“I don’t really have a trail to follow, I’m making it as I walk.”

Chile’s Nicolas “KaneBlueRiver” Gonzalez made waves in the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament scene during the 2013 Road to Evo season. Regular viewers would notice that he was in attendance at practically every major, earning a devoted fan following by rocking his “Big Bodies” team (Hulk, Haggar, Sentinel) well into top 8 and putting on an excellent show in a first-to-15 set against Team Spooky’s Fooblat at East Coast Throwdown 5. I spoke with Gonzalez about his past year as a wandering fighting game competitor, his future plans, and his insights into his own playstyle and weaknesses.

I just got very, very lucky.

Patrick Miller: It seems like we’ve seen you at just about every major tournament this year. How’d you pull that off without a sponsor? Hitchhiking with your laundry bag like Ryu?

Nicolas Gonzalez: Well, as most people know, I earned my trip to USA by winning the local Road to Evo tournament for the second time, which gives the winners a paid plane ticket to go play at Evo. I just arranged with the organizers to send me in early March so I could see how far I could go, and I would just see from there how I would make it to places. From there on, it was just me getting extremely lucky.

For Final Round, a player who I didn’t really know in person at that time, that I sometimes talked with online, basically gave me his plane ticket because he wasn’t going to be able to make it to FR and wanted me to play there because he considered me a very hype player to watch. I was finally able to meet him personally to deeply thank him for that at ECT (Thank you so much as always, Mathieu).

For Japan, a close friend (Erick) I made last year, who was the person that hosted the international players last year at Season’s Beatings, offered to cover 2/3rds of my plane ticket, and I had just made the extra money in MMs at FR because the local players basically dragged me to their room to MM me and I did very well against them, and Matt (Forgenjuro) hosted me during those weeks at his place, known as The Black Eye, which is basically the Japanese UMVC3 HQ.

A group of friends from the LA area basically took me with them for NCR. For the trip to EC/MW, another friend, El Quatro Loko (not going to expose his civilian identity) who was the organizer of the KOF team tournament at Season’s Beatings again last year, offered me to help me get to Pittsburgh to train for ECT, stay with him and help him practice KOFXIII, and help their local community with the experience I’ve gathered, but they could only afford a 1-way ticket (basically, the whole local community invited me), I just jumped on it thinking that I’d figure out later how I’d make it back to California.

For UFGT, I stayed for a couple of weeks with the host of the local community from Cleveland, Manny (FreeSuper), since I met most of them last year and I really wanted to make it back there this year, and a group of local Injustice players let me ride with them to Chicago and back. During that, one of the organizers from NWM, Anton (Shouta) contacted me and told me he really wanted to have me in the tournament, and he offered to pay for my trip from wherever I was to Seattle, and from there to wherever in the States I had to go after, so that solved my problem on how to make it back to SoCal. Thanks to community leaders from San Diego (Ryan Tang) and Phoenix (Jon Toy) I was also able to visit those communities a short while before Evo.

Also, of course, Romance helped me a big deal when I just got to the States, allowing me to stay with him and Luis Cha for a number of weeks, and I got a ton of help from Henry Choi (Choysauce), since he basically let me stay with him once I made it back to LA for pretty much all the time until I left the States. Shoutouts to everyone here!

So yeah. I just got very, very lucky. Everything worked for me without even really planning it. Sorry about the lengthy answer, but I want to make it clear that I’m not a millionaire or anything close, as many people seem to think about me.

PM: Where are you planning on going next? Are there any local scenes or players you particularly want to check out?

NG: I’d like to go everywhere I can, of course. But it’s not easy for me, being from where I am. First, I can’t really afford it. I don’t have money to travel anywhere. Second, there are some countries which I can’t visit unless I get a tourist visa for them. USA is of course the main one, but that one was solved last year, since my tourist visa lasts for 10 years, but it was not easy to get it. But right now I can’t enter (from countries that I’d like to visit to play FGs) Canada, Australia, China or Taiwan. I actually was like five hours away from Toryuken earlier this year but couldn’t go because I don’t have a canadian tourist visa.

