Video games and I have a long history together — my first professional writing gig was as a video game reviewer, and I eventually became the editor of a semi-popular game review site (now defunct) called eXscape. Later on, I worked with the Future Games Network and PCGameworld.com. And then, a few years later, I was the store manager for the #1 EB Games store in the Midwest for 2004 and 2005… and #2 for 2006 (out of hundreds of stores!).

It was video games, as well as my part-time gig in comics, that got me interested in business in the first place, and I still daily follow the industry to see what’s going on. There are many interesting parallels between the video game industry and the comic book industry, and there are many things that one can learn from the other.

So, I’ve decided to write a series of articles this week discussing some of the lessons I’ve learned from watching the video game industry… and how these lessons might apply to small publishers and, in particular, comic book publishers. And today’s article is going to focus on one of my favorite genres of video games, one that has actually seen some spinoff licensing in the comic book industry: fighting games.

In 1987, Japanese game developer Capcom released an arcade game called “Street Fighter.” The game was fairly unremarkable, aside from the fact that it had six buttons per player instead of two; it was difficult to play, with imprecise controls and secret moves that were very hard to pull off correctly. Also, players could only play as two identical characters named Ryu and Ken; they were not able to play as the other characters in the game who were controlled by the computer.

Fortunately, Capcom understood that they had diamond that simply needed some polishing, and in 1991, Street Fighter II began appearing in arcades. Unlike the original, Street Fighter II was a tightly crafted game that required skill, timing and practice to master. It allowed players to go head-to-head with a varied cast of eight different characters, and the competitive nature of the game drew a lot of attention from arcade gamers. What’s more, the game was loaded with secret moves, making it a rewarding investment for those who had taken the time (and the quarters!) to master the game.

Street Fighter II popularized the fighting game genre, and because arcade games were extremely popular at the time, tons of imitators quickly sprung up. And this is one of the areas where we can learn some important lessons. Street Fighter II was the “gold standard” of fighting games for several years… but the series lost its position as the dominant fighting game due to many bad decisions on the part of Capcom in response to the incredible amount of competition that arose:

SNK’s Neo Geo Fighting Games

Just before Street Fighter II hit the arcades, another Japanese company called SNK came up with a novel idea. Arcade game developers at the time were responsible for not only creating interesting software, but for creating the hardware on which they’d be running their games. SNK realized that they could create a consumer version of their arcade hardware, sell their arcade games on cartridges, and essentially “double-dip” between the then-lucrative arcade market and the growing home-based console market. To make things even more interesting, SNK created memory cards that could be plugged into the arcade machines and then used to resume games on the home systems.

Once their new console hit shelves, SNK’s developers realized that they needed to quickly develop a wide array of software for their system. While companies like Nintendo and Sega (and later Sony) relied on third-party ports of popular arcade games to help sell their hardware, SNK developed most of its software in-house. And so the company began cranking out a variety of titles, many of which were shameless ripoffs of more popular titles. And, since two of Street Fighter’s original developers left Capcom to work for SNK, it was only fitting that SNK should start cranking out Street Fighter clones like Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, both of which spawned several sequels.

The SNK strategy was simple: copy ideas and add features. Both Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury were inferior to Street Fighter II, but both contained features it didn’t have, like scaling graphics and multi-tiered backgrounds. As SNK continued to develop fighting games, it differentiated itself from Capcom’s games by featuring more colorful characters, higher quality animations, and more frequent installments.

Mortal Kombat

Japan wasn’t the only country that wanted a piece of the fighting game pie. Midway had been a player in the arcade industry for years, and two of its developers, John Tobias and Ed Boon, came up with an idea for a fighting game using digitized actors instead of hand-drawn characters. Instead of trying to compete with the bloodless violence of Street Fighter II, the two made Mortal Kombat ridiculously gory, adding in blood that flew off enemies with every hit and the chance to finish a battle with a “fatality” where one player could kill another one off with a gory signature move. Mortal Kombat wasn’t nearly as technical as Street Fighter II, and it lacked the depth that series fans had come to love. But it had a massive appeal to casual gamers due to its ease of play and over-the-top violence, and it even had a secret character that could be unlocked and used in play.

Mortal Kombat was so successful as an arcade game that it went on to spawn one of the biggest launch events in the history of gaming when it was released for home systems. Midway wasted no time in getting Mortal Kombat II into arcades in 1993, as evidenced by the multiple versions of the game that were released to correct bugs and balance issues. The third game, Mortal Kombat 3, came out in 1995 and was such a disappointment that a subsequent update, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was released later that year.

