I don’t leave the house much. This is important.
I waited to pack my bags until day of my flight. It was my first time on an airplane and I was obviously freaking out. Clothes, toothbrush, something that smells good…
Don’t forget your medicine.
“I won’t.”
The voice was a constant in my head. Not someone else’s, but my own; a different version of me with everything in life figured out, on the right path, a version that was somebody instead of just being somebody. There’s a distinction there and it’s also important, at least to me.
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Apart from including my first flight, this trip would also be my first visit to Las Vegas. Now, as I said before, I don’t leave the house much. This is a combination of slight agoraphobia as well as the simple fact that I’m just more of a homebody. Partying does not interest me, getting fucked up does not interest me. Not to say those things can’t be fun for someone else, it’s just not what I prefer. It’s probably safe to say I’m pretty boring, but I’m okay with that.
Anyways: flying, Las Vegas - definitely outside of my comfort zone. But this trip was important because it was also my very first time going to Evolution, the largest fighting game tournament in the world.
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Along with my family, anxiety and fighting games have been two of the only constants in my life. I would read stories about tornados in the Midwest (my parents eventually had to start hiding newspapers from me at a very young age), see growing clouds in Sacramento, California of all places, and begin to worry something like that was possible in our neck of the woods. And by worry I mean pace my room and continually look outside to make sure those innocuous clouds hadn’t formed into something more menacing, taking frequent breaks to consult my folks on whether or not it was prudent to seek shelter elsewhere.
That anxiety naturally bled over into my interactions with other people. I had very few friends growing up, but those I did were basically a security blanket. I would keep them close, shutting out everyone else in favor of keeping those relationships intact. As you would expect, that wasn’t always a good thing. In fact, now that I think about it, it wasn’t really a good thing ever…like, at all. But there was one place that forced me to engage with other people, even on the most basic of levels: the arcade.
Now, I’m not an old fart or anything like that, but I’m old enough to remember the tail-end of the arcade era in the United States. While they were already on their way out by the time I was tall enough to reach up and mash on some buttons, arcades were still a magical place. No matter where I went, whether it be with my parents or on some random school field trip, I would seek out these little alcoves of bright lights and sound effects for a small piece of escape, a moment of respite from teachers demanding that I learn how to ice skate or whatever it was the excursion was really for.
(As you can probably guess, I was [and still am, if we’re being honest] a little bit of a fanatic when it came to video games. I think back on my childhood and embarrass myself a bit when I remember the things I would pass up just for a few extra minutes in Donkey Kong Country, but whatever. They serve as a great escape, but oftentimes have become a problem.)
These game centers were important to me because they gave me a chance to do what I really wanted to do while out and about, away from my Super Nintendo. I see now that video games only deepened my fear of human interaction because they allowed me to slip away and forget about whatever was troubling me on any given day, but arcades were different.
Due to arcade developers and operators needing to make as much money as possible off their cabinets, multiplayer was the next logical step. This meant there was a good chance that whatever title you happened to be playing had a corresponding set of controls for more players, who could jump in at any time to cooperate in your game or challenge you. While early on I would simply walk away if someone happened to join me on the same cabinet, an easy yet costly way to deal with the dread that crept into me when having to connect with a person outside of my comfort zone.
But, this obviously meant less video games, which was very much Not Acceptable for young Ian. So, I had to learn to handle these interactions better. In those days, my parents didn’t have much advice for me except for “suck it up,” which meant any sort of tools I would have received from therapy were lost on me. Through sheer force of will (and, of course, my love for these electronic diversions), I was able to shove much of the anxiety I felt when around new people deep down inside of me, still there but quieter as I continued to lose myself in these digital worlds.
Fighting games were an entirely different beast. Contrary to games based on X-Men, The Simpsons, and Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa (I was really into side-scrolling beat ‘em ups and, yes, that last one is real), fighters were very much focused on competition. This, naturally, brought with it people who were better than you, had no problem telling you they were better than you, and kicked you off a cabinet before you even had a chance to really play. And, due to their popularity, there was usually a huge line of people with their quarters already on the machine waiting to play.
But this isn’t about fighting game history, this is about me.
