Month: June 2016

Editor’s note: Some responses have been slightly altered for the sake of clarity.

Joniosan is a prominent Japanese Guilty Gear streamer who regularly showcases the top talent in the country. The typical meeting ground for the exhibitions and tournaments is the famous Takadanobaba Game Center Mikado in Tokyo.

Recently, an English-speaking voice drew attention when commentating matches between players like Karinchu and Nakamura. Jonathan “2dJazz” Metoyer is an American player who moved to Japan a few years ago, and he has been putting in effort to improve communication between the two scenes.

We recently had a chance to speak with Metoyer, who shares how people started calling him “MajinObama,” what it’s like at Mikado, and voices his thoughts on the current atmosphere in the community.

Luke “Woocash” Siuty: How did your nickname in Japan, MajinObama, come about?

Jonathan “MajinObama” Metoyer: I had quite a few nicknames over the years. [2D]Jazz was the one I had the longest. Once the NESiCA ranking system came out for ArcSys and Street Fighter games, the climate in the arcades changed a little bit. Player behavior changed regarding whom they would fight. Every week, I would change my name to something goofy to get a chuckle out of the people there–they can be kinda stiff. I was going for memes, and my formula for something funny is something really hood mixed with something really anime, so one week, when I went to Mikado, I went for MajinObama. I entered the team tournament for Xrd -SIGN-, and my opponents were Roy, Taka, and Nakamura. As a Sol player in Accent Core, Roy and Mugen, those were the guys you studied and modeled.

I went over to their team and specifically challenged Roy, I was only ranked about 8th Dan. Roy, of course, was 16th or 17th at the time. I called him out and beat him, beat him bad, too. Now all the people who were there and saw that started calling me Obama-san. And I’m like, “that was a joke name for a week, please do not call me that.”

Luke: Do people play in arcades less now, since -REVELATOR- is out on consoles?

MajinObama: Since the demo has been out, people have been going the same. The reason why is because the demo doesn’t offer anything new that the arcade version doesn’t have. The demo offers playable Jam, Jack-O, Johnny, so that’s the same as the arcade version since August last year.

However, [the full console release may mean] a strong drop-off outside of the two arcades in Akibo and Mikado, until the eventual arcade update release. Most ArcSys games follow the same cycle. While there’s arcade exclusivity, the titles in the arcades are really popping. For example, BlazBlue is consistently a number 2 or 3 game in all arcades in Japan.

Luke: Could you describe Mikado Game Center? What’s it like inside?

MajinObama: Mikado is a two-story building that’s tucked away on the side of a busy station in Tokyo. Takadanobaba Game Center Mikado is located near Waseda University, it’s the next stop over, so it’s near a college-like area. From the second you walk in, if you’re someone familiar with arcade gaming, it feels kind of different, because at first you see pinball machines, which is really strange for Japan. Pinball machines are absurdly expensive in America, and even more so in Japan. Then you’ll see lots of classic arcade game setups. Everything Data East, Namco, to Tecmo, the first floor alone is just a blast from the past.

As you go up the stairs, you see these posters for events, advertisements for different games and aspects of game culture like music, it just feels a little bit different. It’s something that’s been declining a bit. They’ve had a record number of arcade closures in Japan [reportedly, over 250 arcades have closed in Japan in 2015]. Most of them were not chains. Club SEGA, TAITO Station, those are major chain arcades all over Japan, but they feel pretty commercialized. They vary in quality depending on where you go.

But Mikado is a true, grassroots arcade, and when you go up the stairs to the fighting game floor, you definitely feel a sensation like that. It’s really different, especially if you come in starting from the era when those places didn’t exist in the West. If you’ve never been in an arcade before, it’s something that’s kind of strange, in a good way.

