No Throwing Chairs (1)
“If by a fighting game… do you mean a game where people literally fight each other?”
What was humanity's oldest form of entertainment?
There could be many opinions, but I thought fighting was probably one of them.
Of course, a fight or duel where people actually killed each other was a little difficult to call entertainment……
But even without going that far, the concept of ‘facing someone and competing to determine a winner’ probably existed as far back as prehistoric times.
“That's right. In a way, it's one of the easiest ideas to come up with.”
After all, it was a form of entertainment that required nothing more than two people willing to fight each other.
It might be called barbaric, but watching two people trade blows offered a primal kind of enjoyment.
There were the gladiatorial matches of ancient Rome, ssireum in the Joseon era, boxing in the modern era, and mixed martial arts in contemporary times.
Fighting games merely turned that primal entertainment into a game.
The only difference was that unlike a real fight, nobody needed to break their nose or bleed.
Well, there were occasionally legends about people getting so angry while gaming that chairs went flying in the form of chair shots.
“I see… It makes sense when I think about jousting tournaments as well. Come to think of it, jousting tournaments have stopped being held since the modernized forces were established.”
“Oh, really? Is that because of me?”
“…It is not because of you, Lord Ian, but after guns were developed, shooting competitions became more popular than jousting tournaments.”
So it is because of me.
I'd done quite a few things I felt a little sorry about toward the knights… especially the traditionalist knights.
Still, they became popular again thanks to ‘Witch Hunter,’ didn't they?
They can have a drink on that.
“Anyway… this time, I'm planning to make a fighting game.”
“Then shall we invite the knights again, as you did when developing ‘Witch Hunter’? They should be able to advise you on various forms of combat.”
Selen hadn't been around when I was developing Witch Hunter, but apparently, she knew that I'd invited experts from various fields back then.
However, I shook my head.
“No. There's no need for that. If anything, we should avoid getting advice from people like them this time.”
“Why? Surely they would provide professional advice.”
“That's exactly why we shouldn't.”
If I invited knights, mages, or others who worked in combat professions, they would undoubtedly give me realistic advice about martial arts.
But that could actually become poisonous.
Because combat in a fighting game was fundamentally different from real combat.
I didn't simply mean the shallow observation that reality and games were different.
More precisely, the problem was that fighting games pursued something different from what real combat pursued.
“Real combat probably isn't as flashy as people imagine. Using a weapon is always more advantageous than fighting barehanded, and rather than exchanging attacks and defenses for a long time, you'd prefer to finish the opponent with a single blow. Grappling might also be more advantageous than striking.”
Those were all characteristics shared by real martial arts and combat sports.
Since using a weapon was more advantageous than fighting barehanded, barehanded martial arts and weapon arts developed separately, as seen in disciplines such as taekwondo and kendo.
And every martial art aimed to defeat an opponent as quickly as possible.
Barehanded martial arts also separated striking and grappling, producing martial arts and sports such as ssireum and judo that specialized heavily in grappling.
Those characteristics were the opposite of what fighting games pursued.
Games didn't bother reflecting the reality that weapons were necessarily more advantageous than bare fists.
Speed was important in fighting games too, but a game normally didn't end from a single hit.
Of course, there were exceptions, such as certain finishing moves.
Likewise, even if there were characters specialized in throws, grapplers weren't usually made overwhelmingly stronger than ordinary striking characters to the point of destroying the balance.
Striking characters tended to be the mainstream, if anything.
“In short, games pursue the enjoyment of competing itself, not a realistic reproduction of combat. That's different from real fighting, where victory comes before entertainment. So in this case, advice from real combat experts could sometimes be harmful to game development.”
“I see… I think I understand what you mean. Jousting tournaments differ from actual cavalry charges as well. The same applies when people compete in other martial arts.”
“Exactly. Sports are ultimately a type of game too.”
In short, sports and fighting games were both concepts built around competing under a particular set of rules and enjoying the attempt to win.
If the rules of a sport were absurd, then it simply stopped being entertaining.
Taekwondo had once suffered from strange rules that made it less entertaining, before later regaining popularity after adopting electronic scoring systems and improving those rules.
“Then deciding those rules must be extremely important… Would that not be difficult?”
“Yeah, you're right. It isn't easy. But it's different for me.”
Because I had all the accumulated data produced as Earth's fighting games evolved.
***
People often called fighting games a genre overrun with veteran players, but in truth, the systems of fighting games themselves were even more seasoned.
Compared to the simple and crude fighting games of the early days, later series had gradually improved and refined themselves.
Players and developers alike studied the games and exchanged feedback, effectively creating the ‘optimal rules’ over time.
Listing everything would take forever.
Attack canceling, where an attack animation was canceled to quickly continue a combo.
Punishing(delay catch), where frame differences were calculated to seize the initiative.
The rock-paper-scissors interaction between jumps, anti-airs, and projectiles.
The guessing game between high, mid, and low attacks.
Backdashes and sidesteps.
Recovery techniques.
Throw breaks.
Wake-up offense and defense……
Systems that had either not existed or had been poorly developed in the early days were added and perfected over the course of years.
Those rules were already so polished in their own right that there was no need to alter them by incorporating realistic martial arts.
“What I'm more worried about… is that someone might get way too immersed again.”
Making the game itself wasn't a problem because I already had all the source material.
The problem was that, for some reason, I had a feeling people would try to imitate this one too.
‘Witch Hunter’ was the obvious example.
The traditionalist knights who admired Witch Hunter's protagonist still called themselves monster hunters and traveled around hunting monsters.
They even imitated Witch Hunter's combat methods and magic.
The surprising part was that it wasn't merely overly immersed cosplay.
The ‘magical possibility’ had actually manifested.
