One last thing I’d like to say:
I don’t like to call out others, but this viewpoint is just warped and petty. Your other arguments at least make sense, despite the harsh attitude, but this here is absurd.
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I litterally just LOL’d like really loud! Thank you for that!
I cant comment on McCinfinite ebcasue Ive never played it. I couldnt get into McC “the previous one” either.
Im looking forward to SOul Calibur as Ive never played it either and I would like to give this one a shot with Geralt of Rivia.
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This is a topic which I am struggling with since KI season 2, KOF14, GG for PC and SFV’s launch. The main thing I struggle with is my impression that I am playing unfinished games, or playing a kind of beta version long after release. So maybe a better question to ask myself is: what is an acceptable level of quality and functionality to launch a game? This will be different for each person but by not buying MvCi I have reached a point where I am no longer automatically sponsoring franchises I loved dearly and it will hurt these games, and our genre, if others think and act like me.
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I think right now we are in good spot. We get many great sequels for popular franchises that have AAA quality, but as you mentioned - fighting games are niche genre and take a lot of time to learn and be consistently good. If the market becomes too saturated it’s safe to assume fighting games will decrease in (I hope only graphical) quality in upcoming years.
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You are absolutely correct that you aren’t buying completed games. But I would agree with your suggestion that a better question is “how far along in development does a game need to be before you can buy it and get full enjoyment from it.” Maybe the answer to that is “finished,” and I think a lot of people would pay lip service to that idea. But then the community as a whole has the attitude that if new content or updates are not coming to a game then it’s “dead.” We can’t have it both ways. Games are either finished or they are in continuous development.
At the same time I wouldn’t want you to think I’m encouraging you to buy games you don’t like or don’t think will be enjoyable just to support the industry. At some point you have to look out for your immediate interests as a consumer. And there’s plenty of room between buying everything day one and “I immediately jump to the internet to troll the game on every available social media site,” where I think a reasonable position can be found.
I failed to mention Skullgirls in my original post. It’s not new but it is a new IP that has enjoyed some success and popularity in the scene. It’s hard to get much information on how commercially successful it has been. I would put it in the “labor of love” category but it might have broken even financially. There’s no rumors of a Skullgirls 2. Which may be for the best - if the creators want to make a new game it probably makes sense to do something original. But I suspect they aren’t doing anything else.
Anybody know what happened to the game Riot purchased the Rising Thunder team to create? The initial idea was that it must be a LoL fighting game and that such a game could potentially be huge for the FGC. But not a peep from them other than the release of the “final” version of Rising Thunder.
Some notes about things you said in the OP:
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Good online is definitely still the exception, and by quite a bit. It’s really only KI and Injustice 2 (and MKX, more than a year after its launch) that have what I could classify as good netcode in the past 5 years. Every other game uses delay-based netcode, which falls apart as soon as you get a time zone away, or poorly-programmed rollback; I believe SFV’s bad rollback netcode has set the genre back at least 5 years, since it seems to have further scared Japanese devs (who almost dogmatically refuse to learn from non-Japanese companies) from putting a good version of it in their games.
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If my boss asked me “what happened with MvCI?” it would be trivial to answer him, IMO. MvCI is a masterclass of how NOT to make a fighting game in almost every possible aspect. They handled everything almost as poorly as possible, from the first impressions in the media, to the utterly atrocious PR, to the bad roster, to the weak aesthetic presentation, and everything in between. Even if you grant them that the roster was out of their control, they shot themselves in the foot so frequently and so strongly that there was no hope for recovery.
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I agree that no fighting game that isn’t an established FG IP has any chance of success as a mainstream title. DBFZ is the closest we’ll get, and it’s one of the most popular franchises of all time among video game enthusiasts, so it basically doesn’t count. Even Killer Instinct, a game with 20 year old nostalgia for many people, struggles to find its footing. If you try to propose a completely and totally brand new IP and sell it today, I think you have no chance. This is the age of crossovers, where even the most popular FG franchises have decided to milk outside brands for recognition (Tekken with Final Fantasy, Injustice with Ninja Turtles, you name it). I think the last truly new FG franchise that’s been at EVO and that didn’t borrow from existing characters was Blazblue in around 2009.
