Your Primer to NJPW’s G1 Climax 28

I’ve said it before. This isn’t a video games blog. It seems like that sometimes, because that’s what I usually talk about. But it’s not. It’s an Aether blog. And that means sometimes we have different subjects than the usual around here. Today’s going to be one of those days. Because today I want to talk about wrestling.

New Japan Pro Wrestling, specifically. Been something of a passion of mine for over a year now. And it’s a good time to be into it. A really good time. The company has been spending the past couple years putting out what many consider to be the best matches in the history of wrestling. They’ve been gathering some of the best talents in the industry, and the results have showing. Perhaps most tellingly, the Wrestling Observer Newsletters rating scale, which many fans look to as the gold standard of wrestling match reviewing, has only awarded more than five stars eight times in its long history. Seven of those times have been matches with New Japan Pro Wrestling within the past year and a half. Hell, they’ve become enough of a powerful presence in the pro wrestling world that even the WWE, who as a rule never acknowledge other wrestling companies, have made some pretty huge references to NJPW over the past several years.

Calling New Japan the best wrestling has ever been is going to draw some controversy, but it’s got a solid claim to that right now. What’s much less disputable is that NJPW is in the midst of a golden age of the form, delivering a level of quality that people are still going to be talking about for years. They are giving us some of the best wrestling you can see. And with them expanding their efforts to connect with worldwide audiences, a new president who has set a priority of delivering more English content, and with NJPW being on the eve of this year’s G1 Climax, probably their highest profile event of the year, I’ll repeat that. It’s a really good time to be into NJPW.

And you know, I’m a giving person. I like making the world a better place. So for those who were interested in getting into this year’s G1 Climax, I thought to put together a little primer. Just something to make jumping in a bit easier.

New Japan Pro Wrestling

Even if you aren’t a wrestling fan, you know wrestling. It’s been around a long, long time, and has taken up enough of a place in our culture that, yeah, you know what you’re in for. So let’s talk a little bit about what’s different about New Japan Pro Wrestling from what you might generally see.

One thing that’s been with NJPW since the start is their value on what they call Strong Style. Yes, WWE selling Shinsuke Nakamura as the King of Strong Style is a direct export from here. The company was founded by Antonio Inoki, a wrestler/martial artist who had a stupid fight with Muhammed Ali once that ended up serving as the dumbest possible origin to Mixed Martial Arts. But Inoki was never-the-less inspired by that, and worked that into the company he made, delivering a take on pro-wrestling very much inspired by MMA, boxing, and other combat sports. The company used to go too far with it, demanding their wrestlers also take part in legit MMA competition and seeing plenty of wrestlers make a habit of hitting each other too hard to get more impact out of their supposedly fake moves. They’ve walked back on it since, but it’s still a part of their DNA, and you’ll see a lot of their wrestlers with legit records in MMA, amateur wrestling, kickboxing, etc. behind them. They do strongly value a mix of styles, both drawing inspiration from outside sources and seeing variety in the types of wrestling styles on display.

One of the best parts of wrestling is the drama. It’s more than just a competition, because a competition that’s not really a competition is kind of lame. Wrestling is at it’s best when you’re feeling for the characters in the ring and getting invested in the momentum between them. In typical wrestling, this often takes the place of a sort of soap opera with muscles that will always sound dumb when you try to explain it to someone else but it can actually be pretty awesome to watch. NJPW is way, way more subtle with that. You don’t usually get people standing in the middle of the ring talking about how they’re going to fistinate everyone else. There’s no ladder matches for custody of people’s children, nobody getting into each other’s heads by having sex with manikins, no fake buyouts of the company by future presidents. For 95 percent of the show, it’s all matches. Most of the story happens in the ring, by the behavior of the people involved in their matches. The announcers will deliver some, some of the special content post match interviews will deliver some for those who choose to go with that too, but most of it just comes from watching and gaining insight into how they interact with each other. Some wrestlers are better at it than others, which leads to some differing quality on how this goes. The story also typically goes over a lot longer term, too. Some people, you’ll see rivalries playing out over years, only coming up a bit at a time when they have the odd match with each other. It’s pretty regular to see them set up a moment at one point that’s not going to have the emotional payoff you’d expect for months. When it works well, it works very well. Again, it does lead to some missteps along the way, but what booking doesn’t have its stupid missteps?

