Fans, Risks, and Fighting Video Games
Make a fighting game. Make it easy to play, with a deeper system for the pros so they are rewarded for their skill.
When you’ve got your fan base, the way to keep them happy and get more money from them is to tweak the system and add more moves, add more characters.
If you look at the history of KOF and SF, you can see what happens when you stray from the formula.
KOF 96 introduced rolls and people freaked out. This system stayed up till 98. These were the hey days of SNK.? I didn’t like 96 when I first saw it and didn’t play it until late the following year on neo geo cd.
SF III. En masse, people turned their back on the parry system. However, a small fan base stuck with it and then by 3S, everyone is like yeah wicked.? The question is did the other players come back? I don’t think so. They came back for IV.
The question is why would a game company take such risks with their fan base? As a fan, all I wanted was a tweak and more moves and characters. What did you want?
SFIV: same old game, with new graphics and a new system feature that can be totally bypassed. All the fans are happy.
KOF XII: it’s like 96/97/SFIII all over again. The masses are not happy. There is a small group of fans but this time SNKP don’t stick to their guns, reverting back to an old system for XIII. Will this pay off for SNKP? The fans that wanted a tweak get a totally different game and the other fans aren’t that excited because? 2k2um is still new and fun!
The reason for a game company to make a sequel is to keep fans pumping coins into the machine when they are tired of the first. History has shown that bringing in new fighting systems is really risky.? XII was even more different in beta tests. What could have happened if the fans had liked it?
Capcom didn’t take risks again with IV. SNKP tried again, even after the backlash of 99, with another three year cycle to try and evolve and convince the fans.? I have to give them Kudos.? However, they failed.
This year, they have given up taking risks.? Same old system, with a couple of system features that don’t really seem that important, but will reward better players.? Will the fans be happy? Or will SNKP still lose?
Interestingly, had I been asked in 1996, I probably would have said “no” to rolls. Now, I can’t live without them.? Thank you SNK, for trying to evolve, and not leaving me to settle with some fireball+dragon gameplay. It’s easy, but… kinda boring, don’t you think??
SNKP is taking a lot of flak at the moment for the unpatched state of XIII, but I’m not that sure they deserve it. They took risks, they got burned, and now, with a limited budget and a new president that doesn’t see profit in arcades, who knows how much longer they will last?? Why don’t we wait and see the console version, before damning them all to hell…
Ratings
- The King of Fighters ’95 4Gag Battle
(5.00 out of 5)
- The King of Fighters ’95 4Gag Battle
About Oyaji
TA: actually, in VF5FS, AM2 reanimated everything. Tekken 6 is still draging along animations from the PS1 era.
“Talking about Tekken Tag 2?s ugly 3D models?”
My comply about TTT2 is about whoring fans in a predictable way, not being horrendous or something like that.
Tekken doesn’t “really” have ugly models, VF neither… But for about only those two (companies) are pretty the only two that get models “perfectly”, most other modeling doesn’t look that great to begin with…. Unless you happen to think that SF IV graphics are the utmost high point of helenian beauty and top notch quality; if that’s the case then I’ll cry for you, don’t worry even though it’s already hopeless for you.
Now the “bad” thing is even though those model might be extremely beautiful; is that they have too many awkward motions here and there to creep you out right of the bat if you attentively look at them. This problem pretty much stems from 2 points: one is that both VF and Tekken are dragging down animations from their first games to begin with; and the other is that there are times where the motion capture itself isn’t really interesting to begin with from an animation point of view (there are a lot of moves where characters feel like are puppet that are being dragged by strings instead of people shifting weight to attack).
There is also the little fact that there are a bunch of universal animation in each game (everyone blocks the same, runs the same, have certain jabs that are the same and the like); that does drain personality out of each character, plus in some cases it does look too freaky for some characters (like, big as a truck guy sliding through air swiftly and etc).