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As for what needs to happen in the FGC going forward (a random stream of consciousness):
Companies need to actually care about releasing a modern product. This means a product that learns from the competition around it, as well as sets at least one or two new bars for the genre in some categories. This means every new game has netcode that is at least as good as KI’s was 5 years ago, has an expansive and standardized training mode suite and online lobby (etc) modes with quick rematch and so on.
It does NOT mean the perceived leader in the genre (Capcom) releasing fighting games with feature sets that wouldn’t fly 10 years ago, for full price, and then shoving their head in the ground and pretending all is well. FGs are kind of bizarre, because all the “big” ones outside Mortal Kombat are made by Japanese devs, who are notorious for being stubborn. Maybe the FG genre will just always suffer as long as that stubbornness is the expectation.
FGs should start to really embrace free to play (or, at least, a low price to entry, $20ish). That means the system should be set up for reasonably priced DLC, both characters and costumes. In the age of crossovers in gaming, TV, movies and beyond, they should be set up for cross-promotion possibilities. Not only characters, but costume/announcer homages, special events that tie in to stuff, and many other ideas. This also means they need to learn from the Dota compendium and other “buy something in game, support further development and tournaments” initiatives. The Shadow Jago fund was so incredibly and instantly successful that I couldn’t believe they never really tried something like it again (the Kilgore fund was a pretty weak second effort, in both concept and execution, and they still got $50k). That’s the kind of thing I would use to support my theory that MS is trying to get out of the FG space, but that’s another discussion for another time.
FGs need to really, really think about good tutorials and not about dumbing the game down to suit the needs of the casual audience who will still get frustrated at every loss to better players, no matter how easy the game is. They need to sit and actually think about what the core issues are, and discuss it with people who’ve been thinking about this for years. They need to work with content creators who have interest in teaching/supporting their game.
I’ll say it again here; FGs need to get over their fear of rollback netcode, particularly the Japanese developers. I firmly believe the genre can really go nowhere without this being fully embraced and adopted across all games. But again, I believe this will probably never happen as long as Japanese devs are the trendsetters.
In reality, what the FG really needs is a company that “nails it” just one time, but I feel this is pretty much impossible because all the IPs that can bring this type of heat are being firmly held by people who are extremely out of touch and will never relinquish the grasp. There are good people working at these companies, but they have proven that they don’t have the power to really make any reasonable change from the inside, because the momentum against them is just so strong. And the people with smart ideas who do have a full game in their control don’t have a foot in the IP war to engage. The one possible exception to this is a League of Legends FG, as people have theorized Riot is making. The genre is so ripe for the picking that if Riot comes in and does even the most basic things correct, they’ll make all the other games wish they studied for the test many years ago.
I think KI might be the closest existing game we have to that, actually (well, NRS is close as well): an IP with nostalgia and a forward-thinking developer who made a game that can actually be played online. But they really made some grave errors along the way (namely, totally failing to capitalize on the DLC path in one of the most DLC-able fighting game franchises around). The Xbox exclusivity also hurts them big time, and this last run of 6 or so months for the KI team has been extra hard with all the matchmaking and character select bugs that have really taken the wind out of the game’s sails with its remaining player base. I’ve been a huge supporter of the game in all its seasons, but constantly hearing “the game isn’t working for me” from dozens of new players (and now, finally, me as well) every single week for months and months has caught up to and surpassed that enthusiasm.
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Thanks Infil,
I admit, you were one of the folks I was hoping would hop into the discussion. You offer a lot of thoughts here, so I will pick my favorites to comment on.
This is a pretty bold statement. I think there’s a lot of potential for the free to play/low priced model. But it does limit some things. Do you think it’s reasonable to expect fighting games to appear with high production values and full rosters to launch under a free to play model, or are we looking at KI season 1 as the standard launch model?
