Ingoro
Smash Ace
So, I’m writing this article because after the reveal of Cloud we have tons and tons of people already assuming or even making statements that according to them, Cloud is a ballot character, that “we’re going to see at least a few ballot characters in December” or “Smash update in December has to be last one” or my favorite one “Why did Sakurai chose Cloud over >insert niche FF side character here< character?” I’ve seen these quotes at media sources in our scene that have quite a large group of followers, such as Etika and Gamexplain. They often make statements about the development of characters in smash which are often untrue and misguiding even though they spew them out like their 30year old veterans of the Japanese gaming industry.
As an insider and student of the game industry and somebody who’s getting frustrated by explaining the same thing over and over this is my attempt to offer you guys some fresh perspective on how development actually goes down.
Let’s start off with Sakurai, everyone treats Sakurai as the extreme god and the reason for our existence. Well, after you’ve completed any mode in smash 4 and you’re jumping around credits, do you actually notice how many names you can hit? Have you counted how much people work and worked on this game? They have Sora ltd & Bandai Namco Games developing on this together, with the big boss Nintendo overlooking everything. And that’s just the initial development of the game, this is apart from play-testing, marketing, treehouse, the list goes on. There’s a lot of decisions to be made and with a game of this caliber, thousands of people from all around the world are involved and dependent on its sales. Smash is a top game and an insane income for the companies developing it and Nintendo themselves. They’re all dependent on its success so, let me tell you this; There is not a single thing in this game entirely made by Sakurai himself. Give those other hundreds of people some credit too, Sakurai is just one person.
Next up is character development.
I’m going to keep this part as short as possible but you could probably fill pages describing this process detailed. Keep in mind that for every single step of the process all involved parties (in this case Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Sora ltd and Nintendo’s top people just to name a few) can potentially stop the process or reset it and eventually all of them need to agree on how a character is represented in the game. I know of certain cases where creating a character(not smash) took 1 till 2 years by constantly changing opinions and perspectives and where they had to make tons of different iterations.
Creating a character is sort of like this:
> The idea for a character/game: At a meeting, potential choices are heard either by request of outer companies, polls and of course the development team. It’s going to take at least a week.
> Reaching out to the owner of said character/brand: Before they agree to even have a meeting to consider the inclusion of a character, they probably need to have a meeting internally. After both parties are interested that’s when the character creation start. Could easily take a few weeks before they reach some kind of agreement for stage/item/trophy/characters/anything.
> Start concept character, sketching, moveset ideas: Now this is where the real fun begins, as you know that Chrom from Fire Emblem was in very far development before getting cancelled and replaced by Robin, we have no clue if Robin was actually started on before or after Chrom was cancelled as playable character. Another example: Megaman has his retro iteration but we know that in his final smash has 5 fully fleshed out Megaman iterations. This process takes a few weeks.
> Start developing character visually: After sketching and concepting its moveset, the team can start its 3D model, by this point they might not have settled on which iteration to use so they’ll like make too much instead of too little (weapons, outfits, etc). This process can take up weeks but more likely months.
> Start developing moveset design wise: Implementing moves, with how much range and such, numbers can be changed easily but animations are difficult, balancing already becomes an issue at this point.
> Testing character gameplay: Apparently Sakurai mentioned that he does this all alone, makes sense but it also requires a lot of work tweaking numbers when you have 50+ different characters, stages and items.
> Finishing character visually: Effects like particles, item animations, outro clips for modes, trophy descriptions.
> More gameplay testing: After the first version of the character is done, it goes to treehouse and other testing grounds where teams test it in as much different situations as possible, to find glitches and bugs and that data needs to be communicated back to the development team. This probably goes back and forth for quite a couple of months.
TL:DR: Making a character for smash, especially a 3rd party character takes at least months if not years before the entire process is done. You can’t get just permission by a 5 minute phonecall and a simple ”yes”. Don’t expect ballot character(s) earlier than summer 2016. In case of super smash bros. A lot of different people and company have influence on a character’s process.
Extra:
You have to think in accessibility; for every single character the super smash bros team needs to satisfy the other party that owns said character. The only exception I can think of that are easily accessible for the team are Kid Icarus characters & Kirby characters. Why do you think Dark Pit made it in? The game director owns the freaking character and thus completely eliminates a secondary party he needs to satisfy.
It terms of difficulty of making a character in smash, it goes something like this:
Easy: Pit, Dark Pit.
Game Director owns these characters.
