I heard somewhere once that when people say ‘the illusion of choice’ what they really mean is if you look back and say ‘what if’ or ‘could’ve’ there’s only ever one answer: it wouldn’t be you. It would be someone else, and at that point they wouldn’t be asking the same questions.
On or about January 11th, the domain and WordPress plan for the site will expire along with my active maintenance of this blog. It’s been a good 7+ year run. This year has challenged me in many ways to deal with rapidly changing personal circumstances. As a result, it gets easy to start looking around at what isn’t changing and whether or not that’s something to keep around.
Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a decision I came to because I want to suddenly leave all this stuff behind. I don’t have any bitter feelings towards modern fighting games or regret my time doing this blog.
Hell, how could I?
There are things that this blog did for me that I would have never had the chance to do otherwise. I got to be a guest on the gone-but-not-forgotten UltraChen podcast, among others. I was able to contribute to the first live Combo Breaker event since the COVID pandemic, writing up a number of the descriptions for the official program given to every attendee. I got to collaborate with the awesome ThatBlastedSalami Youtube channel on a video version of one of my posts. I was interviewed by fucking NPR for comment on SNK’s Saudi Arabian connection. This might sound like I ‘made’ it in some type of way, but in reality this is a microscopic blog that has had its reputation preceded by shares from influential community figures who all seem to think that, agree or disagree, my thoughts are worth reading. This is a humbling fact that I am proud to hang my hat on.
In many ways, the FGC’s future with both games and creators is looking pretty bright. But there are a lot of parts that aren’t, which is a view purely based on my own personal principles that I now realize don’t really jibe with a lot of people.
To make it as simple as possible, there are two major happenings that have been slowly sinking my enthusiasm to continually write about the broader fighting game communities and their foibles. They aren’t new grievances and I’ve written about them before, but in this difficult year I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what I want to keep doing with my time, and these keep sticking in my craw. I will never have an answer that fully satisfies my problems and that’s okay. I’m not looking for one either; I’m more than willing to let bygones be bygones and leave it at that. What I can’t abide, however, is continuing on as if they haven’t fundamentally altered how I feel about FGC stuff as a whole and keep producing the same blog year after year. Change is inevitable, and I’m on a straight line – as a wise man once said, ain’t no gettin’ offa this train we’re on.
I’ve banged on about this enough times that I’m tired even drawing up the links to the blogs. But yes, Evo being half-owned by the government of Saudi Arabia is devastating to me. The move for years has been that the Crown would, instead of going for flashy acquisitions of major events, slowly take over the logistical wing of video game tournaments. Acquiring ESL/FACEIT was a major factor in forcing the hand of more mainstream titles into working with them, and now RTS, who handles a lot of marketing and event planning for Evo and other events, will further tighten that stranglehold.
You all know the arguments I have so I’m not going to repeat them. I think that the long-term health of the professional community being in the hands of a manchild Crown Prince with delusions of humanity is a disaster waiting to happen. You can already see this in what it has done to the Capcom Pro Tour. Capcom has essentially surrendered, deciding to make the CPT finals a Pay-Per-View event in Japan for the near future. This was met with a lot of controversy, but I think it makes sense if you think about how the market has changed. Saudi Arabia came in swinging their nuts and making the biggest circuit of all time, one that you can’t possibly compete with. Then they bought their way into the biggest tournament that the FGC has, one that has a venue in several different continents. The only smart thing to do would be to focus on your big markets, which for Street Fighter 6 is most certainly Japan, and let Saudi handle the global work.
The CPT will still be a thing but every major CPT event is now, in turn, becoming a Esports World Cup qualifier. Slowly but surely, the tendrils are spreading and I would imagine it won’t be long before most major events are doing advertisements as the tourism wing for the Kingdom.
My disappointment is mostly with the elites in the scene, who have almost entirely kept their mouth shut and let the money roll in. I won’t say all – there are some like the player ChrisCCH and Sajam, among others, who have taken bold stances that definitely cost them. But otherwise, it’s just business as usual. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of boycott of talent on the horizon, which is the only real move you can pull, so I guess that’s that.
You may think me naive, to believe that there could even potentially be some kind of organized boycott. But I have seen it in my lifetime! When the previous head of Evo, Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar was, as the story goes, alleged to have goaded a teenager into showing him their genitals, there was mass outrage. So much so, that many broadcasters, playing talent, and even game companies were going to sit out Evo in protest. Granted it was 2020, so the “protest” was not showing up to an entirely online tournament, but it was a big deal that forced Evo’s hand in removing Cuellar and eventually selling the company. Collective action can definitely work.