While Mortal Kombat began to lose its popularity as a series as home console systems became more sophisticated and arcades began to die a slow death, it was the first fighting game to unseat Street Fighter II as the most popular fighter. And though it was technically inferior and looked back on today as more of a gimmick than a game, it differentiated itself from the “market leader” by being ridiculously gory, easy to play, and packed with an increasing number of secrets in every sequel.

Virtua Fighter and Tekken

While Street Fighter II was facing direct opposition from SNK and Midway (as well as several other developers), both Sega and Namco realized that the future of fighting games lay in three dimensions… and both set to work developing their own 3D fighting games.

Sega released its effort, Virtua Fighter, in 1993. The game was defintely little like Street Fighter II — it featured blocky, polygonal characters fighting on abstract planes with very little detail. The characters fought in a realistic fashion (no magic fireballs, super dragon punches, or whirling hurricane hover kicks) and could be knocked out of the ring for a victory. Virtua Fighter caught on in Japan, but it was considered more of a novelty in the US.

Namco released a similar title in 1994 called Tekken, but unlike Virtua Fighter, it went in the direction of the odd cast of characters that could be found in other fighting games. Tekken didn’t try to be hyper realistic; it opted instead for being cool to watch. Tekken also mapped its buttons to the four limbs a fighter had (two arms, two legs) to enable its characters to develop a certain flow that mimicked actual martial arts.

While both series got off to a slow start in arcades, their sequels became quite popular, and many players left Street Fighter II to play either the technical Virtua Fighter or the accessible Tekken games.

Killer Instinct

While Street Fighter II was waning in popularity, Nintendo and developer Rare were perfecting a new technique for developing game graphics that could make games look three-dimensional without actually being 3D. This technique was used to develop a game called Killer Instinct, a fighting game using computer-rendered characters that still fought on a two-dimensional battlefield. Killer Instinct’s main feature, aside from its graphics, was its combo system, which allowed players to smack an opponent with moves that could land ten, twenty, thirty or more hits at once.

Other competitors

Numerous companies attempted to jump on the Street Fighter II bandwagon in the mid-1990s. Most attempted to do so by enacting one of three strategies:

1) To develop a game very similar to Street Fighter II with a different set of characters or a different setting (Fighter’s History, Rise of the Robots, Kabuki Clash, Samurai Showdown, TMNT: Tournament Fighters, Clayfighter, Eternal Champions)

2) To develop a game that could out-gore Mortal Kombat (Time Killers, Primal Rage or the never-released Tattoo Assassins)

3) To develop a game that could try to beat Capcom in the 3D arena (Battle Arena Toshinden, Fighter’s Destiny, Tobal)

Some of these competitors created games that were just laughably bad. Time Killers, for example, was a game that looked like it was drawn by a high school kid on a notebook. It featured characters who could cut each others’ limbs off with the press of a couple of buttons.

Others were just dull. One uninspired clone went by the name of Blandia, and its main feature was the inclusion of weapons and armor that could be knocked off as the fighter sustained hits. I chalk the title up to bad translation (what right-thinking developer would include the word “Bland” in the name of a game that’s already an obvious copy of a more successful one?), but it’s not surprising that no one remembers the game today.

To see just how out of hand the whole fighting game craze got, check out the list of versus fighters on Wikipedia. It’s insane how many entries there are.

Now… with all this competition, one would expect that Capcom stepped up its game and continued to release sequels to Street Fighter II that could enable to company to hold on to its “market share” — in this case, the quarters of arcade gamers.

But Capcom didn’t really seem to figure things out very quickly. While it was making a fortune off its port of Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo, Capcom released two lackluster upgrades to Street Fighter II in 1992 that added four new characters and a handful of moves and tweaks. In 1993, it released yet another update called Super Street Fighter II, and in 1995, it released yet another update called Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Fans who were simply waiting for the inevitable Street Fighter III began to lose interest in the series, and many wandered over to competiting series, which were cranking out sequels fairly regularly.

In the meantime, Capcom developed two series of games that greatly evolved its fighting game systems: Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of the Atom, both of which featured greatly improved graphics and animations and advanced fighting systems. Both debuted in 1994, and both spawned successful sequels.

Capcom’s next move was even more bizarre. As Street Fighter II continued to wane in popularity, the company decided to hold off on the highly-anticipated sequel and instead launch a series of crossover games and prequels. First up was Street Fighter Alpha, which featured improved graphics and new features that seemed out of place in a game that was supposed to take place before Street Fighter II. Capcom also recycled the graphics and moves from Street Fighter Alpha and X-Men: Children of the Atom to create X-Men vs. Street Fighter, an odd matchup game that became the foundation for a series of crossover titles.

