Accessibility of Fighting Games

My friend Mr.Moose recently tweeted an article about accessible games, which are games that are able to be played by all manner of people, included those handicapped. Now this got me thinking about games in general that would be accessible to everyone, or rather games that seem to have barriers to a lot of gamers handicapped or not. One of the genres I found to be consistenly have issues getting people into the scene are fighting games, one of my favourite genres.

There are really a variety of factors being the cause for this and I'll go through them and why I think they are causing a barrier that detracts people from playing a lot of fighting games. For this post I am going to select three different fighting games, all with a variety of different characters and fighiting mechanics to ensure that none of these games play alike. The three games are as follows, Street Fighter 4, Blazblue : Calamity Shift and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

Reduce your opponent's life gauge to zero to win

First off let's just briefly outline how you win in these games, it's really simple. Reduce your opponent's life gauge to nothing to win a round. Win enough rounds (usually 2 out of 3) to win the entire match. Now this concept is simple enough and no one should have trouble understanding it, the problem comes with the other mechanics in the game. 

First off let's talk about some crucial things to learning fighting games to show why it's so hard for people to get into this genre. These are...

1) Fundamentals
2) Movelists
3) Combos

In short, fundamentals are key things that you don't normally think about but do in a fighting games. These aren't normally taught to players by tutorials in game so these are key things that aren't being taught.

Street Fighter 4 - There is more to a fighting game than just using special moves

Movelists are assigned to your character, every character has different moves to choose from with different properties. You need to learn your characters movelist if you want to know what action to do at a certain time. Movelists can range from reasonable to insane depending on the game.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 - Every character has access to hundreds of different moves

Combos have been a highlight of fighting games for a long time and are a way to deal massive damage that you wouldn't with just hitting a person once with a special move. These take memorization and time to learn and can be daunting to figure out and execute.

Blazblue - Combos require execution, timing and memorization to do

Fundamentals of Fighting Games

A lot of new games have tried to make an effort to teach the fundamentals of their game but it's a difficult road for new players to learn. For Blazblue and Street Fighter, they share a lot of similar elements because they are both 2D fighters while Tekken being 3D does in fact share elements too.

Spacing

Spacing - Gouki (Right) uses a fireball at a distance that the enemy played would jump in only to get an uppercut to the face

For instance one of the most basic things to learn is spacing, which means your distance relative to your opponent which is important because some characters lend themselves better to close range combat and others at further range. Spacing out your opponent to take advantage of your character's movelist is a large versus your opponent's character's movelist becomes part of the "mindgames" that come in the matches. Knowing when to throw a fireball based on the distant to your opponent, to make sure they can jump over and kick is an unspoken rule but its there. The problem with this is, no tutorial in any of these games actually teaches you the fundamentals of spacing and this IS one of the most important parts of fighting games. Everyone pretty much has to figure it out for themselves or look online which is just meant more time researching instead of learning hands on. Not too beginner friendly.

Footsies

SF4 - Fei Long (Right side) uses a fierce punch, hitting at max range. A demonstration of footsies or "poking".

Another important fundamental is footsies, which lends itself to spacing. Footsies basically means "poking" at your opponents with moves that ensure you can keep the distance you want relative to the opponent and deal damage. These are important in pretty much all fighting games. Again the problem is that these aren't really taught in tutorials either. I don't know why fighting games neglect to include this in tutorials but this is another very important concept that I never learned without looking online.

Punishing

Ken (On the right) Uses a very slow attack that takes a while to recover. Ryu can then "punish" it with an attack as result.

Punishes are another important concept, which means to punish an opponents move that either misses or simply takes too long recover from the animation. This has been taught in a very well done manner in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 but the other games I have not seen it being taught. This is really important to learn as well and the problem is to learn how to punish, you need to know how the opponent's character you're facing works. This involves a lot of technical mumbo jumbo of frame data and such that really makes it hard for newcomers and even experience players to learn. This is something that though simple, takes a ton of dedication for any player which can seriously deter casual players.

Mix-Ups

Mix-Ups means to alternate between attacks that force opponent to defend themselves in different ways.

Mix-Ups is another technique that was actually taught in the tutorials for these games (except Street Fighter 4). Basically when characters block an attack, they have two options, block high or low. Moves can be counted as either overhead or low. Lows block lows and high blocks can stop overheads. It's a pretty simple concept in practice but hard to execute in real time without lots of practice. You also have to do it without looking to obvious or you'd get predicable.

There are honestly a ton of other fundementals but I've covered more than enough to show how complex a fighting game system can be. This is NOT an easy system to get a hold of and the fact that a lot of fighting games still have yet to officially teach these concepts in a tutorial makes it really daunting for new players to get into.



Movelists

You have a lot of characters in a fighting game, sometimes its around 12, sometimes around 50. And every character in the game has a different set of moves with different properties and special attributes. That could be throwing a fireball or doing an uppercut to lay the hurt on opponents in the air. It's really a lot to remember and you're going to have to learn to combine together to form combos if you want to do any real damage. Let's quickly take a look at how Street Fighter 4 handles these.

SF4 - Ryu using his Ultra Combo, dealing tons of damage

Street Fighter 4 handles move lists fairly well. You have a movelist that doesn't seem to be too large or overly burdening. It can still be a lot to remember but it's organized well and not too complicated. The moves themselves take some getting used to. The quarter circle motion for a fireball is a lot easier to do than it used to be in Street Fighter 2, meaning that these games are trying to appeal more to the casual audience. The problem comes when combining these in combos or trying to apply fundamentals such as spacing and footsies. Still that can be considered more "advanced" stuff but if you want to even think about becoming good, you need to learn those fundamentals.

