Fighting Edge

Getting to “Yes”: Genres: Fighting Games

December 23, 2009 10:51 PM

Game Design
Bob Bates: 2004

Fighting games are two-person games in which each player controls a figure on the screen, using a combination of moves to attack his opponent and defend against his opponent’s attacks. These games are generally viewed from a side perspective, and each session lasts only a few minutes.

Players expect to find a basic set of attacks and counters they can learn right away, as well as more complicated combinations they can master over time.

Genre-Specific Game Design Issues
Fighting games are simple and direct, yet they can be very engaging. This is one of the few genres to assume that the players are physically sitting side by side and can talk to (and taunt) each other. Your goal is to create quick bursts of swift and intense action, followed by more of the same.

Because the focus is so tight, great graphics are a must. The only things players see are a confined fighting area, a relatively static backdrop, and the two fighters. These characters are the most visually developed of all the genres, because the processor can focus so much attention on them.

Each of the characters must have a unique look that conveys personality, and a set of distinctive moves that are interesting to watch. The animations must be perfect.

The characters and moves must be well balanced. If one character has unstoppable moves, everyone will want to play him. If another is too weak, no players will choose him as their avatar. Either case would be evidence of poor design.

Pay attention to weapons, special graphics effects and sound effects, because they add a large portion of the flash and dazzle of the games.

Manage the damage points so that the rounds are neither too short nor too long.

Start the player with a set of easy-to-learn moves. The button-presses should do approximately the same things for all characters (for example, High Attack, Low Attack, Defend, and so on), but you should also build in special moves for each character that the players can learn as they slowly master the game.

Ed Boon

Ed Boon has been in the game industry for 17 years. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, he began working for Williams Electronics, programming pinball machines. In 1990 he moved to the videogame department where he designed and programmed High Impact Football and its sequel Super High Impact. Midway split from Williams Electronics, and in 1991 Boon began work on the first Mortal Kombat arcade game. The game spawned several sequels, two Hollywood motion pictures, two television series and has generated over a billion dollars in revenue. His most recent title Mortal Kombat Deception was released in October of 2004 for the Playstation 2 and Xbox videogame systems.

I disagree that the goal of a fighting game is “quick bursts of swift and intense action, followed by more of the same.” The goal really is like a boxing game where each hit reduces the opponent’s health by a certain percentage. The first player to get enough hits on his opponent to reduce his health meter to 0 wins the round. The first opponent to win 2 out of 3 rounds wins the match.

Also, it’s not true that “the button presses should do approximately the same thing across all the characters.” In fact, exactly the opposite is true. Some fighting games have been criticized for doing exactly that. If all of the basic attacks for the characters were approximately the same, then there really wouldn’t be much distinction between different characters, other than their special moves. This results in the perception that all the characters are basically the same and the game quickly gets dull.

The goal with fighting games is to make the characters as diverse as possible in all areas: Basic attacks, defensive moves, special moves, speed, strength. The more variables you can introduce into the basic fighting mechanic, the more variables you can adjust to make as varied a cast of characters as possible. This is very challenging as the rosters of characters in fighting games has gone up from about 8 in the early 90’s to 20+ in today’s games.

Tips for designers
Animations in fighting games are perhaps the most critical element that can make the game “feel” great or horrible. More than any other game genre, fighting games are very reflex-sensitive and absolutely require that the controls be as responsive as possible for the player. Animations play a critical role in this formula. When a player presses an attack button, his character needs to begin his attack animation immediately. Players need to see their character begin their animation the instant they press the button. A delay of just a few frames will make the difference between a responsive and sluggish-feeling fighting game.

The same is true with maneuvering your fighter on the screen. There are periods in the game where control of the fighter is temporarily taken away from the player—in the middle of a punch attack, for example. The time window where you cannot interrupt with another command from your controller needs to be minimal. The instant your attack animation finishes, control of your character needs to resume. Both the animation speeds and the small time windows where the player controls are disabled contribute to the responsive feel of a fighting game.

Also, since so much of fighting games graphics are devoted to displaying these large character models, the design of the characters, their costumes, their size, and their styles all are very sensitive areas that require much more thought than just putting a guy in a white karate suit. Character design is much more critical in fighting games, and the bulk of the content is in the lineup of characters.

Games that designers should play
You can literally count on one hand the fighting games that have a major influence in this category (at least in the United States). These include Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, as well as Street Fighter and Soul Calibur. Interestingly, all of these titles have been around for many years (some 10+) and have had many sequels. This genre is so competitive that it is very hard, if not impossible to introduce a successful new fighting game without putting a license on it.

On advances in technology
Sophistication in graphics presentation is probably the most noticeable feature that has changed fighting game designs. As the hardware systems become more powerful they allow games to present much more realistic graphics. Designers have over 10,000 polygons to represent their characters. Also, with motion capture technology these characters’ movements can be exactly like a real human because the motions are taken from data created by human motion. I see this trend continuing. Each new generation of fighting game will make big leaps in the visuals and the advances will mostly be in the area of graphic presentation.

On story
Fighting games (for the most part) were originally made for the arcade, where games were designed to provide entertainment in short 2-3 minute spurts. When you only have the player’s attention for such a short period of time, you need to entertain them enough that they want to put another quarter into the game and experience it again. This means you can’t spend time telling an elaborate story. You need to bring them right into the action and give them the most exciting experience you can deliver in 3 minutes. This legacy of “short burst of entertainment” for the most part has remained intact with fighting games. But as they are being designed for the home, additional game modes have been added to provide the longer stretches of fun.

The team
The buzzword phrase that describes the development of a videogame today is “movie-lie production,” and the phrase is so often used because it’s accurate.

It is very important for designers to acknowledge the massive amount of effort that goes into the creation of a video game. In just 10 years, the Mortal Kombat fighting games have gone from a 4-man team to about 60-70. Instead of just a couple of programmers, artists and a sound designer, we now also have writers, producers, directors, and designers. All these people have to understand the vision of the game and understand what their contribution will be.

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