Fighting game players–dedicated, watch-YouTube-replays-on-the-regular players–speak an obscure language, and if you don’t live on a coast or in another hotspot, it’s tough to find people to talk to. If we can’t get a scene together, we play online, and for most of our favorite titles, netplay can be a crapshoot; occasionally exhilarating but often impersonal.
In recruiting those around us to play fighting games, we can ruin things by getting ahead of ourselves: eagerly explaining why Street Fighter is more than just some game, why there’s more to Guilty Gear than, “Wow, that looks just like anime!” We overwhelm our friends with expectations, as if hyping up a joke not quite as funny as we think it is.
Still, I’ve made some inroads. These are a few of the ways I’ve found to get some of the people around me into watching, playing, and investing in fighting games so that I can selfishly impose my hobby on others.
Make Them Spectators First
It took a little while, but I’m finally at the point where I can have my friends watch a major tournament without feeling like I’m wasting their time. At some point, I just had to make the leap of having a tournament on when they came over and not immediately trying to change the channel or leave to do something else immediately. Getting them to sit and watch a tournament with me for the first time resulted in an interesting night, because I still wasn’t sure if they liked doing it or if they would’ve preferred to do something else. Eventually, I realized they were just fine with watching competitions as long as that wasn’t all we did that night, and it’s worked out well (or maybe they’re just not telling me something).
I should mention here that the friends I try to introduce to fighting games have some interest in gaming, whether they play more eSports-oriented games, retro curiosities, or Japanese artifacts. It helped, also, that they’d already gotten a kick out of the world’s most popular fighting game videos (you know the ones). So if your friends are entirely uninterested in gaming, it could be a different story.
But there are exceptions! A little while ago, I had a tournament on and even my own father, who has no interest in games, caught a few matches with me. Fighters, at least, have higher watchability; where other genres need a little setup to achieve coherence, anyone can quickly reduce fighting games into “this person hit that person,” making them easier to slide into from a spectator’s viewpoint.
Play Pickup Matches
I believe the biggest aspect of fighting games that turns people off to them is how seriously others take them. If you go the spectator-first route, chances are your inductees will have a particular idea about what fighting games are: 
serious videogames for serious players who are serious. If you’re not already good after your first few days of playing, you may as well quit, because everyone else has already trained for years and you’re not going to catch up.
But people play pickup basketball and muck around in mini-golf, and they’re probably not thinking about joining up with Kobe or Tiger, either. You’re not playing against your friends to get better (not yet anyway), so play pickup matches first. No one knows what they’re doing, so why not spam random select so they can try out different people?
A friend of mine, after we’d played a few random games of Street Fighter IV, told me he thought he had a good handle on Dhalsim, of all characters. You never know what your friends are going to glom onto, so giving them a wide range of things to learn could give them something they like. You’re probably going to have to sandbag a bit, but if you sit back and let them play against each other, you’re also going to get a few laughs out of it.
Make an Event Out of It
With most people, saying, “Come over and play some fighting games,” will only get you so far. “Come over, let’s do stuff, and I dunno, get drunk, maybe?” on the other hand could work wonders. If that “stuff” happens to be a few rounds of Divekick or Nidhogg after you’ve all gotten tired of Cards Against Humanity, all the better. Infusing fighting games into the party atmosphere can take a little work (especially if you’re with a crew that isn’t too into competitive stuff), but done right it can make the rounds you play less tense and more about funnin’ around.
If you’re the type that likes going to majors, make a road trip out of it. A fighting game tournament may not be where your friends imagine spending their three-day weekend, but if you sacrifice a bit of your time outside pools in favor of side stuff in the city, you’re more likely to have a group of friends to carpool with. Evo takes place in Las Vegas for a reason. Add a few fighting games to the party mix and you’ll have your friends jumping into your anti-airs over and over in no time.
Add a Pinch of Salty Bets
“Oh no, I’m no good at them. I’d rather watch you play.”
This phrase is my Ivan Drago. Not only are people distancing themselves from playing when they say this, but now I’m in charge of putting on a show and making fighting games more appealing to them. If you find yourself in this situation, take it one step further and start taking bets on CPU players. It’s what made Salty Bet so popular last year and, at parties, it allows people who wouldn’t otherwise place bets to get a bit of a gambling high. (Don’t do this if you’re hanging with a recovering gambling addict, obviously.)
I’ve gotten some good results from Super Smash Bros. in particular, where each person can choose a character for their bot to play and get attached to them. Betting on professional matches only works if everyone knows who all the players are, but if you’re the only one in the know, everyone expects you to make the best bets. With bots, everyone’s on even ground and more willing to make small wagers. Every once in a while you’ll get some genuinely hype matches, too.
Foster the Fighters
As mentioned earlier, you’re not going to get some people to play fighting games the way you do. We’re looking for familiarity here, not competition. But if your obsession with beating up on others digitally happens to catch on with 
one of your friends, make a concerted effort to nurture that interest. Have regular fight nights, where the two of you can play for a while and have a more detail-oriented learning session, away from those who might get bored of the finer minutiae. If you feel courageous, you could even have it in front of them, so the rest learn a bit of the game through osmosis. If you have one, check out a local scene.
This is where you unload with all the info you’ve had simmering in your head and do things like watch tutorial videos on the differences between chaining a move and linking it. However, you also have to trust them enough to play on their own. If they can play online, let them know that you’re playing too and see who can compete in the most matches. If they’re interested, they’ll play. If they don’t, at least you had a few nights where you let loose your nerd knowledge without boring someone. Either way, you come out ahead.
I don’t have a full cadre of people to play fighting games with, but they’re familiar enough with watching and messing around with a few of them that we have plans to go to Evo this year, and none of them have plans to actually compete. We’ll see if they pan out.
In the meantime, do any of you have tricks for getting people to play fighting games with you? I’m all ears.