Blazblue is in a similar boat to Street Fighter 4, with a lot of moves still but not an overbearing amount. The tutorials also teach you how to use these.

TTT2 - Characters have a lot of moves but none are specified as "special moves"

Tekken on the otherhand suffers greatly on the topic of movelists. The game has pretty much 100 different "moves" for a character and they don't even give you any recommended moves to use. They don't even have a tutorial for each character to teach you how to use these moves as well, its all in practice mode. This is one of the greatest oversights the game has and it makes it extremely difficult for even an experienced player to get the grasps of a character. For beginners I can't even imagine how hard it is.

The problem in general is movelists don't ever tell you why you'd use a certain move. They don't say "This is a fireball move, use it for spacing" or "This move has invincibility temporarily, use it to counter moves" you have to go through the entire movelist and figure it out for yourself. Learning this stuff for new players is a lot of work.


Combos

Combos have been a basic feature in pretty much all fighting games since Street Fighter 2 first came out. They used to be much simpler but still restricted to certain timing and were difficult to pull off. Nowadays, combos come in all sorts of flavors and the methods to do this in each fighting game is different from the other. Let's start off with Street Fighter 4.

SF4 - Ryu Trial mode and combos

This is probably the best example of a game that provides simplicity with depth. Combos in this game are actually taught through a mode called trial mode, where set combos are provided and you're allowed to attempt these while seeing all the inputs necessary. Every character has their own trial mode and since every character's moves have different properties then they all have different timing and move combinations to make different combos which makes this mode necessary.

The problem with this mode is that they don't show you the proper timing or even provide a "demo" of the combo being done for you. This means you pretty much have to experiment by yourself to find out the timing for the combo. This can become very frustrating to new players since when going into a fighting game, you don't have much sense of timing. Though they show you the combos, it pretty much becomes trial and error to learn. Some even require one frame (1/60th of a second) to chain a combo. Some very basic combos can still be achieved through button mashing and still aren't too difficult but it can still take a fairly long time for new players to learn these. Street Fighter 4 still nevertheless contains a good way for players to learn combos.

Blazblue - Challenge mode for Ragna

In Blazblue, combos are in general much longer and more complex than Street Fighter 4. You combine knocking your opponents all over the air and your hit count in a combo soars into the double digits easily. The mechanics to Blazblue are entirely different and have different timing and properties to combos such as ground bounces that make them it so that any combos you might learn in a different fighting game won't help you here or at least not as much as you'd hope. Thankfully they also contain a trial mode for each character similar to Street Fighter 4 and even provide a demo reel for you to see the timing and learn it. Basic combos with more hits are in general easier to do in Blazblue than Street Fighter.

TTT2 - Fight Lab

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and it's predecessors are in 3D arenas and have combos that are way different than Blazblue or Street Fighter. The problem with Tekken is that unlike those two games, combos aren't even taught through a trial mode for characters. Tekken Tag 2 recently had a "fight lab" mode which taught you the basics of the game (and some fighting game fundamentals) and some combos, however any character specific combos have to be learned entirely through trial and error or looking up videos. For the game not to include this is not very beginner friendly so the process to picking up any character in this game is very difficult.

Combos in general can take a long time to learn for new players because they have to get used to a lot of different gameplay elements still. It's not like in a shooter where the basic knowledge of where to aim and use corners is quite a bit easier to grasp. There is a lot of memorization to be had with combos which can really be offsetting to new players.

Fighting Games require commitment

Fighting games are a daunting task to get into, because there is a certain level of commitment this genre needs more so than other genres I have played with. I myself have a few friends who have tried fighting games but never got into it because either A), they think its button mashing which its not, or B) Upon figuring its not button mashing looks way too complicated for them to figure out and really get into. They don't play one more than one fighting game and even if they do, it's not very often.

TTT2 - Combo video, these aren't easy to do and takes a while to do in training mode let alone in a real match

The fact that a lot of fighting games don't have a good story means that you usually buy a fighting game for the fighting system and multiplayer, not anything else. A lot of fighting games recently have been lacking in single player content (not counting Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena or Mortal Kombat recently). So the problem lies in the fact that you have to spend a lot of time to get good in these games because of course you play to win.  There is no fun in getting obliterated by someone miles better than you and beating computer opponents only has so much appeal. To enjoy these games you need to fight real people, which means you really have to get into the system and learn the fundamentals. If you don't you could end up losing, getting frustrated and just giving up.

SF4 - Daigo and Justin Wong are top tier players who spend most of their time playing fighting games. This can be seen in their grasp of everything about the genre.

That's the barrier this genre faces. It needs the deep mechanics, fundamentals and movesets present right now to keep it's core audience because that's what fighting game fanatics go for. But how do they get new players in while keeping the same tournament level style of play.

Accessibility has been improving

I may have been stating how hard it is for newcomers to get in due to all those factors but companies have been working hard to get people into the genre.

For one there has been an "easy button" mode implemented into Blazblue as well as Marvel vs Capcom 3. This basically makes all the special moves easier to execute, not requiring quarter circle motions or full circle motions and what not. This definetely makes it easier for the new players to get the hand on the basics as they dont have to worry so much on the execution of moves. These modes are however limited and don't allow you to access the full move list of your character. This type of control has been implemented as earlier as 2001 in Capcom vs SNK 2.