They also take a really different approach to match structure. NJPW values the health and longevity of their wrestlers, so the primary style of wrestling match is some variety of tag match. By my understanding, wrestlers are more driven to push the limits and go for those risky awesome moments in one-on-one matches, which leads to more injuries, so they try to save those singles matches for select times. Typically, you only get singles matches when somebody’s challenging for a title, when they’re going through one of NJPW’s tournaments, or in the odd grudge match. The top talent in the company often end up only having about 20 or so singles matches a year, a record way less than most anywhere else. You still see them in tag matches all the time, so you still get a chance to enjoy them for what they’ve got, but you don’t see them completely unleashed but for a few select times.

And frankly, that booking approach comes to define a lot of how things work in NJPW. Titles gain a lot of weight behind them, because the champion becomes the person you’re going to be seeing in singles matches for the next while. Perhaps because of this, the titles are more volatile than in many other promotions. Most champions are only able to hold onto them for a couple of defenses before someone else takes over. Factions are a lot more important to the company’s structure, as well. Most of the talent is divided into one of four different factions. Those factions give the individual wrestlers some identity, serve as a vehicle for both collaboration and conflicts with other groups, and provide the stable of member with whom you’ll see them team with in that multitude of tag matches they use so often.

The G1 Climax

When I say the G1 Climax is perhaps the highest profile event of NJPW’s year, that might lead you to expect things that don’t quite apply here. The G1 Climax is not NJPW’s equivalent of WrestleMania, the year-turning show in which they pull out all the stops and capitalize on all the momentum they’ve built up. No, that would be Wrestle Kingdom, which is almost always a great experience in it’s own right. Still, not the G1 Climax. In fact, no titles will be on the line during the G1 Climax, no grudges settled, nothing finished.

Rather, the G1 Climax is a tournament. 20 wrestlers separated into two blocks, going against each other in singles matches over the course of a month. There’s no eliminations from this tournament, it’s all point based; two points for a win, one for a draw, nothing for a loss. At the end the two wrestlers with the most points from each block face each other. The winner of that scores a contract that, assuming they can defend it until then, has them challenging for the top title of NJPW, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, in the main event of next year’s Wrestle Kingdom.

So what’s the big deal about the G1 Climax? Well, aside from the fact that it’s twenty shows over the course of a month of great wrestling, remember that NJPW is protective of their talent, only having them in singles matches on select occasions. And this is probably the biggest select occasion. This is actually where most of the wrestlers involved will be seeing the majority of the year’s singles competition, more matches in one month than they’ll have in the rest of the year combined. This isn’t the only singles tournament NJPW has, but this is the one that gathers the biggest quantity of their top talent, and as a result, has a really great quantity of high quality matches, all in a single place.

Moreover, this is one where they pack a lot of surprises, as well. You’ll see normally invincible champions falter. You’ll see wrestlers pick up surprise victories over people who would normally be way above them in the power rankings. You’ll see matches go in bizarre directions they wouldn’t try anywhere else in the year. Generally, whenever someone beats a reigning champion, they end up with a title shot against them later on, so you’ll see this open up a lot of doors to surprising future matches as well.

So yeah. It’s not just one great show. It’s a lot of great shows, many that bring things you won’t get the chance to see any other time this year. It’s an excellent jumping on point, or an exciting annual event if you’re already in there. There’s a lot to look forward to here.

The Working Player: Real Life Skills from Video Games

I don’t tell many people I game.  In meatspace, I mean.  People who know my flesh-name.  Here, on good old cyberspace, where I am the Aether, I talk about it all the time.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of my passion.  Far from it.  But there is a problem with the way a lot of people react to it, I’ve learned.  See, people who don’t play video games don’t understand videogames.  Go figure.  And people who don’t understand videogames put a lot of mental baggage on videogames, and that baggage doesn’t fit with the image of the hypercompetent supersexy professional I have to present to most of the world.

