Hyper realistic graphics are overrated. But I agree in general about "some games should just exist." Not just fighting games but for gaming in general. More side scrolling beat em ups should come back, sequels and revival to long forgotten series, ambitious spin offs, or these niche darlings. Everything doesn't need to have to generate Fortnite or Genshin Impact money.

The amount of restraint Max showed when he didn't respond "Bruh." when someone asked if Project fucking L was a big budget game is... well, that amount of will power generally earns you a green energy ring and a spot on the Justice League.

Budget is one thing, but clearly the effort and time put in a [fighting] game says alot. There are fighting games out there that are visually appealing, but are also lacking at the same time. And then there are games like Skullgirls and Power Rangers [both mentioned in the video] who clearly deserve more love and attention.

Fighting games don't need every damn premium package but a high budget and other aspects wouldn't hurt. Killer instinct became what it is today despite a small budget but if it had more budget it would've reached its full potential much sooner and might have been even better.

I'd say the talent is more important. Have a team of people who understands what they're working on and what makes that specific genre fun. I've seen many games with a large budget but with a team of people who have no idea what their doing, Battlefield 2042 for example.

Short answer: No. Long answer: No but it fucking helps.

Doesn't matter how big or how small a budget is. It could have infinite money, but if the game still comes out as bad quality because of bad choices, then THAT is the issue. Looking at you Marvel vs Capcom infinite.

I agree. Fighting games don't need to be AAA budget. If it has a good character roster, fun gameplay, and DLC support... Most people will be fine with it. Repurposed assets can be an efficient use of funds.

Skullgirls is clearly heavily inspired by Darkstalkers, namely the way the characters animate; all stretchy and morph-y and exaggerated expressions. The character Eliza in particular, IIRC Alex Ahad has straight-up said she started as a Darkstalkers Fan Character. I've dreamed of Capcom outsourcing a new Darkstalkers to Future Club (or at least the Art portion,) the only way to do the old games' animations justice is either hand-drawn 2D frames, or whatever black magic ArcSys does to make 3D look like 2D.

Rivals of Aether and Skullgirls are some of the best examples of not having a triple A budget but making amazing fighting games without it.

KI is a prime example of having good decisions and talent with low budget

I think a fighting game needs enough budget to be able to pop in terms of personality. I hear that MvC Infinite PLAYED well and was decently balanced...but it looked so bland, almost generic kind of. MvC3 didn't look amazing, but it had that comic book filter that made up for it not having peak graphics, since it emphasized actual style over graphics. That Nickelodeon fighting game plays well and can be a lot of fun, with nice touches in moves that reference bits of the source material...but lack of voices because of the budget killed it for a lot of people, especially when you look at what Multiversus is bringing, with full voice interactions and battle shouts. You don't need to dump a super huge amount of money to slick something up to a mirror sheen, but you do need enough to be able to give characters personality, or barring that, stages. I think, to that end, fighting games can do pretty well with an A to double-A budget. They just need to focus on having talent that knows what they're doing, and to be able to make characters not bland or generic in terms of personality.

It’s always kinda sad to know that the old amazing 2D sprite artists are gone or moved onto different genres of games like platformers and such. Great 2D sprites in fighting games were incredibly memorable art styles.

I think having good art direction can do much more for a game than just pumping infinite money to have that hyper photorealistic graphics also, I wanna see more 2D hand drawn/pixel art fighting games

I hate when people say for indie games: "OMG this roster is so small! It only has 20 characters! This is an outrage! ROSTER TOO SMALL -7/10" 20 is over double what some games have, and you only really need to like 1-3 (team and tag fighters) characters to get into a game.

Speaking of reused assets, the versus games uses the same assets as Street Fighter Alpha and Children of the Atom. They eventually just added new assets. CVS if I recall correctly has old capcom assets as well.