Blazblue - With easy mode, even basic moves turn into special moves and can turn into combos easily

As previously mentioned, there have been more tutorials for combos and some of the basic fundamentals (though not all of them) featured in some games. The game Skullgirls recently featured a rather broad tutorial and taught a lot of the fundamentals as well as the game's own systems thoroughly though it had no trials. Other games like Tekken Tag 2 have not shown all its systems in it's tutorials. If games could teach the fundamentals of the genre more like Skullgirl's tutorial, then a lot more of them would be appealing and accessible to audiences. If they can combine Skullgirl's tutorial along with teaching you at least the basics of how to use a specific character, then it goes a long way to teaching players how to get into the game.

Skullgirl's Extensive Tutorial

Conclusion - How do we make it easier for new players?

In short the problem is there are a whole cluster of things for new players to do, learning movelists, characters, combos, important fundamentals, with usually only a few of these things actually being taught. Fighting games are daunting there is no question about it, which is why new players need the game to help them. Sure they can look online if they are passionate about learning but you want to make sure the game itself is helping right there. Its so much easier to do a tutorial in game than to look at a video online.

But if you can make a person really enjoy a fighter, get into the system and learn the fundamentals, you have to get a hold of their attention for not only the sequels to that fighter, but other fighters in the scene as well. If you learn Tekken 6 for example, you can easily get right back into Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Even your fundamental understanding of spacing and what not will transfer to Street Fighter despite the different mechanics of the games. That's what fighting games have to do if they want to hook people in. Make it as easy as possible and add in the depth of the game's systems and fighting game fundamentals as they go through tutorials (fun tutorials that is). The more a game guides a newbie's hand, the easier it will be for them to get in.

Game Design vs. Level Design

There was an important question that was raised during the first session of Game Design and Production II. It was what are the differences between Game Design and Level Design and well how are they related to each other? Well what they are each individually is pretty obvious in itself but I'll just quickly detail them.

Quick Overview of Game Design & Level Design

Game Design is the mechanics and the rules of the game, pretty much the gameplay. Is the game a shooter where you can jump around, use grenades and powers ups? Or an adventure game where you explore by using physics to interact with the environment? Is there a certain goal to the game, such as save the princess. I've covered this before but its good to get the definition out there again (even for my sake).

Mario jumping is a game mechanic and part of Game Design

Level Design on the other hand are the areas in which gameplay will take place. For example, in Mario our level would be World 1-1, the very first area in the game (aka first level). There are blocks placed all around the area as well as blocks containing power ups. To make it clear, the level would be the placement of these blocks, power ups and enemies, where as the gameplay would be the interaction with these elements. 

World 1-1 is a level for Super Mario

Designing a certain level means you want the player to experience certain challenges at certain points in the game. The first level would have a simpler layout, less enemies, more powers, or anything that helps get the player into the game. The last level would have the most enemies, the most complex layout and overall require the most skill. Now this doesn't always have to be true but it's not usually a very good example of level design when your hardest level is the very first one, and the easiest being the very last. I have not yet encountered a game like that which performed very well.

World 1-4 is a much harder level than World 1-1 because the player has progressed further

Game Design vs Level Design

Now two important and rather subjective questions were also raised in class which I will focus the rest of this post on. There were...

1) Does bad level design make a good game bad?
2) And does Good level design make a bad game good?

These question can be answered in any number of ways as they are subjective and I would like to give my opinion on them because they are pretty interesting. First of all, let's try and answer the first.

Does bad level design make a good game bad?

The first question assumes that our game in question has good gameplay mechanics. So let's say our game is Halo, which has very good foundations as an FPS. It helped reinforce the two weapon choice limit, has excellent controls, intelligent AI, fun weapons and other great qualities as a shooter. This game has a number of excellent and fun levels, save for one, which is titled the Library. The problems with this level are twofold. It's boring and it had enemies that no one really likes.

Halo - The Library, the labyrinth of the same thing over and over

The reason it was boring was because it was essentially the same one area, over and over for simply too long. Aesthetically it looks boring after seeing it for another time, but then you're forced to relive it over and over, the exact same scenery. Just when you think its about to end... nope, let's go through it again and again. There was honestly very little variation in it and it's proclaimed as one of the worst things in Halo: Combat Evolved. The enemies were also boring too, it was the flood, not the intelligent Covenant enemies you usually face. The flood AI is zombie like on purpose which makes them rather dull to fight in comparison to the covenant. It's always cool fighting an Elite from the Covenant but fighting a flood enemy is just not as interesting. So you have to fight these tedious enemies over and over with the same scenery. This is not a good level, everyone hates it. It's torture just to get through it, yet despite that the game still gets exclaim and I still love the game too.

Halo - The Flood, not as well liked as the Covenant

So in this case, it was a bad level, no one liked it, but a lot of people still loved the game. Did it ruin the game? Maybe for some but overall it didn't drag the game into oblivion by itself. So then maybe it's multiple bad levels that make a bad game? Because most of the other levels in Halo were much better in comparison and much more interesting. If you had to do 3 library like levels throughout Halo, things might get more grim for the shooter. You take that a step further and you just have every level being bad design, with flood everywhere and similar corridors about. Since people hated just playing the level once, won't they hate the game entirely if they had to do multiple bad levels? That's really a question of opinion for everyone but for me, I would absolutely despise it. I wouldn't play the game if I had to suffer through many dull levels like the Library multiple times. Sure enough I have the gameplay with cool weapons but things can get boring if you simply go through the same thing over and over. Now one can argue the levels would still be different even if they were badly designed but it can still make the experience dull as can be see in the difference in response to the Library compared to other levels.

