“Why should I buy the PS2?” he asked. “Isn’t the PS3 going to be out in a year or two?”

The statement was absolutely ludicrous — at the time, the Playstation 3 was a distant rumor, something we all assumed Sony would be releasing one day, but which no one knew anything about. I convinced the man that it would be years before he’d be worrying about a PS3 — and I was right! — but his attitude was a precursor of the way the videogame industry was shifting. The Nintendo DS, the Sony PSP, the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii and the Sony Playstation 3 all arrived on shelves between 2005 and 2006, and the video game industry shifted into its biggest “next-gen” generation yet. As I write this article, the Nintendo DS has become the bestselling handheld system of all time, and the Xbox 360 has dropped its price to $200. The Nintendo Wii is still difficult to obtain, and the Sony PS3 is trailing the industry with 17 million systems sold. All of this can only mean one thing — in another year or two, we’ll be hearing about the next round of next-gen video game hardware.

As it stands, home video game consoles are in their sixth or seventh generation (depending upon whom you ask). And while each console generation has offered bigger and better things than the last, every generation has followed a fairly predictable life cycle:

1) Enter the market at a high price and (generally) take advantage of holiday sales.
2) Drop prices to the range of the early majority within a year or two.
3) Within three or four years, drop prices to attract the latter majority.
4) As the next system is released, slash pricing once again to attract the laggards.

As it happens, the systems that have deviated from this cycle in some way — the Sega Dreamcast, the Sony PSP, the Nokia N-Gage, the Sony PS3 — have trailed the competition, while many of those that have followed it — the Sony Playstation and PS2, the Nintendo Wii, and the Nintendo DS — have been wildly successful. Of course, there is more to releasing a successful gaming console than simply adopting the right pricing scheme, but it’s interesting to note that there is a pattern behind the pricing for the industry’s biggest success stories.

The console generations have helped to give birth to another custom in the video game industry — the extreme focus on products that are on the horizon. I first observed this happening during the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, when magazines like Nintendo Power started reporting on the new Super Famicom game console and its flagship title, Super Mario World. Gamers developed a thirst for information about upcoming games, and the gaming mags of the day starting hyping things up more and more as the years went by. By the time the Super Nintendo console was losing its luster in the US, speculation about the next generation of games was already in full effect. Sony was able to ride the hype engine well and position its new Playstation console to become a major player. Nintendo’s super-hyped Ultra64 (later renamed the Nintendo 64), in the meantime, arrived two years after the Playstation, had barely any software available during its first year, and was unable to offer software as deep or engaging as the Playstation’s Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid or Tekken 3, all of which were smash-hit titles responsible for selling a lot of hardware.

As the gap between console generations widened from 4-5 years to 6-8 years, gaming media began to place a bigger emphasis on hyping software. At the same time, software grew exponentially more sophisticated, time consuming and expensive to develop. There was much more for game journalists to talk about, and magazines went from being largely devoted to strategy guides and reviews to being hype machines for upcoming software. Many magazines continue this pratice today, often devoting half of their pages to previews of software can be years away from release. And retailers like GameStop follow the magazines’ lead and focus a large portion of their business on selling new releases through pre-orders. Gamers are only too happy to commit to buying games they’ve never played based solely on hype, and postpurchase dissonance is easily mitigated by the ability to trade games back in once they’re beaten.

“But Sean,” you may be thinking. “That’s all good and well, but how does this relate to publishing comic books?”

Well, oddly enough, as the video game industry has evolved and become more sophisticated, the comic book industry has gone through a few “generations” of its own. Most people know that comics went through what we call the “golden age” and “silver age.” In the 1980s, comics were largely based on a newstand periodical model. You could subscribe to comic books like any magazine, and you could buy comic books any place there was a magazine rack. Comic books were pretty low-tech at the time, with newsprint pages and limited color palettes. They were also often poorly written, and most didn’t have a lot of style when it came to art.