So yeah.  Most of the people in my life don’t know that I love video games.  All in the name of getting them to take me more seriously in my work.

Which, after some thinking I’ve been doing recently, seems real ironic.  As it turns out, I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten plenty of my professional skills from gaming.

I was talking with a group of clients recently, discussing the importance of doing a skills inventory on oneself.  Yes, this is boring work stuff, but hold on, we’ll be back to the fun gaming content you know and love soon.  In any case, as I often do, I just dove right into talking about myself, highlighting some of my most marketable skills.  The conversation turned to where those skills came from, and, well, while all of them I have actually spent time developing in the work place, there were some of these that, as I traced the path of where I built them up, seemed to have some definite roots in my life as a player.

And you know, that was really interesting to me.  Obviously that means it’s interesting to you, too.  So let’s take a look at some of the skills my secret superhero identity as a player has helped me with in my professional life.

Regulation/Policy Navigation

In my current job, I work in government, administering a program that ties in federal, state, and county level government actions.  And as you may well know, government loves it some red tape.

In my last job, for the record, I worked for a nonprofit, and a big chunk of it was in helping other people get through the good old bureaucracy as well.

Hell, even beyond just exterior government red tape, I’m great at both navigating and building those within the organization as well.  Building business plans, planning for contingencies, and most of all, keeping all the myriad policies and procedures in mind and calling them up at the appropriate situations, those are all things I’m quite fantastic at.

And I’m great at all of those.  Always have been, even while I was still in college and hadn’t yet entered the real world proper where you never have money or time but find yourself with a hell of a lot more responsibility.  I started my career better at this than people who’ve been working at it for years.

And that’s because it’s something I’ve been working at through gaming ever since I was a child.  Games, whether video or tabletop, are all about the rules.  Deeper games have more rules.  Many games have a lot of rules that only apply in specific situations.  Most have rules that can interplay in odd ways.  Many games, RPGs in particular, have special rules that you can impose on it yourself.

And if you’re going to get any good at these games, you’ll have to learn these rulesets.  Pokemon’s a great example of this.  17 types of Pokemon and attacks which form the foundation for success in the single player games, a deceptively complex system of stats and growth and impacts, and how many people do you know who have that all memorized?  And not just memorized, internalized, to the point they can build their critters just the way they want them and can always call up the right attack to use without even thinking about it?  It’s not just RPGs, either.  Any game, from the big brainiest puzzles to the dumbest of shootbangers have their own rulesets that understanding is absolutely vital to success.

And really, I’ve found that the parellels between understanding the ways a games rulesets work, and the ways an organization’s systems of established behaviours work, are quite strong.  You may not be able to predict the behavior of people based on gaming systems, but the behavior of entities actually go by similar metrics.  It’s all about setting bounds for people who are cooperating with you and within your authority to act within towards a desired overall goal you both share from different perspectives.  Really, from a game designer of a manager/government-crony, it’s all the same.

Perseverance

I’ve been mentioning it over her occasionally, so if you’ve been following us for a while, you know full well that I’d been looking for a new job for quite a while before I landed in my current one.  Over three years, specifically, more than most anyone you’ve ever heard of.  For a good long while, that was the main focus in my life, and I was just failing at that over and over and over and over again.

I stuck with it, however.  That’s a big problem with unemployment from an economic development perspective, that when people stay unemployed for long enough, most everyone will just give up looking for a job, and leave the workforce entirely.  Not me, however, I stuck with it, and eventually, it did work out for me.  My new job is helping people on welfare find jobs.

Yeah, the irony is not lost on me, either.  Turns out, though, I am absolutely fantastic at it.  And I attribute that all to the amount of time I spent failing at my own job search.  The three years I spent job hunting led me to see pretty much everything hirers have going on, and I am an expert of the hiring process like no other, simply because I have gained so much experience at it, through my failure.

