According to my research...
Last generation saw a lot of excellent fighting games, from the genre-revitalizing Street Fighter 4 to the bone-crushing brutality of Mortal Kombat. But as the dust settles on those bygone bouts - and developers flock to current-generation hardware - I thought it was as good a time as any to look back and see what we can learn from the past 10 years of fighting.
Roughly half the people who pick up a fighting game play through arcade and/or try story mode (if there's one available).
In a genre about eccentric characters coming together and punching each other, you'd think a coherent story would be the least of our concerns. And yet, narrative-based trophies have some of the highest completions rates. In Mortal Kombat, 40 percent of players made it halfway through the campaign. In Soulcalibur 5 and Dead or Alive 5, roughly 70 percent initiated story mode. And even in games without story mode - such as Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 - over half cleared arcade mode and saw an ending.
Most players remain unwilling or unable to play online.
Playing another human over the internet is a tough sell for most fighting game players. In King of Fighters 13, only 21 percent of people bothered to play a ranked or player match. MvC3 didn't fare much better, with 38 percent of people participating in ANY online mode. Meanwhile, Street Fighter 4 lists only 17 percent of people as having won a single ranked match. If playing online against others is the end game of any fighter, this trend needs to change.
Players demand more from their educational modes.
The data shows many people will start a tutorial, only to abandon it. In both Street Fighter X Tekken and TTT2, around 40 percent of players started the tutorial - but only around 13 percent finished it. Mortal Kombat and KOF13 show similar completion statistics, with 17 and 15 percent respectively. Honestly, this doesn't surprise me one bit, as most fighting game tutorials have the creativity and teaching method of an Algebra textbook. Between the cluttered checklists and clinical presentation, they feel like homework.
We gotta' get motivated!
What all this data says to me is that fighting games have a motivation problem. I imagine most people reading this article understand that, when you're proficient at a particular fighting game and have the chance to face someone of similar skill, it's a rush like no other. But reaching that point takes a lot of honest-to-goodness work. Unless you already know that your investment is going to have some concrete payoff - be it satisfaction or bragging rights - there's little reason to make such a commitment. You're simply not motivated.
Fighting games in the current generation
A while back, I ran a story about the Shadow Brain system coming to Killer Instinct. In brief, the Shadow Brain is an AI you spar against and send out into the internet to do battle in your name. Meanwhile, you can fight against other player's custom-made AIs. This is a really smart way to help acclimate players to the online arena. It creates a bridge between the tough-but-exploitable challenge of a traditional CPU opponent and the instinctual quirks of an actual person.
