Learning and Teaching (Fighting Games) is Hard
An examination into the dynamic between community teachers, newbie players, and how emotional context gets thrown into the mix.
Street Fighter has been interesting lately.
I originally planned to do much more frequent updates about my journeys with the game, but I've struggled a little bit to figure out how to communicate it without doing full "here's every bit of lingo" posts. In short, I'm going to trust that if you're not interested in this stuff, you can unsubscribe from the section; in certain situations, I'll leave footnotes to the Fighting Game Glossary.
This piece is mostly about some repeating dynamics I’ve seen between student and teacher, and how emotions can complicate both sides’ roles in improvement. Before that, though, I’d like to give a little update as to how my journey with Street Fighter is going.
The last time I gave an update to my ranking, I think I'd mentioned that I'd hit Gold Rank, which I was pretty proud of at the time. I’m still proud of it, but I’m kind of over a hump where I feel like I want to push for more.
Below are graphs made from information scraped from the Street Fighter 6 player log system, and we can see that the majority of players are in Platinum rank, where I am now (🎉).
It’s important to note that Street Fighter 6 has per-character rankings; a player playing Ken (like me) may be better or worse with other characters, and that’s represented in the data below, instead of just one ranking per account.
Right now, I’m in Platinum 4, apparently among 2.74% of the game’s player base. The reason for the large spike at Platinum 1 is that you no longer receive a win streak bonus for winning: better players who win more in a row will get more points, to help them get placed to “where they should be” by the game, but only from Rookie to Gold.
Another spike exists at Diamond 1, because players with any Master Rank characters can no longer be placed lower than that rank. If I get Ken to Master, I then cannot start again at Rookie (or wherever I land after 10 placement matches) with someone else.
With that out of the way, I wanted to write a bit about getting better, and some stuff I’ve experienced while doing so.
I’ve been messing around with a couple ways of showing my Ranked Match data, and I think the best way for Substack is via Datawrapper. I also have a much larger dashboard on Tableau.
I went up and down between Platinum 1 and Gold 5 a couple times. The first time I hit Platinum 1 was December 12, 2023, and the most recent (and hopefully last) time was February 5, 2024. In between those two dates, I only played 31 Ranked matches, mostly because of a state of nerves that made me nervous about losing points.
I essentially took a bit of a break from Street Fighter in general, and started playing Ranked with Ken again on August 29, 2024 (Match #365). The next few dates/stats are as follows:
I hit Platinum 2 on October 7, 2024 (40 Days) with 131 matches in between. I won 70, lost 66, and had a win-rate of 51.47%.
I hit Platinum 3 on November 10, 2024 (35 days) with 83 matches in between. I won 49, lost 34 and had a win-rate of 59.04%.
I hit Platinum 4 on November 23, 2024 (13 days) with 66 matches in between. I won 41, lost 25, and had a win-rate of 62.12%.
Since then, I’ve taken December “off” from playing due to some personal drama, and I’ll be picking up the game again in January.
I haven’t done these calculations before writing this piece, but I can say that “huh, I actually got better.” I got farther, quicker, with a better winrate. There’s a lot of factors involved here (how often I could play, my mental health, life circumstances, and the match-ups I was able to play), but in simplest terms, something clicked.
What I’m going to attribute most to the improvement is the development of a good support network, good coaching from friends who are much better than me, and the development of a base level of confidence and self-esteem about my play.
For the rest of the piece, I wanted to dive a bit more into that.
Learning to Learn
An important part of the process has involved identifying when I feel the worst about myself when I challenge myself and identifying the underlying feelings at play.
I feel at my worst when I play Street Fighter 6 when challenges or setbacks hit my confidence, and when my self-esteem makes it difficult to believe that I can overcome the challenges. The game doesn’t attack my confidence directly, but it provides data that is filtered through my self-esteem, and then I make conclusions based on that interpretation.
Some examples of real thoughts I’ve had:
“Man, I hit Platinum 1, but I am inconsistent in wins and losses afterward. I must not be good enough to make it farther.”
“I consistently have trouble against this character. If I was good, I wouldn’t have this trouble.”
“A tactic that I used to get to this point is no longer working, or I am getting punished for it more. I am discouraged by adopting something new, because that takes time and friction to implement.”
All of these things reach similar conclusions: “it will be difficult to move on from here, and it will not be fun to do so. I will continue to have a negative time trying to surmount this challenge.”
However, what I’ve found is that I’ve been mindful of a confidence and self-esteem growing in real-time; this has helped quiet that doubt. Especially with the gaps between Platinum 3 and 4 shortening considerably, I’ve thought “well damn, I must be doing something right, and I must be capable of rising to the occasion. It’s even been fun.”
