Is the FGC a Community? — Dog the Cynic

That the fighting game community (FGC) is a community seems to be a tautology – it is, after all, in the name. But I want to argue (poorly) that this is a mistake. Many of our intuitions and conceptions that work at a community level neither scale well nor handle a myriad of issues facing the FGC in its current incarnation. I am not naïve to believe that we will stop using the term FGC, nor do I think a campaign for such a change would be productive. There is just too much history and legacy, plus it just rolls off the tongue. But I do want to suggest that as the FGC is growing, it is perhaps time to start looking seriously at things we have been taking for granted. To paraphrase the late rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, “The community is the cradle of the FGC, but the FGC cannot live in a cradle forever.”

The idea of gamers as a community is not a new one. Phil Spencer, head honcho at Microsoft Gaming, is fond of describing us as a community 2.6 billion strong. But what exactly is a community, and what defines it? McMillan and Chavis, in their work “Sense of Community” published in 1986, laid down the four pillars of any community:

Membership
Influence
Integration/Fulfillment of needs
Shared emotional connection

At first glance, the FGC seems to fit right in that definition. It is common to say that if you play fighting games, you are a member of the FGC. We influence the popularity of games and what we talk about via social media and what we play and spectate. The FGC helps fulfill our need for entertainment and competition. And as the enduring popularity of Evo moment 37 and various other memes and in-jokes suggest, the FGC certainly has a shared emotional connection. What are the issues then? If gamers can be a community 2.6 billion, why would the FGC not be in the same boat, writ small?

The anthropologist Robin Dunbar coined a term that is now semi-formally known as the Dunbar number. Dunbar suggested that there is a limit to the number of “real” social connections we can form with other humans due to the finite capacity of our grey matter. Dunbar describes this as the number of people who, if you stumbled upon them at a bar, you would feel comfortable sitting down and having a drink with them. In other words, these are personal connections, not Twitter likes, Reddit Karma, or PS4 friends. The exact number seems to be up to some debate, but it tends to hover around the 150 mark. The issue is that we derive many of our intuitions about how communities are and how we ought to handle community norms from an environment that does not match up with the modern FGC.

Many of the ideas of community norms and ways of enforcing those norms do not scale up well in larger societies. Not all those intuitions are wrong or maladaptive. We are kind to strangers. We are perhaps unique among our closest primate relatives in that we can bump into a stranger in a strange setting and not immediately run away or fight them. But there are genuine problems with assuming that the FGC in its current state is a community. For example, ostracization is a potent tool in small, close-knit communities – but it rapidly loses its effectiveness as the population grows. There is also the implicit assumption that because we share a common interest, it follows that we share other cultural norms – that is not always the case.

The shift from a close-knit community to a large body of strangers with only the loosest of bonds is not new. America witnessed this on a massive scale during the move from small town to city living during the ’60s and the ’70s. We moved from an intimate society where everyone knew everyone to a society of strangers. The same holds for an FGC event; your local FGC group still is very much a community. But when you go to a larger FGC event, you are entering a society of strangers with a shared interest. Of course, the people you meet there can become a part of your community, and that is the joy of these events. But it remains true that you will not interact with most of the people at the event, nor will you form close, life-long bonds with most of them.

There are two areas in specific where thinking of the FGC as a community can lead to real issues – one ethical, the other commercial/economic. I’ll try to address the harder (and more critical) ethical issue first. In the aftermath of Evo 2019, a rash of sexual assault accusations cropped up – both at the specific event and from previous transgressions come to light. The FGC response was symptomatic of thinking of ourselves as a small community, and I suspect it will be ineffectual. There were many appeals to be kind, and not be a jerk – and that is true – we should be kind and not be jerks. But implicit in that argument is that amongst our society of strangers, we agree on many basic norms and just need a gentle reminder. That seems unlikely – one of the big lessons of the move towards an urban society is that ostracization works poorly with determined bad actors. More than that, it is not clear the FGC is adequately equipped to handle either the determination of innocence and guilt or appropriate punishment. I hope it is not controversial to say that we can be both sympathetic to the victims and still believe in the presumption of innocence.

The other issue is commercial and/or economic – for the sake of anyone who has already made it this far, I will only touch on this topic briefly. I plan to cover it in greater detail in an upcoming post (soon™), where I will present one possible approach to scaling up the FGC that is within our control. Suffice to say; I believe the FGC currently has a collective action problem. I think TO’s, professional and aspiring professional players, streamers, et cetera are all acting (more-or-less) rationally individually. However, the outcome ends up not being ideal for the FGC as a whole.

Perhaps it is time to stop thinking about the modern FGC as an extension of the local you go to every week or the people you hang out with either online or in person. It is perhaps more appropriate to think of it as the Fighting Game Body or Fighting Game Association. How humans or rational beings ought to organize themselves in societies is a topic that has vexed thinkers since the beginnings of recorded history. In modern society, we cede the monopoly of violence and the meting of justice to the State. In The Eumenides, Aeschylus marks this transition by transforming the Furies into the Kindly Ones. This ultimately leads to the establishment of the Athenian judicial system. So then, do our most visceral instincts pave the way for a (theoretically) impartial judgment, from which we can escape the cycle of violence and go about establishing a civil society. With apologies to Tennyson and Hobbes, we must form a social contract lest we fall to “nature red in tooth and claw, a war of all against all.”

An association would help clarify, codify, and establish what the modern FGC is. Not that it would be easy – it would involve the leaders of the FGC getting together and setting aside differences. Almost certainly, there will be people unhappy with it, and seeing it as further proof the FGC is moving away from its grassroots origins. I have no idea what an acceptable association would look like. It may, for example, only limit itself to matters of a commercial nature, focused on solving some of the problems allowing the FGC to grow. It may decide, perhaps reasonably so, that anything our legal system or a developer Pro Tour is better equipped to handle serious issues like sexual assault. Or it may decide that protecting our most vulnerable members is a moral imperative that it can neither wait upon nor outsource. Laying out the norms the FGC holds and how it plans to enforce it is, however, no small task! These are all challenging questions, and the incentive is to kick the can down the road or ignore it. But I think that because of the grassroots nature of the FGC, we are in a unique position to determine how we move forward. We are not currently beholden to the whims of a publisher or non-endemic capital. We can choose how we want the FGC to be, and I fear that if we do not, someone will choose for us.

If you’ve made it through this whole spiel, you have my thanks. My original idea was to turn this blog post into a video, but it ended up being too abstract. My meager imagination and video editing skills didn’t help. I would appreciate any feedback you have to offer, either via comments below or e-mails. If you liked it, or if you hated it and thought I wasted time you’ll never get back, that is all helpful to me. Finally, I’ll add a list of additional reading/resources if you’re so inclined.

Sources & Additional Information:

“Neocortex Size as a Constraint on Group Size in Primates” Dunbar, R.I.M., 1992

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004724849290081J

“Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory” McMillan & Chavis, 1987

https://www.drdavidmcmillan.com/category/community/

“Where did all the Serial Killers Go?” Human Interests, July 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsv-DsU5X8c

“Lethal Aggression in Pan is Better Explained by Adaptive Strategies than Human Impacts” Wilson, Michael, 2014

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13727

"Eumenides" Aeschylus, 458 BCE

https://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_aeschylus_eumenides.html

“In Memoriam, A.H.H.” Lord Tennyson, Alfred, 1850