I’m focusing all efforts on training to make sure I can win the paid trip again next year, since it’s the only way I can make it out there, so for plans, I’m getting invited for a tournament in Lima, Peru at the end of November, and that’s pretty much it regarding plans. If it was where I’d like to go, I want to take an extended trip through North America and the FG powers in East Asia, given that I can make it out of here first.

“Fighting games are becoming my life…so they’re very close to my emotions.”

PM: I’m interested in the way you talk about your own fighting game skills; on Twitter and in your interview with Polygon, you seem to discuss more emotional aspects of fighting games, like ‘fear’ and ‘self-confidence’, than most high-level players. When you’re trying to improve at a game, what does your process look like? What do you pay attention to, and what do you ignore? What led you to start thinking about things like self-confidence in a fighting game?

NG: For me, fighting games are just more than a hobby, that’s clear. The difference is that beyond the passion, this has given me a drive and a purpose that seemed lost in my life for many, many years. So I wouldn’t say that fighting games are part of my life, fighting games are becoming my life, and that has the consequence of being deeply related to my life, so, they’re very close to my emotions.

Also, there’s the fact that I consider my brain my only real strength in fighting games, and I’m mostly known for my good reads in Marvel 3, which derive from analyzing human thought. Psychology plays a huge role in anything competitive, but I’d say the few players that take this into consideration are the ones that have vast experience in other diverse competitive fields where mindgames are given even more prevalent roles, like Poker.

My prime example of such a player is Viscant. My process to improve at a game is not really anything special, I’m honestly still trying to figure out what’s the best way for me to improve. I do try to X-Copy some of the things I learned with my day training with Tokido as much as I can: Mostly, try to find one or two players on each game, that I consider better than myself at them by technical knowledge and intelligence, rather than talent, and ask them to mentor me. I feel that is the fastest and most efficient way to improve, which I need to do since I aim on being a solid FG player, rather than just a known Marvel player.

Problem is that down here, the only game where I can really do that is KOFXIII, and it’s pretty hard since most players here have only the “street experience” of the arcades, no knowledge of the engine, no frame data, they just know what has worked for them for over a decade and that’s good enough for them. They know the Whats, but I need to know the Hows and Whys.

I pay attention, as noted by what I said before, to the things I can use to give myself an edge. Technical knowledge of the engine. Frame data. Character “patterns” (lines that are very efficient for a character and most players repeat them). Maximum optimization; it’s hard for me to get in so I might as well make the most out of every opportunity, plus it makes me more familiar with the character/s that I’m playing. Execution practice. Those are the things I focus on.

About the more psychological things, I’ve always thought about those, mostly because I know how being in a good state of physical and mental health improves your game, and there’s also the fact that I played and judged Magic: The Gathering for many years, but I stopped playing when I realized how random the game was: I won a paid trip to Europe for one of the biggest tournaments of the season (The Pro Tour) without earning it. I just banged my head through the tournament wall for +-10 years until it cracked down and the odds went to me once. Everything went my way that day, and that’s not what I want in competition

I want to beat my opponent exclusively because I outplayed him/her. And of course, there’s also the presence of mind. You can see how the very best pretty much “will” themselves into crushing victory, just by knowing they’re among the best. I noticed that personally when I went to Brazil, with Sako and Ryan Hart present; even though there were many very strong players there, you could see in Sako’s and Ryan’s face the look that said “I’m taking this down and there’s nothing you can do to stop me”.

To be honest, I’d like to reach that point, but I’m really far from it. I have severe self-confidence issues. I’ve thought even about consulting a sports psychologist, which I think would help me integrally, both physically (I’m really out of shape) and mentally, but that takes money, which I don’t have.

“I’m not doing anything outside of this.”

PM: What do your training habits look like? What do you practice, and how long do you practice it? Picked up any training tips along the way you’d like our readers to know about?

