A Close-Knit K.O. Community
Members of the Bellingham Fighting Game Community explain the importance of face-to-face play in a world where online gaming is dominant
Story and photo by Hayden Knoedler
BFGC member warms up with their custom-decorated fight stick before their tournament match. // Photo by Hayden Knoedler on March 1, 2024
What do you see when you think of someone enjoying video games? It might be an image of a person sitting alone, eyes pouring into a TV as their imaginations marry with the mechanics, stories, sounds and colors of a fictional world. Much of my experience as a gamer lines up with this description, and it has been a fulfilling and enriching experience. The Bellingham Fighting Game Community (BFGC), however, is more comparable to sitting around a campfire bonding with old friends and making new ones as chairs fill up, empty, and fill again.
Walking up the stairs of Academic West on Western Washington University’s campus on a Friday night, you can hear faint cheers, shouts and laughs coming from the four classrooms dedicated to the WWU Super Smash Bros Club, which focuses mainly on the massively popular Nintendo video game series “Super Smash Bros.” Years ago, the BFGC split off to focus on a greater variety of fighting games. Now, one of those four classrooms is dedicated to the BFGC and its membership of about a dozen, while the other three rooms continue to be dedicated to the much larger WWU Super Smash Bros Club.
On a starless winter night, I visited the BFGC in Academic West 303 for the first time. My coat was soaked from a gently falling mist that threatened to turn to snow, but the BFGC members had managed to create an atmosphere filled with the social buzz of a summer afternoon. They had lined three of the four walls with laptops, monitors, and PlayStation 5 consoles. The classroom had been filled with chairs, which were pushed to one corner of the room and even stacked on top of each other to make room for BFGC’s members to quickly walk between gaming stations. Some stations had one member practicing their character’s combos against an AI-controlled character, others had two members practicing against each other, and one even had multiple spectators cheering on a friendly competition.
In a fighting game, the player selects their character from a large roster of various identities and gameplay styles, then goes up against another player who has done the same. To win, each player must have mastery over their character as well as enough knowledge of the other characters to be able to predict their opponent’s moves. It’s common for players to form communities based on friendly competition, using tournament-style brackets. The BFGC, for instance, holds tournaments every Friday at 6 p.m., though most members arrive an hour early to warm up and socialize.
All of the games BFGC plays have online modes that would allow these players to stay cozy at home. Despite this, every tournament has consistently been an in-person event since the end of the COVID-19 lockdown.
BFGC member Eric Philbrook enjoys the energy of an in-person tournament and feels more connected to other players this way.
“I think a bit of that connectivity and closeness has been left behind from a lot of online games,” Philbrook said.
Another BFGC member, James Martin, joined the club last fall when he first transferred to Western to study computer science. Martin grew up in Wenatchee without a local community of fighting game players. After discovering a local tournament happening weekly with the games he was interested in, he immediately wanted to join.
Martin views the tournaments as a place where people “share an experience and come out of it with stories and friendships.” One big misconception, Martin explained, was that many casual gamers think of tournaments as a way to test your skills or compete. He doesn’t think the goal of tournaments is to become the best player or get the best results.
“Oh, you think I’m gonna take this game seriously?” one BFGC member joked as he spammed his opponent with an attack combo to little effect.
Both Philbrook and Martin described the BFGC as a surprisingly diverse community of people from different backgrounds and with various gender identities. They both guessed this is correlated to the diversity of characters that players can choose from in the fighting games they play.
“There’s so many different characters that I think no matter who you are, you’ll find a character that lives with you,” Martin said.
Philbrook agreed: “It’s a great thing about fighting games. Once you find your main character, they almost become a part of you.”
Whether you’re looking for a new group of friends or a new hobby, fighting games may be the perfect choice. Most community-driven video games are team-based, entirely online and require you to learn teamwork. Fighting games on the other hand, Philbrook explained, allow you to spend time alone with your chosen character as you learn to master your playstyle. It can be a daunting hobby to pick up, but other players are welcoming and ready to help you learn.
And in Academic West 303, you’ll find a community that’s always willing to push a few extra desks and chairs against the wall to make room.