Capcom is clearly failing (although arguably they have been failing at releasing fighting games since about 2000 and it’s just sentiment that makes people feel that they are the “leader” in this space). I love my share of Japanese games and Japanese developers (heck, I’m deeply in love with Monster Hunter - a fantastically Japanese game by Capcom). But I think people are stuck in a mentality where fighting games come from Japan and the Japanese “scene” is viewed as vitally important. This means that we are overly focused on Japan, and I agree that it is a negative influence on innovation in the genre. But I also think it’s tempting to ask for full featured, cheap games. So, what in your opinion is it that developers can sacrifice and produce free to play, fully tutorial driven and feature rich games?
Just quoted for truth.
I’d love to hear it - it’s certainly germane to a discussion of the future of fighting games. My own view is that MS is not monolithic and so you can find people with different opinions sprinkled throughout the organization. But I think there’s a few people with a strong belief in KI, but that the company as a whole kind of meandered into the fighting game space and is now meandering out of it - rather than having a decisive strategy to “go in” in 2013 and then a clear decision to “get out” sometime in the last year or so. It is increasingly clear that KI has truly been abandoned. I have mixed feelings on this. Whether the glass is half full or half empty is debatable, but they clearly haven’t left us a full glass at the end of the project.
I agree with you that KI was a flawed experiment, but it really lays out a model for how you might get into this space. I feel like a developer other than MS (IG for example) might be able to take this experience and successfully revive another franchise or even make a new IP if they are able to get some investment. Something like a Primal Rage reboot or a new idea. So, if you had to pick three things that are needed for success of a fighting game in 2018 and beyond what would you pick?
Mine are:
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Netcode that makes the game playable online and can serve as the primary community. No lack of love for the offline scene but 2,000 people just can’t financially support a game.
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A fighting engine that is approachable, but has depth. This may seem obvious, but I think this is a huge problem with most of the anime and ASW games that is preventing otherwise appealing games from growing their audience. They are insanely difficult to approach. No, this doesn’t mean making the game easy. But the idea that you have to have been playing fighting games for 20 years and that DP motions and one frame links are “fundamentals” of the genre is really holding us back. Smash Bros, which I know is controversial, doesn’t have these inherent execution barriers although high level techniques are incredibly difficult. Unsurprisingly, the games sell to a huge audience AND maintains a robust competitive scene. But people still dismiss this.
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A monetization model that doesn’t ask players to front huge amounts of money. Maybe not f2p but certainly including lots of aesthetic options. Preferably at reasonable prices, but it’s clear that you can’t build a large community of new people by asking them to front $60-$100 off the bat.
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While these are trivial to you, they are not for many other people. I want to like DBFZ but as someone who never really watched the show I feel like the missing cannon for me hinders my experience (a Cell intro is meaningless to me). Also anecdotally I have a friend who loved MK9 and mained skarlet, MKX would have been an instant buy had she been included in the roster but since she was not he never picked it up. What I’m saying is roster and aesthetics mean a lot to some people. I’m willing to bet when Sagat drops for SFV they’ll see a decent sales boost.
In regards to @Infilament on his commentary regarding accessibility to new players. This is tricky I feel, I’ve played a ton of dota and what I like about the game is that it’s competitively balanced. Patches are influenced by the game being played at a high level. Dota is easily one of the steepest learning curves in video games and yet it was a success. The reason for that I feel is that learning and progress is satisfying and the matchmaking is good. Fighting games need to be careful if the learning and progress is not satisfying and the matchingmaking is bad it’s a sure fire way to lose any hope of retaining new players to the genre and I feel like by and large almost all fighting games currently fail at these aspects which is arguably one of the main reasons fighting games are considered “Niche”. This is somewhat tragic as I feel there’s been no better time than now to capture devoted players. We live in a time where their are lots of gamers who will do research and put in work to become good at certain video games so long as you can keep their interest long enough to make it fun for them.
Also as a side note: I love KI because of it’s two way interaction, I personally end up dropping most other fighting games and coming back to KI because of it. In NRS games and DBFZ where you’re dialing muscle memory bnb’s or having them dialed against you it becomes rather thoughtless. Interaction doesn’t occur until knockdown or neutral. There’s no mind games to their combo systems, it’s all min/maxing based on meter, position and health bars. I think more two way interaction could serve to help future franchises.
