"Meet Your Mod" Episode 15: Jais

This Week - Jais

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Why did you choose that particular handle, is there a story or reference you'd like to explain?

I struggled, in starting out, to find a handle that would suit me. My full name is 'Jaison' and I never had a nickname growing up. Making up my own seemed so forced that I always avoided it. My family has always called me 'Jais' and until I connected w/ some distant family that forced it on me in my adult life I never really embraced it. But shit it's cool, and nobody else really has it aaaand it's genuine. Jais is who I am, not what I want to be but just me.

What is your background with fighting games...Did you start with BB or are your OG like SFII?

Being a twin meant always having someone just as awesome as me to play games with. I've always had Kyle to level up or dick around with. My roots are most deeply tied to Kyle and playing games like Primal Rage, Killer Instinct and Street Fighter. At that time we had no idea about competitive gaming. We knew we both could play simultaneously, we knew we loved combos and we knew we had a niche for having an emotional investment toward specific characters ( I was Blizzard/Vertigo he was Chaos/Armadon and we DID NOT play each others' characters hahah wow it sounds so dumb )

Then came competitive fighting games, are you ready for this? THE ARCADE. Nothing better. We learned at the age of what? 14 that we had an arcade, and it was awesome. It was a Namco funded arcade so we played Tekken 4 like it was our birthday. We had always played Tekken since 2 came out on psx and we figured out how to juggle...well...we would juggle our 'favorite' move not necessarily the most damaging or even the most efficient lol but it was "ours". So the typical arcade story happens from there on.

Then came Guilty Gear competitively, YAY. We had always played fighting games, we owned and played GG for psx. We pre-ordered XX from the Gamestop 30 mins away ( it came out on our Birthday HA ) I played Chipp back then and the report of 'new normals' was exciting. Chipp's 5HS was compared to me as King's ff+1+2, I was hype. We knew of the competitive fighting game... Namco scenes. We knew of all the fighting games we loved. So, HELL YES we entered the Tekken 4 tournament at Ohayocon! We of course did descent at Tekken but decided to hang out in the game room and scope out the other tournaments. So, low and behold, "this guy" who was great at Tekken was amazing at GG. I need to back up and because first you have to understand our emotional investment in Tekken, it was there but not...passionate. We had a scene and we loved the games but there was a couple things we knew we didn't like about Tekken.

The neutral game. The defensive game.

Neutral game was - I swing you react and block, ok now your turn, you swing I react and block. It was like we were trading useless frame advantage the whole time and it was not exciting unless our life was low.

Defensive game, at the time I didn't realize just how lacking it was but I knew it was not fun to guess if your opponent was going to roll or kick off the ground and lose advantage if you guess wrong.

Back to animu-cons, we liked "this guy" cause he was social and friendly. We decided to watch him play Guilty Gear, now we knew supers and assumed those were the most damaging things in the game, we knew of FRCs and assumed they were for making uppercuts safe on whiff only. Basically, We knew of simple fighting game things.

Here is where the magic happened. We saw Kenji use Ky's 2D>Charge Stun Edeg as Oki. The very first time we saw it we both instantly understood the knockdown, frame advantage, reversal bait, hit confirm into combo or pressure. And All of it before the first CSE even connected with the opponent. We wide eyed each other like "SShhhiiiiii" and just knew.

From there it took off like crazy with college, Seattle crew, and dustloop, and then Guilty Gear University Kentucky, and Kugler and then Tenkai and on and on all the while traveling traveling traveling to tournaments.

What competitive scene are you involved with? (Ranbats, Arcades, XBL, PSN, Reload Online etc.) Would you elaborate the benefits of this particular scene?

Seattle has the best BB scene in the country and a strong turnout for a Capcom scene, it rocks.

Mon through Wed - XBL ( jwattula or Elf Kitty) and west coast swing classes

Thur- Gameworks (AE machines) has $10 infinite play from 7-midnight ( shoutout to my bartender Jake, good luck with the professional training man!)

Fri - Arcsys crowd at Digipen ( shoutout to Spark for buying a freaking CS machine and hauling it around everywhere, you support the scene, it's awesome)

Sat - Salty Runback - Capcom tourneys in downtown Seattle or us old school Guilty players get together to play everything but GG

How strong do you feel your nation is as a whole, what is the next step to strengthening it?

I am constantly impressed by the speed at which we can learn, as a nation. Looking back, it was insane how much information hiding there was in MvC2. Our what? 7? year progress to optimum play was blown out of the water by the likes of SRK and MvC3. Knowledge is meant to be shared. That was my motto in structuring the Bridget forum, share everything. We can only get better when we work together. We can only get better when we work together. I believe dustloop has helped our nation IMMENSELY (and becuase of that, donate ppl! ) As a whole we are crippled by 2 things.

1) Physical location - it is resourcefully exhausting to attend regular tournaments. It's a shame, but it's the way it is. This limitation proportionality affects the size of our niche demographic. It really hurts people from training for 'the big picture'. Who cares if you can't beat that local Bridget, you can probably beat every other Bridget in America. Losing to a local player is amazing training for the national level. You will be surprise at how much you will grow by constant losing to top players and then being exposed to other scenes. You will instantly see where the other players are not as A or B as what you are used to and you will see holes in their games that you can use to your advanatage.

2) "best out of 3" - Beings as there's big investment to attend a tourney the community evolved toward this social norm of best of 3 games. This is a weak and very forgiving structure for tournament play. Mistakes are given an obscenely large margin for error. Beings such people don't play the first match like their life depends on it. On top of that, statistically speaking, the more you play the more tiers emerge. It also emotionally downplays the spectating, come backs that result in a second match are not nearly as climatic. I personally prefer team format over singles any day, but if a singles has to happen I would much rather see two separate single elimination, single match tournaments.

The next step in strengthening our scene is very complicated, because there is nothing like an arcade and, sadly, arcades are dying fast. We need ppl to get off the couch and go to meets, go to tournaments, JUST GO. Aside form the exposure, the direct feedback you get from a human being is priceless to your learning. On-line sadly promotes pattern play. Now don't get me wrong on-line is great for solidifying your flowcharts and learning basic match-ups. It's just that RL is irreplaceable for; dynamic learning, feedback, social pressure,commuity and the support group it takes to become the legend everybody wants to be.

Which player(s) give you the most trouble and why?

Baiken players - HA, maybe it's my terrible abahre or maybe it's my lack of damage w/out a set-up but man that chick is an uphill battle.

On a personal level - SH_ prevented me from participating SBO in 2009 >(

and ... Kyle haha. Him and I have always played counter characters and we are so far in each other's head that it's funny how much unpredictable creativity we have to roll with to break each other's defense. I know May's tricks and set-ups as well as he knows mine. So it's turns into a lot of how to prevent each other from 1f jumping each others set-ups or air throwing each other all day. It just turns into base damage cause we hit each other equally hahah. Twins are awesome.

What has been the most helpful tool while growing stronger in BB?

See my signature

Is there anything you'd like to share regarding your respective character or Dustloop in general?

Bridget and Valk both have highly interesting unconventional movement, they make the neutral game more rewarding that any other character you've played!

Valk has a lot of room to optimize depending on your playstyle. You can play to optimize some specifc resource that you are stronger at and spend another one you are less competent at to really customize an effecient playstyle for yourself.

I love watching other players utilize his many resources differently than myself :D

Screen position, knockdown, damage, molf meter and tension can all be used in creating set-ups and combos that work for you. So don't play to mimic someone else, take a good look at what you are strong at and build Valk from the ground up. We as a community have yet to see Valk be fully explored and it will never happen if we only mimic what we see.