Sajam Interview
I also thought it would be extremely valuable to get some perspective on netcode from a community member who lives and breathes fighting games every day. Stephen "Sajam" Lyon has commentated tons of top 8s for the fighting game community's biggest tournaments, plays and studies a dozen different fighting games, and loves to chat about important fighting game topics on his Twitch and Youtube channels. Thanks for taking some time to chat!
Sajam: Thanks for having me! I spend a lot of time chatting about networking for fighting games, and I’m always happy to chat about rollback and delay based solutions.
I think it's a good idea to learn a bit about people first experienced online fighting games. What was your first experience with rollback in online fighting games?
Sajam: The first time I ever played on rollback netcode was for Street Fighter x Tekken back in 2012. At the time, I remember feeling like the netcode was really different from Street Fighter 4 and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, but I didn’t think too much of it. Then the following year, I got to try Killer Instinct and realized just how important rollback netcode was. I remember playing Southern California to New York on Killer Instinct, and thinking that this was the future of next gen fighting games online. Even a few years later, I was amazed at Injustice’s 2 online experience when I had really fun online sessions with players from the East Coast US, and even the UK!
It’s no secret that we both enjoy Killer Instinct and I think a lot of that has to do with the online experience. For me, coming from years of bad online fighting games, it was so nice to see a big studio finally do rollback well, and to find out that it wasn’t just reserved for retro games played on the GGPO beta on PC. On that topic, why do you think so few games have rollback netcode?
Sajam: In most cases, I expect it’s because by the time developers consider what to do with online play, they are super deep into development and use the fastest/easiest solution. Which is unfortunate, because 95% of fighting games are about playing another opponent, and most of the time you do that online. So without a good online solution, the majority of the fun of the game can be tough to find. These days though, it seems crazy for developers not to consider the online portion of the game important, so hopefully that’s something that can change!
I agree, but the interesting thing is that GGPO is not all that new anymore. It was developed a decade ago and it’s only been in a few mainstream games since then. Why do you think adopting rollback is taking so long? If it was the best solution, shouldn’t it be in more games by now?
Sajam: I think the demand for rollback has been especially loud lately, despite it being a really great solution for a long time. Western developers seem to have embraced rollback, but it’s struggling to be common in Japanese games. That’s especially unfortunate because Japan creates so many beloved fighting game franchises like Street Fighter, Tekken, King of Fighters, Soul Calibur, Marvel vs Capcom, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Under Night In-Birth, and uh, I think you get the point.
How do you think the ecosystem around these games would change if they implemented rollback netcode? How would the players, commentators, and fans of the game benefit?
Sajam: Well for starters, the amount of possible opponents for somebody to play with online expands by an incredible amount. That alone is a huge deal for communities with smaller player pools, or for regions who want to train together but can’t because of a large distance. We see this with SonicFox training consistently with players from all over the US, and Europe in Mortal Kombat 11 every week on their stream.
Besides casual and competitive players gaining possible opponents, it gives credibility to online events/tournaments. Events like the Capcom Pro Tour Online gain respect as a viable method for determining who should be handed out points on their competitive circuits. It also lets a developer run ranked competitions or leagues knowing there is validity to it. For commentators, all that online match footage from tournaments becomes usable, and we as commentators would have more access to online tournaments without the need to travel. I’ll stop here, because I think I have an endless list of reasons why it benefits tons of different types of fighting game fans and players.
A lot of those benefits seem targeted towards competitive players or those who are super invested in the game. Do you think the casual player would notice rollback over a basic delay-based solution? You often hear comments like “when I play the game, there’s no lag” coming from casuals who might not even think twice if rollback was in the game. Should the devs only put rollback in because of the hardcore community, or are there benefits for the casual fans too?