Medium: Mewtwo
Gamefreak is owned by Nintendo but apparently Gamefreak put up some objections against how Mewtwo was portrayed in the series.
Difficult: Megaman
Character isn’t owned by Nintendo or one of Nintendo’s companies. A very big gaming character and icon of a company & series. Must be honorably represented.
If you have any questions or disagree, feel free to leave a post.
As an insider and student of the game industry and somebody who’s getting frustrated by explaining the same thing over and over this is my attempt to offer you guys some fresh perspective on how development actually goes down.
Let’s start off with Sakurai, everyone treats Sakurai as the extreme god and the reason for our existence. Well, after you’ve completed any mode in smash 4 and you’re jumping around credits, do you actually notice how many names you can hit? Have you counted how much people work and worked on this game? They have Sora ltd & Bandai Namco Games developing on this together, with the big boss Nintendo overlooking everything. And that’s just the initial development of the game, this is apart from play-testing, marketing, treehouse, the list goes on. There’s a lot of decisions to be made and with a game of this caliber, thousands of people from all around the world are involved and dependent on its sales. Smash is a top game and an insane income for the companies developing it and Nintendo themselves. They’re all dependent on its success so, let me tell you this; There is not a single thing in this game entirely made by Sakurai himself. Give those other hundreds of people some credit too, Sakurai is just one person.
Next up is character development.
I’m going to keep this part as short as possible but you could probably fill pages describing this process detailed. Keep in mind that for every single step of the process all involved parties (in this case Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Sora ltd and Nintendo’s top people just to name a few) can potentially stop the process or reset it and eventually all of them need to agree on how a character is represented in the game. I know of certain cases where creating a character(not smash) took 1 till 2 years by constantly changing opinions and perspectives and where they had to make tons of different iterations.
Creating a character is sort of like this:
> The idea for a character/game: At a meeting, potential choices are heard either by request of outer companies, polls and of course the development team. It’s going to take at least a week.
> Reaching out to the owner of said character/brand: Before they agree to even have a meeting to consider the inclusion of a character, they probably need to have a meeting internally. After both parties are interested that’s when the character creation start. Could easily take a few weeks before they reach some kind of agreement for stage/item/trophy/characters/anything.
> Start concept character, sketching, moveset ideas: Now this is where the real fun begins, as you know that Chrom from Fire Emblem was in very far development before getting cancelled and replaced by Robin, we have no clue if Robin was actually started on before or after Chrom was cancelled as playable character. Another example: Megaman has his retro iteration but we know that in his final smash has 5 fully fleshed out Megaman iterations. This process takes a few weeks.
> Start developing character visually: After sketching and concepting its moveset, the team can start its 3D model, by this point they might not have settled on which iteration to use so they’ll like make too much instead of too little (weapons, outfits, etc). This process can take up weeks but more likely months.
> Start developing moveset design wise: Implementing moves, with how much range and such, numbers can be changed easily but animations are difficult, balancing already becomes an issue at this point.
> Testing character gameplay: Apparently Sakurai mentioned that he does this all alone, makes sense but it also requires a lot of work tweaking numbers when you have 50+ different characters, stages and items.
> Finishing character visually: Effects like particles, item animations, outro clips for modes, trophy descriptions.
> More gameplay testing: After the first version of the character is done, it goes to treehouse and other testing grounds where teams test it in as much different situations as possible, to find glitches and bugs and that data needs to be communicated back to the development team. This probably goes back and forth for quite a couple of months.
TL:DR: Making a character for smash, especially a 3rd party character takes at least months if not years before the entire process is done. You can’t get just permission by a 5 minute phonecall and a simple ”yes”. Don’t expect ballot character(s) earlier than summer 2016. In case of super smash bros. A lot of different people and company have influence on a character’s process.
Extra:
You have to think in accessibility; for every single character the super smash bros team needs to satisfy the other party that owns said character. The only exception I can think of that are easily accessible for the team are Kid Icarus characters & Kirby characters. Why do you think Dark Pit made it in? The game director owns the freaking character and thus completely eliminates a secondary party he needs to satisfy.
It terms of difficulty of making a character in smash, it goes something like this:
Easy: Pit, Dark Pit.
Game Director owns these characters.
Medium: Mewtwo
Gamefreak is owned by Nintendo but apparently Gamefreak put up some objections against how Mewtwo was portrayed in the series.
Difficult: Megaman
Character isn’t owned by Nintendo or one of Nintendo’s companies. A very big gaming character and icon of a company & series. Must be honorably represented.
If you have any questions or disagree, feel free to leave a post.
Last edited:
