In other words, should we as players worry about whether the characters or tactics we employ are fair? Should we worry about “breaking” the game or creating situations that are too disadvantageous to opponents?

My viewpoint is that nothing is cheap. Or rather, that players shouldn’t worry about it one way or the other. Cheating is bad form in real life because real life only gives us one physics engine to play in and one set of laws to obey. If someone wins through a loophole, everyone else has to suffer and there’s really no escape. That’s why “cheap” tactics carry such a bad vibe on an almost subconscious level.

However with fighting games, the Capcom community alone has access to over half a dozen classic titles that have been tested rigorously by the tournament scene and proven to be competitively viable. In other words, there’s no reason to hold back. If it turns out that Super Street Fighter IV is garbage, we don’t have to keep playing it. Of course i’m hoping that it’s a great game and that it fixes all of SF4’s problems without introducing any new ones. But if it disappoints me, it’s not the end of the world.

What this means is we don’t have to handle these games with kid gloves. Pick the character you feel is strongest and give it your best shot. If you break the game, then it wasn’t worth playing to begin with. And however long it takes you to reach this conclusion, you’ll have gained a wealth of knowledge and skill along the way that will transfer over to almost any other fighting game.

The only time you should shy away from the best character on the roster is if you can’t play them to their fullest potential. If you believe Sagat is the strongest character in SF4, but using him bores you so much that you can’t even bring yourself to practice basic combos, then pick someone who resonates with you. But don’t hold back, because the whole point of fighting games is give it everything you’ve got against an opponent who’s committed to the same ideal. If you can find an opponent like that, don’t ruin the experience for them or for yourself by trying to defend the game.

It’s impossible anyway. We’re all struggling to wrap our heads around the complexity of human competition. For someone to declare themselves an arbitrator and dictate a modified subset of “fairness” is outright ridiculous. Maybe the community as a whole can decide to ban one character, but to make sweeping judgements like “teleport runaway is cheap” or “divekick abuse is cheap” … these statements don’t even mean anything.

If something is truly as bad as it seems, the entire community will spend a few months searching for a counter. If it’s found, the game’s following will continue to thrive. If not, the community will gradually revert to another classic title to replace it. If something bothers you that much, you can get a head start. In fact, one of the best things about the launch of a new game like SF4 is the way that it revitalizes existing subscenes such as the ST community and the MvC2 community.

Personally, my favorite competitive fighting game is classic Super Turbo, which wasn’t in any arcades anywhere near my neighborhood when it was released. In fact, i didn’t start playing it until Capcom vs SNK led me to it. If SSF4 turns into a disappointment, i’ll go straight back to ST and i expect to see a few old faces (and a few new ones) waiting for me there.

What i’m trying to say is, when i use the word “cheap,” it’s strictly as a compliment.