Well, this didn't turn out at all like I imagined

So yeah, I made a game about the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I'll get around to making one of those games that make you cry at some point or another, I guess. A commenter requested that I give some insight into how we went about making UFC 2009 Undisputed. Well, I'll try to do this and avoid being fired by shedding some light on some of the more abstract decision making that went into the creation of the game's combat system.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, first off, what's wrong with you? I update this thing every six months or something ridiculous; find some new interests. Second, you've probably realized that I like fighting games, and above all fighting games, the Virtua Fighter series. Long criticized as being sterile, boring, and bland by the majority of fighting game players (shunned so is Virtua Fighter that at this year's Evolution 2009 World Championship, an event attended by only the most distilled and dedicated American fighting game player, it was completely unrepresented), Virtua Fighter has steadily eased itself into comfortable obscurity in the West. Its latest arcade incarnation, Virtua Fighter 5 R, is unlikely to receive any sort of console version, a feat almost unheard of in the current arcade market, which is shrinking by the day. There are a combination of factors that led VF to never really catching on in the West; like a lot of Sega games, the visual design of the game is rooted in a much more pragmatic aesthetic, focusing on believability more so than excitement. And the game's combat mechanics, while solid and not at all uncommon within fighting games as a genre, are perhaps more difficult to learn through simple empirical play than either its 2d predecessors or its 3d contemporaries. The Virtua Fighter series is known for being one of the few 3d fighting games that actually looks better in the hands of experts than in the hands of novices - and while I think that contributes to the game's celebration in some communities, I'm fully convinced it led to its downfall in ours (there's also that whole Virtua Fighter initially being only available on Sega consoles and Virtua Fighter 3 costing a dollar to play in arcades thing, but that doesn't really fit into the argument I'm making at all).

So of course, when I sat down to design the combat system in UFC 2009 Undisputed, the first thing I said to myself was, "Well, I better get started ripping off Virtua Fighter." I can say this now because where Undisputed ended up is quite a ways away from VF. But in my opinion, most of Virtua Fighter's core mechanics are more than suitable for extraction and translation into other fighting games. There was actually an early version of UFC 2009 that featured momentum swings based on guaranteed throw situations, which is the cornerstone of Virtua Fighter's gameplay. Ultimately we had to go with something else for a combination of reasons, one of them being a desire for more a more organic, physics-driven reaction system (another being that in focus testing, people just weren't getting the subtle nuances of a -8 frame advantage after blocking a mid attack; no, I'm not joking).

This plan of mine, to root UFC 2009 Undisputed's gameplay in the fertile soil of the traditional fighting game, was a controversial one at the time. The expectation was that the game would be more spiritually aligned with sports games that happen to feature combat elements, like Fight Night. I have written about Fight Night, suggesting that it and games like it represented an opportunity for fighting games to survive what I perceived to be the genre's pending demise (that fighting games are experiencing a tremendous resurgence speaks loudly to just how wrong I am about a great many things). But in saying as much, I'm also asserting that Fight Night is not a traditional fighting game, and I stand by that, while stressing that I say that not as an insult, but simply as a descriptor. Its core gameplay is not rooted in the fighting game tradition, and while Fight Night is one of my most favorite series, it does not satisfy the same gaming hunger that I satiate with Virtua Fighter. I wanted to make UFC 2009 Undisputed feed that hunger, for a combination of selfish and altruistic reasons. I wanted to prove that the fighting game was still a viable medium, and one that could be played and enjoyed by the general gaming public, not just the nomadic tribe that puts its tents up in Las Vegas for three days every August, and in doing so I was taking a big gamble in the minds of my co-workers, many of whom disliked traditional fighting games for their complexity, arbitrary mechanics, and lack of relatability.