The antagonistic behavior of certain individuals (they were not the norm in my area, believe me) provided an even great hurdle to overcome that wasn’t present with other arcade-goers. You were bad, you lost, and they were going to make sure you understood both of those points before you took your place in the back of the line. As you can guess, these situations were pretty much hell for a person like me, who had trouble having even positive interactions with individuals I wasn’t close with.
Much like I did with other games, I was dead-set on continuing to play fighters. That meant I would need to overcome my issues with conflict, improve, or (better yet) both. While I can’t say that I was ever held in high regard by my fellow competitors, there eventually came a time where I was more than capable of holding my own in just about every game I came across (except for the Marvel titles…something intrinsic about their gameplay eludes me even to this day) and better cope with those particular individuals who made it their mission to cut other players down.
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So, yeah, Evo. It’s a pretty big deal to us fighting game folks. Thousands travel to Las Vegas every year to compete, and even more spend money to attend as spectators. By the finals day, the vast majority of visitors are basically spectators anyways, but I digress. While I’ve followed these tournaments very closely ever since being made aware of them by Jason “DreamTR” Wilson’s columns in Tips & Tricks Magazine, I’ve never actually attended one in person until this year, and I have a few very special people to thank for that.
In late 2011, I saw a job listing on Shoryuken (the world’s leading resource for fighting game news, strategy, and more!) for staff writers. Though I had dabbled in a ton of creative endeavors as I grew up, writing is one that really stuck with me through the end of middle school and into high school. Poetry was my thing for a very long time, but I had aspirations to somehow start my own magazine in that declining industry, and received a lot of positive feedback on my work. Since I was currently working a dead-end job at Old Navy, I figured, hey, let’s give it a shot.
Prior to this, I had a very brief stint as a “content producer” for Evil Geniuses, a prominent competitive gaming organization that currently sponsors players like Justin Wong and Ricky Ortiz. The experience wasn’t as positive as I had hoped it would be (the less said about that, the better), and I was looking forward to possibly working for a site with a more explicit focus.
The application process was pretty lenient, and I was soon invited to take part in a group call for further sorting. The only thing I remember from this is not wanting to be in the same call as a guy I “worked” with at Evil Geniuses who had also made it into this next level, and none other than Jay “Viscant” Snyder being in the handful of people I was eventually placed into a call with. One of the other applicants joked about interviewing him, and Adam “Keits” Heart (who at that time was Shoryuken’s editor-in-chief) promptly cut him off. I don’t remember if that person was hired or not.
To make a long story short, I was hired. My fellow writers and I were brought on simply as staff writers, in charge of finding stories, getting them written up in a timely manner, and passing them onto Keits for further editing and publishing. It was fun work, writing on something I’m passionate about, and easy. I could work my shitty shifts at Old Navy, then head home and do a job I was actually proud of in some small way.
Eventually, my hard work (and somewhat passable writing skills, I guess) paid off, and I was assigned larger stories by the higher-ups. One in particular I remember was for a forum member who had recently passed away. I’ve always seen myself as a very empathetic person, so this assignment was very meaningful for me, and also served as one of the larger “community connecting” events I had experienced outside of my time in the arcades.
With a large tournament series and increased work on his indie fighting game Divekick on his plate, I was promoted to an assistant position under Keits, giving me more responsibility in editing the rest of the staff’s work and publishing articles on a regular basis. This, of course, came with a bump in pay, which in turn allowed me to leave my day job and focus on my Shoryuken work.
It was a scary step, for sure, but I was very happy for making that decision early on. But, with the added obligations came an increase in anxiety. It’s around this I began to exhibit some very interesting…symptoms (I guess?) that worried me.
During high school, I went through a period of time where handwashing was super important to me. Outside of normal things like making sure they were clean before eating or after using the bathroom, I would spend a lot of time marching to the closest sink for the smallest things. Touching things outside, my cat, anything I deemed as “dirty” forced me into another session of soaping up, scrubbing, and rinsing. This never spiraled out of control, and I never had a meltdown if I couldn’t clean myself immediately, but looking back on that time in my life is pretty telling with what I know now.
