When it comes to video game development, one of the hardest things to do with a longstanding series is to keep it “fresh.” Do you keep making what worked and hope that players keep enjoying it? Or do you try to “spice things up” and change the flow of things? For Capcom, they made a poor decision with their beloving fighting franchise when Street Fighter 5 was released. They made a “basic” game with few characters and fewer modes, and it was going to be rooted in DLC. Unfortunately, said DLC would be five seasons long, and fans weren’t happy about that. Thankfully, Street Fighter 6 appears to be a step in the right direction.
If you want to know who to thank for that, that would be the development team. No, we don’t mean Capcom specifically. We mean the actual game developers who were working on the title. In a new piece by Game Informer, the team revealed that they pushed back against the higher-ups of Capcom because they had a vision of what the new game should be, which wasn’t what the higher-ups initially wanted.
“The concept I received from Nakayama-san was that we wanted to take it back to almost what it was during the Street Fighter II era,” said Producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya. “We wanted to make another Street Fighter game that’s not just for existing fans of the series, but for everyone and get that same feeling where all types of gamers are falling in love with fighting games.”
It should be noted that the “era” he talked about was when the franchise exploded in popularity. Many of the most beloved characters from the series came from that game, and it set the tone for many things to come.
The team further noted that they want Street Fighter 6 to be a “gateway” for players to try out fighting titles and not be overwhelmed by them. We’ve already seen aspects of this via the announcement of the “simplified controls” scheme. Another exciting feature is being able to create a character and then take them on a “World Tour” to be trained by the Street Fighters so you can build your perfect character.
The online functionality has also been greatly expanded so that multiple groups can join together to have battles, tournaments, and so on.
The only “bad thing” about the 6th mainline entry is the cover art! If that is the only bad thing that sticks out upon launch? The dev team will have done their jobs.
Source: Game Informer