I loved fighting game unlockables on the ps1/ps2 era. Having to unlock costumes, characters, stages gave a feeling of progression and accomplishment. Nowadays everything is bought. For example, Soul Calibur 3 is one of my favourite fighting games because of how much content it had besides the normal modes. Tekken 3 had the Force mode and volleyball mode. Mortal kombat had their adventure modes with a lot of easter eggs and secrets, sure they were janky, but still different and fun. I think fighting games just need more content like they used to, than just normal fighting modes.

If beat 'em ups are included here Streets of Rage 4 and River City Girls are some of the best games I've played in recent years.

I hope VF 6 gets a decent budget. Series has too much potential to take short cuts in this day and age.

I been saying this! Not just for fighting games tho, but especially for fighting games! Darkstalkers doesn’t have to be a huge budget game. Sega/Nintendo/Capcom have huge libraries of quality IPs that haven’t been touched in years that could be made with a lower budget.

sg, tfh, and power rangers are crazy fun so to me the game play is the most important part of any game

Lets be absolutely honest. This whole trend to blame devs and video game companies goes both ways. Its also undeniable that the new generation of playerbase has become the most complaining and self entitled there is. There is studios messing up. But theres also players that just look to hate. Gotta stay true. Max knows that as well.

I just find really weird how Skullgirls is praised by the artstyle but when something like KOF 12 was released it was criticized by the artstyle when it was really cool looking but lacking in other departments.

One thing I would really like to see is a new fighting game IP... a feel like a lot of games in the genre are limited by brand recognition and it would be really cool if a dev team made a fighting game with a completely new IP dedicated to said game.

Thanks for the SkullGirls: 2nd Encore graphic on the video thumbnail! I still feel SkullGirls is severely underrated and under appreciated. I love fighting games so much. Skullgirls blew me away. It’s not on any of the top fighting game lists much of anywhere… I believe Skullgirls is one of the best designed fighting games in at least the last decade. It’s been around awhile and it’s been through a lot. It’s fans kept it alive. I just don’t think it gets the respect it deserves. I have a blast every time I play it. It’s not an easy game to learn. I’m glad it’s back in the spotlight with Evo and other tournaments! It deserves more time to shine. It just sucks waiting for all the DLC characters in season 1 pass before it comes to other platforms. I just can’t believe how much this game has struggled. It’s easily up there with the classic street fighter and darkstalker games. Others will not agree but that’s my honest opinion. I still don’t know if I like that it’s a tag fighter. I’ve come to accept it more. I’m finally now using the tag and assist with 2 or 3 characters instead of just 1 character. SkullGirls will survive for quite a while longer. It’s a shame how much this franchise has been through hell. It’s one of the best fighting games I’ve played probably since Soul Calibur 2. Just insanity! People need to jump on this game called SkullGirls: 2nd Encore!!!! I don’t think fighting games need a big budget. As long as the design of the game has quality and it doesn’t suffer in the mechanics, graphics or animations then a fighting game doesn’t need a huge budget. The NRS MK11 story modes are great but sometimes you just want to get into a match and just FIGHT! Isn’t that what fighting games are about?

Look at mortal combat it was made with programmers casting personal friends to play the characters in their game. Amazing things can be done it just requires actions on large Ideas.

Fighting games are inherently budget-friendly, particularly in the early days when their was a versus mode and not much else. Even the most fine tuned coding and gameplay mechanics ever made is a drop in the bucket compared to things like artwork, animations, sub-modes, licensing if necessary, etc.

I'm just gonna go off the title and say some fighters do need to have big budget. Tekken 8, SFVI those types of games need to be big budget even if they do reuse assets.

I’m a little surprised we done have Capcom doing some 2D fighting games like Vanillaware does their 2D stuff. Vanillaware's most expensive game to date is still Dragon's Crown, which cost something like just a little over a million dollars to make. Capcom could do some nice looking hand drawn HD fighting game, and keep the budget relatively low if they really wanted to. They could have a Darkstalkers game for example that actually looks like Daigo Ikeno or Kinu Nishimura art moving around on screen. I do wonder if they'll be doing something along those lines for that Final Fight and Captain Commando remake they’ve got planned.