NG: Right now, to be honest, I’m not doing anything outside of this, so I devote all my free time to training. I try to have someone here to play with during the afternoon, usually three friends that live or study close by. One comes more often than the other two, and we usually play until 8PM or so, mostly UMVC3, but also SFIV or KOFXIII sometimes. They’re not really tournament players, but I enjoy playing with them way more than local UMVC3 tournament players, at least, since we don’t really share the mindset.

I practice SFIV with 2 players but they’re seldomly able to make it here, and KOFXIII whenever I can with some of the best local players (and in the South American region), but that’s frustrating since I can’t seem to be able to close the skill gap between me and them in KOF. It doesn’t help that I’m one of the two or three “new” competitive KOF players — everyone else has been playing since forever, and the scene size is decent, but stagnant

In the night, I just mess around in practice mode mostly in said games. I sometimes do practice mode of other games that I want to have at least the bread and butter combos in good condition, that’s for the games I want to learn eventually but I have no one to play with here, like P4A or TTT2, so I can at least do something when I finally get a chance to start learning them next time I’m out of here.

Basically, I’m 100% focused to make sure I win the paid trip next year, and go out there, this time for as long as I can. That’s the only thing that I’m working on right now. Sadly, I feel that right now only UMVC3 can do that, even though I’ve worked hard at improving at SFIV and KOFXIII, which are the other games that give the paid trips.

About the training tips: I feel I can only say to people to practice intelligently, it’s not just mindless repetition, and to try to learn multiple games, as each one will strengthen you in the other ones.

PM: UMVC3 has been around for two Evos, now. What do you think will be the next big character or team? Do you think any of the existing top-tier characters will fall considerably? Do you think we’ll see different team composition patterns?

NG: I think the game is in a stabilized state, and people mostly want to increase their win count over their health, so most people will keep sticking to the currently known top chars, which will make them have more representation in tourneys and thus, get more top 8 placings. I can see players coming out of nowhere breaking out with less-played characters, but I don’t see the game overall changing from what’s perceived to be good right now in quite a while.

PM: Your “big bodies” team is part of the reason you’re a huge fan favorite. Any plans on changing things around? Working on any secondary teams?

NG: Not really. I’m planning to move some things around, like re-learn my point Haggar (first year in the States I played point Haggar, but the second time I played with point Hulk), and try to learn the drones approach in certain matchups. Maybe I’ll retake the Shuma approach, after discussing a bit with Jan about new findings, though we’d also need to talk with Angelic about it, because my Shuma is non-existent outside a couple of B&Bs. Other than that, I have a couple of fraudulent Doom/Vergil teams (Spencer/Doom/Vergil and Doom/Vergil/Frank) that I only play in casuals when I realize that the other player isn’t really getting any play time with my standard team.

“…I was kind of screwed…”

PM: I notice you’ve been putting a bit more work into SFIV lately; what brought that on?

NG: I’ve always played SFIV, since launch (though I was only able to get a PS3 on late 2010). I actually won the first two local tournaments, proof of what Viscant always says, about knowledge trumping skill on the early months of a fighting game. I took advantage of that too, had knowledge that no one had and could beat more gifted players, but that lasted only a few months before they caught up. Then after that, I found a group of friends that I had met many years ago and we “found each other again” at the tournament, neither of us knew that the other was into fighting games, so we all ended up practicing together as a group, these guys had a ton of experience from other competitive fields like Poker and MTG, especially the host of the sessions, who was very insightful too in the psychological aspects of competitive gaming.

Sadly, I lost that team around Arcade Edition because of League of Legends. After that, I became disheartened with the game since I felt I had no real way to get good at it, and stopped training hard with it. Interestingly, I still used to get good placings in tournaments, but still lost to the same group of 4-5 players. Decided to finally start getting back into it after I returned from the last trip. I just can’t leave the game aside, I need to become better at it, somehow. It was kinda sad that during the trip it was really hard to find instances to practice it. For example, in SoCal, there are regular training sessions for UMVC3 or KOFXIII, but talking with many of the top SFIV players of the region, they were like, “No, we don’t really do that, since we already got the game pretty much figured out by this point, at most we practice online”. So, I was kind of screwed in that aspect.

