For the longest time, my relationship with the Climax of Night tournament series was being simultaneously "being a walking billboard for the event" and "being cursed to have all plans made to attend fall apart". I was resigned to never reverse this curse until Shinobi announced to the crowd at Climax of Night 6 that he has one more in him ala Vince Carter. Upon having this prayer answered, I speedran coordinating plans to get to and stay at the event. With event plans settled, it was once again time to vociferously shill the event along with the games at the event to anyone who would listen.
Even through being forced to stream monster for years at a time, it was readily apparent that Climax was something special; I've long maintained that picking up French Bread games solely to compete at Climax is more than valid. For me, getting a chance to attend in-person was both a goal and a reward in and of itself. The cameraderie and genuine enthusiasm for the games we play on display year in and year out was second to none.
Stepping through the doors into the Climax venue, I felt at home. I did not need to evangelize to anyone about things I think the fighting game community "oughta be". Climax of Night is that vision made manifest, and everyone in attendance understood the assignment through years of experience. Inherent to the event itself is that we are here because we genuinely enjoy the games on the main lineup regardless of what preconcieved reputations the games have developed amongst the general population. This positivity has proven to be infectious time and time again, the French Bread scene owes its continued growth and new opportunities because of it.
[finitude]
Emotions ran high throughout the entire weekend. For me personally, the main thing that kept tears flowing leading up to, during, and after the event was fixating on the fact that this was the last Climax of Night.
I correlated Climax going away with the things it represents and the things that make it such a great event series going away too. A definitive rallying point like Climax is a huge benefit for the games being played. Everyone from everywhere is brought together, which not only emphasizes diversity as our society's strength, but also connects people who would have otherwise never crossed paths together with a shared vision. Seeing the love being evenly distributed across every person in the building regardless of what they look like, who they love, or where they came from reaffirmed more than anything else what I always believed: that the offline, grassroots FGC is kinder than the outside world. The French Bread community is one of a very small list of projects, political or otherwise, that I feel is 100% rooted in compassion.
It is both unique and admirable that Climax got to end on its own terms. We live in a material reality where events that are ostensibly built to last and to provide sanctuary to gamers everywhere are either closing up shop against their will due to economic pressures or being bought out by moneyed interests that are antithetical to what the FGC is about. Climax's natural conclusion gave us the new assignment of doign what we could to give it a proper sendoff. That being said, since French Bread players, especially those who like UNI2 the best, are really fond of option selects, I did not rule out the possibility of Team Climax having an OS of their own. I kept expectations for how Shinobi and company hedging their bets would play out pretty small, so I was completely floored by the announcements that there would be at Climax of Night-branded stage at Combo Breaker next year along with an all-new, all-different event with Shinobi as creative director. Fitting in with the "live in the now" philosophy, I am not terribly concerned with trying to game out what these future events would look like, outside of the given fact that these will be "bigger and better things".
My experience at every multi-day offline fighting game event I have attended, regardless of scale, has been its own emotional rollercoaster. Every unique "element" I would ever want to "ride through" is in ample supply at these regionals and majors. There are moments where I am deep in thought, whether I be locking in when preparing to play somebody or reflecting on why I lost. There are plenty of laughs to go around, facilitated by both on-screen and face-to-face interactions, among other things. In most demand among the three core emotional responses that one should cycle through every day is that of crying. Every attendee at any Climax of Night event ever has had at least one method or another of accessing high-grade catharsis. I've alluded to sources I've relied on above and will touch on more of them in sections below. Despite all of this, the purest catharsis I've ever let into my system is obtained from hugging the friends I've cherished over the years and telling them how much I love them. This is the drug that eases the pain of reality setting in when the Night ends.
[romance]
Thank you Kamone for being the public face of the team that gifted us with the two greatest games ever made: MBAACC and UNI. I understand that you may be very busy in your role(s), so I don't fault you for never having attended in-person or VTubing into the stream as the UNI awards ceremony wraps up. I am glad to see that even when viewing us from afar, the scene coming together to celebrate your games makes you and the rest of the team so happy.
