The arcade game boom of the 1970s and 80s was fading and interest in video games was waning when the entire industry was suddenly jolted back into relevance with the appearance of Capcom's Street Fighter II in 1991. Though the invention of the two-player fighting game is often traced back to Tim Skelly's 1979 dueling game Warrior, it wasn't until Street Fighter II appeared with its cast of playable characters, each with their own assortment of special moves, that the fighting game genre took off. Pac-Man and pinball may have lost their appeal, but Ken and Ryu brought players--and their quarters--back into the arcades.

One thing that became immediately obvious to everyone in the video game industry was how often players would come back to play the game in order to work on their skills and better their performance. The range of techniques and tactics employed in Street Fighter II went far beyond what players had seen in games like Donkey Kong and Q*bert and many players engrossed themselves in the quest for mastery.

Though it was more complicated than the games that preceded it, the moves of any particular character were still easy enough for the casual player to learn--which meant that success in the game was dependent on a player's tactics. Players would develop and practice assorted tactical choices in order to beat their opponents. When is the best time to use a certain move? How far away should I be in order to have the best chance of success? Players deliberately worked to improve the choices they made in the game.

The processes involved in learning tactics in fighting video games parallel how tactics are learned in fencing. ...

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