This may seem like a no-brainer to people who have experience with competition, or who have made their own journey already, but that’s another part of this piece: the relationship between mentorship and the learner in online communities.
The Mentor-Student Dynamic
While fighting games are rarely cooperative in gameplay, I think it’s become a fairly collaborative experience, in that you find people who can teach you to be better, and you end up adopting a lot more from them along the way. How you, in turn, provide advice to people feels largely influenced by how you were “brought up” — this can be both a good and bad thing, depending on your mentorship structure.
This part of the piece was largely influenced by an experience with the mentorship of a Discord server that’s helped me really develop myself as my journey with fighting games continues. While it had channels for game-specific help, it also had a channel geared towards topics of fighting game mindset, and the associated feelings that came up while playing, learning, or developing.
I found that an interesting dynamic emerged between the two main groups of people: the players who had already achieved “mastery”, either in skill or by in-game rank, and the people who were striving to get there (I’m just going to call them “students” for the sake of ease).
This dynamic led to a loop that eventually contributed to the channel being locked; not because it was particularly bad, toxic, or “wrong”, but because it was difficult to mediate or have the channel remain productive.
A student would express their frustration at their ranking, their lack of progress, the difficulty in achieving progress, or their difficulty applying concepts that had been taught to them. This frustration varied in framing; it could either be a call for emotional support/validation, or a call for more practical advice.
The mentor had to a make a choice as to what kind of answer to give; the tone of the answer also varied because of the different kinds of people, their relationship with the individual student, and their principles (or “how they were raised”).
The student, depending on which answer they wanted, or which answer they received, needed to make the choice to apply the advice, or accept the way the validation was given. They would also need the emotional toolkit to be able to process a mismatch in answer, or validation that didn’t meet their expectations.
I feel like going into “what happened in the channel” feels a little reductive; I wouldn’t want someone who participated reading this and thinking that I was calling them out for behaviour that was inappropriate or “wrong.” I mostly want to point out what I saw were common challenges both parties had to face.
Common to both of these things, though, were issues with communication and empathy.
The Student’s Challenge
For students, the main issues revolve around communicating their needs, and realizing the limitations of a casual coaching relationship.
The student needs to have the self-awareness to know what kind of advice or help they want. This is difficult because it demands a skillset that isn’t immediately apparent — how they ask the question, and what answer they want in return, isn’t something you’re thinking of when you’re frustrated.
Stating your needs bluntly (“I need emotional validation”, “I want someone to recognize the work I’ve put in so far”) can feel1 awkward, demanding, or that it’s tainting the answer being given. Someone “giving you what you asked for” in this situation can hit your brain as patronizing, and what you want most out of this interaction is to be able to trust what a mentor has to say.
This reveals a limitation of this “open channel coaching” model, in that not all people providing advice are “trained”, or self-aware of how their answers may hit. They are fellow players and fans, not psychologists, therapists, or performance coaches.
A student can still reject advice, or reject attempting to integrate it; this can drain the compassion budget of a specific mentor, or the channel as a whole as the student demands bandwidth but doesn’t “hold up their end of the bargain” to attempt to integrate it.
It’s interesting to try to break down where this potential rejection comes from: the student could be unsure of how to integrate it (and are too embarrassed to ask further), lack belief or trust that the advice would be useful, or, in perhaps a more extreme example, just enjoy the attention and validation that comes with someone giving them sympathy and advice. Again, as the mentors aren’t being paid for their time, this can eventually taint the relationship.
The Mentor’s Perspective
It’s easy to approach an article like this just critiquing students, but what really helped it form in my brain was considering how to examine “the other side.” This isn’t to indict mentors, but more just to highlight some of the things that make the relationship difficult to manage, especially when in an untrained and unpaid environment.
Being a coach is a skill, because it involves management of emotions, an excess of patience, and the ability to communicate and tailor guidance to each one of your students. In a casual, open Discord channel, that nuance falls away, and the needs of a student can become generalized: for a mentor, advice can simply turn into “this worked for me, and I’ve seen it work for other people.”
Without the student advocating for themselves and the type of relationship that they want (and being realistic about the nature of community coaching), rejection of the advice can be seen as disrespectful, invalidating, or naive.
An example of this dynamic is a friend of yours that’s always broke. They complain about being broke, are frustrated by it, and they ask for your advice on how to improve their finances. After looking at their budget or transactions, you say to them “If you stopped dining out, you’d be able to get [$amount] back in your wallet every month.”
