Irrespective of your opinion of professional gaming, at the highest levels, it requires much of the same effort and dedication as any physical or non-physical sport would, just more emphasized more towards having strong mental fortitude than physical prowess. I wanted to share witnessing incredibly RP behavior in an environment where you would normally would not expect to find it.


The current Top 8 players in Street Fighter just competed in probably the most prominent yearly-global tournament, this year clocking around 2200 entrants. Just in case you’re unfamiliar at all with Street Fighter, I’ll give an incredibly brief run-through:

Two players faceoff 1-on-1 on a traditionally 2-dimensional plane with invisible walls on the each side. Players defeat the other opponent by depleting their health-bar to 0 or having more health after the Game timer expires. They do this by engaging in a rock-paper-scissors-like system where Punching/Kicking > Grappling(Throwing) > Defending/Blocking > Punching/Kicking, etc.

This is the core of most modern 2D fighting games, but add some additional complex mechanics (that at top-level play, require refined hand-eye coordination mechanics, think playing a piano sonata but in real-time against another person) as well as different/unique characters to play as and you have Street Fighter (in a nutshell.)

The tournament is in a 2 out of 3 Games, 3 out of 5 Sets format. It’s also double-elimination where the bracket can reset in the Grand Finals. Rounds can be up to 99 seconds long, but on average do not that get far, so a game normally runs between 3-5 minutes, a set of 5 games might average 10-15 minutes.

Every match until the Winner’s finals onwards went on as most matches go. Three players at this stage, Infiltration, Gamerbee, and Momochi are the ones of note. Momochi plays a standard/solid style, whereas Infilltration plays a versatile style (high knowledge of different characters), and Gamerbee is somewhat in-between, mixing both aggressive and defensive play.

Winner’s finals go longer than most matches, going 3-2 with both players switching characters between sets. This is where the test of mental fortitude comes in. Infiltration despite being down in sets, goes for a left-field character pick (which is somewhat uncommon in competitive play, as the time it takes to master one character alone is significant) and almost manages to make a comeback. When he drops to loser’s, he goes against Gamerbee in a very long and drawn out match. Most of the games let the timer expire mostly due to Gamerbee switching to a character with a defensive healing mechanic. Due to the defensive nature of the games [1], the spectator and online chat reaction was invariably negative, calling it cheap or gimmicky etc , think Pacman/Mayweather (but as RP’ers should know, anything goes when it comes down to it.) At some point the crowd boos [2], with most rooting for Infiltration, due to another left-field character pick, but despite this, Gamerbee remains calm and relatively unfazed by the atmostphere, stays in the moment, and sticks to his gameplan. At match point after 30 minutes that felt more like hours just watching, Infiltration shows more visible indication of emotions, amplified probably due to the crowd and playing from behind[3]. It may or may not have been the reason for the outcome, but the player with the more stoic frame came out victorious.

It’s Grand Finals, and with Gamerbee coming straight out of a grueling mental slugfest, goes straight-into it. He loses the first set, commentators attributing this due to the nature of the previous match, but he quickly adapts and manages to go 3-1 and reset the bracket. The crowd is livid at this point, much louder and hyped up, due to the much faster pace of play compared to last match. The whole room might as well be rooting for Gamerbee now, but Momochi answers back with a character switch. With both players playing aggressive style characters, the matches were incredibly tense and close, going into the final 5th set.

The crowd and commentators almost can’t take it at this point, it really is mentally taxing even just watching, let alone actually playing there in that moment. Momochi takes Game 1, but in Game 2, something goes awry and the game is inadvertently paused[4]. You can feel the crowd’s heartbeats stop synonymously, as pausing the game during a tournament match, by tournament rules means losing that game by default. The pause is due to Momochi’s controller malfunctioning, therefore after a few uneasy minutes of waiting and determining how to proceed, Momochi gets a replacement controller and must forfeit Game 2, making it 1-1.

Match point. The commentators cannot even speak anymore. Crowd is going nuts. The game starts and Gamerbee goes straight in aggressively wasting absolutely no time. But unfortunately, the round ends very quickly, not even a minute passes, with Momochi taking the game, set, and match. After the win, there was much silence, probably due to the anti-climactic resolution[5] after such a mentally grueling and stressful trial for everyone involved, especially Gamerbee.

At this point I would imagine even the most hardened competitors would fall and lose frame, even if just a little. Even moreso, in the backdrop is Gamerbee’s fiancé in tears after witnessing all that just passed. But despite this, he embraces her with a smile, with no visible sign of negative emotion, maintaining frame the entire time[6]. At this point even I admit feeling emotion running over me just watching. But he maintains frame till the very end, and graciously accepts the outcome and everything that went along with it.

Outcome independence exemplified.


The takeaway.

A man who (unluckily due to public stereotypes and perception) does not embody the masculinity and alpha-qualities that RP teaches men to strive to embody and become, yet, even in an incredibly stressful environment and situation, in front of a large and loud crowd, maintains frame till the end. If a person divergent from the perceived ideal image of a RP man can exemplify being stoic and maintaining frame in stressful situations, then we should all mentally strive to do the same.

Meditate.
Live in the moment.
Maintain frame.
Be that rock in the storm.


Full matches
Loser's Finals
Grand Finals
Bonus