Halo - The Silent Cartographer Level, I really loved this level. Why can't the Library be like this?

One thing to note is that, if a game has terrible level design everywhere, can a game with fundamentally good mechanics fully take advantage of it's own mechanics if the levels aren't designed well? Level design consists of using your game mechanics to their advantage in meaningful and interesting ways (such as the right amount of difficulty depending on how long the player has been playing and their skill level). If levels are low quality, then your mechanics will most likely be dumbed down to fit with that low quality which will make the game bad.

Does Good level design make a bad game good?

Expendables 2 Game - I can't say I know anything about it's level design but I know it's not a good game

So let's try and answer the second question now, does Good Level Design make a bad game good? Our Bad Game has terrible mechanics, the combat system is just awful, repetitive and doesn't really have all that much depth, its just mashing the same buttons over and over. The game's gameplay is just mediocre at best. Now say our game is an action game, and let's put them in the most fantastic level, with the right amount of enemies to fight, the right difficulty, and a really cool final boss encounter. In my opinion, if the game's mechanics were terrible to begin with, even with the right difficulty, it would still be a dull affair. If I am in a game where all I need to do is press one or two buttons, you could even argue that the level design doesn't even make a difference. 

There should be a picture here but I honestly couldn't think of a bad action game with an excellent level

It's a little harder to answer this question with a terrible action game because its hard to balance the right amount of enemies in a game where you only press one button to really win. That and level design for these kinds of games isn't as complex as some others, so let's switch to a platformer for a sec to get another perspective.

A platformer, with excellent level design, gameplay looks like its going to be a lot of fun and there are a lot of innovative puzzles on hand and a lot of imagintation that really makes the level look fantastic, both gameplay wise and visually. Problem is, the controls are awful and you're more likely to boost off a cliff than make it to the platform the level designer wanted you to get to. This level is fantastic and in another similar game with better controls and mechanics, you'd be sailing through with a ton of fun. But in reality, you're fighting the game just to be able to play the level but you just can't.

Yoshi's Story - I liked this game when I was younger and the level design seemed good but I felt the gameplay was lacking compared to other Nintendo playformers

There is another issue with answering this question that came up with showing the action game example. If a game's mechanics and gameplay are really that terrible, can you really show a great level through that? A purely action oriented game with only fighting can lend itself to level design mostly in spawning enemies, but if you can only really do a handful of boring actions, can you make a good level based on that? That's where I feel like this issue makes it difficult to determine if you're really making a good level when you have terrible game design. For some games it can be more obviously determined like in platformers, but others can have trouble telling the difference.

Yes, I played this game, I really hated it, couldn't even tell if the levels were designed well because of how bad it's gameplay was

But even with platformers its still difficult to tell, let's take Sonic 2006 for example. I made fun of this game a while back in a previous blog post and well I know the game's controls and mechanics weren't very good and that it's levels weren't particularly good either, or were they? Now it's hard for me to judge because I see Sonic going on rails, looking like he is having a blast but then suddenly falling through the ground or spinning upside down. Were the enemies and platforms Sonic was supposed to be facing actually placed really well but couldn't be taken advantage of because of his poor controls? I honestly can't really tell because maybe I am just blinded by my dislike for it's controls.

 

Sonic 2006

This is where I feel there is a grayline for the second question, where Good level design can make a bad game good. I can't even properly tell if its supposed to be a good level in the first place because the game can't take advantage of it. But let's just say we can tell in that case. My earlier example of the platformer not being able to control well and you go out of control to get to those "perfect" would like me to think that even with good level design, in general you can't really make a bad game good or it's really hard. 

Little Big Planet - Great game, with controls I didn't quite like

The only exception I can think of is Little Big Planet, who's controls I didn't really like at all but it's excellent Level Design, level creation and customization made it a great game still. That and the mods that allowed you to change the controls to even overcome some of it's control yipes (like becoming a spaceship somehow, don't know how Little Big Planet Players do that). The problem with including this exception is that it's Game Design was built around customization and overall it's Game Design is very solid. My only grief with it was the controls (though to be honest controls are very important in a platforming game)

My conclusion

To give these two questions a quicker answer I will say for the first...

Bad level design can make a game with good design suffer, one level can make the entire experience a bit less than it should be but still be great. Multiple bad levels can serious hinder a game from it's full potential but not might outright make it terrible. It certainly won't be as great depending on the severity of the bad level design but it probably won't outright "kill" the game on bad level design. Besides whats "bad" can be subjective to some people anyways. There is a difference between bad/poor level design and "just flat out terrible why would you do that, kind of level design".

For the second question, a good level will most likely not save a bad game. If the game is that bad overall, you might not even be able to tell if it has a good level or not since a good level works with the mechanics of the game and if the mechanics are bad, it might influence the level to be bad in order to fit. I feel it's highly unlikely great levels will make a bad game good.

That was a lot of time just spent on two questions but I honestly feel these are really good questions I hadn't considered before and that they deserved the time they got in this post.

Beginning of a new Year

It's the start of a new school year at UOIT and what better time to continue the blog then to do so now. It's now my third year at UOIT's Game Development Program and it's only been a few days since class started and there really isn't all too much happening at the moment except the formation of teams. This means there is quite a bit of time on hand (At least for now) for other things, including to make sure this blog gets a proper start back into the new Year/Semester.