“There's no guarantee the same thing won't happen with a fighting game…….”
It seemed ridiculous, but I did worry that releasing a fighting game might somehow create entire clans of fighters who shot flames from their fists.
On the other hand, I also thought that might not matter very much.
Magic only realized a ‘possibility.’
It didn't mean everything someone imagined would automatically become real.
Unless a person genuinely believed in their own possibility to an extraordinary degree, realizing it was difficult.
Of course, there might still be absurdly immersed mages or knights who somehow managed it……
But even then, I wasn't particularly worried this time.
Because fighting games were ‘appropriately unrealistic.’
As I mentioned before, characters in games deliberately fought with their fists despite weapons existing.
Even after being struck by weapons such as swords, they didn't die or suffer injuries as long as their ‘health’ hadn't been depleted.
And there were separate ‘finishing moves’ that couldn't normally be used and were only available under limited conditions.
Even if someone believed in those possibilities and realized them, there were simply too many unrealistic elements for them to be easily incorporated into real combat or military tactics.
“They still manage to create and use them anyway? Well, then I'll give them credit.”
In any case, I decided to make a fighting game without worrying too much.
Surely nothing major would happen this time, right?
***
Some time later, new games appeared in the Empire's arcades.
They were fighting games created by Ian.
“King of Iron Fist? What's this?”
“They say it is a fighting game. Apparently, two people fight each other.”
“Oh, a fight through a game? Sounds entertaining. Want to play a round?”
Ian had copied several fighting games from Earth wholesale.
People's initial reactions to them were quite favorable.
Unlike Tetrix, which had seemed unfamiliar and unimpressive at first, fighting games centered on something everyone already understood as entertainment.
Fighting.
“Damn it! I lost again!”
“Kehehe! You're terrible at this!”
“That's because you're fighting cheap!”
“Whoa, calm down and put the chair down!”
People quickly became absorbed.
There were a few minor disturbances where fights in the game turned into fights in real life and chairs went flying through the air, but it didn't take long for fighting games to become regular favorites at arcades.
***
“Hmm. A new game from Baron Ian… Could there be something our modernized forces can make use of again?”
Before long, the leadership of the modernized forces took notice of the game.
Ever since Ian had invited the traditionalist knights during the development of ‘Witch Hunter’ and effectively transformed them into ‘monster hunters,’ the leadership of the modernized forces had been closely watching Ian's activities.
Since they were natural rivals of the traditionalist knights, they were wary of Ian granting the traditionalists yet another benefit(?).
Fortunately, Ian hadn't invited anyone while developing this game.
But that only made them more curious.
Just what kind of game had he made?
“Oh, this is entertaining. As expected of Baron Ian's games.”
“However, the martial arts depicted in this game do not appear very practical. Many of them are excessively flashy or detached from reality.”
They tried to find something useful in the fighting games, but this time, nothing in particular stood out.
The officers of the modernized forces had once been knights just like the traditionalists, so they could have imitated the martial arts in the game if they wished.
But there didn't seem to be any reason to.
Just as Ian had expected, to the eyes of experienced combatants such as knights and mages, the martial arts depicted in fighting games lacked practical value.
“That may be because it is a game. But from my perspective, it is not entirely useless.”
“In what respect?”
“In the fact that it is more entertaining than training. If we use this properly, it could be quite useful for training soldiers.”
However, it seemed useful for soldiers drawn from the commoner population.
“Our firearms still aren't advanced enough, so there are times when we must rely on ‘bayonets’ or older troop types.”
“…That is correct. Unfortunately, we still cannot replace all the older troop types.”
“Exactly. Which means bayonet training remains extremely important… What if we use these fighting games to help soldiers understand even the basic concepts of combat?”
Unlike knights, who learned combat skills through years of training and discipline, the combat skills that ordinary soldiers could learn were limited.
There were many reasons, but one was that commoners themselves weren't particularly eager to learn combat skills.
Of course they weren't.
Training was exhausting, dangerous, and usually not entertaining.
They could be forced to learn through orders, but making them genuinely want to learn was difficult.
But ‘games’ were different.
They weren't exhausting.
They weren't dangerous.
And most importantly, they were ‘fun.’
Naturally, the soldiers would participate willingly.
“For now, let the soldiers play mainly during their rest periods. We shall see whether it has any effect.”
The leadership of the modernized forces experimentally incorporated fighting games into regular training.
At first, plenty of people were skeptical.
But even if the experiment failed, there was little to lose.
If the games merely improved the soldiers' morale or fighting spirit, that would still be beneficial.
Yet the results were far better than expected.
“A recruit took down a barbarian warrior with a bayonet!”
“I heard one fellow even went toe-to-toe with a wolf last time.”
“It seems the soldiers' combat ability has improved considerably thanks to fighting games.”
After they began playing fighting games, the soldiers' combat ability improved noticeably.
“So there is an effect. Some of them are performing well enough to be appointed officers.”
“Remarkable. They only played games, yet their actual skill improved.”
“It seems we underestimated the possibilities of fighting games.”
Of course, no one knew exactly whether their abilities had improved because they were imitating martial arts from the games, because they had become bolder and more composed, or because of some unknown possibility.
But at the very least, the results weren't coincidental.
“In any case, this is good for us.”
Whatever the reason, the leadership of the modernized forces was satisfied.
At this rate, not only would the Empire's military strength improve, but their own standing within the military would rise even further.
But there was one thing they had overlooked.
They weren't the only ones enjoying fighting games.
“A traditionalist knight achieved enlightenment through a fighting game and reached the realm of Swordmaster!”
“Mages founded a new school through fighting games! Battle mages have appeared!”
“Someone realized the flow of waves while playing a fighting game!”
As time passed, hardcore veterans began appearing all across the Empire.