Fighting Game Psychology 101: Button Mashing

Because cats.

Alright, let me start off with an important statement. Button mashing is not OK. Sure, it can be fun to sit back and watch your character flail around with varied degrees of success. Unfortunately, mindless button mashing results in random, mindless gameplay and an overall passive experience.

Allow me to elaborate.

In a fighting game, every attack a character possesses is a tool appropriate for a certain given situation. Let's look at Ryu (everyone's favourite protagonist) as an example.

Ryu has 3 basic special moves in pretty much every version of Street Fighter. They are:

Hadouken: A projectile attack used to threaten foes from a distance and pressure them to jump, leaving them open to an anti-air attack.

Shoryuken: A very fast rising uppercut with invincible startup. This move is great for anti-air and cutting through an opponent's pressure. However this move has a long recovery time when blocked or dodged, leaving Ryu wide open for punishment after a poorly calculated shoryuken.

Tatsumaki-Senpuu-Kyaku (Hurricane kick): A horizontal moving spin kick, which travels through certain projectiles.

Ryu also has around 20 normal moves, each with their own appropriate uses, but for simplicity's sake I won't go into detail about these.

A good Ryu player will always know when and where to execute each attack. They throw fireballs at safe ranges, anti-air accordingly, and use the correct normal moves at their ideal distances. A player who mashes will execute a random attack, at a random time, in a random place. Not only is this experience not fulfilling for the button masher, but it is equally useless for his opponent. In a fighting game, being able to read your opponents moves and tendencies is paramount. However, if your opponent's actions are unconscious, it becomes virtually impossible to read them. If you don't know what move you're going to do, how the hell should I?

When players choose to mash instead of making conscious decisions, they are choosing to ignore all aspects (timing, spacing, risk/reward) of the meta game.

And you know what, if that's fun for you then I guess that's ok. But against any half decent player, you're going to get bopped. That being said, fighting games are certainly not for everyone. The execution barrier can  often be an obstacle that prevents new players from understanding and enjoying a game. But we'll talk about that at a later date.

TLDR: If you want to be good at fighting games (or any games for that matter) stop mashing.