INTRO:
Tournament finals, Axl v. Slayer. It's just a regional, but both players are bringing their A-Game, and everyone in the room is hype. It's down to the wire, the last round of the last match. Both players are about halfway down their HP bar, and a single combo can decide the outcome. Axl gets a lucky knockdown, and throws down a 2H to oki Slayer at the last second. But the Slayer's seen this before. He pulls out a perfectly timed reversal super. It's going to be a counterhit, and the combo after will end the game.
But right before the superflash, there's a smaller, familiar blue flash. Axl has FRC'd the 2H, and blocks the super. The Slayer yells “You bastard!” as he takes a big anti-air combo and loses the match. What happened there? A psychic reversal gets beat by an even more psychic bait? Nope. What happened there wasn't a coincidence, and it wasn't anyone being psychic. It was operant conditioning in action, and it's an important part of higher-level mindgames.
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Learning and why it's awesome:
The human brain is kind of amazing. It has the capacity to process complex situations and come up with solutions on the fly. It can also learn from mistakes, and improve skills. In short, humans can learn. While it's still very hotly debated how much of our behavior is genetic and how much of it is learned, it's definitely widely agreed that learned behavior makes up a significant portion of what we do.
So what does this have to do with fighting games? Well, in general, everything that you do in fighting games could be considered a “learned behavior.” There are lots of kinds of learning that take place in fighting games. On a real-world level, familiarizing oneself with the basic controls is a learning process. Within the scope of the game, you learn to do moves, perform combos and various other tricks, and beat specific moves or tactics. Most interestingly of all, you learn matchups, both against in-game characters and real-life opponents.
Of course, to win in a fighting game, one factor is definitely stuff you've already learned. What moves you have, what moves your opponent has, maybe even some frame data and matchup knowledge. But in a fight with an equal or stronger opponent, this is combined with your ability to adapt to novel situations; to learn on the fly. Some of the best fighting game players are the ones who can adapt quickly to situations they've never seen before, or haven't seen for a long time. They make judgment calls based on what they already know and what they're learning about their opponent. Naturally, like anything else, this can be exploited.
The Mechanics of Learning: Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning is a concept in behavioral psychology that says, basically, that an organism that can make choices and learn from mistakes will respond to stimulus by changing its behavior. A famous psychologist, B.F. Skinner, did a lot of research with pigeons, training them to do various tasks like play the piano. This is accomplished by rewarding the behavior one wants (Reinforcement) and/or punishing the behavior one doesn't want (Punishment/Extinction), essentially creating an environment where in order to get what it wants, the organism learns to behave in a particular desirable way. This is usually accomplished in small incremental steps, in a process known as “shaping.” If you've ever seen someone learn how to do a difficult task on their own, you can see this concept in action.
In fighting games, there is an intrinsic motivation to win. Especially with skilled players, connecting with an attack, blocking an attack, or what have you can be seen as usable rewards. Getting hit or whiffing an attack can be seen as usable punishments. In other words, players learn by reinforcing behavior that lets them do damage, and avoid taking damage in the game. If something consistently works, they'll do it again. If something consistently fails, they'll stop doing it. This all might seem very obvious.
Additionally, everyone knows someone with bad habits. Most people, even really advanced players, have a few themselves. The guy who always gets too close and gets thrown when trying to oki, or who always DPs on wakeup. Bad habits generally come from playing against players who can't deal with those options, either due to a lack of technical skill, or just not knowing what to do.
Using your powers for Evil:
Behavioral methods such as Operant Conditioning have gotten kind of a bad rep in the lay population. People tend to think of it as mind control, and it's easy to see why one would. Fortunately, there are very strict ethical standards for scientific research, so scientists can't just go out and mess up little kids' brains. In a fighting game, however, your goal is to defeat your opponent, and there are absolutely zero ethical implications to conditioning, since everything you do is only in terms of the game. So when you run into an opponent who can probably beat you in terms of sheer technical skill, you have to play mindgames in order to stay ahead. One such mindgame, and my personal favorite, is conditioning one's opponent to play poorly.
In general, people have to think fairly fast in the middle of a match. If you think they have time to consider every possible option for every possible situation, you're kidding yourself. Instead, people have tried things, either in training mode or, more often, against prior opponents, and have some habits or heuristics by which they make their decisions about what to do in a given situation. They have to either react or anticipate with these solutions with split-second timing. It is easier to create a habit than to break one, and you, as an opponent, can take advantage of this. If you teach your opponent, through controlled reinforcement and punishment of certain specific tactics or general heuristics, essentially teaching them to react a certain way to a certain situation, you have made them more predictable in the future, and you can take advantage of their conditioned response.
To give an example, a strong tactic with Sol is to tick 2P into Wild Throw. This nets him a strong combo, and is a tough mixup to deal with. But obviously there are ways around it. Like any tick throw, it can be beaten with a jab, or something throw-invulnerable. Eventually, a good player will see it coming and do something about it. But what if Sol started doing 2P into Volcanic Viper? Obviously this is, from most perspectives, a terrible idea. They're already blocking the 2P, and the best solution to VV is to just block and punish it. However, it will beat most solutions to wild throw. Obviously doing VV after your 2P when they're expecting Wild Throw is a mixup.
But what if you started out by doing VV? They initially expect a wild throw, and get hit by the DP, or maybe they block it just in time. At any rate, soon they learn that your weird tactic is to always use DP, maybe occasionally RC it so it's safe, but either way, they're learning to just keep blocking, which is exactly what you shouldn't do against the much more legitimate tactic that is the tick throw. Eventually, they're so used to your terrible DP tactic that they have learned to just watch for that and punish it for free damage. Obviously, since doing damage is intrinsically rewarding, they'll keep doing that. And then, at a critical moment, you switch to wild throw. They know that that's your best option. They know what to do about it. But they've been conditioned to respond as though you were going to VV, and so they block, eat the throw, and take a big combo.
Now, let's say you condition them to expect VV when you know you can come back from whatever they do to you, then win at a critical moment by switching to the more valid tick throw tactic? You've essentially conditioned your opponent to play wrong, and taken advantage of it. In the real world? Evil. In fighting games? A win is a win.
Final note: Learned Helplessness
Learned helplessness is another phenomenon that's been observed by behaviorists. Essentially, an organism has learned that its actions have no effect on the outcome, and thus will stop trying. It's a serious problem when it happens to people, and like most things about the human mind, it definitely happens in fighting games.
It is very hard to predict someone's every move. It's even hard to condition them to do exactly what you want. But if you can completely shut someone down? Make it seem to them like nothing they can do will beat you, they will pretty much give up. I'm sure you've seen it in at least one match. It's a major psychological edge to have, and hopefully a trap you won't fall into.
It's never good to assume from the getgo that you can't beat someone. Martial Artists and Behaviorists agree: If you know for sure that you'll lose, you've already lost.
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