Underground resistance

Resilience and evolutions of analogue competitive videogaming: the case study of “Street Fighter 3” and the Italian Community

Abstract

Video games have been, and increasingly are, a component of popular culture. With their growing popularity, their ability to generate mythopoiesis, stereotypes and language is becoming increasingly evident, as is their economic relevance and the size of their fan bases. The pandemic and the consequent increase in the use of digital media has further made this phenomenon a more and more important part of many people's lives, no longer just young or very young, increasingly extending to other socio-demographic groups, as is also evident in the growing phenomenon of nostalgia and 'retro gaming'. The well-known ‘Street Fighter’ saga, as a whole, has had a very strong media, artistic and imaginative impact, just think of the fact that the franchise in question has expanded to include comics, anime, films in a trans and cross media manner. Today, communities of gamers, be they platform loyalists, nostalgic or early adopters, are a fertile field to study the role that ‘Street Fighter 3’ has had and still has in shaping imaginaries, communities, places and practices dedicated to this activity, in fact, almost 20 years after its release, the title is still played, even competitively, by specific communities in the sector, despite its apparent commercial failure. This video game has the typical characteristics of 1990s fighting games, but the fact that it is still played has brought interesting innovations and developments, updates that run parallel to the game itself: streaming, new gaming peripherals and new communities. Gaming peripherals, necessary for tournaments, are not only space-consuming but also vintage, requiring dedicated space, skills and technical knowledge that players often learn on their own by domesticating the tool in question. Given these premises, the research intends to structure itself in an ethnographic investigation aimed at exploring the members of a community of Italian players, avid enthusiasts, numerically meagre and heterogeneous in terms of age and socio-economic background. This community has demonstrated resilience in terms of continuity, challenging the evolutionary processes of gaming, but making its own customised evolutionary transformation, partially adapting to contemporary modes of 'play'. Despite being a heterogeneous community, the places dedicated to tournaments and gatherings are for the most part located in the city of Milan, the place of choice for conducting the research, consisting of semi-structured interviews with selected individuals. With rare exceptions, these players have nurtured the existence of the community for over ten years, interacting even outside its physical space and enriching its direct and indirect knowledge of the game in question.