Finally, I will say that I think video game development in general is a huge risk, regardless of genre. You see major flops and successes across the industry. Destiny 2 for example as a flop. And GoW (they said single player games couldn’t succeed) as a success. An IP or genre can only get you so far, the game itself has to actually be good. SFV is learning this lesson.
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AFAIK MKXL and I2 netcode is still delay based, but it’s really well programmed to the point where that delay is as minimal as possible.
I would also say Tekken 7’s delay netcode is acceptable, but maybe that’s because Tekken 7 isn’t that much relying on split seconds reactions.
I think the fighting games have the same problem every competitive game has - they’re just difficult to pick up and gamers nowadays aren’t determined to get good.
Look at competetive shooters, there are , like, 3 relevant titles: R6 Siege, Overwatch, CS: GO.
There are many other potentially good multiplayer shooters but they have either small community or none at all, the biggest titles take the cake.
And they are not one of many sequels (technically Siege is, but previous games weren’t competetive shooters), but their own games with support planned for years to come. Counter Strike’s core gameplay is 20 years old and still going strong. And nobody really demands a sequel for any of these games.
Fighting games are IMO a lot more difficult than shooters, and their communities are small percent of any of competetive shooters out there, and to make thing worse, the FG consumers have tendency to cry for a sequel when FG is like, a year old, without even getting competent or dive deeper into given title.
My point is, current FG market is really saturated. We have a lot of great games to choose from, each one costed a lot to produce, and each demands time and dedication to get even remotely competent. It’s literally impossible to keep up with all of them, gamers will have to write some of these games off, even if they’re good, and FGC is already too small to make all of these games successful next to each other.
I think in future, as FG’s sales will be getting progressively lower, we will get a lot less new FG titles, and they will propably be “games as a service” with microtransactions and DLC dripped content support planned over course of few years. And I think it’s good - that way, the FG’s will keep their “freshness” for longer, people will actually have more time and motivation to discover them instead of scratching their surface and moan for sequel in a year.
PS: With traditionally releases fighting games and consumers’ tendencies I mentioned, many of these games literally feel like sandwich that was bitten two times and threw away.
On the subject of nostalgic IPs like KI struggling in their revival, what about the success of Mortal Kombat? That series has been a massive outlier in the genre commercially ever since the MK9 reboot. Are there lessons that can be learned from it?
There was a time when I would have believed this, but I think it’s too little too late at this point. Maybe I’m wrong.
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MKXL is rollback not delayed based. It went so well they kept it for Injustice 2. One thing that really separates NRS games from most other fighting games (Marvel Infinite excluded) is the heavy investment they put into the story mode. I think that in particular helps justify the AAA pricetag. I find most other games like SFV or even our beloved KI have really half assed attempts at story modes because the dev budget isn’t there to do more with them. Of note DBFZ also had a decent story mode.
MK9 was a fan service game, basically a MK Trilogy Remake. They could not go wrong with that one, and world literally starved for actually good MK game after mediocre 3D installments.
As for KI, I think it desperately needs a sequel to get proper traction and brand recognition.
Even so I don’t think that explains how MK9 and MKX are able to sell several million full-price copies in their first year while other leading games in the genre, like Street Fighter 5, only achieve a fraction of that success. Is it the violent spectacle that maintains appeal to people? The sheer power of Warner Bros’ marketing? The extra emphasis on single-player content compared to their peers?
I don’t agree that fighting games are harder. I think they often have accessibility learning curves for sure. If I want to do a combo or special moves in fighting games I’ve got to teach myself those things before I can use them (this is why I support combo-assist for new players). Versus say an FPS where I just point and click. That said, when it comes to mastery the time and dedication required is very similar, I’d argue that in some genre’s it’s actually a bit higher than mastering a character or two in a fighting game since many games require a layer of teamwork among many other variables.
