The Fighting Game That Just Can't Catch A Break - Skullgirls

20:20 has been a rough year for eSports thanks to the global pandemic leagues have had to shut their doors to fans while attempting to transition all operations to a purely digital format considering that production and broadcast staff for these events I've never had to function remotely many games which depend on split-second reaction times have suffered greatly by being pushed into an environment rife with latency issues and changes to timing and muscle-memory more than any other genre fighting games require pinpoint precision in timing spacing and reactions with many top players understanding their move set down to the exact frame data translating into fractions of seconds for years fighting game players have begged developers for improvements and innovations in their online multiplayer netcode but today only a handful of developers have taken steps to cater to the online player base for example Street Fighter 5 arguably one of the most popular traditional fighting games today only recently updated it's infamously terrible netcode a full four years and two new additions since its original release while this constant neglect has been mostly free of consequence months of quarantine and dozens of canceled events have brought a newfound importance to online play on May 1st the evolution championship series considered by many to be the Superbowl of the fgc announced that it would be cancelling its twenty20 event due to concerns over the length of the pandemic weeks later Evo announced the changed lineup of games that would be featured in their purely online tournament previously axed games like Mortal Kombat 11 and them's fightin herds would be included in the online event along with a game that was never included as the main event even in the year of its release a game with stunning visuals amazing netcode and a beautiful hand-drawn aesthetic but that never got its chance in the spotlight a game that stayed alive for eight years through the love of its fans and continued developer support for close to a decade this is Skullgirls this battle is all in the mind Showtime Skullgirls is a hand-drawn team-based fighting game with a strong dark deco aesthetic the game takes heavy inspiration from Marvel vs. Capcom 2 as well as other team-based fighters from the 90s Skullgirls utilizes a six button layout unlike many of the team fighters today who opted for four buttons instead while this may seem more complicated considering the speed at which Skullgirls is played the developers beg to differ the decision to go with six buttons had two justifications in the transition from six buttons to four in Marvel vs. Capcom too many characters that were carried over lost moves or saw them tied instead two directional inputs muddying up their controls and fundamentally changing the way they were played the second was tied to accessibility and how precisely you're able to control your characters while purposefully performing the actions you want beyond controls though Skullgirls also bucks the established norms by allowing players to face off against different sized teams if they prefer the game can be played with teams comprised of one to three characters with their damage stats altered accordingly to keep the game balanced this allows for players to approach the game however they'd like and not be forced into features or play styles that they don't enjoy don't like learning multiple characters that's just fine play your favorite love playing for long drawn-out combos extended by clever use of assists well that's also fine these mechanics and control layouts ensure that skull girl stands apart not just visually but mechanically from almost every other fighting game on the market but what really makes the game special is the love and dedication shown not just by its fans but its creators as well Skullgirls came into existence as a collaborative effort mixing the fighting game engine of Xiamen with the artistic design and setting of lead creative director Alex Ahad both had been working independently to design their own fighting games but after noticing the quality of each other's works a partnership soon formed this pairing would form the basis of what would later become known lab zero games the team behind skullgirls proceeded to create the game at breakneck speed taking only about a year to complete the game from start to finish but the challenges didn't stop after initial development had been completed skull girls would go on to face numerous challenges throughout its lifespan with one of the biggest being the fgc itself in the year of skull girls release the fgc was a bit starved for choice while many less popular franchises like Virtua Fighter and dead or alive had releases the only big name skull girls had to contend with was the highly anticipated yet poorly received Street Fighter X Tekken despite this skull girls didn't receive the warmest of receptions while some of this can be attributed to a flawed infinite prevention system that's still allowed for characters to be killed in a single long combo string a lot of the distaste shown to the game seems to be tied to the game's visuals as a result of this the community that sprang up around skull girls were more or less independent from other scenes with many of them attracted to the game for the very reasons that others had passed it over it was through this new community of players that skull girls found its life however while skull girls was still finding its legs the development team was standing on their last after skull girls initial release the development team was laid off thanks to an ongoing legal dispute involving their distribution partner Konami while the lawsuit ultimately had nothing to do with skull girls the company was connected enough to Konami that investors were scared off which put autumn in hot financial water this would normally be a death sentence for the long-term health of a game but the team behind skull girls wasn't about to let it die after an internal discussion the key team members behind skull girls decided to work completely unpaid for a year in order to ensure that the project they loved had the best chance to survive this group of volunteers formed under the moniker of lab zero games the core of which still remains with the company today seven months later the team released their first big patch slightly different edition which added a lot of new content fix the infinite prevention system and generally tweaked and improved the way that characters played however despite the team's efforts skull girls already seem to be declining for many players seven without an update had proved just a bit too long I think the