Game Design will be getting frequent updates as it's one of the courses for this semester so it will continue to get the loving treament it did before.

New for this year I am adding the Game Engine section, which will include my hands on experience with Gaming Engines such as Ogre3D, Unity, and other engines. It will also include some breakdowns of games like I usually do and try to decipher some of the engines behind them and such. There will probably be more things to come to this section as well.

I will most likely continue my Tunes of the Week as well since they don't really take too long.

This year I will probably talk more about the development of the Game being made by my group but that won't begin till the groups are actually formed. I'll also probably have a post relating to some of the basics of level design soon as well.

That's it for now!

SDCC 2012 : Comic Con Experience

I recently just came back from a trip to Comic Con with my Brother and I really wanted to share our journey in the exciting convention. It was really a great experience, really fun and something I would one day like to try again. For those that don't know, Comic Con is a massive convention which started off only featuring comic book related material. But as its grown now to feature hit TV shows, movies and even games. The newest of all this media are shown and people attending Comic Con are given sneak peeks at them as well as some panels telling the process of creating that media. But enough with the intro, let's start with the journey.


Here is a quick list of all the games I was able to get to play at SDCC 2012.

• Halo 4 Multiplayer - Hands on Impressions
• Resident Evil 6 - Hands on Impressions
• Playstation All Stars : Battle Royale - Hands on Impressions Part 1 (Kratos and Nathan Drake)
• Playstation All Stars : Battle Royale - Hands on Impressions Part 2 (Big Daddy, Radec, Heihachi)
• Devil May Cry - Hands on Impressions
• Injustice : Gods Among us - Hands on Impressions
• Tomb Raider - Hands on Impressions
• Sleeping Dogs - Hands on Impressions

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Day 1 ~ Wednesday - Preview Night


Despite Wednesday being titled Preview Night, my brother and I didn't  decide to actually go and see any of the previews. The previews would have been for new upcoming shows that haven't aired yet, one of them being a Green Arrow (DC comics) show but instead we opted to check out the extremely large exhibition hall, one of the highlights of Comic Con.

Exhibit hall, near the Microsoft Booth

The place was already packed with people but we wouldn't even see the worst of it till later. Amongst the booths featured at the exhibit hall that I looked into were Capcom (Resident Evil 6), Microsoft (featuring Halo 4), Nintendo (New Super Mario Bros 2), Activision (Transformers Fall of Cybertron), Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed III), Square Enix (Tomb Raider, Kingdom Hearts 3DS), Sony (Playstation All Stars), Showtime (Feat. Dexter), Warner Bros (The Hobbit), Marvel (Iron Man 3), DC (Injustice Heroes Among us), and a TON more. The booths ranged from having merchandise (Some booths specifically having only merchadise instead of having displays), to having playable demos, screens showing previews of their movies, shows or games, autograph signings with famous peoples, etc. The ones I listed had way more to offer than what I listed in the paratheses but its just a taste. I will go into more detail on the specific days I actually went to the exhibits. But there was just so much in the exhibit hall, you could spend most of your time in Comic Con there easily.

Microsoft Booth featuring 343 Industries and Halo 4

The first thing we actually did was of course look around the booths. But the first one I actually went to and got up close with was the Microsoft booth. The only thing they had featured there was Halo 4 but that was good enough. Since it was only Wednesday it was not as busy as it would be in the later days but still took an hour to get through the line up to play Halo 4 multiplayer. I managed to get my hands on with the game which you can find in this link here. But boy it was fun for sure and that booth got a ton more people later on that I simply couldn't get into it again to try. Dommage.

The Capcom booth

Up next I checked out the Capcom booth where they had Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 6 and Lost Planet lined up. Unfortunately I didn't actually realize DMC and Lost Planet had demos there so I only walked around aimlessly and by the time I got to the RE6 demo line, it was pretty late and I probably wouldn't make it in. I did however get to try my hand at Marvel vs Capcom Origins (a release of the original Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel vs Capcom for Xbox Live and PS Network). Boy was I terrible at that game, not to mention I was also awful at using a fight stick. I felt shame that day.

Activision Booth

I also looked around the Activision booth briefly, which had Transformers Fall of Cybertron (which I for some reason didn't try and demo), previews of the Walking Dead game and some others I can't quite remember. Assassin's Creed was also right next to it but I didn't get any hands on time with it either. I hit the Sony booth shortly after and got my first hands on Impressions with Playstation All Stars Battle Royale.

Poster for the Hobbit

The rest of the time had us just looking at a few other booths. I checked out the Warner Bros. Booth which had posters of the cast of the Hobbit which I promptly snapped photos of. I went further down and saw a WETA workshop display (the people who made the miniatures and big miniatures of the Lord of the Rings and various other movies) and they even had some stone trolls on display featured in both the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit (which I also got a picture of).

"Look Mr. Frodo, it's Mr. Bilbo's trolls"

That was pretty much it for the first day, I didn't get much farther than those booths since we only had about 2 hours in that place anyways.

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Day 2 ~ Thursday - Panels everywhere


This was the first full day of Comic Con so it was bound to be even more exciting than the 2 hours on Wednesday. As a special note, my family usually doesn't do all that much in one day but for these next 4 days, we made sure to jam pack every day with as much stuff as we could. It definetely paid off thats for sure.


Note: The following pictures will just be randomly from the exhibit hall since we weren't really supposed to film or take pictures in the halls. At least I didn't, I wasn't a rebel.

