Last year in September I drove an hour out of Seattle to play Street Fighter 4; it kicked off 3 months of playing the game an average of 3 nights a week. It felt like words couldn't express how amazing the experience of playing it was that first night. I only picked Ryu because I am generally very comfortable with shoto mechanics. Game sort of felt like Alpha/CvS games mixed with 3rd Strike, but with no overbearing system mechanics so SF2 traditional matchups were pretty similar. Just like Alpha 2, Ryu could link a lot of his crouching moves. I won a few games vs the scrubbier players that first night before watching a dude who I'd later find out is one of the best local players getting a 30+ win streak with Ken, in fact after losing to him 2-3 times I went and grabbed a spicy chicken sandwich at Wendy's and came back and it was about a half hour until the bowling alley closed so I just drove home, it would be one of the few times I ever left an SF4 session before the establishment closed down.

Fast forward 5 months, 2 local tournaments, hundreds(maybe a thousand?) of matches played, hundreds of dollars spent on credits and a 2 month break and SF4 finally came to console. It came out just a week after my employment was put in question and 9 people in my company, several of them my friends were laid off. This didn't really deter my excitement; I was calling a few shops every day to see if i could get the game even 24 hours early. I called the Game Crazy I worked at nearly 10 years ago and happen to now live 10 minutes from and the dude on the phone said they had one copy left. I left work immediately not caring if anyone noticed me cutting out early, picked it up and despite being really tired at 4pm played for about 8 hours that night. By night 2 I was pushing dangerously close to the top 100 ranked players.

Then something happened.. The game got frustrating. I will blame most things on playing online and alone. But with lag anything that is normally frustrating becomes a mental earthquake..

Jump back from Zangief doing an empty jump into ultra? Nope not with a quarter second delay you wont.

Jump or counter hit on reaction any charge type character move(Blanka ball, Honda headbutt, Balrog dash punch, etc), nah sorry that will hit you half the time for free.

Trying to play footsies with a sagat? Hm good luck because anytime you buffer a move and put yourself out of holding back/down back you are basically letting the game know that you can't block on reaction to anything.

I suppose I started to feel so cheated in my losses that I couldn't take it, but screaming "Faggot" at the LCD screen became an every day occurrence. I'm sure my neighbors think there is something wrong with me. There probably is. I think shit got more serious to me once I had my first disconnector. It was probably 200 games into playing. A few weeks later I found out that he was at the tournaments in my area that I went to. I lost to him twice and upon beating him in the 3rd match he disconnected and after a message to him he responded with "Those throws were bullshit."

The lack of personal connection makes something like that really hard to take. In general the game feels really different without other people around. At the arcade a streak becomes a king of the hill type moment, every match is another chance to hold your ground. Everyone viewing your matches, trying to analyze your play for when their turn comes up. On ranking I might start winning a few in a row and I don't really feel any rush from it, it's just playing. Every match resets the momentum. Gain some points, lose some points. It is cool to see your skill put in a context but with the system being so flawed it doesn't really mean anything. Maybe it doesn't mean much to end a huge streak in the arcade and get applause from the crowd, or have people who don't play the game in awe and ask you questions about the game. But those things are a novelty and break up the practicing. They keep things interesting and add standout moments. A great match is interesting but I tend to forget the close matches i've had a few days later. I happen to remember when someone taps me on the shoulder and says "Are you the one winning?"

The other day I logged on and created a player match. No one challenged me. At any given time I have around 5-10 people on my friend list online playing SF4. I invited 2 people and there was no response but I imagine they were playing or busy. I sat for a minute and just thought "SF4 online is lonely. This is lonely."