Street Fighter III finally hit arcades in 1997 under the simple title “III.” It was a beautiful game, with incredible animation that was sometimes as high as 30 fps. But it was also somewhat of a betrayal to the Street Fighter faithful, since it discarded all but two of the original characters and added in brand new mechanics that were difficult to master. Many of the new characters were not likable, and the new boss lacked the charisma of Street Fighter II’s villain. Capcom tried to update the game with two new versions, but it was too little, too late. In the meantime, Street Fighter Alpha 3, launched in 1999, managed to be the Street Fighter game that players had been hoping for, including most of the traditional characters in the series and continuing to refine the classic gameplay of the original. But since it was a prequel and not a true sequel, it failed to garner the acclaim it deserved.

The series has been on hiatus since, and it’s only now, in 2008, that Capcom dares to release Street Fighter IV, a game that looks suspiciously like an update of Street Fighter II with a few new characters. It’s as if Capcom hasn’t learned a thing…

But what can we learn from this story?

First of all, Capcom’s reaction to the popularity of its game was exactly the wrong reaction. When Street Fighter II caught on, the competition realized the game wasn’t hard to imitate. The floodgates opened, and several clones immediately hit the arcades and home consoles, giving Capcom less ability to control the market. Capcom should have responded with an immediate sequel, and then continued to grow the line with spin-offs and sister series. Instead, Capcom tried to refine what it had already released, afraid to get aggressive in the face of competition. As such, Street Fighter suffered as gamers moved on to something else.

Second, Capcom’s refusal to release anything but updates reveals the company’s lack of foresight. At the time, arcade games were big business, while home consoles were still catching on. Capcom was used to an arcade climate where developers launched new cabinets each year, often with slightly updated versions of popular games. What Capcom didn’t realize was that many of its competitors were more interested in making a quick buck than in creating quality titles. While these companies did not create games that were as impressive or long-lasting as Street Fighter II, they did create games that took away slot space. The fewer Street Fighter II machines there were in use, the less of a chance that subsequent Street Fighter games would do well.

Capcom also failed to realize that it was not just the fighting that gamers enjoyed in Street Fighter II, but the interactions between the characters. Many gamers had grown quite attached to the eight original characters in the game, and most had no desire to see them phased out. And yet Street Fighter III essentially was designed to tell gamers that no, they couldn’t continue to play the game the way they wanted because Capcom knew better than they did. The failure of the game to catch on shows just how arrogant and misguided this point of view is.

Finally, while it’s too early to say whether or not Street Fighter IV is a misstep as well (since it isn’t out yet), it’s clear that Capcom has not learned from history well. True, the company is not repeating the mistakes made with Street Fighter III, but instead, it’s repeating the mistakes made with Street Fighter II by releasing an update rather than a brand new game and trying to act as if it’s the same thing. Due to the nostalgia associated with the series, the game will probaby do well, but it is unlikely that Street Fighter IV will have nearly the impact on gaming that Street Fighter II did in 1991.

Now, take a moment and think about how this same scenario has been occurring in the comic book industry since the 1990s. The first half of the ’90s was the heydey for comic book publishers; everyone was imitating the style of the popular new look that Image was pioneering, and each company had its own twist on the idea. A lot of comics came and went quickly, deserving to die a quick death as “me-too” properties. Some were even ridiculously laughable.

And yet, fifteen years later, the comic book industry is still trying to shovel a lot of the same stuff at readers, hoping that things will magically return to the way they were in the 1990s. When new concepts are tried and don’t work, publishers revert back to old ideas as if they’ve never learned from history. And all the while, interest in comics loses momentum as those who used to have to turn to comics for a certain brand of storytelling have found themselves being courted by Hollywood and its increasing stable of comic book-like films.

Street Fighter II is a great game, but it’s lost a lot of its appeal since it debuted almost 20 years ago. And comic books can be a great source of entertainment, but they’ve become so stilted and stale that they’re never going to achieve the prominence they once had. In fact, once the current generation of baby boomers who look back on comics with a nostalgic eye move out of positions of prominence in media and in popular culture, comics as we know them will likely fade away as a pop culture phenomenon.

Is there a way around that? Absolutely. But it involves creating something new, rather than trying to ride the waves of derivative works. It involves looking at the comic book medium differently, and trying to find a new way to use it to tell stories. Just as the gaming industry eventually moved away from creating derviatives of Street Fighter II and found other genres to develop, so the comic book industry must move away from stories aimed at hardcore fans and adolescent boys and find new audiences to reach.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss another great lesson I’ve learned from the video game industry: licensing. Don’t miss it!

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