games, and as described by Keogh, the feel of video games is what allows players to observe the relationship between their physical reality and the digital reality of the games they play. Playing Arms and Guilty Gear: Strive, I traversed these two worlds, sailing between worlds both physical and digital, utilizing the vessel of my controller.

Works Cited

Arms. Directed by Kenta Sato, Masaaki Ishikawa, and Shintaro Jikumaru, Nintendo, 2017.

Nintendo Switch game.

Guilty Gear: Strive. Directed by Akira Katano, Arc System Works, 2021.

Keogh, Brendan. A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames. MIT Press, 2018.

Swink, Steve. Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. CRC Press, 2017.