PM: You mentioned on Twitter that your ‘fear of wakeups’ is what’s getting to you in SFIV. How’d you notice that, and what are you doing to address it? How do you practice away your fear?

NG: I guess it’s more because the character I play (Balrog) has no real okizeme game, and his own wakeup options are terrible. I actually run different lines than most Balrog players. Against many characters (usually the ones with good DPs), I don’t go into knockdowns, because I don’t earn anything from that. I’d rather end my combos into MK Dash Upper than with HP Headbutt or sweep, since that gives me frame advantage and good positioning.

I think the problem is more prevalent when there’s something in the line, “tournament play”, since people here don’t play cleanly for the most part — they’re not worried about doing wakeup stuff — and I’m not skilled enough to just outplay that, and I’m like, “What are these guys even thinking…”. I don’t really know how to address that yet. I’m still working on that, but it goes beyond just game practice.

PM: You used to be a Magic: the Gathering player, right? Have you noticed any crossover between Magic and fighting games as far as mindset or skills?

NG: Well, as I mentioned before, any competitive gaming requires the players to be mentally and physically healthy to be able to be even close to giving their best. There are definitely skills that help in both, of course related to the mind, the ability to read your opponent, and also the knowledge, both things have a metagame, which is something you can study and help you be definitely prepared for the most common things you might encounter in tournaments (the higher tier decks/characters).

You also need other competitive factors like resilience, since even MTG tournaments use the Swiss Rounds format. It’s pretty much the same as double elimination until you get to top 8, since you can consider yourself out once you go X-2, so if you go down to X-1, you need to know how to remain calm and keep focused.

“Most of them just aspire to be the best on the block, area code, city, whatever.”

PM: We don’t see that many players make the world stage from Chile; what does your local scene look like? Do your fellow Chilean players learn from you after you come back from traveling? Can you think of any players from your scene that we’re sleeping on?

NG: Most scenes are pretty separated from each other, related to games, but I feel that most of them just aspire to be the best on the block/area code/city/whatever, they don’t care about going beyond that, but that’s reasonable and understandable since honestly, most of them won’t ever get the chance to go somewhere else to aspire to higher challenges. We have less money down here, and it’s more expensive to go anywhere, which is a pretty bad combination. I don’t feel local tournament players aim to learn from me or my experience, the ones that are worse than me don’t really care about getting better, and the ones better than me, well, they’re better, so they don’t feel they have anything to learn from me.

About strong local players, the ones that come to my mind are three with experience outside of the region and two without: EvilCraa and Sicario, two very strong SFIV and SFxT players (top 8 last year in SFxT teams at Evo, EvilCraa also won SFxT this year at Treta Aftermath in Brazil); Zeroblack, a known KOF player regarded as the strongest Terry and one of the best Kyos worldwide, he 9th place at Evo last year. The ones that don’t have experience outside the region would be Gutts, a KOF player who has developed a lot of the high-level tech used currently in KOFXIII, like Benimaru’s infinite and Yuri’s Rai’ouken loops; and Misterio, a KOF player from 2002 who is a South American legend and a player I’d strongly like to see compete internationally. Misterio won KOFXIII at Treta Aftermath earlier this year in Brazil, and I’m not afraid to say he is even Evo top 8 contender material.

PM: What’s next for you? Are you going to try and keep up the same pace in tournament competition that you did in this year’s Evo season?

NG: That’s what I’m working on: That and that alone, since if I don’t win the paid trip, I don’t really have a way to make it out there. And once I make it over there, I don’t really have any plans, either. I just want to play and keep improving, traveling around, seeing old friends and meeting new people. I don’t think I’ll get as lucky as this year, but I have no other choice, really. This is what I decided to do, and now that I don’t have anything to lose, since I don’t really have anything, I’m just taking the dive and seeing how far can I get. I don’t really have a trail to follow, I’m making it as I walk.