But that started to change in the 1990s, when Marvel and DC both began ramping things up. DC decided to go for media exposure with its “Death of Superman” series, a fairly high profile crossover event. Marvel, in the meantime, had a stable of top-notch artists who were developing the style of popular books like Spider-Man (Todd McFarlane), Wolverine (Marc Silvestri), X-Force (Rob Liefeld) and X-Men (Jim Lee). In 1992, seven artists left Marvel to form Image Comics, which helped to usher in the era of “creator-owned books” — comics developed, controlled, and owned by individual creators instead of publishers.

Much like the video game industry’s hardware generations, this shift brought about many enhancements to comics. A lot of them were simply flashy, like holo-foil gatefold variant covers and pack-in trading cards and posters. But at the same time, the artwork in comic books became much more sophisticated, particularly when it came to lettering and colors. Artwork played a much bigger role in storytelling, and artists were given the ability to draw their own custom-shaped panels and layouts — a big change from the rectangular panels of the old days. The paper used in the books themselves got glossier and heavier. Wizard magazine also jumped on the hype bandwagon, and was all too happy to talk up books coming out from superstar creators.

Unfortunately, the comic book industry imploded on itself in the latter half of the 1990s, spurring a need for reinvention. Independent publishers became much more viable, and licensed books centered around 1980s nostalgia became quite popular once the milenium shifted. At the same time, the graphic novel format began to gain traction in bookstores, and Japanese manga books, after flopping in comic book form, started to pick up steam in pocket-sized novel-length reprints.

At the same time, a different innovation was occurring at Marvel and DC as both scrambled to scoop up celebrity writers like Kevin Smith, J. Michael Stracynski and Joss Whedon to work on their superhero books. Marvel saw its properties gaining traction in pop culture as films like X-Men and Spider-Man debuted to critical and commercial success. This opportunity for tie-ins and merchandising gave Marvel yet another chance to reinvent itself — this time, as a company wielding the licenses to a catalog of hundreds of characters. The comic book division became secondary to Marvel’s new profit center: licensing.

The comic book direct market also shifted during this time as Diamond Comic Distributors beat out the competition and established itself as a monopoly. Product was no longer returnable, and retailers were forced to only order what they thought they could sell. Back issues also became much harder to acquire due to Diamond’s policies and pricing. The way business had been done in the industry changed dramatically, affecting publishers and retailers alike.

Finally, the process of producing books shifted dramatically as the new milenium dawned. Books that were once produced mostly by hand migrated to digital production. Inkers began to see themselves replaced by digital inks, and colorists found themselves pushed to learn new effects and techniques to keep up with the pace of the industry. Letterers went almost entirely digital, thanks to a movement led by ComiCraft. Artists who once had to ship their pages to publishers in tubes via FedEx could now upload digital copies, and books could be produced much faster — and cheaper! — than ever before.

What’s interesting about comic books is that the products themselves have not changed very much. But much like video game hardware, the backbone system behind the product has evolved greatly. Unfortunately, while the gaming industry learned to get good at forcing consumers to look forward in anticipation, the comic book industry has always moved forward kicking and screaming, often substantially behind the available technology.

One of the reasons for this is that the comic book industry is primarily controlled by two giants who continue to preach “business as usual” at every turn. American comic books can’t seem to get themselves disentangled from superheroes, much the way the video game industry can’t seem to put a stop to the never-ending supply of games that involve shooting and killing things. There are alternatives, but it’s far easier to pander than to create something new.

Another reason that the industry can’t advance is that there simply aren’t enough people buying. The comic book industry does a terrible job of marketing itself to people outside the fold. It’s hard to bring in new readers when you’re busy fighting over who gets to serve the existing ones.

