I still remember one of my first experiences with fighting games. I was young, and on vacation with my parents. I walked into an arcade, stepped up to a Street Fighter II cabinet, and promptly wasted 5 dollars on getting my face stomped into the ground 20 times by someone who was much better and more experienced than me. My two most vivid memories of that experience are A, the fact that arcade games only cost 25 cents back then and not a dollar plus like they do now, and B, what a gigantic conceited jerk my opponent was. I walked away, telling myself I was never going to be like him, that I was going to get good at games and become a “different” type of pro gamer that was going to bridge the gap between noobies and the uber l33t, that I was going to somehow get good at videogames and simply not be a jackass. Most importantly, I never stepped foot in that arcade again for fear that I might have to go up against someone who will ruin my fun by making me waste all my money on getting my face stomped again.

Now, somewhere between 15 and 20 years later, I find myself walking into my local arcade to blow five bucks on four-ish games of BlazBlue with no friends around to play with. I have friends, I’m not THAT pathetic, just no friends who want to play fighting games with me … or any competitive game for that matter. I find myself naturally gravitated to people who attempt to destroy me in any game I play, so that I can do the same to them, and all the while I see kids and adults alike walking away in disgust because I made them waste their hard earned five bucks on getting their face stomped in. Sure enough, I never see them enter the arcade again, perhaps just as a matter of timing, but I am sure at least one kid is thinking the same think I did all those years ago: “What a gigantic conceited jerk that guy was!”

I have become what I hated, and turned into the person I swore I never be, all those years ago, and what is weirder, I really don’t see anything wrong with it. I have a thing I am good at, and would like to become better at, so I always play my hardest and I have a fun time when others do the same. If someone is not as good as me, I offer advice, which I suppose could come off as conceited, as that is exactly what my opponent all those years back did to me. As reward for any sort of skill I am met with friends who do not want to play games with me anymore, and a general feeling of guilt every time I get a little better. It’s sad, it’s lonely and honestly … it’s just not right.

So I decided to dig deeper. Over the past 6 months what with the release of so many new fighting games, I have decided to introduce new games to my friend structure, games that neither I, nor anyone else was good at. I chronicled my experiences to the best of my limited sociological ability, from the massive fun we all had in picking up something totally new to us, to the inevitable decline and unavoidable fissure that separated the good from the people who simply didn’t want to play anymore, all to hopefully answer the question I had all those years ago: “Why are pro-gamers assholes?”

These next few posts are my findings. I’ll put up Part 2 later this week.