The Pure Game Design of Fighting Games
Channel: The Game Overanalyser
Date: 2021-03-05

Fighting Games have always illustrated the purest aspects of game design, whether balance, asymmetry , risk/ reward decisions or depth, but they are also notoriously hard to learn. Unlike most genres, fighting games don't tutorialize the game well within its own systems, and hence it expects players to rely on themselves or the community to learn. Because of this, although fighting games have extreme depth and a practically infinite possibility space, they are very inaccessible. This video explores the history and design of fighting games, the concepts in game design they illustrate , and the pain and joy of learning them through the eyes of yours truly.

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Sources

- Playing to Win , David Sirlin
https://sirlin.squarespace.com/ptw

- Game Design Theory , Keith Burgun 

- A decade of approachability to fighting games, GDC talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TivpMwuGzeM

- Depth in Strategic Games 
http://julian.togelius.com/Lantz2017Depth.pdf

- How to play Virtua Fighter 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boM7T3BWewY

- Designing Games , Tynan Sylvester

- The Ethics of Computer Games, Miguel Sicart

- The Morals of Chess
https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=29&page=750a


Additional thanks to new patrons not included at the end

Jaron Saturnino, Dmajan Jovanovic , Charles Voita , Lou Hidjy