Regardless of budget, just make the game fun to play for me is enough.

Truly wish more of the FGC actually understood and held this mentality regarding good games. Skullgirls is the perfect example of something that appeases so many peoples “problems” with FGs, but they won’t actually play it. It’s weird.

Oh geez, I *completely* forgot about Them's Fightin' Herds

To me I think AAA budget isn't the only concern especially when speaking about other Capcom fighting game IPs. It's if there is big ambition to make a fighting game the next big thing and supported like a big brand for many years to come. Honestly just sucks when something being relatively financially successful through sales doesn't really matter much anymore.

Nope I play games that are fun regardless of the budget and visuals. People put way too much focus on a games looking like movies or super ultra graphical power houses

The budget doesn't have to be extravagant. Just make it look good with great features. Don't reuse sprites for years like some of the KOF titles, but Don't do what KOF 12 did where we do get great sprites but at the cost of basic game features. There's a balance and a way to have your cake and eat it too!

2:46 Not really. It's possible that SCVI and Tekken 7 shared assets, but if you talk about projects prior to these games, the jump to Unreal Engine was new and those assets had to be made almost from scratch. The only thing that was inherited was the mechanics of previous games. In words of Mr. Harada, Tekken 7 was developed using a framework that works with 2 layers: the visual part (which can now be replaced by any other engine) and the part that moves that visual part, let's call it "the mechanic rules layer" . This last one I think was already iterating from previous Tekken titles. They don't need a huge budget, but they definitely need budget approval. If the budget is not approved, the game or the feature is not developed and that's what a lot of people end up saying that the developers are lazy when they don't develop what consumers want. Many people don't understand how the real world works.

I think the only time you need a really huge budget for a fighting game is if your game will have better graphics, improved fighting mechanics and a huge load of preferably fan-favorite characters and maybe some guest characters to fill your roster. Outside of that though not really because if you look at certain fighting games that were made by indie game studios they're actually very fun and thought-out. ex: Skull-girls, Power Rangers: BFTG, Brawlhalla, and Mulitverses

I don't understand why Persona 4 Arena Ultimax failed... it's got great art style, great music and very fun characters. And an extensive story mode. What else do you need? How is a fighting game with animals more popular than P4AU???

I just hope Nick all Stars could get enough money to get the power rangers treatment for the rest of it's lifestyle

The big dogs like Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat/Tekken/Smash, probably. But as you said, they don't need to break the bank on everything.

Preach, Max! It's so sad that tons of great stuff gets ignored for decades at a time.

Truly off topic but always love to hear Light Plane Vocal Mix

One of my biggest problems with modern fighting games is how most of then just have no single player/side content. Sure the main point of these games is the multiplayer, but a good single player can be super memorable. Look at every Smash game, or Soul Calibur 2 for examples. Hell, even Skullgirls has a pretry decent Story Mode. If a game has a smaller budget, I would give it the benefit of the doubt.

Gaming would be sick if everyone just made A and AA games lol. Cheaper to make, faster to produce, and less risks in cases of failure

Of course they need a big budget. 1st impressions matter and the last thing people wanna see is shit that looks like it should've been released 2 or 3 generations ago. And the lack of content we've been getting out these games as of late doesn't help either. Either go hard/big or go home.

That's why i feel that mk11 was so disappointing. The roster was great, stages beautiful, gore super detailed but man were the mechanics lacking. They clearly devoted their budget to the aesthetics and just kinda did whatever they thought would look cool with the game mechanics. AAA budget but man is the game broken. Some of these companies let their huge budget get in the way of making a balanced fighting game and just get passed by lower budget but more competitive titles.

Ngl. I get it. But it would be nice and have a bigger community if that power rangers game was looking really really good bcus of the budget. Have more than 7 stages something cool. Alot could be done but it can help. Let me fucking tell you power rangers fans are alive and well. And thats all it needed. We just want a pr game. But thats all we got. It was a desired product even before the game was made

As someone who wants to make a game of the genre, this is good to hear. I just want to make a unique game. Possibly more. As someone who is huge in concept art and things, I really want to make things. And if anyone asks, I look for a 2v2 tag fighter... with many crazy things. Either MVCI or BBTAG.

