On Strategy and legend of Street Fighter Alex Valle interview.

I’m a huge fan of strategy. That doesn’t mean sitting behind closed doors drawing plans, it’s about smart action and fast action.  The keyword being Action. I think the interest started when I got into warcraft 3. This game is hugely strategic (excepting the Nightelves ofcourse) and lies on various factors. For years in both Quake 3 and Warcraft 3, I was good at the game simply because I practiced it far more than most people. And the desire to win was greater than my fellow companions. I didn’t know there was a science behind the achievement of the top players. If you take players of various games today, you’ll see they have broken it down to a science. What differentiates the players then lies on 2 things in my opinion.

a) Intellect
b) Motor Skills.

In that order. Intellect is the primary thing that seperates idiots from the achievers. This is not limited to just one field. I believe this is pervasive over all games. Being smart, gets you better -- faster. Motor skills, to a large extent, can be learnt by any idiot. How hard is it to move a mouse and press keys on keyboard after all ? But purposeful action is something that largely eludes many people getting into any game. That being said, I have immense respect for players still grinding it at the game and STILL enjoying it. That’s the most important part, if you aren’t enjoying it, stop doing it. Why tortuself in this one life you have. I came across an interview with Alex Valle, a street fighter legend of the game. He’s 31 years old now and still going strong with strategy. And the stuff that this game has.. man you wouldn’t believe the amount of mechanics there is to this game. The whole interview with Alex Valle is up here, but I thought I’ll post some of the most interesting tid bits related to strategy thatI found.

Alex Valle of USA , street fighter

On how developing motor skills before tournaments is important.

If you’ve seen an online match, they’re so sloppy because nobody cares. You want to land all this crazy stuff, but it’s so sloppy trying to do it. If you were to take that same sloppiness to a real tournament match, like 50% of your life would be gone attempting to do something technical. Attempting. So once you figure that that out in round 1, in round 2 you’re not going to have anything left. You’re not even going to attempt your old strats that you practiced online, because when it counts and you’re sitting right next to the person and they know that you can’t beat them, they don’t work.

On how age affects game play

The only thing that’s going to affect me is my execution. For many of the standard photographic situations that are coming at me, it’s the conditioning and the execution part that I’ll probably be struggling in. As far as strategies and overcoming all the obstacles, that will never leave me. Age really doesn’t matter. You still have Street Fighter II Super Turbo players who are pushing 40 and still dominating, and that game requires a lot of fast-paced execution. There are no short cuts in Super Turbo: if you missed an uppercut, it’s because you really missed an uppercut.

I actually do feel I have somewhat of an advantage over these new guys because being really good at all games, I’m already prepared for it. They have to put in the work and the time to adjust to any hardships.

On dealing with trash talking

Yeah. Going back to everyone calling me “1998-Power” and “old timer” and stuff it is what it is, but were in 2009 and my name is still out there. Where are you at?

On playing high level and enjoying it

Look, I’m not the only one: but there are only a handful of people who can still do this. I’m one of them, John Choi’s one of them, Justin Wong can do it. These guys don’t really have to go to all these tournaments to prove anything. They have this set in stone in their minds: it’s like riding a bike, being good at Street Fighter. You can like practice two weeks before a tournament, a national tournament, and still place like top 10, top 8, whatever. That what happens after many years of grinding at this game. We will never suck, and I rode this for the past couple of years. After not practicing, I’m still placing top 8 at EVO, but now in Street Fighter 4, I’ve never seen as much hype and hunger for a game that it takes me back to the 90’s. It really does. I’m stepping over my life boundaries between taking my girlfriend out or holding RTSD sessions for these players. Or like going to Watson’s pad and leveling up with them, or doing what I’ve got to do to really be dominant in this game. I’m doing what everybody that really enjoys something does.

Excellent analogy between Street Fighter (and games like Quake 3) vs RTS (Warcraft 3)

Let me give you my analogy for this. (clears throat). You’ve got tennis, where you can watch any Open live, and then you’ve got an MMA fight, right? So if someone hits a serve and someone hits it back, no one’s saying anything in tennis until someone finally scores a point and then everybody claps because they’re allowed to. In MMA, you’ve got people cheering all the way down to the ring. You’ve got the announcements, the hype, and whatever happens before to piss those to guys off to put them where they are up to the very first swing. That’s what you have with Street Fighter right now. An RTS game is like tennis: you can’t really see anything. There’s just boring, there’s no hype. It’s crap. You don’t even feel intensity. Even if those guys were shit-talking before, you don’t know that. You don’t care. You just want to see how fast they have a zerg rush. Who cares. When you’re watching these guys at SBO on the live stream, you know Slasher and Gootecks did a really good job just trying to talk about what’s going on. Some people like it, some people didn’t like it, but it was really hype. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

On staying motivated

Actually, I do. Keep playing. Everybody out there, if you can’t make it to EVO, you might make it next year. It’s not like mandatory you have to go to these things. Just keep in mind that the community is strong, and we’re always going to help you, but also keep in mind that it’s a very competitive scene. Don’t take it the wrong way if someone wants to win really bad. That’s just them. Either you can suck it up or challenge it, or just get better man. Get better at home. Do what you’ve got to do to get better at Street Fighter, and the scene will take over.

I think this is a fine interview , read up the whole stuff. Shoryuken!! Here’s an awesome video btw of Alex playing Sagat against the best street fighter player in the world, Daigo Umehara.

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