I’ve spoken about this in bits and pieces before, but I have what’s called obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. Like, I literally have OCD; I’m not Monk, I’m not a Tumblr or Twitter hashtag. In the most basic terms, the disorder makes it nearly impossible for me to let go of negative thoughts (self-deprecation, perceived future tragedies, etc.) until I take part in some sort of compulsion, such as washing my hands when I feel they’ve been made “dirty” or “contaminated” by something in my environment. Where someone without OCD may think of something horrific and be able to eventually let it go with relative ease, we sit on it, ruminate, turn it over constantly. This, as you can probably guess, regularly gets us stuck in our compulsions, sometimes for hours at a time. Yes, it’s exhausting, but even that isn’t enough to describe what it’s like to live with OCD on a day-to-day basis. To be completely honest, it’s hard to accurately put to words what the disorder “feels” like.
And so, with the spike in work on Shoryuken, my daily anxiety levels heightened; with a higher anxiety threshold, the slight OCD symptoms that first appeared during high school bubbled to the surface once more, this time with a vengeance. It started slowly but, as time went on and I continued to give into its demands, the obsessive thoughts became harder to ignore. My hands were raw, red. They bled. I spent huge amounts of time washing them, making sure I was placing my 3DS perfectly in its charging cradle, turning my light on and off and on and off and on and off until it felt just right.
The worst part? It had an adverse affect on my job. Using the computer and my phone for even the most basic tasks was an exercise in careful mouse clicks, typing, and much more. This, in turn, compounded the natural stress I was feeling from work, forming a very vicious cycle that I couldn’t see a way out of.
Two breakdowns and a quick family intervention later, I was on my way to therapy. Without going into details, I’ve since been matched up with three fantastic women over the past couple of years who have really helped me get a grip on my own mind and come to terms with this overwhelming disorder. While I still feel the effects of OCD on a daily basis and have to deal with them constantly, the issues I was facing with work have almost completely disappeared (knock on wood).
Shortly before this all went down, Keits’ development team was picked up by Iron Galaxy Studios, who helped him polish up Divekick and release it on a variety of consoles. From what I can tell, it’s been rather successful (I recently saw it playing during a demo reel at Target) and I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s recently been assigned to work on the second season of Killer Instinct which, if you aren’t aware, is a Pretty Big Deal. He’s good people and it’s nice to see good things heading his way.
With things speeding up in his life, I was tapped to lead Shoryuken as its editor-in-chief. More money, more things under my control. My greatest acquisition, however, was the opportunity to reshape our focus, and I think I’ve done a rather okay job.
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Being in this kind of position, watching summer roll around every year brought a new sense of dread. “I need to go to Evo this year. How can I afford that? And even if I could swing it, I can’t possibly deal with flying all the way there. My car can’t make that drive. All those people…shit.” See, as time had gone on, my job allowed me to become even more insular than I already was. Without the ability to head to the arcade (there used to be at least three in my area, but they have since gone the way of the buffalo), my chances to socialize greatly diminished. I found it much easier to just stay home and write than to put effort into meeting people. Hell, I still do. This is an ongoing problem.
Anyways, this year I was contacted by Shoryuken coworker/boss/rant recipient Terry “Kineda” Ng with an interesting proposition: the site owners were willing to pay my way to Evo. Hotel, airfare, the whole shebang. I was floored. As someone who deals with a hefty amount of self-loathing, “good things” are almost always labeled in my mind as “things I don’t deserve”-this was a large issue when I was promoted to Keits’ assistant and later chosen as his replacement. I probably thanked them enough times to embarrass myself, and slowly started to psyche myself up for the matter at hand: actually getting to Las Vegas.
My brain bombarded me with every excuse you could imagine; the plane was going to crash, I was going to be alone all weekend, I was going to miss the last few days of my sister’s visit, people would meet me and realize I wasn’t worth their time and everyone would hate me and I would break something and be kicked out of the event and have to walk home and…yeah. It wasn’t until, in a groggy daze, I had my flight booked that I was finally able to tell myself, “This is happening, you idiot. Get with the program.”
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Don’t forget your medicine.
“I won’t.”
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For a few weeks leading up to Evo weekend, I was taking a medication called Luvox. In addition to treating things like depression (something else my therapist was worried about cropping up in my already addled mind), it’s mainly used to quell the debilitating symptoms associated with OCD. From what I was told, it affords the brain an extra second or two between getting caught up in an obsessive thought and performing the self-defeating compulsion. Unfortunately, taking these pills was almost as anxiety-producing as the disorder itself, but I was desperate for another step forward after hitting a slight dead end in therapy and group sessions.
