Novelist gets accidentally roped into Tekken 7 balance discussion, leading to a lot of confusion, funny interactions and a response from Stephen King
I think you picked the wrong character on the Versus screen
While most of us here are familiar with the jargon and terminology surrounding the realm of fighting games, sometimes it's important to be reminded that those on the outside looking in generally have no idea what we're talking about.
A Tekken 7 fan recently got to experience that confusion first hand when they tried to ask producer Michael Murray about the game's balance, but they instead accidentally tagged novelist Myke Cole which led to some funny interactions between the communities.
Twitter user Jbacher attempted to reach out to the Tekken developers as to why one of Paul's big low attacks isn't launch punishable on block that obviously wouldn't make much sense to pretty much anyone who doesn't play the game.
"I have been staring at this tweet for a solid 5 minutes and I have no idea what it means," responded Cole, who is best known for penning the novels Shadow Ops: Control Point and The Armored Saint along with appearing on TV shows like Hunted and Contact. "It seems so tantalizingly like English and yet . . . I don’t think it is? I keep thinking if I just read it one more time, I’ll understand it."
This exchange also caught the eye of world-renowned suspense and horror author Stephen King, who called the text strange among other things.
Many in the fighting game community were quick to jump in and try and explain the situation though everyone involved ultimately seemed to have a laugh about the mix up.
Strange. Interesting. Tantalizing.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 20, 2020
The message also made its way back to Bandai Namco's Murray played up a bit the fact they inadvertently got the creator of It and The Shining to say something about Tekken.
There are some lessons we should be mindful of from this encounter like being aware of our language used when talking to people outside of the FGC bubble or those just trying to dip their toes into fighting games — and also doubly make sure you tag the right people on social media.