Given the unsuccessful early play testing sessions, my co-workers were justified in their concerns. So, after my initial failure at implementing a throw-based frame advantage system, I decided on another approach. Rather than pull out the actual mechanical gameplay elements, I elected to instead try and replicate the emotional decision-making that's involved in playing Virtua Fighter. I tried to recreate the sense of "risk mitigation" that dominates so many of Virtua Fighter's encounters. Rarely in Virtua Fighter does a defensive maneuver leave the player free from attack. The famous "Evade, Throw Escape, Guard" macro-movement, the first step in becoming an advanced VF player, only protects against a limited amount of retaliatory attacks from an opponent; it's up to the player to decide to which side to step, which throws to defend against, etc. I took this concept and applied it to UFC's defensive systems by making them exclusive. You can block against strikes, and you can block against grapples, but you cannot block against all strikes simultaneously or all grapples simultaneously, and never both of them at the same time. By making most of the offensive options as equally viable as we could across striking and grappling, KOs and Submissions, I also tried to encourage as much true yomi (literally the Japanese word for "reading," but in the fighting game community, the word is used to describe predicting the intentions of your opponent) as possible. While not exclusive to Virtua Fighter, yomi is often considered most potent in VF due to the inability to effectively mitigate all types of attacks with any consistency; players must truly "read" the intentions of their opponent at any given situation and take the appropriate action. I think UFC 2009 Undisputed does a good job of replicating this. By making the match-ending conditions so lethal and omnipresent, players have to quickly discern the intentions of their opponent based on things like character selection, and whether the opponent chooses to fight standing, in the clinch, or on the ground.

It would seem that generally, the public likes what I'm feeding them. While internally there was a lot of what I'll call "concern" prior to release over some of the decisions we ended up making, UFC 2009 Undisputed is off to great success, both critically and (I presume) financially. There is an initial learning curve to the game's mechanics and control scheme, and the complete nuances of the game continue to be discussed and debated. Most reviewers agree that the game is much more (enjoyably) complex than your standard gaming fair. Whether or not the game's success is due to, or in spite of, a more hardcore fighting game experience than anyone (except myself) envisioned is kind of a wash to me. I got the chance to expose a couple million people to what I consider to be gaming at its finest for the very first time in my career. If I don't get to make another game ever, at least I have that. Plus, I think we've shown that games don't have to be dumbed down to be made palatable to the lowest common denominator to succeed, which is a popular theory amongst executives in this new gaming world of ours. If the subject matter of a particular game is attractive enough to a demographic, the people will rise to the occasion and dedicate the time and energy into getting better at your game and they'll thank you for it. There's a really impressive new community that has sprung up around the game, and that they appreciate what we did is humbling, gratifying, and inspiring all at once.

You could kind of say that UFC 2009 Undisputed is my console port of Virtua Fighter 5 R, but that would probably get THQ sued, so I won't be saying that.

Thanks for reading.

They Call Him Punches in Bunches

Just finished a game recently, hope you guys dig it.

Game Begets Game 2: The Begettening

Well, the success stories keep pouring in. Turns out that Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is well on its way to being the highest-grossing digital download ever. A homegrown fighting game community kid by the name of Dave Sirlin is more than a little responsible for helping HD Remix achieve this amazing feat.

I won't lie, it warms me somewhere deep in my cold heart that a fighting game - perhaps the finest fighting game the industry has ever produced - is going to set this record. At a time when fighting games are oftentimes relegated to second-class status, as most major American publishers don't even consider fighting games to be a core gaming genre, this is a huge victory.

Congrats to Sirlin, and to everyone who made this possible.

Thanks for reading.

Game Begets Game

I'll admit it; I get really giddy when I see coverage of my friends' games. I entered the industry with a group of designers born from the fighting game community; a group of guys for whom simply playing games was never enough. My good friends John and Paul Edwards, Adam Puhl, Eric Williams, and extended family like Ben Cureton, Jason Cole, Ed Ma, Dave Sirlin and Jason De Heras all came into the industry around the same time and have all gone on to show themselves as rising stars in the industry; if you haven't heard some of their names yet, trust me you will.

Another good friend of mine birthed from the fighting game community, all-star designer Derek Daniels, is currently tearing it up within Activision's venerable Central Design department. This means he gets to demonstrate his prowess over many of Activision's titles. One of those titles is set to be EGM's January cover game - X-Men Origins: Wolverine. A quick look at the quotes from their teaser over at 1up clearly show that Derek's influence is showing through:

"In our January issue of EGM, we tell you all about real-time in-game healing, the simple satisfactions of an elegantly accessible combat system, a sweet boss fight against the very first Sentinel robot prototype, and lots more...We also chat with Raven about a few of Origins' influences, from God of War to Super Smash Bros..."

