There are a lot of factors that led to the arcade scene's diversity. Foremost among them: Fighting games were cheap when they first arrived in arcades, and in most places, they remained cheap for as long as the arcades existed. The barrier to entry was a mere 25 cents. In practice, this lower barrier of entry has opened the community up to people a lot farther down the socioeconomic ladder than the average StarCraft or League of Legends player, and that means a lot more members of marginalized minorities can get their foot in the door.
街机室里人种多样化的因素有很多。很关键的一点是，格斗游戏对所有人来说入门成本都特别低，而且一直以来几乎就没涨过——一个菜鸟和一个格斗游戏之间只隔着两毛五的距离。相比较玩《星际争霸》和《英雄联盟》所需要的硬件成本，两毛五的入门成本让格斗游戏的圈子可谓对所有人开放，于是乎哪怕经济条件窘迫的少数族裔也不会因囊中羞涩而不敢踏入街机厅半步。
As fighting game player and game writer Pat Miller puts it, "You have this huge mix of people, this huge range of people, and I think that's because, you know, you didn't need to own a two or three thousand dollar computer to play games. You didn't even have to have a TV and a console. You could just play with a quarter when you were walking around town. ... When you have that space where anyone can go ahead and drop by, play a game, shoot the shit, whatever — and you actually have an incentive to go out to different places and start playing new people who you're not used to playing against — that really kind of did attract a diverse audience."
Miller, who is part Filipino, also has another idea about diversity in fighting games that hits much closer to home for him.
"Honestly, one of [the reasons for diversity in the FGC] I think is the representation of people of color in the games themselves," Miller says. "We'll joke about how crazy essentialist and stereotypical a lot of the characters are, but at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure there weren't that many Indian characters until Dhalsim, or Russian characters until Zangief, or Brazilian characters until Blanka. ... The first Filipino character [I ever saw] in a game was Talim from Soulcalibur 2. I was really stoked to see that ... I like having those points of identification; [that's] probably one of the things that made it much easier to bring people into the community. They see that and they think, 'These are all really fascinating characters. I kind of like this guy. I kind of identify with this guy. I'm gonna go play as him.'"
格斗游戏选手及游戏作家Pat Miller对此的看法是：“之所以这个圈子人种多样化，是因为你不需要配一台两三千刀的电脑，甚至也不需要电视或游戏机，你兜里有个两毛五的硬币就足够了。试想有这么一个人人皆可去的地方，想去就去，去了就能玩儿，而且你也有去的欲望，去跟你从不认识的人互相切磋——这样的环境与条件确实能吸引不同的人**在一起。”
（LZ：随着街机厅的消亡、免费游戏的普及，入门成本如今却掉了个个儿——电脑、网络人皆有之，下好了倒塔、有键盘鼠标就能玩；而要体验格斗游戏，没有一台600+软妹币的三和原装摇杆不高兴，键盘手柄皆不如意。成本的陡增让如今的格斗游戏想吸引几乎没有收入的年轻血液难上加难。）
除了入门成本的原因，有菲律宾血统的Miller对于人种多样化的成因还有着自己独到的观点。
“我认为格斗游戏里能找到和自己同样肤色的角色也是人种参与众多的因素之一。很多角色确实会因为游戏制作者见识的狭隘和浅薄而被设计得过于刻板偏见，但是，我敢说在达尔西姆之前，你在游戏里难以找出个印度人；在桑吉尔夫之前、布兰卡之前你也难以说出哪些游戏里有俄罗斯人和巴西人。一直到《灵魂能力2》的塔里木之前，我都没见过哪个游戏有个菲律宾人——第一次看到他我确实诧异。身份的认同与共鸣确实让格斗游戏圈子更容易吸引新人。那些初涉格斗游戏的新手看到游戏里形色各异的角色一定会想‘这些角色确实吸引人，我喜欢他，我认同他，我干脆就用他吧’。”
Miller has encountered other players who personally identify with the race of the character they play as, too. Years ago at an EVO tournament, he got paired against a Mexican opponent in the first round. His adversary was playing as El Fuerte, the Mexican luchador character from Street Fighter 4.