I swallowed them with lots of water, one a night for a week then two a night for a week and then three a night for a week. These film-coated, yellow, scored, elliptical tablets that were supposed to give me an edge on my own brain, my own thoughts and imagination. The etched-in numbers scared me, their strange, almost sickly color scared me, the frequency scared me, the novel-sized pamphlet warning me that it was possible I could become suicidal or fall into a coma scared me. But I took them. I’m not good with fear but I took them. I swallowed them with lots of water.
It was explained to me that it would take a few weeks for the chemicals to build up in my body and make any changes on my brain function. I was patient. It was slow and I felt nothing. Someone made an off-hand comment one day that they could tell there was a difference in my mood, my general temperament, but I shrugged it off. It wasn’t until my sister’s visit, during which my family took her and her fiancé to San Francisco, that I could personally tell it was working. Where a year earlier I could not shake the idea that one of the city’s countless pedestrians was going to grab my sister, pull a knife, and stab her over and over and over and over again during our entire visit to the bay area, this year’s excursion was beautiful. Nothing is ever perfect and I will never be without anxiety or my obsessive thoughts but it was beautiful.
I was ready for Evo. I didn’t forget my medicine.
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Despite nearly breaking down at the airport as I bid farewell to my folks (who offered to drive me and eliminate at least one worry) and having to wait quite some time for a shuttle to my hotel with another Evo attendee who was very…sociable, the trip from Sacramento to Las Vegas was pretty uneventful. I made sure to stay away from the airplane windows and, much like I did in my youth, kept my eyes focused on a video game (racking up combos in Muramasa Rebirth on PlayStation Vita, if you were wondering) to distract myself from the immense weight of my anxious thoughts. I was in the aisle seat, an elderly woman grabbed the window seat, and a cute middle-aged lady sat between us. I said hello. She smiled. It was fine.
Once I finally made it to the hotel where Evo was being held and got my rooming arrangements sorted out, I jumped to the back of the check-in line and waited. This part’s really only important because I saw Ed Boon (co-creator of Mortal Kombat) near the front of the mass of people waiting to get to their rooms and was like, “Hey, that’s Ed Boon.” I like to think I’m the only one who noticed him.
After grabbing my competitor’s pass, I settled in and wrestled my way through the night, trying to find sleep. I took my medicine.
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My Ultra Street Fighter IV pool was in the earliest time slot, so I got up early, made sure I was cute as possible (I really should have gotten a haircut or at least brought my shaving kit, but oh well), and made my way down to the ballroom.
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I don’t get out of the house much, so the Evo setup was a little crazy to my tiny mind. I’ve been to larger concerts (usually ducking out early because dear god crowds of people suck), but this was something else. I originally thought the vendor area, which was the first hall you walked into, was the entirety of what the event had to offer, only to be dumbstruck as I walked through a small dining area to another ballroom, complete with the pool stations, the main stage, gigantic screens, and more.
Oh, and, lots and lots of people. Ew. (Nah, not really…but yeah ew.)
If you haven’t caught on by now, I’m a worrier. This led me to check into my pool as soon as there was someone around to run the bracket. I entered simply as Ian instead of my Shoryuken tag; not because I expected to be swamped by adoring fans but I had this really awful scene floating around in my head where someone would recognize my name, see that I am completely awful at Street Fighter, and proceed to heckle me all weekend until I broke down, went back to the comfort of my bed, and ate room service veggie burgers until Monday morning.
So I was just Ian. I’ve always liked my name so that wasn’t an issue.
Needless to say, I went 0-2-well, technically 1-2 because I was given a bye in the losers bracket thanks to my opponent not showing up, but for all intents and purposes I lost two games and my first Evo as a competitor came to a grinding halt. That’s fine, I told myself. I was using a new character, had very little practice time leading up to the tournament, and, the most important of all, the players I fought against were just plain better than I was. They came to win.
I came for something else.
See, Twitter is important to me. It’s allowed me to connect with a wide variety of people who I would otherwise only have the ability to contact with at large, national events like Evo. The folks I talk shit to, share silly jokes with, and generally waste my time alongside are, I don’t know, precious to me? That’s kind of a weird word for people I’ve mostly never met but I guess that’s how I feel. Thus, I had quite a few people I was hoping to run into during my stay in Las Vegas.