To you, this is addressing the problem, and it’s something you might’ve even done yourself. You’ve gone through the difficulty, conquered the challenge, and see the benefits.
To your friend, your answer doesn’t address context that you may not know. They could be dining out due to lack of cooking skill, or they could be working a hectic job that doesn’t leave a lot of personal bandwidth for planning meals. Your friend lacks the confidence in themselves to know if they can implement it, and is frustrated that their attempts don’t seem to be working.
To you, you’re frustrated at your friend’s continued complaints, because you feel like you’ve given him the tools to change; he might seem like he’s not being realistic about the time frame of change, or might not be “trying hard enough” at all.
This extra content creates tension, and it’s on both of you to be able to recognize it. Your friend needs to be able to communicate specifics and the magnitude of what’s at play, and you need to remain mindful that it can be present regardless, and empathetic when it surfaces.
Ego and the Emotional Stack
The “mental stack” is a common expression for the layers of things that you need to balance, while being able to execute what you need to in-game. This kind of extra emotional load creates an “emotional stack”, as well, and not every student is aware it’s even present.
A common piece of advice for students is to play against high-level players, and then learn or ask questions about what they can improve on. In a vacuum, this makes sense, but it gets complicated when the student needs to have the emotional bandwidth to:
Lose (and lose a lot)
Be comfortable having their weaknesses explained to them
Be open to accepting associated advice to fix their problem
Be open to stumbling or struggling with implementing the advice
A common scene is a student going 0-20 against a mentor, feeling frustrated at the reminder of their inability, and then becoming defensive at their suggestions.
They’re already on edge from not being able to separate the experience from their self-esteem, so even a simple “You need to block more” feels patronizing or insulting: “What do you mean, I thought I was blocking.” Depending on the mentor, this can seem like scrub2 behaviour.
Mentors are also working against what students can feel is an objective, accessible metric to grade themselves on: their winrate, and their Ranked standing. They allow a student to maintain a comfort zone around self-criticism, as they’re not forced to reflect with another person: the loss itself might sting, but they don't have to immediately perform understanding or gratitude for feedback that they might not be ready to hear.
“Teaching” sets, or replay review hold up a mirror to something that can feel embarrassing, and it requires a specific set of emotional skills, or specific empathy from a teacher, to navigate appropriately. If you don’t know it’s even there, it can feel confusing as to why you’re becoming defensive.
I have been (and still am) in the position of the student, I can recognize that the bedrock of avoiding this feeling is usually related to confidence. If you feel that your difficulty is indicative of your potential, or invalidates your progress, it can be hard to want to continue to face situations that ultimately help you grow. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s a weakness of someone to want to find spaces where learning feels possible, rather than overwhelming.
To the mentor, who’s survived the experience of going from not-confident to confident3, it can be hard to be mindful of these kinds of contexts, especially if multiple students react in the same way, and “eventually grow out of it.”
While the advice is technically sound, it can feel dismissive, and that’s perhaps a limitation of the format of community/collaboration coaching. To a student, it can feel like it’s “easy” for the mentor to give that advice in spite of a deeper connection or empathy not being developed. The student gets discouraged, resentful, or retreats, and the cycle risks starting again.
In the worst cases, the student gives up, and the Survivorship Bias continues.
Finding Balance
I’ve discussed this kind of cycle with people, and the hard truth is that there isn’t really a concrete fix. It only improves with the awareness of the contexts that both sides are bringing to the table, and the adjustment that people can make on the fly to them.
The student can be more mindful of their needs, more respectful to coaches who don’t have the capacity to reach them, and realize that they are responsible for their own self-validation and progress past a certain point. At some point, they have to face that friction to explore what is truly possible.
A mentor can be aware of external contexts, while realizing that the student isn’t necessarily obligated to provide access to them (just as the mentor isn’t obligated to help). They can realize that “tough love” has a time and place, rather than a default, and that if a community wants a diverse group of people participating, there has to be room to accommodate diverse levels of confidence, mindset and responsiveness to “what’s worked before.”
This is one of the things that make fighting games so interesting to me: the change that’s possible not just in your gameplay, but how you treat and interact with other people. I think that it distills down a very common dynamic, in the “ability to see” and the “desire to be seen.”
I think it pays to keep our vision clear.
I’m being purposeful about the usage of “feels” or “feels like” in this article, because we’re dealing with subjectivity and the varying degrees of validity of feelings. This can fluctuate between people and interpreting the feelings of others.
“Someone who thinks they're much better than they are and makes excuses whenever they lose.” https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Scrub
I’m hesitant to use the words “gone from beginner to master” here, because it’s all relative, and expertise doesn’t have to involve defined achievement.