Hayashi: Thoughts on the DOA5 Demo and the Fighting Game Community

Hayashi was recently interviewed by Gamereactor for primarily Ninja Gaiden 3 information. However, Hayashi also answered questions about Dead or Alive 5. Specifically, the sex appeal, the alpha demo releasing with Ninja Gaiden 3, receiving community feedback, and the fighting game resurgence and its relation to Team NINJA. A transcript is posted below, but if you'd like to listen yourself just jump over to the interview and start listening at 5:30.

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Yosuke Hayashi: If you look at sex for example, the Dead or Alive girls have always been known for that. So... okay let me ask you one thing right now: When you look at this concept of sex, when you go and meet a woman, do you go and look at her breasts - do you judge a woman by her breasts? You don't, that's just rude and disgusting. What we really want to do in [Dead or Alive 5], especially because our female characters have been such a huge symbol of the series, what we want to do is redefine that. What we want to do is make a woman who really moves a man's heart. When a man looks at a woman, when he looks at her posture, her manners, when he hears her voice, it's everything that makes up a beautiful woman that can really kind of emotionally move a man. That is something that we are really trying to put into Dead or Alive 5 and portray our female characters like that, something that's not superficial really. ... We're giving the series a much more deep and emotional connection than we have up to now, and we really want to give meaning to what we're doing right now at Team NINJA. It's a huge kind of movement toward the future right now.

Gamereactor: So with Ninja Gaiden 3, there's a demo of Dead or Alive 5 and that seems really early to put out a demo. So are you interested in hearing the feedback from players with the demo?

Yosuke Hayashi:
Yes, it is much earlier than you would release a demo, but the reason we released the demo is, as you said, to get feedback from gamers. I think the fighting games are made with the interaction of development and the core kind of fighting game fan. I think that the more feedback we get then the more we can adjust the system - we can adjust the system to make the game much better. With this demo we are putting into Ninja Gaiden 3, we're really excited to hear what fans and gamers really have to say about the new concept and the new direction. So we're really eager to just put the demo in and hear as much comments from fans and gamers out there, and we're really excited to see how we can fit that in while moving forward with development.

Gamereactor: So it's actually been seven years when Dead or Alive 5 comes out since Dead or Alive 4. How do you feel that the fighting genre has evolved in that time, and where do you think you could advance it with Dead or Alive 5?

Yosuke Hayashi:
Well first of all, the evolution of fighting games within the seven years we've been away since [Dead or Alive 4], I think that the biggest evolution was made when Street Fighter IV came out. That was the father of fighting games. I think Street Fighter and bringing it back this generation, redefining the game that way, kind of making it look like it looks and giving it online has obviously made a huge impact on the fighting game genre. I think it's because Street Fighter really redefined or brought back that Fighting Game boom that I think it's given us really an opportunity to look back on ourselves and make Dead or Alive 5.

So we're really grateful for that, but if you look at fighting games right now obviously online has been one of the biggest drivers to kind of create this massive community. Obviously this generation's hardware has made it look very good. Even still, if you look at 2D fighting games, it's a very static thing: You have a backdrop with fighters fighting in one line. Even 3D fighters you have some backdrops but they don't really do much and just sit there and maybe move around a bit - you have your ring outs. So it's a very kind of static experience. What we really want to do with Dead or Alive 5 is kind of push that formula of actually fighting and interacting with stages to kind of blend those in to create a holistic fighting experience. What we want to call this is our concept of Fighting Entertainment. We don't really want to use this Fighting Game term anymore, because through this Fighting Entertainment what we really want to do is blend the fight and really kind of make it interactive with the stage and what is really going on. For example, let's say you punch and kick your opponent into a certain part of the stage, and the stage is going to start falling apart, cars are going to fly, or metal girders are going to go everywhere. It's just going to be chaos. It's something like a climax scene in a Hollywood movie, so you can imagine it in that way. It's really trying to push that interaction of a fighting game to a brand new level, and we really want to define what fighting games look like in the future. At the same time obviously, being Dead or Alive, we really want to keep integrated that hardcore fighting game system that hardcore gamers can get into. So adding a brand new dimension to an already excellent fighting game system that is really going to define what the fighting game genre looks like in the future. We're really confident and excited about Dead or Alive 5 as well.