Sajam: Oh there are definitely benefits for casual fans. For starters, lots of casual fans who play games on console use wifi, and that is really brutal for delay based solutions. Rollback is much better at handling inconsistent connection types, and making it seem like there was no lag there at all. In the case of casual fans, expanding the amount of friends they are able to play with it based on distance, and making online play feel great is such a huge win. It’s hard to explain how often I hear people say that bad netcode, and lack of good online features really hurt somebody’s enjoyment of fighting games. As far as noticing delay based solutions vs rollback goes, a big reason rollback is great is actually how well it masks bad lag.
A point of view that I’ve heard from some players is that when a game has good netcode, people would rather sit at home and play online than travel to locals or tournaments for a game. Do you think there’s any merit to this idea that good netcode may actually, in some ways, be a “bad thing” or have a negative impact on local scenes?
Sajam: I’ve heard the same thing, and I feel like it’s a pretty interesting thing to consider. As good as netcode can be, it won’t replace the feeling of playing fighting games offline, and it can never replace the community aspect that exists in our grassroots events and tournaments. That being said, I can definitely see the ability to play lots of people online with a smooth connection be tempting over attending a local occasionally. In that case, I think it opens up the door to play with those some local friends online, or even host local/regional events weekly online. In either case, I don’t expect it steps on the toes of larger regionals or majors very much at all. Those are worth attending, regardless of how good online play is.
Often when consumers are unhappy with something, they choose to “vote with their wallet”. In the case of fighting games, there’s been some sentiment that maybe the community at large should stop supporting games that don’t implement rollback so the developers get some tangible feedback. On the other hand, it’s very hard to not be excited about some fighting games on the horizon, even if it’s unlikely that they’ll use rollback. What would you say to someone who’s caught in the middle of wanting to play cool games, but also wanting to try and vote with their wallet about the rollback issue?
Sajam: I mean that’s a tough spot to be, and I say that as somebody who is in that exact position all the time. I feel that exact way about the upcoming Guilty Gear, but then I have hope for stuff like the Riot fighting game announced recently as well. I think you can vote with your wallet if netcode is a deal breaker to you, and at the very least we should all demand that developers consider netcode when creating games in the modern era.
That being said, it can be tough to resist with how many great fighting games come from Japan with delay based netcode. Being a fighting game fan is full of these moments of, “Man this is so close to being awesome, but it’s too bad they didn’t do this or that.” And feeling that all the time gets pretty tough I think, especially when you look at other competitive games out there. Especially when many of the things we want in fighting games, like good netcode, have existed for over a decade now. It’s really a shame, I think.
Do you think SFV’s implementation of rollback has done damage to rollback’s reputation as a good online solution for fighting games?
Sajam: I think it undoubtedly has, yeah. Unfortunately, Capcom tried to do right by implementing rollback netcode, but had some issues, some of which were mentioned in this article, that lead to the current state of SFV’s online play. That being said, it’s important for articles like this, and creators like myself to use our voices and let people know that rollback is still the best option available.
Some people have even cited that they enjoy the netcode in SFV more than SF4, which is really fascinating to me. The idea that somebody would enjoy a rollback solution that doesn’t function correctly, versus a pretty standard delay based solution, is a good sign that they were on the right path. Still, if SFV’s version of rollback has soured you, I can’t blame you. I do encourage you to look at games like Killer Instinct, Punch Planet, Skullgirls, Mortal Kombat 11, etc that have done rollback correctly!
Any closing thoughts you want to share with people who play lots of online fighting games?
Sajam: Yeah! Mostly that adding rollback netcode is tough if developers don’t decide that’s the route for them from the start, so anytime a developer uses it make sure to thank them and appreciate how awesome fighting games with good netcode are! Besides that, thank you for writing this awesome article, and thanks to everybody who took the time to read this interview!
I want to thank Sajam for his time, and also thank you the reader for sticking with this article to the end! My sincere hope is that you learned something new about the challenges of making fighting games play well online, and if conversations come up about rollback netcode with your friends or other members of the FGC, I hope it's easier to have informed discussions with them. Thanks for reading, and until next time!