Not every fighting game needs a big budget, but it does need a budget. There are certain things a fighting game needs to get popular and grow a fanbase, but the most important thing is visuals. I get it, most would say gameplay is king, but to a casual (the majority of consumers) audience, they just want a game with cool characters that can do cool moves and look cool doing it. You don't always need MK levels of fidelity to have a success story, but there is a reason MK stands and one of the most successful franchises out there. Games like Marvel Infinite and Nickolodean Smash are prime examples of this. Sure, they are great in the mechanical sense, but their presentation leaves a lot to be desired and that hurts the chance of mass appeal despite source material.

This is one of my best quotes use it well. "You need to make a wave before you make an ocean." joels pisces quote.

Yes fighting games need a triple A brand. If not they will be over looked. Look at SFVs release. No one cared about anything but the title. Look how far it’s come. Without covid think skullgirls woulda gotten another update? NOPE!

We need a new 2.5D Pocket Fighter that just pulls characters from all the franchises.

That MH Rise and Wold comparison is how I feel about it.

I don’t hear anyone talking about Nickelodeon All Stars Brawl. They say the lack of a budget completely ruined the game, like how they couldn’t afford voices being the most notable example of this. Was the budget the problem with Nick All Star Brawl, or was it something else? Who knows?

Effort matter more then budget. Budget just allows for more effort as you can put more into it. But you can pour as much money into a game, and it be terrible cause no passion or effort into it.. Well what's that saying? "You can polish a turd till it has a mirror sheen, it's STILL a turd." Street fighter alpha 3 gold or whatever it was, was amazing even tho it was a release with a few pulled charters from other games. Why? FEATURES! Game had SO many modes and ways to play. LOTS to do. People just want stuff to do in games/worlds they love.

I agree with most of the points. Just need the right choices at the right moment.

I imagine BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle was a AA game with all the sprite reuse. The only new sprites were the RWBY characters. I have a blast with it.

Key ingredient: "Art style that works." Perfectly said.

This one should be label Real Talk ;)

ok But what about Fighting games like Pocket Bravery? Small indiefighting games that have no legacy? What chance do they have, not even in competing with others, but doing well enough profit-wise in such a crowded market?

Definitely talent a passion is the most important thing. Like look at Akatsuki Blitzkampf, it was a passion project that was a freeware game, but it was crammed full of good mechanics you’d swear it was made by one of the bigger fighting game producers.

Yo, is that Skullgirls in the thumbnail? Sweet!

they don't need a big budget to have a niche success, but they need one to breach into mainstream audience. With more more of the budget on marketing and constant updates

Honestly, all a fighting game needs is a clear vision to see what's going on, be fun and give content. If it can do those 3 things, people will jump on board. Even some of the worst looking fighting games have dedicated playerbases because of how fun the game is and how much there is to do.