Evidently partnering exclusively, directly with the monarch and Crown family who is responsible for the killing/maiming of tens of thousands of children and teenagers in Yemen, kidnapped trans Saudi dissidents from the United States to detransition them back home and drive them to suicide, and tortures or imprisons female dissidents who want equal rights is not the same sexy cause célèbre. My bad.
The other reason is something that I haven’t really talked about. I have indirectly, but that was when it was still fresh and I didn’t have some of the info I do now.
In 2022, I received several private messages from different people. They alleged there was a prominent player, one who has participated in the FGC for years and is still a major figure, had sexually assaulted a person at a major event some years ago. The request was for me to ‘do something’ with the information. I’m not a journalist – I don’t have the resources or time to act the proper way – but I knew what I had was radioactive.
Although my time and resources were limited, I investigated the claims to the best of my ability. Before you ask, there’s a reason why I’m not saying any names: I never could get 100% certainty that the act occurred as was alleged. And when there is a crime being alleged, the only responsible thing to do is to take it deadly serious and respect the axiom of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
That being said, what my digging did turn up was extremely troubling. I can’t be 100% certain but I am fairly confident in saying that there was enough fire to the smoke that it should have been the subject of serious investigation by the powers-that-be in the community. Preferably ones that had the resources and time to actually look into it.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I eventually discovered this information was given to what constitutes authority in the FGC at the time it may have occurred. To say the response was flippant is an understatement. This was years ago but it was hardly in a bygone era where this kind of thing was just brushed away. All the info I had dug up was available at the time, and those with power in the FGC said ‘eh’ and turned a blind eye.
But perhaps I speak out of turn. I will admit there are two distinct possibilities: that this information is completely fabricated, or that this information was initially disregarded but actually picked up steam entirely behind the scenes. I can’t talk to everyone and I’m still a nobody; maybe I just never heard about some disqualifying facts that were the result of a serious investigation. While I’m skeptical that there is zero truth, I’ll admit that there is potential this is all a colossal misunderstanding. As for the other hypothetical: if that is the case, then I’d say that is a sign of a distinct maturity for a community that has not often lived up to that.
Even so, I find that troubling still. If the hypothetical situation I just described did happen, that would mean this player was afforded the grace and dignity of privacy. It would mean a concentrated effort to not have this player smeared by unproven allegations for the rest of their time on the internet. There was no delusion that the safety of all attendees was at stake; there was an understanding that this was a highly personal matter that was better resolved privately for all parties involved. All matters of the allegation were debated and scrutinized, both parties were at the table, and a resolution was produced that allowed both to continue to operate in public spaces with no issues.
Suffice to say that is not how this kind of thing is handled typically. Even at the time of the alleged events, most happenings of this nature occurred publicly with swift responses from authority figures regarding their findings. Sponsors would be alerted and time itself would suspend as everybody figured out the best course of action. The accused are typically not given the grace of a response or considered perspective, and the safety of the entire community is the stakes considered in any given instance of malfeasance. It is also considered a moral responsibility that rights holders and game companies fully announce their intent and take direct action to intervene and hold players accountable.
If that pure perfect hypothetical occurred, it would mean an unfathomable amount of secrecy and diplomacy, so much so that I have a hard time believing it occurred. This leaves us with a sobering reality – the only reason I, a lowly blogger, was given the info is because nobody else worth a damn actually cared. I would hope that I wasn’t the first name someone thought of when choosing to pass this information along, although I suppose that’s possible too. Either way, if my limited amount of digging was able to find some disturbing information, I suspect there is more truth to it than not.
But that couldn’t possibly be the case, right? There’s simply no way that in-group status can determine whether or not something as serious as an alleged sexual assault gets handled in a manner befitting the severity of that allegation. It would mean that there is a sort of intercommunal caste system where some, in this case well-connected men, get the endless benefit of the doubt and a right to a defense and privacy where others do not. And I’ve been told over and over again that those things are anathema to a healthy community that is concerned with keeping things fair and just.
I guess I was wrong.
That about does it for me. I don’t want to say this is a ‘Goodbye’ – I have too big a mouth and a need to let people hear it to stay quiet forever. But I think this is the end of ‘Them’s Fighting Words!!” as it has existed from 2017 to now. In that sense, think of it more as a ‘Until we meet again’. If you ever stopped by this blog or shared it, you have my utmost gratitude and support. I’ll do my best to keep this site around and to archive the posts in some manner, although I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t some financial reasons why I decided to let the ownership slip.
If I am back, it will probably be somewhere a bit less archaic, hopefully where I can have a better subscriber system set up. I don’t really have an interest in doing the full Patreon route or -shudder- making a Discord community in order to encourage access. We’ll see.
Thanks for everything, and I’ll talk to you all some other time, hopefully not too long from now.
Peace!
Them's fighting words!! 
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