Like all joking aside…that’s basically all they are, right? There’s a generation of movie and supervillain cliches building up this idea that being good at chess requires and/or unlocks some kind of deep mental super power but its all just pattern recognition and puzzle solving right? That’s obviously not nothing and requires a degree of mental acuity and discipline to become a master at but imagine seriously caring about what Daigo Umehara thinks about Israel/Palestine or something and you can quickly see how ridiculous it is.
Less actually. The gimmick of chess is modeling and memorizing lots of plays. In fighting games you have to be humble and train to get stronger then be able to deeply understand your opponent to outplay them. Bonus because of historical accidents fighting games are heavily poc and working class. So you can get some terrible takes there but bet your average pro fgc probably has better politics than your average pro chess player.
Very fun to see the reactionary shitheads like LTG just get routinely clowned on over the years when they spout hateful shit. There’s a lot of problematic trends/culture in the FGC but you’re spot on about the make up & attitudes of the community. When one of the most popular players is a black nonbinary furry then there’s at least something good there
Chess players are literally no better than gamers
Like all joking aside…that’s basically all they are, right? There’s a generation of movie and supervillain cliches building up this idea that being good at chess requires and/or unlocks some kind of deep mental super power but its all just pattern recognition and puzzle solving right? That’s obviously not nothing and requires a degree of mental acuity and discipline to become a master at but imagine seriously caring about what Daigo Umehara thinks about Israel/Palestine or something and you can quickly see how ridiculous it is.
Less actually. The gimmick of chess is modeling and memorizing lots of plays. In fighting games you have to be humble and train to get stronger then be able to deeply understand your opponent to outplay them. Bonus because of historical accidents fighting games are heavily poc and working class. So you can get some terrible takes there but bet your average pro fgc probably has better politics than your average pro chess player.
Very fun to see the reactionary shitheads like LTG just get routinely clowned on over the years when they spout hateful shit. There’s a lot of problematic trends/culture in the FGC but you’re spot on about the make up & attitudes of the community. When one of the most popular players is a black nonbinary furry then there’s at least something good there
Video games are actually fun