It’s tough making fighting games in America. It’s even tougher to make fighting games in America that people will pay attention to. Omar Kendall knows this - he's a veritable veteran of the genre in America. Kendall’s most recent project, PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale, is a fighting game designed for both the hardcore and casual bracket. A game designed to stand out, but not reinvent the wheel: finesse here, a new take on an old mechanic there, and a hell of a lot of character.
“I’m a big fan of the fighting genre, obviously, but I know it’s a shrinking genre,” says Kendall. “Nowadays, there are obviously other game types that are dominating people’s attention. I hope that fighting games continue to evolve with the times and be able to react with people’s changing tastes. I hope they stay viable.”
To help stay relevant, Kendall believes that it's time for those working in the fighting genre to ask themselves the tough questions. What are they doing that’s hurting their appeal? What sorts of things can they do to expand their audience?
I hope fighting games continue to be viable - and that we’re a part of that.
“I think a game like PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale does ask those questions. The setting has a broad level of appeal, and the way we’re implementing systems we feel will also have broad appeal. I hope fighting games continue to be viable - and that we’re a part of that.”
Kendall is currently serving as Game Director at SuperBot Entertainment, the recently formed company developing Sony’s mascot brawler. He’s worked across a number of genres, but was headhunted by Shannon Studstill - Senior Director at SCEA - because he knows how to make a fighting game sing. What’s more, he’s based in the States, which is a rarity.
“It’s really difficult to make a fighting game in America, because basically there’s not a long history. You’ve got the dudes from Chicago who make Mortal Kombat, and that’s pretty much it. Most of the talent is from Japan."
Kick, punch, block, putt.
SuperBot was specifically formed to work on All-Stars. The company is comprised of a handful of fighting experts, a handful of developers who have a strong loyalty and affinity to the PlayStation brand, and a slew of in-betweeners. There are 100 odd devs working on All-Stars, so a harmony between these disparate groups was crucial.
“You do kind of have a struggle. We don’t have a hundred guys who are fighting game fanatics – maybe 25% of our total staff are really into fighting games and have maybe competed on a high tournament level. Then you’ve just got your casual guys, who maybe have played a fighting game or two, and you’ve got these die-hard PlayStation guys.”
Kendall believes this kind of melting pot is essential to the success of All-Stars; that the diversity is crucial. Not every guy who came from a fighting game background is going to give a crap about PaRappa the Rapper, and not every guy from Naughty Dog or Insomniac is going to care about the depth of Street Fighter’s mechanics. “We needed a very specific set of expertise to make the game like this,” he muses. “You have to pull from both worlds.”
It hasn’t been the smoothest ride for the fledgling studio. When All-Stars was first announced to the public, the reception was brutal.
It never occured to us we were being offensive to people. We just like video games.
“I think it only occurred to me... we had our announcements back in April, and we’d had some media training,” recalls Kendall, with a laugh. ‘This is what you say if someone asks this,’ that sort of thing. But inevitably, we’re making a mascot brawler, right? So someone’s going to ask THE question, and these people training us were like, ‘try to downplay the comparisons.’”
It seems absurd that the team would be requested to downplay any comparisons to Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros., considering how keenly aware they were of of its influence. But they were also surprised at the vitriolic nature of the feedback. “It never occurred to us that we were being offensive to people. We just like video games, and we wanted to make something that’s fun.”
SuperBot has succeeded in making a fun game, as anyone who’s played the beta or attended a recent consumer show can now attest to. Its appeal lies with its accessible premise and control scheme, which quickly seduces players into poking around under the hood. For Kendell, this accessibility was crucial from the get-go.
“We’re going to attract people who are fans of the PlayStation brands, but just because they liked Sly Cooper doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to jump in and start doing dragon punches. So we set a very low technical department when it comes to inputs. It’s a really simple up, down, left, right control scheme.
"But at the same time, we like competition and getting people in the same room and have them battle it out to see who’s the best, so there is an underlying depth and strategy there. That to me is the great virtue of fighting games. It’s not like ‘oh, I can do this really super complicated sequence of input on a controller’ – it’s the mind-games that go on at a deeper level once you really have a good understanding of the systems and how they work. It’s that battle of wits. That’s the really interesting part of fighting games, and that’s what we tried to bring to All-Stars.”
Heavenly Sword's Nariko cutting loose.
Drawing from his experiences working on THQ’s UFC franchise, Kendall and his team also wanted to ensure that there was an authenticity to the game for fans of the characters.