Anyways we first checked out the exhibit hall briefly before my brother and I split up. I went towards a panel on writing stories while he continued to check out the exhibit hall. In Comic Con, line ups for panels can be pretty long and chances are, depending on the popularity there are high chances of not going in. You HAVE to be there early for sure, at least for most panels. I came to the panel maybe 20 minutes early and I barely got in.



So the panel was moderated by Maxwell Alexander Drake, a writer of fantasy stories. He gave us tips on "Building the foundation to a page turning story" and another panel about "How to create a character driven story". It was about an hour for each panel and of course he couldn't teach us everything about them but he did what he could with the time he had. I took a lot of notes and he even has everything posted online. http://www.maxwellalexanderdrake.com/ He was definetely pretty funny as well so it was enjoyable experience regardless of what I learned in the class.

That took me to about 12:00pm where I met up with my brother and had lunch in the exhibit hall where they served Pizza and hot dogs. Immediatly after we headed for the Street Fighter 25th anniversary Celebration which had a massive line up in one of the bigger rooms in the convention center. Again it took a while to get in and there weren't many seats left afterwards.

The celebration started off with a video showcasing how Street Fighter has influenced the world, including some rather hilarious "Confessions" from Street Fighter fans. These confessions were actually set up in the Capcom Booth where you could confess in a man sized booth about whatever you wanted related to Street Fighter (though I did not do it). The video also featured pro players Justin Wong and Daigo Umehara talking about how they got into fighting games because of Street Fighter.


After the video ended, there was information and a trailer for Street Fighter X Tekken for Vita that was discussed by one of the producers. Eventually executive produer Yoshiori Ono showed up who gave us a video showing an announcement from the creators of the Street Fighter short "Street Fighter Legacy" and that they are now sponsored to make a series now. Definetely an interesting annoucement as I enjoyed the short very much (you can easily find it on youtube). Following that there was a short Street Fighter quiz for the fans which I could have answered most of the questions to, including a surprise Tekken Question.  Katsuhiro Harada (Producer of Tekken) suddenly appeared to bomb the panel (though to be honest it was no surprise because I found him with Ono just outside the room minutes earlier). He and Ono had some playful banter before finishing up the trivia before ending the panel. It was definetely a fun panel thats for sure but I am sure other people were looking for cooler annoucements.

Handheld Portal Device

From there I decided to head to the exhibit hall briefly then head towards the gaming area I had heard about. From there I pretty much spent the rest of the day there. They had a large variety of games there, featuring Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Halo Reach, Super Street Fighter 4 AE edition, Skullgirls, Soul Calibur 5, Gears of War 3 and Modern Warfare 3. 

However I spent pretty much the whole time this first day just playing UMVC3. They even hosted a tournament which I managed to get first place. I won a copy of Lego Rock Band, a bag and a t-shirt. Not bad considering the tournament was free. The rest of the time I was just playing casuals (just for fun) matches with other players, talking with others and just chatting. Everyone was really friendly in the gaming room (and pretty much all of Comic Con) and even if I wasn't playing, chatting it up or watching others play was very fun too.

Activision booth once again

I picked up dinner then finished the day off by heading to one last panel which was how to get a job in the video game industry. It was actually pretty interesting. A number of employees from Capcom and some from Activision (Formerly) talked in the panel. They were from a variety of different fields and explained how they got into the gaming industry or how they got the job. One was just a college student who asked to work for free, another got in by entering an art contest for kids by accident but getting offered to work for Game Pro magazine then eventually moving to the game industry. They told those stories as well as giving advice on what to do to actually get the job. The most important things I remember was contacts, to get your name out there and get out of your comfort zone. That you need to keep going at it in order to move up as well since pretty much all of them started off on the lower side of things or were in completely different vocations in the company to rise up to the high status of what they have now. Definetely one of the most important panels for me in terms of learning things at Comic Con.


That was pretty much the end of the day as the exhibit hall was closed down at that point.

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Day 3 ~ Friday - Look at all the Models

Close up view of the Resident Evil 6 booth

The thing I learned from the last day is that some demos are just way too hard to get into. Thats why we went there early, lined up for the exhibition hall and I went straight to the Resident Evil 6 booth because apparently they were giving out tickets with a specific time. This meant you could pick up a ticket and then do whatever until your time slot. I couldn't get one of these on thursday because they sold out within the first 10 minutes of opening. So crazy. I got mine for 5:30 pm.

Sideshow figure of Boromir from LOTR

From there I checked out more of the exhibition hall. I looked around and saw a large display from a company called "Sideshow" which had some of the most detailed and exquisite models I have seen. There were models of characters of all sorts, from Mortal Kombat, to Marvel villains and heroes, Terminators, Aliens and Predators, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Diablo, Batman, there were just way too many to count. I will make sure to upload photos of them but they looked really, really great.

Bust figure of Superman at the Sideshow booth

I also saw the Iron Man 3 booth which had about 6 or 7 of the Iron Man armors, the variations from each movie on display as well as the new Iron Man 3 armor as well. I made sure to take some pictures of that because, why not? Its Iron Man. I could have gotten up on stage but I was in a bit of a rush because I was going to head for the "Legend of Korra Panel".

Collection of Iron Man armors at the Iron Man 3 booth

Speaking the Legend of Korra, I didn't get in. It was located in the 2nd biggest hall, and I underestimated how hard it would be get in. I was 1 hour and a half early and the line up was already full. I pretty much gave up at that point and went to the game room to chill for a bit.