The first of these people I had the courage to tap was Jesse, otherwise known as Hellfire, a Colorado player who I’ve connected with thanks to our shared love of BlazBlue character Amane. He’s also a super nice guy. After a short misstep thanks to a bit of work I had to take care of, I was finally able to connect with him in the real world. It was nice.
We talked about a lot of things. I opened up more than I usually do with people. I was myself, but also not. I casually mentioned some things without going into too much detail. We talked about the work he was doing on his very own Amane cosplay. He has great ideas and will look awesome in that pink kimono. I met an acquaintance of his from New Mexico and got some info about a charity tournament his local scene is planning to run.
(As an aside, I just ran to my backpack to consult the flyer he gave me and make sure I hadn’t missed the dates. Luckily, I haven’t, which is good because fucking that up probably would have sent me into a spiral that would end tonight’s writing session/Mountain Goats listening party. I plan to write something up on Shoryuken about it but feel free to check out their website and visit if you happen to be in the area. Good causes all around.)
We parted ways. I made sure to grab the time of his BlazBlue pool the following day so I could show up and support. Things were good.
-
During those pools, I had the opportunity to meet up with group of people I knew through Twitter from Southern California. I previously met two of them (Alex and Paul) at NorCal Regionals a couple of years ago, but Evo gave me a chance to finally shake hands with another member of their group of friends.
Monique (also known as Michael, Tatsu’s mom, etc.) is someone I’ve looked up to over the past few years due to her dedication to speaking her mind. She’s helped me really take a step back and look at the world from a perspective other than my own and expand my knowledge of a variety of social issues. And, while we haven’t discussed them much on personal terms, I have a feeling we share many of the same anxiety issues.
Most importantly though, she plays Pokemon and Animal Crossing like a hex maniac.
As older members of the community, they’ve generally had quite a few more experiences than me and, as silly as it may sound, I sort of look up to them. So, when I passed by them later in the weekend as they left the ballroom and they asked if I wanted to grab lunch, I was taken aback. Due to my inability to recognize my self-worth, I rarely believe I am worth someone’s time. This was, essentially, like being invited to eat at the cool kids’ table.
Yeah, I’m kinda pathetic.
The meal was spent having my mind changed about certain community members and reaffirming some I already thought were assholes, but it also served as a good barometer for how I’ve changed over the past year. Just a little while back, I would have been a knot of anxiety, silent in my seat and afraid to contribute anything to the conversation around me. Now…well, I can’t lie, I was still pretty tightly-wound, but I was able to better recognize the warmth of the people around me and realize that I was wanted there. It also shed new light on previous interactions and how I had probably twisted otherwise normal conversations into these catastrophes that only existed in my imagination.
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I’ve rambled enough. Overall, Evo was Evo. It was everything I hoped it would be and more, and I can’t wait to attend future installments.
Really, that last line is what this was all about. There’s something new in my mind, taking up occupancy next to the negative thoughts, apocalyptic visions of the future, and terrible jokes: hope. While my money situation doesn’t seem like it will improve any time soon, the fear of traveling, of leaving my own little comfortable corner of the world is now a slightly smaller beast than the hulking monster it was before.
I see more trips in my future; visiting Las Vegas again, heading down south to see my sister and her beau in Los Angeles, making the effort to see other states and other communities and other tournaments. But, more than that, I’m excited to meet more people.
I’m not dumb, this will be a hard mountain to conquer. Heading to Evo was a very large step but still minor in the grand scheme of my overall journey. Despite my better outlook, I’ve already seen myself fall back into some very destructive behaviors. While the medication is helping, I’ve all but given up on therapy (I plan to fix that soon, so don’t worry). I will be in a constant struggle with my mind and the questionable pathways I’ve burned in my thinking from years of both hiding from my problems and giving into my compulsions, but that’s not such a daunting prospect as it once was.
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Don’t forget your medicine.
“Yeah, yeah, after this round.”
—
Special thanks to Tom and Tony Cannon, Joey Cuellar, Terry Ng, Adam Heart, Mark Julio, James Chen, Jesse, Eshi, Patrick Miller, Sanchez, Monique, Paul, Raf, Honzo, and Lance for both making my trip to Evo a reality and a pleasure once I was there. I love you all.
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