While the gaming industry has mastered the art of hype, the comic book industry is often still stuck in the Stan Lee mindset. Stan Lee was a marketing maestro, and he knew how to hawk his books. But today’s readers aren’t reading comic books for escapist fantasies, because they can get a superior product from films, video games, and other entertainment media. Most of the existing buyers are collectors first and readers second. But the industry doesn’t seem to know that much about the people who actually read comics. Research and planning is definitely in order, but no one wants to spend the money or the time on it.

The console generations create a sort of staggered form of experience. Gamers know that with each generation of games, they’re going to get something really big and mind-blowing. With the previous generation, games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto III, Resident Evil 4 and Guitar Hero really shook things up. In this generation, games like Little Big Planet and Bioshock are already shifting things forward on one front while the Nintendo Wii opens up new teritory on another. It’s an exciting time to be a gamer.

The comic book industry could really learn from this. One of the things I’ve always been very critical about is the industry’s insistence on serialized stories that go on for as long as possible. The problem is that these stories begin to lose their relevance after a few hundred issues, and they have to constantly be rebooted to stay interesting. But when you consider the really amazing works that have come out of the comic book industry that are still celebrated today — stories like Watchmen, Bone, Sandman and The Dark Knight Returns — you’ll realize that they’re all series that told complete stories and that gave readers something to look forward to in a satisfying conclusion. That’s the sort of thing the industry needs to turn to.

One last point I’ll make is that the video game industry doesn’t have a narrow focus. The PS3 and the Nintendo Wii are designed to be home entertainment devices as well as consoles. The PSP can be used to browse the internet and to watch movies. The Nintendo DS can be used to chat with other people wirelessly. All of these systems offer software libraries that have something for everyone. While game hardware might be sophisticated and powerful, heavy emphasis is put on making it easy to use.

But how accessible are most comic books? True, anyone can pick one up and read it. But a lot of comics require outside knowledge — either of the series, the publisher’s universe, or the license the book is based upon. Most aren’t designed to be picked up and read by people who aren’t already fans. Try handing someone not familiar with comics an issue of Marvel’s Civil War or DC’s 52 and see if they can make sense out of it. Chances are good they’ll be lost within a few pages.

The comic book industry can learn a lot from the cyclical nature of the video game industry. But it’s a lesson that probably won’t be learned by the current crop of publishers. I fully expect it will be the next generation of publishers who take the industry somewhere else, and it will be those publishers who decide if things will stay the same… or if the comic book industry can wise up and be something better than it is.

Licensing is big business in the world of video gaming, especially around the holidays. And there’s a pretty good reason for it: the majority of gamers (or people purchasing for gamers) are what the industry refers to as “casual gamers,” and they’re more likely to buy something that sounds familiar than they are to try something new. It’s very difficult to build up a AAA intellectual property in the gaming industry, and though series like Halo, The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy have managed to pull it off consistently, the majority of games struggle to keep themselves on the retail radar at all. Licenses help drive retailer orders, and having a movie tie-in title available a month before the film debuts can really help improve sales.

What’s peculiar about the success of licensed video games is that they’re almost always bad. Every now and then, a good licensed game, like The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic hits shelves and demonstrates the power of licensing. But more often than not, licensed games are awful. For example, this summer’s Iron Man games were consistently a poor crop of games, regardless of platform. The same could be said for the Wall-E tie-in games and the Hellboy game. And yet most of these games likely moved more copies than many good games that didn’t have a license behind them.

The comic book industry, on the other hand, has a fairly dismal record when it comes to taking licenses and turning them into profit. Certainly, there have been a few success stories; Dreamwave did well in the early part of the decade with Transformers, and Marvel certainly earned some attention for Stephen King’s The Dark Tower and a project I’m all-too familiar with, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. But for the most part, the industry has done a terrible job with licensing, both from a production and a marketing point of view. And thus it’s worth a few moments to consider why licensed products are so lucrative for the video game industry despite their low quality, while licensed products are only somewhat lucrative in the comic book industry despite the seeming demand for them.