Source: Gamereactor
 
I always find it strange that people will point straight to DoA when talking about sex in FGs...when SCIV is right there. I'm unsure of whether I want to get NG3 for the demo, never been an NG fan...but I want to play DoA >_<
 
gamestop has a 7 day return police full money back. You can always get the game download the demo and take it back, now that is if you dont need the disk to play the game. I laugh about this cuz a gamestop employ told me do so that with the borderlands disk
 
I always find it strange that people will point straight to DoA when talking about sex in FGs...when SCIV is right there. I'm unsure of whether I want to get NG3 for the demo, never been an NG fan...but I want to play DoA >_<

Granted, even though there is a sex selling aspect in the SC series (Taki, then Ivy), the game can still be looked at for its gameplay primarily... Not every female character was a "sex advertisement" per sé, so it didn't make take away from the main core of the game which was the gameplay itself and the style of play that it presented (8wr, GI, ringouts, air control, short combos, etc)... The same can be said about other games as well, such as VF5, KOF XIII, even Senko no Ronde. There's a bit of sex, but it doesn't overshadow the whole game, because you don't play a fighter primarily for TnA (although that could be a bonus for some people). You play for it's fighting engine, and/or story for the most part (this might be debatable for some though)...

DOA on the other hand, every female could be considered "sex advertisements", even though the gameplay was generally good... This aspect took away the focus of the game itself, so much that it kinda dumbs the game down to a mashfest, and no one really knows what the game is about underneath it all, because people only see what's "up front", or "on top" rather...

DOA5 has a chance to get rid of all of that, and put itself out there as a solid fighter... I think it did that with DOA3, but because it was on the xbox, and not ps2, not too many people got the chance to see that, especially considering the fact that many were skeptical of the xbox at that time. The 360 got alot of recognition, but by that time DOA4 wasn't what DOA3 was in terms of gameplay and the overall feel of the game, so I think it went back into that slump that it was in when it was first released on the Saturn...
 
SF4 revived fighting games?? WTF is he talking about? SF4 only revived the SF re-re-release mania from the 90s.

Don't mean to double post, but this is so true... I've never been under the impression that SF4 revived fighting games. Why??? Here's several reasons:

VF5
DOA4
GGXXAC
Battle Fantasia
Senko no Ronde
KOF XI
NGBC
Bleach DS
T5DR
KOFNW
Samsho Tenkaichi Kenkukaden
Melty Blood: Act Cadenza
Dungeon Fighter
etc... The list goes on

There were so many games that came out during the said "drought of fighting games" that I don't agree with the whole SF resurrection... The only thing they resurrected was sales in SF only... Sure, it made other companies hop on the FG hype train, but I'm sure they would've done the same thing with or without SF4...
 
SF brought about a huge resurgence. Putting the fighting game community in a spotlight that none of the games you listed really did: Battle Fantasia? Senko no Ronde? KOF? Bleach DS?

Melty Blood's probably the only one out of that list that survived the drought but I wouldn't say it reinvigorated the genre. Not anywhere near as close as SF4 did.

It was because of SF4 that MK9 came out looking like it did, they wouldn't have gone back to 2D for any other reason. The same can be said for other fighting games since SF4's release, that they may never had been green lit if it wasn't for the attention to the genre SF4 gave: Soul Calibur 5, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, King of Fighters XIII, Mortal Kombat 9, Marvel vs Capcom 3, and Dead or Alive 5 just to name a few.
 
the only people who call it a drought are the cashcom dick riders. There community is so large that they are the majority so they tend to have the say so when it comes to these type of things
 
I was at NEC5 and have been helping run the events, including the GVN events, since I believe NEC8 or NEC9. I can say that the size of any community during the drought is immensely smaller than it was after the release of Street Fighter 4. We went from a room of 100 guys, to most recently 1300 people. Evolution broke records not only for most entrants in any of their games, but also for viewer numbers as well thanks to the birth of a manageable live broadcast streaming over the internet.