I started gaming in an era where games hated you.  Limited tolerance for screw-ups and an abundance of cheap deaths meant if you wanted your fun, you were guaranteed to fail countless times before you made it work.  And games were not just hard, they were punishing.  You screwed up, and it was back to the beginning with you.  As the medium developed and started to become more, the punishment and cheap deaths started to fall away, while tolerance for minor screw-ups increased, but never to the point that failure is not a constant companion with games.  If games are too easy, after all, that starts to sap the fun of it.  And I’ve had a lot of practice picking myself up from my gaming failures.  You all watched me do that over and over again with my Dark Souls run.  Eating those failures, in life, at anything, learning from them, and getting up again, it’s not an easy thing.  And it’s really not an easy thing to be doing constantly.  I wonder if I would have been able to do that if I didn’t already have the years of experience from my gaming.

Also, this totally works for romance too, in case you were wondering.

Resource Management

Yeah, this one’s a relatively simple parallel.  Real world budgeting and resource management is way, way, way more complex than anything I’ve found in video games.  There is absolutely no way, no matter how good your 4X Strategy Empire is running, you can transfer that right over into managing a program budget without some additional education/experience.  But you know, it does at least give you the basic principles to use.  This is not one I’ve really mentally explored enough to explain, but I have found it kind of interesting that I take a similar approach to managing my time and my program’s resources as I do to financial management in plenty of the games I play.

Honestly, a lot of resource management is just fitting pieces of a puzzle together.  Most games that have a resource management aspect have you juggle a lot less puzzle pieces than do your given job, and the puzzles may be a lot more complex, but a lot of the foundation is still there.  Just a measure of learning the additional steps.

Stress Management

Yeah, so this may not so much be a skill as a result from gaming, but I thought I’d include it anyways.  I work in the welfare field.  I deal with people going through some of the worst times in their lives.  Burnout is a constant risk that my organization and many others are contributing a lot of time and energy to try and fight against.  And things aren’t always dandy there.  A good part of the reason my already slow rate of posting has gotten even slower is that there are some days where work has been so rough that I just get home and I cannot do anything productive anymore.

But I’ve found video games to be a great way of refreshing myself.  My clients often unload  an emotional weight on me, and I take that, because, well, that’s my job, and I’m a professional.  But that eats at you, and those emotions need to be worked out, and in a far shorter timeframe than actually solving those problems takes before they deliver harm.

And you know what, I’ve found video games to be invaluable for that.  It’s a little hokey and childish, maybe, but spending that time being absolutely immersed in something else, completely forgetting about myself and what I’m going through, that’s one of the biggest things keeping me refreshed and helping me manage the emotional burdens I find myself carrying.  Because of that, video games are just making me a better worker in general.

All told, with all those skills given, it seems like real life is just the rather disappointing sequel to your favorite video game.

Random Rantings of a Young Professional

It’s hard in the modern workplace.  For pretty much everyone.  Every single category of workers you could break someone down into faces their own unique challenges in the office.  Take me, for instance.  I graduated college and entered the workforce a few years early, and the place I’ve been working for since has really placed a lot of responsibility on me, so I’ve ended up with a lot more job skills and experience than most my age have.  Youth is definitely an asset.  It’s pretty awesome being young.  If you haven’t yet, you should give it a try sometime.  However, inexperience is a problem, and youth and inexperience often go hand in hand.  And when my organization is making use of one of their key personnel and project managers who isn’t anywhere close to reaching 30, people tend to see the latter far more than the former.

There are a couple things I could be doing about it.  I could foster and make apparent a strong work ethic.  I could make it clear I expect to be taken as seriously as anyone else in my position.  I could start wearing masks to work so nobody could tell my real age.  Or I could cry about it for a while on some out of the way blog that for whatever reason gets a lot more popular when I haven’t posted for a while.  I imagine those would all have the same effect.