This inclusiveness within the games themselves sets fighting games at odds with the majority of popular eSports games. First-person shooters are almost always filled with identical Caucasian soldier types, and RTSs and MOBAs generally sport a variety of aliens and/or monsters, with a few hypersexualized white girls thrown in for good measure.
League of Legends, arguably the most popular competitive game in the world right now with a roster of 116 playable characters, didn't have a single black character until the introduction of Lucian a few months ago. He was character number 115 — and his alternate costume makes him look white.
Miller不是唯一有这种想法的人。多年前的一次EVO，他在海选中遇到的第一个对手是一个墨西哥人，而他的角色就是艾尔·福尔特——《街头霸王4》里的一个墨西哥大厨。
这种格斗游戏独有的特性让格斗游戏本身又和主流的电子竞技有了更多的差异。第一人称射击游戏里面几乎清一色的白人士兵，而即时战略和塔防类游戏又是数之不尽的外星生物和怪物角色，配些许风骚露骨的白人妹子做点缀。
《英雄联盟》——或许是目前全世界最受欢迎的竞技游戏——有超过116个可操作角色，却在圣枪游侠出现之前连一个黑人都没有！而圣枪游侠是这个游戏第115个角色，更可笑的是他的第二套服装让他看起来像个白人。
The Dark Side · 月有阴晴圆缺
Of course, there's still room for improvement in the fighting game community. Even while doing impressive things in the realm of racial diversity, the FGC shares a burden with the rest of eSports when it comes to another diversity-related issue, one that plagues all of gaming.
If you attend any sizable fighting game tournament, you'll notice two things about the crowd almost immediately. The first is the presence of virtually every race under the sun. The second is the almost complete lack of women. The unfortunate result of this gender imbalance is a negative feedback loop; because there's not very many women in the FGC already, it's not easy for women to enter the FGC. In many ways, it's the same problem Cannon faced in the StarCraft community.
当然，万事皆难圆满，格斗游戏圈子如是。虽然在人种分布上格斗游戏圈子令人印像不错，但在另一个“多样性”的问题上和其他电子竞技有着同样的不足。
但凡你身处一个格斗游戏赛事，不论大小，瞟一眼人群你就立马认识到两个现像：一，啥肤色的都有；二，《妹子去哪儿》？这种性别上的不平衡让这个圈子也没少受非议。原因也无非是格斗游戏对于妹子来说太难入门了。而文章开头的黑人选手Cannon表示星际圈儿里亦是如此。
To make matters worse, the FGC has also had a bit of a rocky history with gender politics. Perhaps most prominent among the FGC's run-ins with gender issues is an incident that took place in early 2012. Capcom was in the middle of running a Twitch-streamed fighting game reality show called Cross Assault as part of its promotion for the upcoming release of Street Fighter X Tekken. During the show's fifth day of competition, Twitch community manager Jared Rea broached the subject of the often coarse language used during fighting game competition, and questioned whether such unwelcoming vernacular was something that should be part of the FGC. One competitor on the show, Aris Bakhtanians, replied that trash-talking (and particularly sexual harassment) was an integral part of the FGC.
"The sexual harassment is part of the culture," Bakhtanians claimed. "If you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community ... it doesn't make sense to have that attitude. These things have been established for years."
Bakhtanians' statements, combined with the general language used throughout the matches showcased during the Cross Assault competition, highlighted a problem with the FGC's general attitude toward women. As one would expect, the backlash against this series of events was sizable, and the whole affair led to Capcom apologizing for its role in the proceedings.
