The history of game development is usually a history of compromise. Due to technical constraints, time constraints, budget, or some combination of the three.
Sometimes, however, first-party games come out of an environment where these restrictions are lifted, and that seems to be what the Street Fighter 6 development team had to fight for behind the scenes.
Detective game They recently released their Street Fighter 6 cover story online, detailing how Capcom’s management needed to be pushed back and convincing that their take on the game was worth it.
This basically boils down to the idea behind SF6 to create something that captures the essence of what drew people to the genre in the first place.
“The idea I got from Nakayama-san is that we wanted to roughly return it to how it was during the Street Fighter II era,” producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya said via Game Informer. “We wanted to make another Street Fighter game that was not just for existing fans of the series, but for everyone and get the same feeling where all kinds of players fall in love with fighting games…with Street Fighter. When this concept was presented by Nakayama-san, it resonated strongly with me. It’s a challenge, but it’s worth tackling.”
Though they stepped in after Street Fighter 5 to take lead developer roles, director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto along with their relatively less experienced team still don’t have the seniority or authority to make big executive decisions on their own.
Yoshinori Ono is no longer around to command the ship, but this is clearly where Tsuchiya, who has also been at Capcom for over 30 years, steps in to be the voice in their corner when confronting those in charge of the company.
“It took some time to get a few people – the decision makers – outside the team to explain why these new features matter,” Nakayama said. “We’re trying to achieve a lot more than other fighting games, but we want Street Fighter 6 to be relevant and maybe an entry point for a lot of people to get involved and excited about a fighting match.”
Those with boots on the ground certainly want to do whatever they can to avert the disaster of Street Fighter 5’s launch, but it’s also easy to see why Capcom is so reluctant to give them anything they ask for.
Street Fighter X Tekken, and Street Fighter 5 and Marvel vs.
Hell, they revealed it recently SF5 was originally slated for 6 seasons of DLC before being scaled back at 4 – then green light for a fifth season after the success of the Champion Edition.
Meanwhile, their other big properties like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter are making Capcom more money than ever with Street Fighter catching up.
Luckily for everyone, it looks like we won’t actually be hearing about management involvement in this particular project.
“It’s very rare that matches pay off because they’ve been able to deliver everything the team aspired to,” Tsuchiya said. “There is always some kind of compromise that needs to be made or ideas that should have been scrapped due to budget, schedule and resource issues. But right now, in terms of the basic things that Nakayama-san wanted to accomplish with his dream project, it seems like we didn’t have to make any kind of omissions or compromises for this title.”
We’ve seen the team take new steps with the franchise, such as giving players the ability to create custom avatars to roam and interact with in the all-new Battle Hub, as well as the largest chunk of single-player content Street Fighter has yet seen with the ride. of the SF6 world.
Game Informer makes it look like Capcom’s leadership is behind the entire fighting game team now, and perhaps all the positive attention SF6 has received thus far will help dispel any remaining doubts.
Whether or not Street Fighter 6 will ultimately achieve its goal of revitalizing the series and potentially taking it to new heights remains to be seen.
But it’s nice to know that there’s a group of people building SF6 who really care about what Street Fighter is and why it’s important to get it right.
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