From what I’ve gathered, it doesn’t matter what field you’re working in; if you’re young, and in a white-collar job, people who don’t know you will always assume you’re a tech.  Once, I had gone to a presentation at a major industry conference.  As they were setting up, they were running into some technical issues, and all their support staff were off working on something out.  The presenter looked across the crowd, singled me out, and asked me to help him out, assuming that because I was the youngest person in the room I knew how to handle computers.  And that’s far from an isolated incident.  It seems that at any conference or multi-group meeting I and my boss always have to keep emphasizing my job, else people just assume I’m there to talk about computers and nothing else.  Sad thing is, I actually am pretty good at working with tech, but I always feel hesitant to show that publicly, for fear of getting pigeonholed into that role and having nobody take me seriously for anything else.

It’s an odd experience, having an older colleague along to such a gathering and hearing how others will interact with them in regards to me.  I work in an organization that fits a couple different common non-profit subsets, and one thing I’ve noticed in the various fields I interact with is that they really tend to employ the older generation a lot more than other industries might.  And the older generation seems to assume they just can’t get mine, and makes a lot of sweeping generalizations to compensate.  I used to dress a bit more formally than most at industry events, thinking that’d show me as being serious about my work.  I had to stop after everyone kept asking my colleagues if I was goth/alt/whatever subculture they had most recently heard of.

I have long hair.  That might exacerbate my problems.  Or it might not.  I have no idea, because nobody’s ever talked about it with me.  I kind of wish someone would, at least one of these people I’ve been interviewing with, so that at least I might be able to blame that for being the reason I’m unable to switch jobs.   The local Amish community seem to love working with me, though, and if anyone would take issue with my hair, it’d probably be them.  I did have one manager at a partner organization sit down with me at a dinner meeting once, and tell me all about her younger sister who is covered with tattoos and still gets high level work and how great it is that the younger generation is standing their ground and forcing companies to accept non-traditional appearances.  Because apparently women haven’t been showing up at work with long hair for decades.  That was a little awkward.

We host quite a few events.  Which, given my role, means that I do a lot of events management, getting logistics together, arranging speakers, etc.  I don’t know if this is unique to just being young, but my boss gets directly thanked and recognized for a lot of the work I do, while nobody will even mention my name.  Odd thing is I know this irritates her as much as I.

Speaking of events, it’s pretty common for us to be making presentations at various occasions.  I’m actually pretty experienced at getting up and giving a speech to a crowd.  Absolutely nobody expects it.  It’s kind of funny to see the looks on people’s faces when we’re scheduled for a presentation, and rather than the distinguished personnel they were expecting, some twenty-something shows up to speak.  In fact, last week, I was at a forum that my boss was scheduled to introduce the speakers at, except nobody bothered to inform her, so she wasn’t there.  I, of course, would have been the next best option, having worked with the speakers and their project on a number of occasions.  But I’m young, and nobody expects young people to give a coherent speech in front of others.  So they asked some other guy who had never worked with the group before to do it.

And, of course, my age definitely plays into job searching.  My job really values professional development, especially in their key personnel, so I’ve got work experience most people would have to wait a few years to pick up.  I’m not looking to go down a level in my job search, so when I’m applying for jobs, I’m competing against people mostly five to ten years older.  In some cases, inexperience does play a factor.  I’ve been pushed through training and challenging assignments, but there’s still some things you can only truly pick up by putting in the years to learn it, and in those areas, I am truly behind.  But I’ve been starting to wonder if it’s truly an issue of skills.  I’ve often seen people seem obviously thrown off upon seeing me for the first time in an interview, and have had quite a few organizations who seem really interested over the phone turn absolutely disengaged for the in-person interview.  One of the worst was just last week.  I had gone through four stages of the interview process before finally being granted an in-person interview, drove five hours to reach the place, and could just tell upon entering the room that the interviewers had already made up their minds.

Well, that’s just some random thoughts I wanted to get off my mind, and figured I’d take advantage of this forum.  See you next time for some actual quality posts!