“UFC fans are very savvy when it comes to the details of the sport. So we had a very specific strategy of really tapping into that, and going really deep into the authenticity of the mechanics and the positions that people were doing, because we knew the fans would respond to that.
"We take a similar approach to All-Stars. For example, for the Sly Cooper fan, we’ve tried very hard to get to the essence of that character. Obviously Sly Cooper has never appeared in a 2D fighting game, but there are elements to Sly that are very quintessential. He’s a very sneaky guy, so we give him invisibility and back-stabbing and the characters of Bentley and Murray play a very prominent role in those games, so we made sure to include them in his moves set. So we're really doing deep dives on these individual characters and these individual levels and universes and really trying to become as authentic and accurate in our portrayal of these characters as possible. We hope players will respond to that.”
In a game that pitches Fat Princess against Kratos, balance has also been a major focus, especially when it comes to each character’s super attack. Kendall acknowledges early criticisms of certain characters’ super attacks, where a push of a button equals a ‘kill-em-all’ cut-scene.
“PaRappa’s level three super – the Gotta Believe music concert – was actually one of the first supers that we made. It was controversial with a lot of members of the team, and on message boards, because essentially Parrapa pushes a button and watches a cut scene and then everybody dies.”
In a fighting game, says Kendell, this challenges a lot of people’s sensibilities of fairness and player agency. Sweet Tooth’s level three super, for example, requires him to shoot and catch other players in order to earn kills, demanding more from the player.
“It was a big challenge having supers like Kratos' and Sweet Tooth’s sitting next to supers like PaRappa’s, and I think that it could have been a situation where we just ran from it, and said, let’s not focus on stuff like that. But I think we really tried to offer something new and challenge some of the standard conventions of fighting games, and what it means to have a competitive landscape."
So SuperBot looked at how much energy each super cost, how many kills a super can get, how easy it is for a particular character to get energy, and tried to balance everything out. "We sort of used those exterior systems and features to try and balance those ‘I’m going to click a button and watch a cut scene’ supers with the ‘earn my kill’ kinds of supers. I guess we’ll find out if we did that right or not.”
There’s a lot of pressure, too, to be truthful to these iconic characters. Kratos must feel like Kratos, but still be able to work within the mechanics of a 2D fighting game. When we asked which characters gave Kendall and his team the biggest challenges, the answer was both obvious... and terrifying.
“The characters who appear in games that aren’t out yet. So we’ve got Dante from the new DmC, and Raiden from Metal Gear Rising: Revengance. The vast majority of people will experience those characters for the first time in our game.
Those are the characters that give us the biggest challenge - the ones we're developing at the same time as their creators are.
"It’s a strange level of pressure. Because – I sympathize with the developers that are working on those games, but we have to manage our own production cycle. Sometimes we’re asking them questions they haven’t even asked themselves yet about how they’re going to handle their characters, but we still have to ask, because we still have to make our game, and hope it sort of matches their vision. Those are the characters that give us the biggest challenge – the ones that we’re developing at the same time as their creators are.”
Sometimes, notes Kendall, the marketing machine can get in the way of communication between themselves and these other studios.
“I’ll be honest, there are some things that we watch, like trailers, or promotional footage that comes out of trade shows and we’re like, ‘we’ve never even seen that before!’ and want to immediately run back and put those new things into our version of the character. There’s this sort of leap frog thing that we’re doing with these characters.”
Dude - your head's on fire. Might wanna put that out.
For all of All-Stars’ challenges, Kendall must surely be pleased with what he and his team has achieved. Previews have been positive, with many citing the old aphorism ‘easy to pick up and difficult to master.’ We ask Kendall if he thinks the adage still holds weight, considering the complexity of many games available on shelves today.
“I see a lot of parallels in the game industry with Hollywood. You used to see a wide variety of experiences. You could go to the movies and watch a strong piece built on acting, story and setting, and now you’ve seen this transition to this giant, big budget effects driven movies that have sort of drowned everything else out.
And so I think in consumers' minds, it's sort of separated. That a console experience has to be this big gigantic cinematic experience, and if you want something that is that ‘easy pick up, hard to master’ experience, well that’s your Angry Birds, or something like that. That divide does trouble me, a little bit. I’ve come from fighting games, and they’ve always had that element, you know, they can still be a graphical showcase or whatever, but take years to master. And I hope there’s still an audience for the kind of game that mixes both. I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive."
Lucy O'Brien is Assistant Editor at IGN AU. You should talk to her about games, horror movies and the TV show Freaks & Geeks on IGN at Luce_IGN_AU,or follow her @Luceobrien on Twitter. If you like what you're readin', meet the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.
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