Yes
Yes
Yes
I think NRS has always done it’s own thing and during the dark days of the 3D MK games they weren’t lighting any fires but they were learning stuff in their own way about how to make games. I think some of that stuff helped them tremendously and they learned the correct lesson from SF IV - that people wanted to go back to the nostalgia of 2D fighters. MK9 was a brilliant mix of old and new, and NRS has always put a premium on presentation. The games are solid around the edges, with good menu screens and “curb appeal.” Tons of non-competitive players buy their games to go through with their buddies in the dorm or on the sofa looking at the crazy fatalities. They certainly don’t get everything right and while I buy all the NRS games, I can’t really say I get my money’s worth. But they have figured out what works for them and they aren’t ignoring the rest of the industry, but they also aren’t changing what defines them to try to fit in with other companies in the space. I have probably said this before, but I never really considered myself a fan of Ed Boon or even a big supporter of NRS and MK as a series. But over time I increasingly admire his accomplishments in keeping a studio together (some of the folks at NRS have been there forever) and keeping it afloat through a lot of changes in the industry.
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I’m not trying to be nitpicky, but I think it’s easy to say “they could not go wrong” after a huge success. But ask yourself if, two years ago, anyone would have thought Capcom could go wrong with a new MvC game in the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I wouldn’t have guessed it. I think there were plenty of ways NRS could have made a giant disaster out of MK9, and they didn’t.
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NRS games have enormous casual appeal. Casuals think MK games’ animations are good, love well polished story modes and spamming X-Rays to see bones breaking. Also good marketing.
I am keeping my statement on MK9. Ed Boon had a lot of experience with MK franchise, what worked, what did not, and what made Midway go bankrupt.
He remade MK1-3 setting and lore, along with these games’ complete roster + best ones from newer MK’s like Quan Chi and Kenshi, made Fatalities not idiotic like stretched necks and animalities, etc.
He played the safest cards. After 4 failed MK games, that was the only move he could make.
Wow, lots of conversations going on in this thread and I must say that I really enjoy all of them. Good stuff!
As far as Mortal Kombat goes, I think that, like Street Fighter, it became one of the biggest franchises in the genre. In fact, due to the graphics, the violence, etc. it actually broke out of the genre much more than SF did and it appealed to not just casual fighting game fans, but to game players in general.
So even in those “dark days” of the 3D era, MK games were still selling. Sure, Mortal Kombat as a franchise has sold a little less than Street Fighter, but I think at least part of that is mitigated by the fact the franchise has had almost zero market penetration in Japan and the snootier FGC fans have mostly disregarded it until the last few games.
Either way, I think that MK now gets with the masses on having a large roster, DLC (especially the guests), a large suite of modes (especially the single player), great story modes, and a notably lower execution barrier than many of the other fighters out there. You can do cool looking stuff, from smaller combos to X-Rays to fatalities and you don’t have to do DP motions, charge moves, 360’s on the d-pad, etc.
Now, would I love for the fighting to be a bit more 2-Way like KI, where players could combo break more easily, counter-break, escape, reverse combos, have more access to catch counters and what not so that the interaction wasn’t just “open up opponent and do your big combo” gameplay? Sure.
Would I love for the animations to be more fluid and pronounced, cross-ups to feel more natural and for hit boxes to not be quite so tight? Absolutely. Maybe slowing the game down slightly wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world either.
But I’ve been a fan of this series since the first one and I think that they do a lot right beyond the window dressing of blood and gore. In fact, I’d say I actually play MK in spite of that stuff, and never got in to it because of it, but that’s just me.
Anyways, back to the original idea about the future of the genre, I think that there are currently a lot of contradictions that fighting game fans have to deal with and I think that many of them tend to have an adverse effect on the prospects for both sequels and new IPs.
We want new IPs, but we don’t do a great job of supporting them when they come out. Granted, they happen rarely. But take Killer Instinct for example, a game that today’s younger FGC likely barely knew about back in the day. I’m not sure if many of you recall how the gameplay reveal was greeted at EVO, but I don’t recall it being a positive experience.
If we have to make every game scratch and claw for each new fan it gets, I think this genre suffers. Sure, we don’t just want to buy crap to “support the scene” or whatever. But I think the attitude of genre enthusiasts tends to be a little less initial excitement until proven wrong and a little more in the way of finding reasons why something sucks.
Also, as far as existing games, we tend to want new characters, but we also want our favorites. Obviously this has been brought up already. But if you’re not going to buy a game because ONE character wasn’t in it, then that’s an awfully high bar for a developer to reach.