There are so many things that make the UNI series and MBAACC truly special If I were to describe what puts these games over the top of the rest of the genre for me, I would mention first and foremost that beyond what goes on on the screen, that there are endless stories to be told about how these games have impacted people's lives. From an individual standpoint, these games are so unlike anything else that simply seeing them in the wild is enough to entrance someone immediately. My one guarantee is that if you boot up UNI2 or MBAACC at an offline event of any type or scale, someone will play with you and that someone will become your friend by the end of the set. Encounters like these are the moments where UNI2/MBAACC players are born. From there, they are starting a life journey whether they realize it from the get go or not. Maybe they install the game themselves, stream monster it, join dedicated online communities and/or otherwise proselytize it. They'll decide on a character, watch some high-level footage on demand, identify exceptionally strong play of a character(s), and decide that said player is now their hero (not necessarily in the order listed). Eventually, during all of this community interaction, they will one day recieve word of an event known as Climax of Night (or whatever comes next) that is given the reverence of a family reunion (or even beyond that, a religious pilgrimage). If the stars align, they attend in-person and get to take in the greatest atmosphere the fighting game community has to offer. They do meet their heroes, and realize that the stage is set so that they are on equal footing: we all play the same games, have the same vision, and the same desire to celebrate life.
More poignant than any individual account about how French Bread games have impacted peoples' lives is the ongoing story of the sustained growth of their communities. Every preconcieved notion or systemic barrier working against all four of French Bread's major releases have been shattered to pieces with the help of Climax of Night providing them a spotlight. UNI cemented itself as the Last Great New Fighting Game IP, became the first indie/doujin fighting game to headline major events, and recieved a publisher tour that has done more to facilitate international competition than any other circuit by virtue of including Climax of Night along with Stormy Night, an event on the other side of the Pacific that serves as UNI's Reitaisai equivalent. MBAACC beat back a bunch of memes from onlookers that disrespected the game en route to a scene revival that culminated in the fighting game boomer's wet dream: an ongoing stretch where it consistently outdraws its successor at majors (and in the case of this last Climax, hijacked the stream of the latter's Top 8 to show off an off-stream Top 48 match). Type Lumina's community responded to reports of the game losing ground by putting together a furious rally centered upon constantly innovating in the realm of community engagement. DFCI, long the most inaccessible of the major French Bread releases, finally found itself a way to be played on PCs with rollback netcode.
I truly believe French Bread, their games, and their communities will take over the world one day. This is because the games are compelling enough that there will always be people playing them with new stories to tell.
[pay it forward]
Thank you Shinobi for busting ass to put on the greatest event in fighting games all these years. Climax of Night has proven itself to be the blueprint for how to protect genuine enthusiasm and love for the video games we play from outside forces. While all four games on the core Climax lineup owe a lot to the event, and every installment of the event have played their role in shaping history, I would like to stress that it was especially important that Climaxes 6 and 7 happened so UNI2 could have the greatest first two years a fighting game release has ever had.
There were a lot of reasons why I submitted a volunteer application for a fighting game major for the first time at Climax, some of which succeeded while others failed. I want to focus on the successes to start with. I wanted to TO because I view the act of TOing as a civic duty for all fighting gamers. TOs and EOs have been unfairly maligned by the wider FGC, and I wanted to set an example by running brackets at majors in the hopes others would join in too and understand how important their jobs are. Another big reason was that I wanted to pay it forward to the realest lead event organizer the FGC has ever seen; working for them was a way to both thank them for years of supporting the scene as well as making up for years of my own lost time. I was able to efficiently balance both running brackets and entering them and look forward to doing similar at future events.
For this event in particular, the biggest reason I wanted to put a lot on my plate was so I could keep myself preoccupied and not end up "raptured" in the Night. The idea was that by locking in for my duties, I would be able to minimize the time that I would be stunlocked by the fact that all of this would be going away just as I was finally able to grasp it. I felt as if I had absorbed too much, for better or for worse.
One more thing, Shinobi. I think you'll be surprised and perhaps even glad to know that I stumbled across a time capsule you left for us on the MeltyBread (RIP) and SRK forums. I uncovered this for the first time some years ago, but it resonates especially well with me in this current moment. It tells the story of a burgeoning tournament organizer/competitor standing both at a real-world personal crossroads and in the wake of a monumental international Melty Blood bracket taking place in Atlanta. They were very proud of the dedication the game's community put on display, promised to carry the kind words from this event with them for a lifetime, and stressed that the event in question has provided a golden opportunity for the Melty Blood community to seize.
When you click this link and take the stroll far down memory lane, I would like you to do so with these thoughts in your mind:
The communities of MBAACC and subsequent French Bread works have succeeded far beyond your wildest dreams because of the major role you've played in the years since Final Round XV.
In paying it forward from this moment in history by creating Climax of Night and doing the same job year after year, you have without a doubt created a new generation of French Bread gamers who dream of organizing French Bread events themselves.
Yes, both of these custom fumos are mine. Satsuki is from CBS Cute and Waldstein is from Tosiphus.