I actually forgot to take a picture of the gaming area, so here is a Batmobile

Except I didn't just chill, I decided to enter another UMVC3 tournament and this time won again out of a 12 man bracket. I took the finals rather easily this time as I was getting adjusted to the game now (the TVs had laggy screens). The rest of the time I just played for fun with the people once again and I even saw familiar faces (this would happen for every single day).

Gears of War Retro Lancer

From there at 2:00 pm I hit the Gears of War : Past, Present, Future panel. The panelists included Cliff Bleszinski (Design Director), Rod Fergusson (Director of Production), Writers Tom Bissell and Rob Auten and the voice of baird, Fred Tatasciore. They talked about what it was like to make the game over the years, as well as some of the design choices for past games such as the evolution of the trademark Lancer chainsaw gun. The audience was shown a bunch of images of concept art for the Lancer, at least a dozen. 

More Retro Lancers!

They also talked about the new Gears of War Judgement game and why it focuses on Baird rather than the other main characters. They did it because Baird never got any focus or as much development as the others such as Marcus, Dom and even the Cole Train. They followed up the discussion by showing a new trailer and tutorial for the mode Overrun which was first shown at the panel and is now up on youtube. 

Gears of War Overrun tutorial

The panelists continued to talk about a lot of old stories during development as well such as Fred Tatasciore getting a lot of leeway in choices for dialogue, with most of the dialogue for Baird actually being non-script takes by the voice actor. The session ended with some Q&A with many questions being about the locust and their Queen Mira. Rod Fergusson didn't want to say anything as he said it would take away the mystery and that the locust would not seem as interesting after that. The session was pretty entertaining overall, with a lot of banter between the panelists that was genuinely enjoyable, not to mention hearing about Gears of War was interesting anyways.

I ran out of Gears of War pictures, so here's Gandalf

From there I went back to the game room, trying to win another UMVC3 tournament but unfortunately having to leave due to my 5:30 resident evil demo. I probably would have won it too (Made it to Grand Finals), tis a shame. So I proceeded to head down to the Resident Evil booth where I got my hands on time with the game.

One last look at the Resident Evil 6 booth where the demo is being played

Afterwards I decided to check out a few more booths before chilling in the gaming room for a bit more time before ending off the day.

A Lux (League of Legends) cosplayer I ran into just before the day ended

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Day 4 ~ Saturday -  Demos and Tournaments Galore

Square Enix booth where Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs were featured

I started Saturday off extremely early, because my brother and I wanted to get official Comic Con T-Shirts which has an extremely large line up. I managed to get into the exhibition hall early and still had to wait around 30 to 45 minutes to get our T-Shirts. After I managed to snag those I headed towards the Square Enix booth and managed to get my hands on time with Tomb Raider and Sleeping dogs.

Aerial shot of the line for Hall H, where the hobbit and other Warner Bros. previews were being shown

I wanted to hit the Warner Brothers preview as well as Iron Man 3 panels located in the largest Hall in the convention center but I knew there was no hope. Aerial shots in the news have depicted the hobbit as having a line up going all the way across streets and up and down and everywhere. I knew it would be near impossible to get in without wasting the entire day and waking up at 4:00 am in the morning. I decided to spend my day mostly in the gaming room actually.

No Gaming room pics, so here's Diablo

I had some of the most fun in the gaming room that day, with some stiff competition for UMVC3 this time. I also joined 2 other tournaments, one for Soul Calibur 5 and one for Skullgirls (Neither of which I had played in months). I managed to get 3rd place in UMVC3 still and snagged a 3rd place in Skullgirls. Somehow I managed to get 1st place in Soul Calibur 5 however and netted myself another game (Star Wars Kinect) as a prize. As usually I saw many familiar faces in the gaming area and had a lot of fun with them as well as new faces showing up.

Brackets for Soul Calibur 5, they never did update it with the winner...

I managed to snag the last bit of my time in the convention center that day in at least one panel, this time being for Gaming Kickstarters. Here were the panelists "Gaming industry veterans Oded Sharon (developer for Leisure Suit Larry), Chris Jones (Tex Murphy), Chris Pope (Two Guys from Andromeda: SpaceVenture), Jordan Weisman (Shadowrun), and Chris Avellone (Wasteland 2) ". They talked about the prospect of a gaming kickstarter as a way of sourcing a game's funding instead of a publisher. They talked about the stories of their own kickstarters and provided tips on how to run a kickstarter and why.

More pics from the showfloor at the Konami booth

For those that don't know, a kickstarter project is essentially a project that is funded by your customers instead. You give them options to donate a certain amount of money for the game and give them benefits such as free gifts, a copy of the game, allowing them to feature their creations in the game, featuring them in the game, etc. Giving higher amounts of money would also give them the benefits of the lower tiers of features that you'd offer.

Pictures from near Petco Park, promo for the Walking Dead

Key points I remember were that a kickstarter allows for more freedom to talk with the community, where as a publisher may limit you. You can talk to them, listen to what they want and make changes more easily. That was the main point about kickstarter was that you didn't have to listen to the publisher. The problem is that there is more at risk since you're now risking your customers money as well as your own for the kickstarter. Another advanatage though is that you can get great support from fans as well as other developpers around. So really the kickstarter is like a community based funding. Appeal to your customers, talk to them, having forum discussions, make a game more easily for them. This was easily another important panel for me to hear about because now I have another potential method of funding a game in the future.

Star Wars cosplay!

That was pretty much the end of Saturday, with learning!