So yeah, this post is just me bragging about my friend's accomplishments. Game seems to be shaping up nicely and I can't wait to play it. Kudos to Derek!

Thanks for reading.

Please Accept this Meager Update

Apparently, David Jaffe is unaware that when a product is marketed, occaisonally one is lied to about that product's contents. In case Mr. Jaffe is uninformed with regard to some other truisms of the world, I provide this valuable lesson: water is also wet.



I don't have many words on this subject; I think Jaffe speaks for himself pretty well. Ironically, I have never felt that God of War's marketing does the complexity of that series justice. Maybe the themes I appreciate most aren't the ones on which Sony wants to sell the game; it's their right to do so.

And just for the record, God of War is one of my favorite games ever, and my second favorite game on the PS2, right behind ICO and right ahead of Metal Gear Solid 3, so let it never be said that I'm not fair and balanced.

Downright Fierce

The above picture is from an ad campaign for the console release of Street Fighter 4. I wish I could say I found it over at Kotaku, a cool site that I don't feel gets quite the recognition it deserves, but I actually stumbled upon the set through NeoGAF. This particular picture, with the instructional commands for a Hadouken, had an immediate impact on me. Street Fighter 2 was a watershed game for me. While Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. won the first Battle for my Heart, Street Fighter handily won both the Battle for my Brain and the Battle for my Soul (all important battles in the hotly contested, yet completely fabricated Omar War).

This particular picture made me chuckle because I recently received a bug on the game I'm working on at the moment. In short, the bug complained that controller inputs changed based on screen orientation - an input performed when a character is on the left side was mirrored when that character was on the right side of the screen. You know, exactly like Street Fighter. In my entire design career, it never occurred to me that anyone who's ever played a fighting game would ever find something like this strange, which of course reveals a more important lesson: there are a lot of modern video game players for whom fighting game conventions are not a part of their gaming language.

That really sucks.

Anyway, please check out the recently released Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, an update to the greatest fighting game ever made. There's not a game being released this year that deserves your money more.

Thanks for reading.

RotK - GIRPN: Acronym Edition

I'm almost reluctant to resurrect this series. I kind of feel like making games threatens to render me ineligible to comment on my personal play preferences, which is a stark departure from my previous feeling. But, at the end of the day, I wouldn't be fulfilling the premise of this blog without talking about the playing side of this whole games thing. So, here we go:

Bangai-O Spirits
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: D3



Bangai-O spirits bills itself as a shooter I think, but it's much more of a puzzle game. Sure, you navigate a giant robot - giant, despite it's relatively small on-screen presence - and you definitely dodge bullets, while throwing out a megaton of your own. The robot itself has 4 weapon slots: two "normal" infinite weapon slots, and two "super" weapon slots that exhaust, and require power-ups to refill. There are a handful of different weapons you can equip in these slots, and some of them, when paired, combine to form complimentary abilities. Each "stage" is broken down into individual "challenges," each with their own unique combination of enemies and objectives, and a big bulk of the strategy in the game is figuring out the right combination of weapons to bring into the fight. Some challenges seem to be solvable using a variety of weapons, but others seem to require a very specific combination. In this way, the game has a very puzzle-like feel. Oh yeah, and you die a lot; there is no real way to figure out which weapons to bring to many fights until you arrive upon a situation in which you can't prevail; this game is definitely for masochists, but it's also pretty good fun. Plus it's by Treasure; every time you don't buy one of their games, a kitten dies.

Soul Bubbles
Developer: Mekensleep
Pulisher: Eidos



I had a design I was working on a while ago involving bubbles that never went anywhere, so this game kind of holds a special place in my heart. I don't even know where I heard of it, and it's only available at Toys "R" Us, so it's not exactly the easiest-to-find. In Soul Bubbles, you take the role of a custodian of souls; you place these souls in a bubble, and move them from one place on a map to another, collecting various trinkets along the way. Occasionally, you'll have to divide your big bubble up into smaller bubbles to fit through tight passageways, and sometimes creatures will come onto screen that you have to jab with the stylus. That's pretty much it.

