Thread by @danfornace

After 8 years of working in fighting games, I’ve accepted the fact that no matter how “easy” you make your game, pros will absolutely demolish new players.

During my time on rivals, I learned that you don’t need to ask how to make things easier for new player. Instead focus on making the most basic actions feel good and each new thing they learn feel even cooler.

Not everyone will learn how deep your systems go. Just like not everyone will play past the first zone in a single player game. But focus on making the game fun for them even if they just scratch the surface.

Many of the simplifications that devs have tried over the last 10 years end up being used by pros to make strong characters more reliable while not helping new players figure out why they lose neutral over and over.

When I started rivals, I also wanted to simplify as much as possible. Because I wanted to make fighting games more accessible and reach a bigger audience.

And there’s some areas that I think those goals improved rivals immensely in terms of game feel. Such as wavedashing during jump squat and using a buffer.

But through making games with our small teams, I learned that no game’s scope is unlimited. You can work as hard as you want to make a bigger net to bring in new players but a bigger net has bigger holes where other fans will slip through.

And difficulty does affect balance. Devs including me have passed on designs saying “well pro players will do that 100% of the time” but in the pressure of competition, can any human hit 100%? Fox would be insane if a machine was playing him.

Nowadays, I still work to make my games accessible. But accessibility to me is something that doesn’t destroy my hands and feels as intuitive as possible. It’s not about purposefully making things easier to draw in players who haven’t been interested in the genre before.

I think some studio COULD make a game that brings in a ton of new players. And twist the genre in a way to appeal to new audiences and expand fighting games as a whole.

But that’s not my main focus anymore. If I’m starting a fighting game, I want to make the best game possible for fans of the genre I’m working in. I want it to be their favorite game of all time.