biggest thing that has slowed the game down and made it Gress and kind of decline in player base was when the SS de which is the second patch of the game got delayed by a lot it was supposed to come out like that summer of 2012 and it came out it didn't come out until like Christmas or January of 2013 it was like really really long I feel like we lost a lot of people who were ready for it to come out in the summer this dip in the player base seemed to kill whatever momentum the game had built up to that point and many tournaments removed the game from their rosters at that point it fell to the community to keep themselves afloat any way they could despite their best efforts tournament entry remains low at first with some events seeing entry numbers in the single digits then in January of 2013 the evolution championship series announced that the last main game spot at evo2013 would be decided by a month-long donation drive with the gaming community that raised the most money having their game showcased as a main event this had been the signal that the Skullgirls community had been waiting for many of the players who had left the scene came back in hopes of gaining the evil spot that their community had been denied in previous years throughout the majority of the drive skullgirls remained in the lead but when it came down to the wire a pair of $10,000 donations in the last hour were enough to push super smash brothers melee into the top position revitalizing the smash scene and dashing the hopes of skull ghouls fans for their long awaited moment to the Sun after the donation drive hype for skull girls was riding high but the team at lab 0 was coming at the end of their rope financially a year of working on the game for free had taken its toll and something had to change after once again coming together and discussing their future lab 0 decided to move forward with a crowdfunding campaign in an attempt to keep the ball rolling with their passion project no.1 at lab 0 really knew what to expect and we're hoping to at least finish one DLC character before closing their doors for good over the course of the campaign lab zero was able to meet all but one of their stretch goals making almost eight hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars compared to their original goal of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on top of this after their huge donation drive the organizers of evil 2013 decided to include Skullgirls as a side event with the presence at the world's biggest fighting game tournament more content coming out and the dev team finally getting paid again the hype train was chugging again what could possibly go wrong well remember that lawsuit against Konami that we mentioned earlier thanks to that autumn games and Konami had dissolved their publishing deal under which skullgirls had been released the result of this was Konami demanding that Skullgirls be delisted on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live services until a new agreement could be reached about the distribution of the game at the height of Skullgirls popularity it was no longer available to buy on gaming consoles in order to get around this skullgirls was rebuilt and re-released without the konami banner under the name Skullgirls encore in february of 2014 with a new title and updated build Skullgirls was back in action free from the convoluted legal issues that held it back in various forms for almost two years it was during this time that the community proceeded to move competitive skullgirls forward in a big way fans started to pressure more and more tournament organizers to run Skullgirls at their events and while many were still apprehensive others accepted and provided a home for the game outside of weekly locals running the game majors like SoCal and Nortel regionals Northwest majors frosty foul stings and CEO Taku formed the basis of the Skullgirls circuit but unlike many games who strive to take the stage of Evo every year Skullgirls turned a combo breaker as their game's largest tournament of the year these consistent supporters gave rise to the Golden Age of Skullgirls an era that would produce high-profile players like decal sage and Sonic Fox over these years the East Coast scene has been developing into an incredibly strong region and with great power apparently comes great posturing the East Coast committed to attend Beach Kru battle exhibition against the entire world representatives from the West Coast Canada Brazil even Japan all showed up to take down the best at the East Coast of the United States had to offer East Coast verse the world is we were feeling ourselves so much that we were just down to fight the whole world we honestly got washed sonic played the last slot just reversed and ran it back and beat everybody so it was kind of bittersweet because it's like yeah we won but we definitely wanted to like do a little better but Onix shaved our ass in subsequent years Skullgirls would see tournament entry start to decline in 2019 lab zero moved on to its next project indivisible this story should have ended with Evo being able to attract new attention to the 8 year old fighting game that survived through its community but recent controversial events regarding the lead developer may make it an even bigger struggle to keep the game alive not only that but Evo online the tournament that was supposed to shed new light onto Skullgirls was cancelled as well but even with all these events happening Skullgirls is a game that is still kicking regardless of what happens within the game's community it's the aesthetics gameplay and netcode that keep people playing the game although we may not know what is in store for Skullgirls future it has definitely made a mark on its dedicated fan base and as long as the game is playable online or offline players will be able to keep the game alive for years to come just like they've been doing all this time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Akshon Esports

Views: 751,698

Rating: 4.9591651 out of 5

Keywords: akshon, akshon esports, esports, fgc, skullgirls, marvel vs capcom 2, fighting games, street fighter, evo, fgc history, evo 2020, fighting game community, evo online, konami, skullgirls 2nd encore, skullgirls encore, skullgirls characters, fighting game, skullgirls switch, sonicfox skullgirls, sonicfox, video game, skullgirls mobile, netplay, best skullgirls, super smash bros melee, ssbm, video games, gaming, lab zero games, video game history, skullgirls filia, video game culture

Id: 3BinskZ412A

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ScorpioTheScorpion]

Skullgirls: The Launch Party Held on a Native American Burial Ground

2020, the party is still going!