Back in the day when all of the arguments where about 2D graphics vs 3D graphics; a big thing where 3D simply lost in every way was that “it looks worst” in comparison to 2D and “it animates strangely” and “they share too many (ugly) moves”….. As of today compared to back then (94) pretty much the only problem solved is “it looks worst”, other than that is people either not caring anymore about detailed animation (or never knowing it in the first place) or people have just lowered their standards enough as not to not complaining anymore since marvelous improvement it’s not gonna happen (most people that I know (including myself) are pretty much in this train).
a) In 1996, I was young and stupid! Dodge, + Dodge Attack FTW! SNK forced rolls into KOF, and I learned to love it!
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b) XIII is wonderful, but it’s not a new system, it’s not a re-birth of KOF. XII was a re-birth.
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c) TA is right right right! And it’s sad sad sad…
about the article on the website..just my 2cents
[quote]This year, they have given up taking risks. Same old system, with a couple of [b]system features that don?t really seem that important[/b], but will reward better players. Will the fans be happy? Or will SNKP still lose?
[i]Interestingly, had I been asked in 1996, I probably would have said ?no? to rolls. Now, I can?t live without them. Thank you SNK, for trying to evolve, and not leaving me to settle with some fireball+dragon gameplay. It?s easy, but? kinda boring, don?t you think? [/i]
[u]SNKP is taking a lot of flak at the moment for the unpatched state of XIII, but I?m not that sure they deserve it. They took risks, they got burned, and now, with a limited budget and a new president that doesn?t see profit in arcades, who knows how much longer they will last? Why don?t we wait and see the console version, before damning them all to hell?[/u][/quote]
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[b]why you say such a thing? I mean the new system features are quite important i think, EX/NEOMAX give the name something new,something deeper than just standard combos/bc combos, you can create something different from what the past kofs had to offer.. in my opinion those new, small, features are well made (bugs aside).[/b]
[i]
thats true, but the switch screen wasnt that bad either, the roll is the perfect way to evade attacks, still i think the switch mode was good as much as the roll (i was hoping they would have re-introduced this feature in xiii xD)[/i]
[u]
As i said, to me SNK did a FANTASTIC job on XIII, they did what most of the fans wanted they to do.. xii juggles,2k2 bc mode, exs,neomax, more characters, more moves, endings, a story line, two bossess.. i cannot blame them for the game itself (bugs aside).. imo the did their best and they did well… now it’s all about the community (in regards to the arcades now, and console (offline & online) later on)[/u]
” I don?t even need to get started on Tekken Tag 2 now, do I?”
What do you mean by that?
Talking about Tekken Tag 2’s ugly 3D models?
Lately (8 years or more) companies haven’t been sticking to what “they can do” or “what they want to do” when it comes to fighting game but for some reason they are awfully worried to what kind of input they are going to get from a game. That means that they aren’t big risks when it comes to games. A big part of that is that compared to 10 or more years ago fans now whine like no tomorrow (and have places to whine). I have been playing games since like 84 or something and to be honest every 5 or 6 years this big groups of guys pop up from nowhere with a bunch of ridiculous complains that are certainly hard to understand and virtually impossible to justify and start bashing the whole place non stop… And each time the arguments get sillier and sillier.
That easily translates that there is absolutely no game company that has the “guts” to scrape 80% of the cast on a sequel and do a completely new story with different settings and characters (and systems). And of course Blaz Blue doesn’t count since the producer said that since he couldn’t direct the Guilty Gear name as he wanted, he preferred to drop the name and make something new; in other words is like he was virtually “forced” to change; he didn’t “choose” to be different.
That also translates that new games aren’t going to pop up anything soon (soon as, in the current generation of hardware). I mean, just look at the Capcom titles of now. Capcom is no longer a company that _create_ games, Capcom is now a cheap prostitute that does weird poses as long as you throw nickels at her… And everyone is buying, so there is no problem with that.
In the same vein, everyone speaks of “fighting game renewal season” and things like that…. And honestly I’m still yet to see it, since really no batch of new games have been popping up at all, we have only getting ^? games for quite some few time (it’s funny how SSF IV can be written as SSF 2^?) . At least I give credit to SNK, since they are trying to take 2D graphics to the limit; another “risk” that 99% of the companies aren’t willing to take since 2D dotting takes time, requires dedication and is more expensive over all than fugly 3D modeling (fugly, because virtually no one “gets it right” either).
I don’t even need to get started on Tekken Tag 2 now, do I?