Let’s start by talking about one of the biggest differences between video game buyers and comic book buyers: gift giving. In the comic book industry, consumers tend to purchase for one of two reasons: reading or collecting. Few comic book fans buy books for friends or family, mainly because comics don’t make very good gifts. Even graphic novels, which are still the fastest growing sector of the comic book industry, aren’t particularly sought after as gift items.

But video games, on the other hand, are often developed with the fourth quarter (October – December) in mind.The reasoning behind this is that parents are out looking for gifts, and they are more likely to purchase something that is familiar for their children than something that is unknown. That latest Bratz game may be awful, but a mother might buy it for her 10-year-old daughter on the basis of the license because she knows that her daughter loves the dolls. Quality is not an issue with licensed games; as long as the license is popular enough to warrant recognition, a licensed game has a much better chance of being purchased by a casual gamer or gift buyer than an original title does.

Many of the big releases throughout the rest of the year are tie-ins with other entertainment media. Games are often released with blockbuster films and animated features, but it’s not uncommon to see a game based on a nostalgia license like The Godfather, The Warriors or Scarface hit around the same time that the associated property is being re-released on DVD.

And licenses don’t just extend to films, either. Activision and MTV Games are both making big money right now by licensing music for games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. EA Sports makes a killing off its sports licenses, and EA, Sony and Microsoft Games have all done quite well with racing games that license makes and models of popular cars. Buena Vista Games regularly releases handheld games based off Disney Channel shows, and companies like D3 Publishing, THQ and Southpeak interactive often scoop up the rights to childrens’ television shows. Atari even recently released a Nintendo DS title called What’s Cooking With Jamie Oliver.

Comic books, of course, have been a popular source of licenses, and Marvel and DC have both seen many video games come out associated with their superheroes. But there have also been games based off UK comics like Judge Dredd, Doom Patrol and Rogue Trooper, a game based off the European espionage thriller XIII, a game based off the Hellboy comics, a game based off the Spawn comics, and a game based off The Red Star, just to name a few. Even newspaper strips and webcomics have been licensed to create games like Snoopy vs. the Red Baron and the Penny Arcade adventures.

As a store manager for a prominent game store, I often found myself annoyed that customers would give bad licensed games serious thought while ignoring good original games in the meantime. Once I began to study marketing, however, I realized that this is exactly how most purchases are made. Our minds are lazy, and stores are often overwhelming with the number of choices available. It’s only natural that our brains will seize on the things that are familiar rather than allow us to consider all of the alternatives equally.

The video game industry realizes this psychology, and that’s exactly why so many licensed games crop up year in, year out despite the fact that they’re almost always panned by critics and made fun of by hardcore gamers. Licensed games sell in spite of themselves. One of the first big releases that came out when I was working as a game store manager was Atari’s Enter the Matrix, a tie-in to the film The Matrix Reloaded. The game was horribly rushed, and parts of it were almost unplayable due to bugs and glitches. The word was out before the game even arrived on shelves that it was a mess. And yet it sold like crazy.

Oddly, this sort of thinking does not seem to translate quite so well to the comic book industry. Don’t get me wrong here; if you browse the top 300, you’ll see that most of the books that aren’t related to Marvel and DC superheroes are licensed, and publishers like Dark Horse, IDW, Dynamite, Devil’s Due and Udon have all established niches for themselves by focusing on licensed properties. But with the exception of the occasional Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or G.I. Joe license that manages to attract a regular audience, most licensed books don’t fare too well in the marketplace. Comic book readers don’t seem overly enthusiastic about buying them, and comic book retailers don’t seem to be overly enthusiastic about carrying them, despite the fact that they often carry associated merchandise!