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Day 5 ~ Sunday - Tournament with a Pro


Though this was the shortest, this was by far the most intense day by far. I started off the day in the exhibition hall, checking out any last minute booths I wanted (note that I hadn't bought anything besides the T-Shirts yet). I finally got to the Devil May Cry booth for some demo time, the Injustice booth at DC comics and also some final hands on time with Playstation All Stars.

Injustice Gods Among Heroes at the DC booth

I also spotted the Rooster Teeth and Mega 64 booths though I didn't actually buy anything from the booths. It was still cool to see nonetheless. I spent a good while just looking around at various booths for anything to buy, make sure there was nothing I missed for sure. I probably did miss some things but oh well. After I was satisfied I headed to the gaming area for the last time.

Dexter at the Showtime Booth

I originally only planned to be there for a short duration, I wasn't even going to join a tournament. However I got too tempted by the thought and ended up joining 4 tournaments, one for UMVC3, Super Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 5 and Street Fighter X Tekken.

Finally some images from the game room, provided by those that ran the event, Fanboy Gaming

Ultimate Marvel started off simple enough, I fought my way up but got knocked into losers bracket. Basicaly I had to lose twice (losing entails losing a set of 2 out of 3) and now I only had one more chance. It turns out one of my opponents had dropped out but instead of getting a free pass, I had to fight one of the UMVC3 pros, Dios X. The runners of the tournament allowed people to join in to replace anyone who was a no show so basically now I was fighting for my life to get past a Pro who's repeatedly gotten top 8 in a lot of Marvel tournaments.

Other people that aren't me, playing UMVC3

I can't even describe how nervous I felt, it was crazy but somehow I managed to play the best I ever have. I felt almost like a pro. I'd never felt so much hype and nervousness in any single match of any fighting game in my entire life and since this was my first time against a pro of this caliber I was not surprised. Somehow though, thanks to my concentration and not breaking up and screwing up everything I actually won. I won twice in a row in fact though the matches could have easily shifted in his favor if I screwed up. It was definitely one of the proudest moments in my fighting game history. 


"For me it was the most important day of my fighting game life, but for Dios X it was Sunday."

My Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 Team (Wesker, Doom, Dante)

Not only that but I made it to Grand finals where since I was in losers bracket I had to win 3 out of 5 games, then I had to do it again in order to win, so I had to win 6 matches. The other player was extremely good as well and it came down to the very last match, where I actually won. The best part was that I only used a single team and I seemed to be making my opponent think a lot about what to do, as if he had doubts about what was effective against my team.

My opponent kept switching teams to try to find a more effective counter for my team but I was to pull through with my team of Wesker, Doctor Doom and Dante. I went from losers bracket, having to fight a pro and a really close finals with a player I suspected might have been a pro and snagged a copy of Prototype 2 for the win. It was definetely the most exciting tournament I have ever done (not that I've done many tournaments) and I would call this one of the top highlights, if not the highlight of my trip.

Picture with me and Dios X

Since I had already won the tournament I agreed to a money match with Dios X (Basically bet money over whether you will win or lose match) and he destroyed me. I knew he would though since he is a pro and all and he had a good counter for my team now, I just couldn't keep up. It was okay though, I only lost 4 dollars and I had always wanted to try one anyways.

Picture of me and Justin Wong

That wasn't the only exciting thing happening. I saw several other pros enter into the gaming area as well which were Justin Wong, Sherry Jenix, and Clakey D. I managed to get a photo with all of them as well. I didn't do so hot in the Street Fighter 4 tournament however (since I also hadn't played that in months) and even had to face Clakey D twice. I proceeded to lose both times but snagged a game or two so I didn't do awful. I don't even know what happened to the Street Fighter X Tekken tournament, it just vanished.

Picture of me with Clakey D. and SherryJenix

The day ended off with Soul Calibur 5 where I fought the same person I did in the last Soul Calibur 5 tournament. We both played Pyrrha, the same as last tournament. I completely dominated this time where as it was close last time, snagging a complete victory with not a single match or round lost. I got one final game, which was MICHAEL JACKSON EXPERIENCE, since I pretty much had every other game they were offering at the time.

Hey they got a picture with me in it

From there that ended my gaming room time in Comic Con and went into the exhibit hall one last time where I managed to snag a Chun-Li figure for 45% off the original price due to it going on sale and also a bit of haggling. I ended Comic Con with that last purchase and had my last dinner at Denny's.

 My final goodie from Comic Con

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Final thoughts


Overall Comic Con was so much fun, it was an amazing experience. All the panels I went to were interesting and a lot of fun and the exhibits looked really great. I held off from buying too much stuff as it was alredy enough just to be there and soak up the atmosphere. Also because I didn't have that much room to pack extra stuff. Getting free goodies was good enough which included posters, t-shirts, bags, etc.

My rewards from the tournaments

The tournaments were also an incredible experience. It makes me consider going to more fighting game tournaments now and even attending the biggest fighting game tournament Evo, in Las Vegas next year. I really had some of the best thrills of my gaming life at this event. And I love prizes but the most important part was having fun.


Tournament Standings
Total Number of Tournaments Attended : 9


1 Tournament - Had to leave (UMvC3)
1 Tournament - Never happened (Street Fighter x Tekken)
1 Tournament - Loss (Super Street Fighter 4)
5 Tournaments - 1st place (3 - UMvC3, 2 - Soul Calibur 5)
2 Tournaments - 3rd place (1 - Skullgirls, 1 - UMvC3)

Total Prizes : 5 games, 2 bags, 3 t-shirts

One year I would like to go to Comic Con again, I don't need to next year but maybe some other time in the future.