2022 in review, 2023 in our sights
It’s been one hell of a year for me and fighting games, so I figured I’d do a proper 2022 wrapup/2023 kickoff post to digest it all properly. These days ya boy is something of an event organizer and a content creator in addition to being a fighting game player and teacher, so that’s how I broke it down.
Event Organizing: Homie, We Major
The Play Guilty Gear crew stepped up big time in 2022, and it was an honor and a pleasure to lead that charge.
We continued to hold it down with our REV2SDAY netplay weekly and Caliburst local monthly, both of which are the backbones of our community, and we kept things fresh by running special events like Kill the Baiken, novelty formats like Face Your Demon and Shang Tsung, and our team showmatch card Coopted Cup. I treat our event formats as a fun challenge that keeps our players on our toes and rewards people who are willing to dig deeper into the game, and I feel incredibly blessed when I see our players show up to have some fun with all our weird concoctions. We’ve also been able to help give NorCal UMvC3 a home at Caliburst, and it has been awesome to see them turn up to keep their game alive and kicking.
Consistency is king for these events, and we managed to keep consistent by expanding the crew and training up new team members to help fill in the gaps when a core team member is away. Eventually our deeper bench let us spin up an entirely new team — shoutouts to the Play Guilty Gear Blue Team for taking the beginner + intermediate brackets and running with it to make OnlyMids! I’m hella excited to continue expanding our crew so we can get more folks feeling comfortable TOing, commentating, streaming etc. because it enriches our entire local FGC, not just the Rev2 scene. It feels good to help build something cool.
Expanding the crew was big for this year’s work, because we also expanded our appetite for events beyond R2D and Caliburst. The team pulled off running major-sized Rev2 side tournament brackets at Combo Breaker and Evo/Vortex Gallery this year, which meant that we had to integrate with bigger event teams and handle more complicated event logistics in venues that we had never worked in before. I’m still amazed we pulled it off, and I’m so proud of the crew for rallying together to make sure everyone out there knows Rev2 is alive and well. We’re definitely going to continue showing up for Rev2 tournaments in 2023 — see you at Slashback!
Of course, it wasn’t enough for us to run two Rev2 brackets at the biggest tournaments in the world; we had to cap the year off with a proper celebration, and that was RESSHOUMANIA 2022. Somehow we pulled off a three-day event featuring a high roller random select bracket, an incredible showmatch card, and the chillest afterparty, all for the Rev2 community we love so much. It didn’t feel real until we put the banner up on the Gamecenter mezzanine, and when I saw it hanging there I knew we just had to keep doing it again and again. The vibes were immaculate, so next year’s goal is simply going to be to maintain the general scope and scale (no hotel ballrooms, please) while spreading the work to make everything smoother and less stressful.
I would be remiss in this events recap if I didn’t give a special shoutout to the Play Guilty Gear Chop Shop, our ragtag video editing team who we assembled at the end of last year. Milk, Espada, Zwei, and Okami have been with us for a while now as players and friends, and when I came to them for help with doing videos to celebrate and promote our events, they took the vibes they had been soaking in for the last few years and made some amazing art with it. This year’s RESSHOUMANIA was absolutely dripping in sauce and it was in large part because these beautiful fuckers have been jamming with each other to grow in their craft. It has been incredible to watch it all come together over the year, and I’m so excited to see how we top it in 2023.
Content Creation: Less is More
I have generally resented the idea of ‘content creation’, or even the homogenizing effects of using the word ‘content’ to describe ‘stuff people make and put on the Internet’ for a long time. This was a year where I consciously took a step back from playing the Content Creation game; I stopped consistently streaming or doing YouTube stuff outside of events, I wrote fewer Medium essays, and I managed to find new ways to give even fewer fucks about engagement metrics and monetization potential than ever before.
It felt real good. I think my writing from this year is better than it has ever been, I’m obviously very proud of how our events have been going, and most importantly, I’m feeling like I can continue with all this stuff without risking burning out or having to push other things out of my life. Twitter’s gradual decline has also been a good reminder that the stuff I do and make is not the kind of thing that appeals to a wide general audience, and so instead of doing work that just blasts out into the void, like the grind of daily Twitch streaming + YouTube cuts, simply isn’t where my energy should be spent. So, in 2023 I’m going to continue focusing on making stuff for the people close to me, nurturing relationships instead of ‘building an audience’, and while I will put it on the Internet for anyone who wants it, I’m not going to do things to make the Internet happy.
Practically speaking, I think this means continuing with my current Medium/Patreon update cadence for polished, ‘complete’ work when I have it, and writing more daily/weekly journals and smaller thoughts on Cohost. (To be honest, the best stuff for Medium always comes from reader questions anyway, so hit that sub for $5/mo and I’ll write you an essay!) I don’t want to be a content creator, I just want to make cool stuff, so this year I’m going to be spending more time refining my creative skills and less time thinking about how to get more people on the Internet to like me.
Competition: Better Than Ever
In-person events came back in 2022, and I felt like I had something to prove after spending two years grinding in the pandemic hyperbolic time chamber. I have never been the strongest tournament player, and I wanted to make sure that I had some results that I could point to as an validation that I practice what I preach.
I entered about 80 tournaments, made Top 8 in Rev2 and +R at Frosty Faustings, got 9th in both at Evo, played some amazing showmatches with sweetxjam, Kizzercrate, and DaveO in Hellfire, Deadass God’s Gift, and RESSHOUMANIA, built up a winstreak at Tag-In Battle (and won VSav for Halloween because why not), got consistent top 3 placements in +R at NorCal Dogfight, and did a lot of good work in netplay brackets throughout the year.
All in all, I feel very satisfied with my competitive performance this year, and I think I got a good understanding of where I stand as a player. All those tournaments and showmatches were hugely useful in helping me refine my fighting game practice mindset and methods, and I am excited to dig deeper in 2023. Getting to line up on stage and stand shoulder to shoulder with players I admire at Frostys was definitely an itch that I had wanted to scratch for some time, and with that behind me, I feel like I can let go of tournament performance-related insecurities and simply focus on becoming a better player without worrying about what my bracket results look like in 2023.
Also, Capcom vs. SNK 2 getting rollback via Fightcade meant that I got to come back to the game with fresh eyes and new opponents, and I feel like I can finally sit down with this game and get good at it instead of just coasting on my previous experience. I am incredibly thankful to Blueminder and the Project Dojo work for bringing CvS2 back into my life, and it’s been super exciting to see so many unfamiliar names kick my ass, so I’m looking forward to grinding this game again alongside Rev2 and +R in 2023. Between these three games and the occasional return to MvC2 and UMvC3 I feel like I’m already set for life when it comes to fighting games, and if no one ever made another game I liked, I’d still be fine.
Thank you for 2022 and good luck in 2023
There was a point somewhere during the height of pandemic in 2020 where I realized that my entire life is about fighting and all the cool shit that comes along with it, and that I should lean into that first and foremost instead of thinking of myself as a game designer or a producer or a writer or whatever. I feel like it is important that I continue to do all this stuff, that I’m singing a song that some people need to hear, that my continuing to play and teach and train and stream is valuable not just because it makes me happy, but because it makes other people live happier and richer lives to see me do my thing.
So: Thank you to everyone who cares about any of this. Thank you to the people who support and enable my work, and thank you to the people who let me know that this matters to you, too. I have made fighting my life in 2022, and I will continue to do so in 2023 and beyond. I hope that my work will help light the way for your own path, whatever that may look like.
Thank you for reading.
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-patrick miller