I would suggest that there are three reasons licensed products don’t perform as well in the comic book industry as they do in the video game industry:

1) The comic book industry is built on superheroes. Marvel and DC command around 80% of the market share, and while both do put out licensed books from time to time, their original properties are what you’ll find dominating month after month on the sales charts. Retailers are more likely to order superhero titles than any other kind of book, because that’s what they know will sell. Collectors are more likely to buy superhero titles than any other kind of book, because that’s what they know will be worth collecting. Licensed properties typically don’t have a high collectible value unless they’re associated with a major license like Star Wars, and even then, it’s the toys that people are usually after, not the comics.

2) Licensed books are not usually promoted well. Aside from the occasional odd newspaper article about a book like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Family Guy, most comic book promotion remains within the comic book industry. Publishers typically do a terrible job of promoting their books outside the comic book press, and they suffer the consequences with mediocre sales (often below 10,000 copies).

I know this all too well since I was in charge of marketing for the Dabel Brothers for six years — we had a horrible time promoting some of our licensed books because we had no idea how to talk to people outside of comics. By the time I figured things out, I was working on the promotion plan for the Anita Blake books. They did really well when I was managing them, because I built up a story about how retailers were contacting us and saying that the book was bringing girls who’d never set foot in a comic book stoe before into their shops to pre-order. The story was true, of course, but a little bit of added hype allowed me to talk about how the book was “breathing new life into the world of comics.” Everyone wanted a piece of that.

At the same time, however, we had people talking directly to fans on message boards and forums to gain their support for the book. We gave them sneak peaks of artwork and asked for critiques. My wife, who adapted the first five issues, even made friends with many of the more prominent fans and promised to sign their books in exchange for their support. Before we transferred the book over to Marvel, I was told that the sales were just under 40,000 copies for the first printing. Excluding the graphic novel sales, the first issue sold over 60,000 copies across three printings, and the second, third and fourth issues weren’t far behind. (The series is not doing nearly that volume now since it’s not being promoted actively.)

I don’t think there was anything special about Anita Blake. I think any licensed book with a dedicated existing fanbase could achieve those numbers quite easily. I just don’t think publishers do a very good job of convincing fans to buy.

3) Comic books make lousy gifts. Parents don’t go to comic book stores looking for presents unless they know specifically what to buy. And why should they? Comic book stores are often unfriendly places that are full of longboxes and overpriced action figures. A lot of comics aren’t “kid-friendly,” and even those that are aren’t a good substitute for a toy or a video game. Comic book retailers are unlike just about every other retailer in the retail sector; they don’t worry much about the day after Thanksgiving, and they don’t rely on the fourth quarter for 50-60% of their annual sales. Some get a slight boost from the holidays, but for most, it’s business as usual.

When you add in the fact that most of the sought-after comics are available in graphic novel format and easily purchased online or in a bookstore, it’s clear that the comic book industry is not built to take advantage of the holidays. And since that’s when licensed products are a great option for gift-givers, it’s no wonder that licensed comics don’t achieve a high level of sales — they miss the chance to climb onboard the annual gravy train!

What can we learn from all of this? Since the days of the Atari, the video game industry has always had its eye on the fourth quarter because that’s when hardware (and subsequently, software) is sold in volume. The comic book industry, on the other hand, has its roots in subscription models, and it’s been reluctant to shed its old ways so that it can catch up with the rest of the retail sector. One of the most unfortunate things that happened to the comic book industry was the 1990s; the speculation boom made a lot of retailers short-term profits, and many of them seem to be waiting for another speculator era to resurface so they can make bank and retire.

Unfortunately, many retailers are in a position where they’re going to have to change or die in the long run. Licensed books could be a wonderful way to add a rich dessert to the bread-and-butter sales of superhero books. But the industry doesn’t know how to make them work, and thus 100,000 copy sellers like Dreamwave’s Transformers and Marvel’s The Dark Tower are seen as flukes rather than targets. It’s too bad; if the industry could get behind licensed books more effectively, comics might be able to break away from their current “superheroes only” image and find bigger and better audiences.

My next article on this topic will focus on hardware cycles. This might not seem to have a lot to do with comics, but bear with me — there are some interesting parallels!

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!