tl:dr Fighting games can be complex to develop for companies due the mechanics and entry level for new players, so they may think it's not worth the investment. I also think they may be a bit stale and could do with more games modes other than just player vs player. The chunk: I think the issue with fighting games is that companies "don't know" how to make them, comparing to say a FPS or a beat 'em up game. If you think about it, for an FPS you don't need much to make average gameplay and just add things on top of it (campaign, multiplayer, etc), where a FG needs to have competent gameplay because besides core gameplay, fighting games have an uphill battle with content (making just an average fighting game may just not do it). Let's take FPS for examples, they were not viable on console until games like Golden eye and Halo, but once FPS figured that out, they became a mainstream in gaming. Nowadays FPS can have multiple game modes (CTF, Deathmatch, KotH Battle Royale, etc) and jumping from one franchise to another doesn't take much for a player to quickly learn the game. Fighting games however seems to be an investment to learn how the game plays and learning the mechanics again even though you may know how to play other fighting games. The learning curve for Fighting games is rather high comparing to other types of games, where in a FG not only you need to learn the mechanics of the game itself, but every individual character to an extent (both for playing as one, and know how to engage others). This last part is part of what makes Fighting games exciting, however it's also the biggest issue for new players. If we compare it to smash (a platform fighter) you know that every character more or less plays the same but can be learnt further. This alongside the multiple stages, music, and game modes to complement the core game. Now, I don't claim to be right or have the complete reason, but I'm sure we can see why unfortunately fighting games have an uphill battle due their current nature and why we don't see more titles more often. Companies may see making a fighting game as too difficult to develop and make a proper profit in comparing to make say another shooter. But I'm sure we know this to an extent, so how to handle this? Again, I don't claim to have "the solution" but some ideas could be explored further. 1. I think max's idea of "free to play" (or freemium, whichever) can help people to pick up a game with no compromise and see if they like it, then they can see if they wish to spend time and money on it. 2. Exploring more casual modes could be interesting, I know a lot of people gets frustrated playing online just to get bodied, so maybe develop alternate PvE / co-op modes? 3. Games like FPS have hundreds of pages letting know developers what makes an FPS good or mechanically functional, but is there such thing for Fighting games? Maybe FG needs something akin to an encyclopedia to let devs what a Fighting games needs to have. I didn't mean to write an entire essay for such a simple question, but I also want to see fighting games thrive and be more prominent in gaming. Sorry for the long read, but if you got this far, thanks for reading. I don't think I have "the answer" but hopefully can get the conversation rolling somewhere.

I’ve been working on a Rick and Morty fighting fan game. Not very far yet but it’s been fun to work on

yes they do need budget, talent and passion.

All product we purchase no matter what form - vacuum cleaner; laptop; couch; - needs to be worth the asking price. And since videogames are already expensive as hell they need to always be top tier quality for the value. No more paying $60 to get bored 3 weeks later and leave it to collect dust on my shelf.

for me personally, the only thing that matters for the presentation is that the animations have "believable" body mechanics. Like centering their weight on kicks, and not ignoring legs on punches

A Skullgirls style Darkstalkers would be perfect. The original Darkstalkers games had so much personality and expressiveness in the animation directly inspired by classic cartoons (the developers specifically cited Tom & Jerry I believe) that IMO has never translated very well into 3D models when some of the characters have showed up in other games. It would just be too expensive to pull off all the extreme distortions and such in modern 3D graphics. But Capcom could make a huge ROI with a new 2D Darkstalkers.

I would like to see max play more skullgirls its getting crazy this year!

Star Gladiator could be Capcom's AA fighter.

When Max saying recycle asset, I imagine game like BBTAG. This game use old asset and new asset and have many rooster of character. I hope, many dev brave enough to use this re-use asset for their game!

I created a channel a short time ago, and I'm following your channel and I'm inspired by your channel friend... I'm Brazilian... success always to you friend

a good idea for capcom and namco would be bringing namcoXcapcom and projectXzone into a smash-like game, or even a 2d fighting game, i mean, all 3 games still looks good, i'd say just keep it that style, reuse stuff and go ham.

Yeah budget is kind of a big deal for fighting games. Power Rangers battle for the grid is a good example, I really like that game but 1st impressions matter and that game was a buggy mobile game on release with barely any characters with a weird line up with Lord Drakkon. Luckily it's held up but if that game got a better budget I guarantee you we would have seen Ryu and Chun Li a season or two sooner

I agree, I mean you guys should try out Battle Craze, it’s a ikeman game that has a lot of effort out into its craft, it has a lot of characters (with 3 different variants). And even has voice lines. The game’s pretty underrated.

I definitely agree if the art style is fresh and cool liking, it doesn’t need to be insane looking graphically. BUT as for a Capcom vs Capcom game, I would want it with a triple A budget cuz that franchise could last forever along side street fighter as their flag ship fighting game. You will never run out if characters to put and especially with sequels to other games and new IP’s to add more. I think also for double A games like a new rival schools or darkstalkers that free to play would help it a lot.

