Granblue Fantasy Versus: Love & Fighting Games

Content originally posted to Instagram on April 15, 2020. Contrary to what I wrote back then, I actually ended up playing fighting games again way earlier than I anticipated!

You need love to play fighting games.

That’s pretty obvious to an extent, since you should at least have *some* love for whatever you’re playing. But actually reading that in Vice’s review of Granblue Fantasy Versus really lit something in me, and made me realize why I stopped casually playing fighting games a long time ago. Part of it was that they didn’t enthrall me anymore — I thought the older iterations of my favorite big fighting game franchises seemed better when it came to the music, art, or atmosphere.

A big part of it though was that I never bothered to get better, to invest LOVE into what I played. “There are better things to do with my time, this isn’t that fun, I don’t know anyone who plays these games, I suck when I play against anyone online, etc.” I guess I never saw a point to getting better at them, and maybe I would’ve kept playing if I did. But things were different back then, and now I feel open to taking a chance with them again.

Also been watching a lot of videos about fighting games and the culture + community surrounding them (although I’ve always been somewhat familiar with it all). And while I don’t have any competitive aspirations (yet…lol), this Granblue review and the videos have showed me how these games might be able to improve my life even further. So once all this Coronavirus stuff clears up, one of the first plans I have is to get better at fighting games. And I know that doesn’t really require being outdoors…but I’M JUST GIVING MYSELF AN APPROXIMATE START TIME OK