When Henry "GoldenCen" Cen opened up Next Level Arcade in 2011, it didn't look like anything special. It was a room that was more of a hallway. It had just a couple of cabinets for the biggest games of what was then the current gen of fighting games, Ultra Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and a couple of monitors for console gaming.
"And those monitors were ass," GoldenCen said in a Discord call. But it was from those humble beginnings that Next Level grew to become the hub of New York City's fighting game community, a sacred ground for the East Coast FGC. Next Level Battle Circuit is one of the most prestigious local tournaments in fighting games, a breeding ground of top fighting game talent, producing champions in Street Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear, and many more games.
What made GoldenCen believe his hole in the wall could grow into what it is today? History. Before he was the owner of Next Level, GoldenCen was the manager at another legendary New York arcade spot: Chinatown Fair. This was not the only arcade in New York City, but it's fair to call it the birthplace of the New York City FGC.
GoldenCen's attention was grabbed, as was the case for many, by the arcade release of Street Fighter II. That was the arcade where FGC legends like Jwong and Yipes got their start, one of the most legendary locations in fighting games.
Chinatown Fair outlasted the rest of the New York City arcades. But as the first decade of the 2000s came to a close, the recession and rising rents forced even that iconic venue to close down. GoldenCen was not in a position to be able to keep Chinatown Fair afloat on his own -- certainly not with Manhattan rents the way they were. But he was determined to make sure fighting game competitions and the people who love them had a place to go in the city.
"It was my passion, you know?" GoldenCen said. "I love playing fighting games, I love the competition, and I don't want the competition to die out. My main concern was that there was no place where people could gather to play competitively, and that people would lose a central place to play at."
"Plus, a lot of the customers were also my friends," GoldenCen added. "So I didn't want to let them down.”
Next Level opened as a hybrid arcade, offering tournaments held on cabinets and consoles. There was excitement. The place was full, or close to it, for the first few weeks. But it quickly became clear that alone was not going to be enough to support a whole business.
"You have to adapt if you're playing any kind of game in life. That's the biggest key point that I'm always focused on," GoldenCen said. "When I opened Next Level, I always tell people this, after the first three months, attendance had already dropped by 50%. I already knew after the first three months, if I continue on this trend, the business is doomed."
Next Level adapted by diversifying. Rather than remain a 3-day-a-week event space, GoldenCen integrated trading cards, hosting game nights for Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon Trading Card Game, and opening the space for card sales to ensure the lights could stay on and fighting game gatherings could continue.
At first, "It was kind of like an arcade and an event space," GoldenCen said, "But at the same time, when the attendance started dropping, I already knew it was like, no bueno. If it drops 50% in three months, your honeymoon phase is already over. That's what I always tell people, the first three months in any kind of relationship with anything, it's the honeymoon phase. It's always looking the best, but you have to come back down to reality and be like, hey, this is gonna be a terrible business model. If I just went the video game route or like a PC cafe, we would have probably been closed by like 2014 or 15."
Instead, here we are, with Next Level still going strong having produced champions at the highest level in multiple games for 15 years running. Players like Smug, iDom, LI Joe, and Nitro called Next Level home before they were playing on Evo's main stage. I asked if that was a point of pride for GoldenCen.
"I wouldn't say it has much effect on me," he said. "I'm happy. But I don't think it increases my ego or anything. But I would say, I'm happy to see people representing the store and the East Coast, of course. But at the same time, I feel like now, as we head into a more global kind of world, the locals seem kind of smaller in scope than it used to be."
In the 2010s, Next Level Battle Circuit was one of the most watched tournaments in the fighting game world. That was partially thanks to the absolutely stacked tournaments they were hosting, but also thanks in large part to the work of TeamSp00ky, one of the first streamers to focus on fighting games. The TeamSp00ky channeldates all the way back to Justin.TV and then grew to prominence on the platform it turned into, Twitch. If you wanted to watch live fighting games, Sp00ky and Next Level were your most reliable option. And if you tuned in regularly, you were bound to see some good stuff, whether it was the gameplay or the reactions to it:
It's a different world now. Local tournaments aren't what the FGC revolves around in the same way. Part of that can be attributed to the way the pandemic reshaped our world, but there's also no denying that the proliferation of high-quality online play has changed priorities in the FGC. For players, it's easier and cheaper to settle for an online tournament or a night of ranked gaming than to head to the local. For spectators, online tournaments offer competition between world-class talent from various regions on a nearly daily basis.
"Now we only talk about the cream of the crop. We don't even talk about the fourth place guy, the fifth place guy. We don't care. If they're not like the best, or a goat, no one cares. Nowadays, we have such established criteria in the FGC, it's very hard for people to break through them," GoldenCen said. "I feel like there's not enough focus these days on like, the local scenes, which is not too many because of the online infrastructure that we keep on promulgating these days. I think it's going to be difficult for offline events to exist because they cost a lot more money."
Next Level's existence has depended on adaptation from the beginning, though, and adaptation has kept them going throughout this new online-focused era. No more of those ass-tier monitors. GoldenCen upgraded to HDMI 2.1, allowing him to run locals on tournament standard PS5s while offering a latency experience similar to that of PCs. He's continued to invest in high-grade streaming equipment, and not just for a Next Level store stream. In an era where top players often feel forced to skip the local to make another night's worth of revenue from streaming, GoldenCen offers local top players like iDom the chance to kill two birds with one stone, with a streaming setup ready for players to go live while at Next Level.
"I think we're just in a phase, though," GoldenCen says. "This is my investment in the community where I'm looking long term. I'm trying to say that people don't realize that once they experience offline, they keep wanting to come back. It's about the experience in life and not the monetary gains you get from playing at a tournament. There's only going to be one or two or maybe three winners in a tournament. That teaches you a lesson immediately. Once you get out in the real world, not everyone can be a winner, but if you want to become a champion, it takes time and dedication and some sacrifices. But along the way, you want to be with other people that can help propel you to that position."
For GoldenCen, it doesn't matter if the spotlight is moving over to online events, nor does it matter if fighting game design is moving in a direction he's not enjoying. He will always be a believer in the unique value of the offline tournament, the things that can only be learned when you're sitting next to your opponent instead of separated by a screen and (hopefully) an ethernet connection.
"I still want people to have the same experience that I experienced, which is getting friends, going into competition. People have to have a gateway to that, and I think online is not the only way. I think it's just a social aspect of it. I want people to have that kind of gateway, the social aspect gateway. So they can come talk to people, make friends for life. I think that's more important than just being a champion or winning."
Maintaining social connections is one of GoldenCen's highest priorities, both for the older generation of fighting game players as they age, and for the newer generation of players that lost out on key years of socialization during the pandemic. If the past decade has proven anything, it's that the next decade will bring changes, and the fighting game community that emerges will be unrecognizable in many ways from what came before. But that won't push GoldenCen off his path.
"We'll have to see, but I'm still gonna keep the store open as long as possible," he said, "until someone else takes over the reins in the future. Because everybody knows, people have to die, you know, that's just life. Some other person is gonna have to pick up the mantle in the future. Even if I retire, I'm not playing forever! But I do think that offline still holds a key piece in my heart that I want everyone to experience. I want them to feel the hype, I want them to feel the energy, you know, the aura of the FGC offline, because once you've experienced offline, you're like, damn, why don't we have more of these?"
Looking to experience it for yourself? Head over to 874 4th Ave in Brooklyn, New York, or check out Next Level online at their various social pages to plan your trip.
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