You go up to that second floor and you literally see, on all sides of you, candy cabinets of past and present, wall to wall, around you. That’s what they call Japanese-style cabinets because of the colors. Buttons and ball-tops are light green, pink. There’s a whole row of just Astro City cabinets, and they have everything that you could want: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Vampire Savior, 3rd Strike, Alpha 3, Project Justice, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, The King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match, ‘94, ‘98, and there’s a small section in the back of the NESiCA games, everything from past and present you can imagine is right on that second floor. They have some obscure titles off to the right as well, and then as you walk to the back, I think there’s 20 now, there are net cabinets, and it’s very rare to walk in and not see them tuned in to Guilty Gear Xrd. Typically it’s going to be that or Accent Core +R.

It might not strike you when you first sit down but definitely, if you go there on the right night, it will make sense to you. Why that place has that reputation and aura. But to me, it represents one of the last bastions of non-commercialized arcade culture. It’s very pure, genuine. You know it’s there because people just care about the game.

Luke: You’ve sort of been this liaison between the Japanese and American Guilty Gear. How did that come about?

MajinObama: To be honest, this is just wild to me. We just talked about ElvenShadow, who was here for like 8-9 years. It’s kind of weird for me to be in a leadership role because I don’t consider myself a terribly good player, at all. It didn’t start to me that way–I just wanted to put the game out there.

Social norms are a lot different in Japan than they are in the West, we know this, but it’s a different thing to experience. Between myself, Jiyuna, ElvenShadow, JamesXie, NKI, Ken I, there’s a long list of people who have had the privilege of playing here for a long time, and I think if there’s a torch somewhere, it’s about taking that further. I’ve been going to this place, playing the games for however long, I’m always thinking different things about scene and wondering why certain things are. There’s this new game, but there’s such a hole in coverage and presentation, and I’m referring to any game that came out.

I remember going to the arcade at home. People who started playing fighting games in 2009-10, when Street Fighter IV came out, missed out on a core aspect of the fighting game experience. Some things that were lost in transition from arcade units to console in the early-to-mid 2000s are perspective and experience. Let’s say you play 3rd Strike. You’re at the cabinet, you lost, you’re standing in the back of the line, but you’re also shoulder-to-shoulder with these Marvel guys. At the very least, you’ll play Marvel while you wait, so you start to make these conversations and connections and experiences with different games and different groups of players. Now, we always say “something” community, but a lot of the times people say community but that’s not what they’re talking about. They say “fighting game community” but sometimes that’s not what they mean. Back in the day, there was no “anime” community, I didn’t hear that until 2010 or 2011. Everybody was just players. There was a much stronger sense of community, and you could at least have a tangential experience with other games and groups of players.

There’s this younger generation that just doesn’t know. For smaller scenes like Tekken, KOF, BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, Undernight, for example, I think we have to work a little bit harder in terms of stepping it up with presentation and production in order to educate them.

And so, that’s sort of what got me started to drive the scene a little bit more forward, because to me, the smaller scenes don’t have the luxury to be lax in areas where the bigger scenes do have that benefit or safety net. Let’s use Street Fighter as an example. Their best international players, Umehara, Mago, Tokido, all their players are sponsored, 7-8 flown out to events, easy. Their events are going to be higher-profile, stronger presentation, more credibility. The fact that our numbers are smaller means that we have to work that much harder.

I play this game with these people, they see me, I look a little bit different, probably, in their minds, a random foreigner, but the difference to me was, I’d at least take the time to talk to them, they see my name from time to time, some were receptive, some were not. But over time, they start to come around, I think. The biggest one was obviously talking to Jonio, who’s the lead broadcaster for Guilty Gear in Japan. He’s been working for a while, a long time. I noticed he had a Twitch channel, and I’m not the only person to notice this, but I asked: you have a Twitch channel, you have all these people follow you, people watch the game and are interested, why are you still recording this at like 340p and you don’t have a subscription button?” And his answer was, “What are you talking about? What’s a sub button?”

That’s pretty much how it started, it kept snowballing, before I knew it, we were setting up exhibitions, we got a sub button, I’m doing commentary on a game I’m not even good at. We’re making that push, to make Evolution 2016 the biggest and best singles tournament for this game that you’ll ever see in this series. The fact that Tougeki and SBO was always done as a team event, which meant that the level was always really high, because you had to go through qualifiers. Or, if you were in America, or some other places, you had to win a qualifier, which has also been a source of controversy over the years.