We also want sequels that are new enough to justify their existence, but we don’t want them to be so knew that we don’t recognize the game anymore. That seems like a tougher needle to thread then one might think. While some see taking Scorpion or Sub Zero out of MK or Ryu out of Street Fighter is blasphemy, I honestly looked at the MvCi roster and part of why I wasn’t that psyched for it as the fact that so many characters have been in every game.
I mean, Ryu? Again? We can’t have any of the other 800 shotos in SF instead? At least give me a chance to miss him a little. Maybe put him in the second season of DLC instead. Not that there will be a second season, but still. I tend to like having more new characters in games, but I know some people want barely any. I was listening to the Netherkast not too long ago and one of the guys, possibly temp, wanted none. How do you release a new game with no new characters?
Also, we all want the devs to listen to us; to have some sort of two way interaction and input in to the game so that common sense changes can be made and for the game to be the best version of what we think it can be.
Only problem is that our vision doesn’t always align with the developers, and there are a LOT of people that are far too immature to cede points, respect the devs opinion, or respect the dev in general, instead taking this stubborn “I’m the customer, I’m always right” attitude and either harranging people to get their attention or just to make them hate the game they made. So yeah, we want to interact, but we don’t seem to know how to do that yet.
I’d also add another item that’s been talked about… People want a finished game, but they also want the content to keep rolling in. If a game has to be rebalanced, updated with new characters, etc, then is it really finished?
Let’s say that KI’s service model is the future and that fighting games start off with a small amount of characters and content, only to have new characters, stages, modes, etc added over time, how does the game start as finished and when does it become finished? We still have a few people around here bemoaning the fact that they haven’t “really” told us that this game is done.
And another that was already mentioned… We want accessibility in our games, but we also want the depth to be great if we put the time in. Another tough needle to be threaded, for sure, but it’s understandable. We want to feel rewarded for our time and effort. But when that balance isn’t there as much as it should be, a game is too technical, too brain dead, etc and it becomes another reason to dismiss the game.
Lastly, we all want the genre to grow, presumably so they’ll keep making more games for us to enjoy, but we tend to be harsh or dismissive of outsiders, casuals, etc, almost as if we begrudgingly accept them as a necessary evil in order to get what we want. Oh and to go along with the last item, developers have to make their games for both audiences involved and if you underserve one, you might lose in sales, underserve the other and you’ll catch hell in your community and risk being disregarded entirely.
Sorry, my thoughts are kinda jumbled in there and I know I ramble. But either way, I know other genres face similar issues, but the fighting genre isn’t as popular as it once was, and making a AAA title in this genre is risky, especially when you factor in all the contradictions above.
I think that players need to become more accepting of games faults, even as they point them out. Dialog simply has to mature in this regard. Of course, the realist in my knows that’s not going to happen. Our online discourse isn’t evolving. If anything, it’s devolving.
So as games become more expensive, the genre becomes more niche, less new titles come out, and fans become more demanding, contradictory and contrarian, I see most companies, especially Capcom, finding little reason to publish as many games in the genre as they do currently.
However, I think that much like in 09 when SF4 came out and in 2011 when MK9 arrived, the genre will rebound again. I think that this genre will ebb and flow, just as it did before. I think that we’ll see the well… Not dry up, but slow down to a trickle of the most “money” games in the genre for a little while before making another triumphant return.
Oh, as far as MS wanting to get out of the fighting genre, I’d be curious to hear that theory from Infilement as well. My uneducated guess is that KI didn’t have a AAA budget, yet the gameplay, modes and characters were all high quality and exceedingly unique, and I think that they built their audience and got enough of a word out there that this game is, at the very least, a very solid foundation for a future title.
Maybe that’s just me projecting my inner hope. It probably is, who knows. But for a company that’s arguably starving for exclusive IPs, it seems odd to put this four year investment, monetarily modest or not, to lay such a great foundation, only to walk away from it. They charged up the mountain, one painful step at a time. Sure, there were some missteps, but they learned, they were responsive, and I still think they put something special out there. Seems like a shame to just say “well, we’re done with that, let’s throw it back in the vault for another 20 years.”
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