I think the biggest hurdle here is how fighting games, outside of the big cheeses, don't get that much attention. Most companies aren't going to prioritise trying to churn out more fighting games over other genres and franchises which have safer chances of success. There's a difference between making a fighting game with re-used assets and a Monster Hunter with re-used assets, because one probably has a niche audience in mind, and the other has a potentially *huge* audience. As much as I think it'd be cool, realistically a game like Capcom Allstars with assets pulled from here, there, and everywhere probably wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as something like Monster Hunter Rise was in the position to be, and so long as that's the case I just don't think it's a high priority for most of these companies. I think the landscape has changed enough to where there's a certain level of polish and sheen expected by people, to where you can't get away with stuff like MVC2 or CVS2 anymore. Either the game gets properly good support and tries to make a big break in a challenging genre to succeed in, or it'll be deemed a waste of time by higher ups. Besides being hard to succeed at I just don't think most companies are interested in trying to begin with. Why put resources into a risk like that when you can just make the next Street Fighter or Tekken or whatever even bigger and better? I imagine that's what they ask themselves. Better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a small pond.

Budget helps so far mostly in technicalities like graphics, sound, a Big ass score, cinematics, the scale of the Game... Stuff like that but at the core, all the money in the world won't fix Bad mechanics, boring gameplay, sloppy controls and so on. You don't need millions to make a good Game anymore, You need to do good fun engaging gameplay, if You have that, the rest likely will come easier.

I agree honestly. I've enjoyed games that were AA plenty of times. To me it's more about fun and am I able to make more memories with them? Then that's all that matters to me.

What fighters need is a good single player mode. Good training tools. And decent gfx. That is it.

I think most fighting games do. Like the big competitive games definitely but a lot of stuff can get away with cartoonish graphics. I wish the money would would apply to in game content cuz man I'm so fucking tired of microtransactions and character passes 😒

Max, could you play through the Bloody Roar series? I wish they would come back

A new fighting game will sell well if it looks fantastic. And it will stay around if the gameplay and functionality works well. Budget does matter.

I feel like EX Layer had a really good shot to catch on as a bigger tournament game

Honestly, if big companies like Capcom keep refusing to try reviving dead franchises, I would at least like / hope that they'd let other people try to revive it for them. LIke Dotemu did with streets of rage 4 , Windjammers 2 , metal slug tactics. Plus the "Garou 2" art mockup they did was really cool

I feel like the Shaolin Vs. Wutang game series is relevant to this topic. I think it deserves more praise for what it is. Max have you ever given this series a play?

The only reason I funded Skullgirls' kickstarter was to give Mane6 access to their engine to make Them's Fightin' Herds.

Project L is probably very expensive to make, more than current SF5 had put on. If it could run in a potato especially. It took a big budget to make an stylized, who looks decent to good, Free to Play game with a whole shit of mechanics and characters. And knowing how Riot is (despite balance issues) the game will recieve patch after patch after patch, with new characters and shit, for AT LEAST 5 years, even if the game is a total flop.

All games (not just fighting games) just need a reasonable budget depending on what the devs are going for. Think of the combination of graphics, which platforms the game will be on, number of features, updates/support, etc. But at the end of the day, even if there is a large budget put into a game, it doesn't matter if it's bad.

I think the game that was hurt by budget recently was Nickelodeon if it had Voices I think it would have done alot better and they aren't there due to part budget constraints but the game is fun to play

MVCI was a AA budget game and everyone hated it visual wise

Battle for the grid has been my favorite fighting game since ultimate marvel 3.

Man Fighting EX Layer was really good too...

Shaolin vs Wutang is a cool indie fighting game

That sweater though!

Thems fighting herds was a hugs surprise

It’s not always about the money 💰

I’d love to know how much of the budgets NRS games are.