As for double elimination/best of three, this tournament is going to be the one, the most intense Guilty Gear tournament of all time.

Luke: You have a list of Japanese players going to Evo? Did they need much convincing?

MajinObama: Yeah, I’ve been pushing it for months now. With the release of Street Fighter V, you see the huge registration numbers now, this is going to be the biggest fighting game event of all time. For me to do anything less than to push this event over here for months, that would be unacceptable for me.

You have to understand that Guilty Gear in general, especially in Japan, is a slightly older crowd. The BlazBlue scene, average age, I would venture 22-years-old. Guilty Gear, in Japan, I would say about 27-28, much older crowd, and what does that mean, they’re established in their jobs, which, in Asian work culture, means that you can’t just request a day off to play a video game tournament. Your boss will throw you out the window! Work culture is much, much more strict than it is in the West. Getting that time off and asking for that time off in general is difficult, and for some players it’s not even an option. For the ones that are paying attention and really want to go, when Mr. Wizard made the announcement, there were like at least 20, 25 players who, like the next week, were ready to go. It was a priority for them. Others, I had to do be a little more convincing, sell the event, let people know how important it was, etc. It’s a mixed bag, some of them may not have the same thirst to compete like that.

In general, I think people will be pleased with the lineup; the international presence is not going to be an issue this year. To be honest, this is something that was missing from a lot of Guilty Gear events in the past. Which is why I thought this year it’s important to make that push. Because, the truth is, when you have a strong international presence at your tournament, and you get 4-5 people who could be the best players in the game, that brings a certain level of credibility and excitement to your event.

Luke: What would you say are some differences between American and Japanese Guilty Gear?

MajinObama: There’s levels to the answer. The most obvious is that the majority of Japanese play is done in game centers, arcades. When Japanese players play, they drop a 100 yen coin into the slot, and they play with the intention of learning something, if not winning. If you’re just going to drop the coin against someone you’re going to lose, then what’s the point, you might as well have not done it. But when you drop that coin, you’re investing something. Contrast that when you play on console and you play your friend. You might still be trying to learn something, to win, but the nuance is a little bit different. You don’t have that added investment.

Some differences that we can say are, obviously because of the size of Japan and how people play there, they’re able to play a lot more and often, getting experience against high-level players in an offline environment. You can literally do it five, six, or seven days a week. For the West, we don’t have that exactly, we’re a bit more dependent on netplay, and our netplay isn’t so good. However, in contrast, the Western scene has a lot more tournaments, we travel a lot more, go to a lot more events, the nuance there is that we get a lot of experience, and having a tournament and travel mindset means we have tournament endurance. Traveling to a place, waking up a 9 AM for pools, wait eight hours, play semi-finals, make top 8 tomorrow, go to sleep early, wake up, etc. We have that, and you can see that come into play sometimes.

The difference is, that experience we have, once every week, two weeks, or a month sometimes, they’re doing every day. Five-six days a week. That’s really fun right–going to Western events is really, that’s why KSB was such a great event, cause it had that Western feel in Japan. You go to your Western event, we drink, we chill, we have fun, and then we play. We talk about it. But that’s only two days out of a month for some people. It’s easy to see how that gap can be created.

Luke: Any final thoughts to our readers?

MajinObama: There are some people I’d like to thank: Zhi, Sharpobject, St1ckbug, Jiyuna, Xie, Team Spooky, Arturo Sanchez, TheBrett, Guymam, Biscuits and “The Split,” Dosu, Baf0, GreatFernman, Ryan Hunter, Hellpockets, SuperFx, SRK, EventHubs, Dustloop, IPLAYWINNER, Twitch, Twitch Japan, Jonio, The Mikado Crew, Absol, and all major contributors to the ArcSys game scene. Shoutout to Louisiana, the South, and GoL.

You can find MajinObama on Twitter and Twitch and Joniosan on YouTube and Twitch.