Back in the days of "the drought" not ONE game I can think of broke more than a million sales. Maybe Mortal Kombat, but they weren't being done with competition in mind as it just didn't bring the numbers. Most of the games that were released at the time were compilation titles or titles that just didn't have anything to run events for (Capcom Fighting Jam? King of Fighters Neowave? Samurai Showdown 5?). All you generally could find were Guilty Gear or Guilty Gear clones (Melty Blood/Eternal Fighter Zero).
 
It's because of Battle Fantasia that SF4 came out looking that way... This is something that alot of people don't realize... If it weren't for this game, who knows what SF4 would've looked like...

I still feel like alot of these games would have came out though... I mean SNK had pretty good success with XI... Besides, KOF is like soccer (fútbol)... It's popular everywhere else but America (pre-XIII)...

Battle Fantasia could've gotten some recognition, but it ended up being "underground" for a few reasons:

1. (casual) game reviewers - I'm pretty sure not one single reviewer of this game knew anything about it enough to say good things about the game... These are probably the same people who gave SF4 a 10/10 despite the flaws in the game, from the balancing to netcode...

2. lackluster netcode - ...because nowadays only "great" games have "great" netcode... But wait, SF4 didn't have great netcode from jump, nor did MvC3... "Ah it's ok, they're Capcom games"... smh

3. it's an Arcsys game - Sadly, I don't expect to see tons of people bombarding xbla and psn for the online version of GGXXAC+... Sales might be ok, but it's not gonna be on a "omg its sf" level... Even Persona Arena, which is banking on catching not just the FGC, but RPG heads alike, probably won't reach "Vanilla SF4 greatness" in terms of sales...

One thing that Capcom does have over many of these companies: Marketing and Hype!!! They know how to sell an empty cardboard box, and make people think it's a friggin tank with the most up-to-date technology. Then when people realize it's just a box, Capcom just goes and says "DLC coming soon" and the hype is regurgitated, and wallets get pillaged once more... These other companies barely advertise, and when they do, it's very little... This is partly the reason why games like KOF and VF got(get) no love here in the states...

Capcom marketed nostalgia and a name, and they're milking it dry... Give it another 10-15 years from now, and the cycle will happen again... 09ers will remember SF4 and go out and buy the next iteration of SF, whether it's ridiculously dumbed down, or actually technical and challenging (I wish)...

If there was such a thing as a drought, we the FGC created it... That's another discussion altogether though...
 
There's no shame in admitting that SF4 made fighting games relevant to the Western casual masses again. Before it came along, the only fighting game that really got much in the way of Western attention and grossed millions was Soulcalibur 4 in 2008. Everything else did more to cater to the longstanding niche that was always there. And since none of them had a Capcom logo or Ryu in it, you can only expect so much from the Western audience.

So, I'll give SF4 credit, where credit is due. But that's about all I think is necessary.
 
The only way he can make the female characters more compelling is writing VERY good in-game stories for them and giving them endings that showcase their personality.

It basically sounds like he's focusing on stage mechanics, rather than character mechanics. Different properties for close range wall splat, and long range wall splat? Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

If he's going to include VF characters he might as well take a few notes from VF and include some kind of in-depth tutorial. Most of the time, DOA games have a decent training mode, but improvements on that don't take much.


 
I agree on the tutorial part, they should provide some depth to it. They did this somewhat with DOA:D in Chronicle Mode where they gave you an in-game tutorial about the game's basic mechanics, but they can definitely take it a step further.
 
Personally, I'd rather they focus on adding layers of genuine depth to the game first, before worrying about putting a deep tutorial in the game. A tutorial can wait for DOA5: Ultimate (or whatever the followup will be).
 
Well for the Sparring Mode, coming from Dimensions, we have the returning frame data. That alone is a great addition to the mode.
 
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