Yes, I suppose this is a bit of an oversimplification, but really, the game isn't that deep. It's certainly not as deep or complex as Mekensleep's Creative Director Oliver Dejade recently suggested. That doesn't mean I'm not enjoying Soul Bubbles. In fact, I quite like it. But sometimes people get a little caught up in their own hype. What kind of hype am I talking about? this kind of hype, which appears every time you turn on the game:


So yeah. Check Soul Bubbles out, if you get the chance.

Braid
Developer: Number None
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios


Those of you who follow the blog will know that I've been waiting for this game for a while. It might surprise some of you to know, then, that I just recently bothered to fire up the 360 and download the thing.

Turns out, Braid is a pretty good game. Braid is a side-scrolling platformer with a focus on collecting. It's really good looking, and surprisingly challenging. It does a so-so job of teaching you about itself. In some instances, it is meticulous in showing you how to walk, and jump. When it comes to solving its core puzzles, however - collecting puzzle pieces - Braid is shockingly bad at teaching. Going through the first level, I collected the majority of the puzzle pieces, but was somewhat puzzled as to how to get the last remaining ones. They were placed in a way that really led me to believe that I simply didn't possess the "power-ups" required to collect them. In truth, I guess this isn't so much a problem with Braid as it is a problem with the library of game information that I bring to Braid, but it had an effect on the way I approached the game nonetheless. It turns out that I was able to collect all of the pieces on the first level using the skills that my character already possessed; Frustratingly, I discovered this through a series of happy accidents, but it almost felt like chance. I could imagine a lot of players simply walking away from the game in frustration.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 (Demo)
Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games




Let me first say that when I pay Naruto, I don't feel like I'm playing a game with any spiritual connection to a traditional 3d fighting game. I don't even feel a similarity to fringe 3d fighting games like Power Stone or Smash Bros. Now, don't mistake this for a compliment; it's simply an assertion. Those looking for me to give the game a compliment, look here: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is freakin' awesome. It's a fighting game alright; there are combos, normals, throws, specials and supers, launchers, juggles, and even more nuanced fighting game features like helpers, meter management, and okizeme. But CyberConnect2 has managed to assemble these familiar pieces together in a really unique and interesting way. And surprisingly, I'm in control of my character most of the time! When you watch a lot of the promotional material, like that I've linked to in previous posts, one could get the impression that this game has a lot of moments of non-interactivity. Yes, the supers (called Ultimate Chakras) are long, but I found them to be surprisingly infrequent, and not at all obtrusive. Most importantly, the game makes me want to hang around and learn its ins and outs. I don't know anything about the license upon which this game is based - and I don't really care to learn about it, either. This game (okay, technically it's a demo, but that just means the final game has even more to love) is really fun. This obviously goes without saying, but I give this game my highest recommendation!

Monster Madness: Grave Danger (Demo)
Developer: Psyonix Studios
Publisher: SouthPeak Games




This game is another one that I was rooting for. I have a great fondness for the action/hack-and-slash genre, and I hope to get a shot as designing one someday. But I may never get my chance if games like Monster Madness aren't more successful. Unfortunately, Monster Madness is probably best described as Hunter: The Reckoning with a great sense of style injected into it, and all the fun taken out of it. It's obvious that the creators of this game have a very strong artistic sense. The characters and world in the game, while somewhat cliche, look interesting and exciting. But when it comes to actually pushing buttons, the game kind of falls apart. The attacks in the game feel really slushy, and there's an overwhelming feeling of disconnectedness between the player and the character on screen. Like Hunter, this game is probably a lot more entertaining when played with friends. Unlike Hunter, and a more successful example of the genre like Diablo, Monster Madness isn't at all entertaining when played solo. And honestly, I feel really bad saying this, but I was really disappointed with this game. Usually, I'll buy a game that I support philosophically, even if I don't necessarily love the game in practice; I'll probably be doing this with Monster Madness. I don't see this as rewarding bad behavior; the guys making this game are working hard to deliver an experience, and I feel like I've been in their shoes before. Sometimes I miss being in an situation to work on a game like this, one where I really get a strong sense of passion and personal pride in the artistic side of the game.

I'm playing a few other things at the moment, but none so much that I'd be willing to share my thoughts on them. I almost left Monster Madness out, because I really don't want to go down the road of bashing games right now, but maybe there's someone out there who hadn't heard of the game that might give it a chance, despite (or even due to) my harsh words.

Thanks for reading.