格斗游戏圈子里曾经发生的一段小插曲让性别不均的问题更上个台阶。这是一个2012年上半年发生的一次不悦。当时卡婊为了推广《街霸X铁拳》而在TwitchTV上直播了一场名为Cross Assault的活动。到了这场活动的第五天，TwitchTV的社区经理Jared Rea聊着聊着就扯到了格斗游戏圈里常有的粗鄙语言（比如“you the pussy”什么的），并且提问这些粗俗语言在这个圈子里是否必要。于是乎本节目的其（Zhu）中（Yi）一（Yang）位（De）选（Dui）手（You），Aris Bakhtanians，发表了如下带有性歧视意味的观点：
“性歧视是格斗游戏文化的一部分，你要是把这个从中摘去了，格斗游戏圈子什么的就无从谈起了。对于性歧视的忧虑本身就杞人忧天，又不是一天两天的事。”
One of only two women who competed on Cross Assault, Miranda "Super Yan" Pakozdi, forfeited her next match in order to leave the show immediately after Bakhtanians' comments were streamed. The incident remains a black mark on the reputation of the FGC, and to some it is still indicative of the community's general attitude toward women.
此言一出，本直播节目仅有的两个妹子中的一个，Miranda Pakozdi，当场愤然离席（撸射活该屌注孤）。这个突如其来的意外让格斗游戏圈子留下了污名，其对女性的影响一直延续到今天。
As UltraDavid mentioned in his editorial, "The fighting game scene is the oldest competitive video gaming community, old enough to have its roots in an American culture that clung strongly to the view that video games were the exclusive domain of young men. Arcades weren't for girls, and they looked like it."
Inevitably, this has hampered the ability of women to enter and feel at home within the FGC. As it stands, there are only a handful of women who can be counted as serious competitive players; a generous estimate puts this number at around half a dozen.
如UltraDavid所言：“格斗游戏圈子可谓自有电子游戏以来最悠久的圈子，悠久得能在美国大男人主义里占有一席之地——电子游戏天生就是年轻男性的天下。街机厅压根儿就和女性八字不合，而客观事实也确实如此。”
于是乎，女性在格斗游戏圈子里既技不如人又难以找到归属感。全世界能在格斗游戏圈子里混得有头有脸的女性职业格斗选手屈指可数。
One of the most well-known female fighting game competitors is French Soulcalibur and Street Fighter player Marie-Laure "Kayane" Norindr. She's been playing in fighting game tournaments for over a decade, and is a regular sight on the European tournament circuit. In the aftermath of 2012's Cross Assault debacle, she was interviewed by GameSpot about her experiences as a woman in the FGC. "When I became a young woman around the time I was 16, people stopped criticizing me about my age and began criticizing my gender," says Kayane, who began playing competitively at a very young age. "Because I was in the media a lot during that time, many people said it was because I was a woman rather than the fact that I was good at these games."
为数不多的女选手中的一个，以《灵魂能力》和《街头霸王》而闻名的法籍日裔妹子Marie-Laure Norindr——其名号Kayane更为人熟知——闯荡江湖已余十载，但凡欧洲境内有比赛就有她的倩影。2012年的Cross Assault活动期间，她接受了Gamespot的采访，就女性在格斗游戏圈子的处境谈了自己的观点：
“当我16岁初初出落得像个女人的时候，周遭人不再就我的年龄指指点点，转而指向我的性别。别人说我之所以经常暴露在聚光灯之下，不是因为我的游戏技艺多么超群，而仅仅因为我是一个妹子。”
It's easy to see how women can end up attracting this kind of negative attention in a community with such a small group of female players, and the most viable solution seems to be to increase the presence of women at the FGC's largest and most prominent events. Fortunately, as gaming continues to become an increasingly mainstream — and gender-agnostic — activity, it's possible that the FGC (and other eSports communities) will see an increase in their representation of women as well.
在女性群体极其稀有的客观条件下，这样的负面评价之所以会有并不稀奇；而对这种偏见最有效的纠正方法，除了在人数和场次上让女性更多地出现在有影响力的格斗游戏赛事中，也别无他法。所幸，随着游戏直播日益成为主流——播主男女皆有——女性在格斗游戏圈子以及其他电竞圈子里的出镜率会越来越高。
（转阅27楼）
