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Article written by
Thirdkoopa
and
Gunla
.Last month, Icons: Combat Arena announced it was winding down development and cutting most of its staff.
Many users online have given their opinions of what could have been done better about the game—Some of these suggestions find themselves grounded pretty firmly in reality, while others aren’t quite feasible for such a small team (e.g. cross platform play).
A few things to make note of: This article has a bit of a dual-handed nature; it talks about Icons’ major missteps and how it can stand as a possible lesson for future platform fighter developers, from an individual deeply involved in the game’s community and another with experience in game development. This article, however, it is not a postmortem of the game, as neither of the authors were involved in the development of Icons.
Additionally, this piece is not intended to diminish Wavedash Games’ accomplishments—Love or hate their game, they managed to secure six million dollars in funding and did indeed provide reliable netplay servers for a platform fighter, albeit only for players in North America.
Our hope is to eventually see postmortems by Wavedash Games, but until then, here’s our thoughts:
1. Be More Than Just Smash
Super Smash Bros. is a great franchise, and Super Smash Bros. Melee has established quite the legacy for itself. Here’s the question on everyone’s minds though: If Smash exists, why play anything that isn’t Smash if it plays exactly the same as Smash? There aren’t really many reasons to. Even on record, Sakurai spoke for the game’s development team and said how difficult it would be to top Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
In AtlasOne’s video, ”Inspiration vs. Imitation: Icons: Combat Arena, Rivals, and Smash” he compares Icons to Rivals of Aether and critiques Icons’ design. In the case of Icons, further differentiating itself from Smash would require developers to create something big to act as a hook, given the wide market they were trying to reach.
If not Smash, then what else? You don’t need to abandon the idea of platform fighters entirely, of course, but consider taking the game design in a different direction. Maybe try a tag team game, or translate some of the gameplay concepts to a battle royale, or even see what impact a drastic increase in speed would have. Even within the template Smash established, there’s a variety of mechanics that could be added, like universal meters, alpha counters, gatling combos (something Rivals of Aether somewhat explores)—within reason.
The next platform fighter to stand well near Super Smash Bros. may not be any of these, and the apple might actually fall far from the tree. Even if we ignore the game design, there’s another glaring thing to point out...
2. Art is a Huge Hook
Wavedash Games wanted Icons to have an expansive universe, with lots of possibilities and various designs throughout the game. However, it failed to recognize that setting restrictions can often both breed creativity and create cohesion throughout a world.
With the apparent lack of restrictions, Icons’s world tends to feel like a mixture of designs split between sci-fi, wuxia and fantasy vibes. At the same time, these elements largely feel disconnected. Aside from some background lore hidden away on the game’s site and in developer vlogs, there’s no real overlap between these three aspects.
While we’ve seen Smash accommodate in artstyle and proportions to make even drastic differences feel cohesive, Icons fell a bit short in that regard, seemingly attempting to approach a wide appeal, cartoon-esque artstyle seen in games like League of Legends. Many of the characters feel like they aren’t really able to take a drastic dive into an artstyle, so they come off as being too generic and are subsequently generally less liked by any potential audiences.
Often when starting work on a game, everyone wants to make a big expansive world. The ambition is admired, but working in smaller boxes is definitely underestimated. Odin Sphere draws from Norse Mythology and William Shakespeare. Armello and Final Fantasy: Tactics rooted their worlds in Medieval times. Splatoon sets its boundaries with water, extreme sports and street fashion, using its aesthetic as a source of appeal.
That’s not to say that boundary rules can’t be broken. We admire the attempt to have a huge, open aesthetic like Overwatch or League of Legends. Those games understand when they break the established mold, and they make sure things that do stray from the standard aesthetic feel like they belong.
We contacted a professional artist (who wished to remain anonymous); they offered us a few comments in regards to some instances of Icons' art:
*Stage Lighting*
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"Almost all the stages use camera blur and depth of field to seperate the main stage from the background. Smash only does this on one or two stages for artistic reasons, like the Pikmin stages, to make everything seem small. Smash uses strong art direction and lighting to ensure the background doesn't interfere with the main stage."
*Models*
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"The concept for every single character is bold, filled with personality, fantastic shape language and silhouette work and then the final models have none of that. They resemble the concept art only in surface level ways.
What does the concept art have? Very strong shape language. Her pose is just standing but even the way she places her feet injects personality. The 3D model is standing there awkwardly. The other issues is that the Splash Art has style that the models lack."
*Facial Expressions*
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“The Splash Art is very strong, very comic-booky, with vibrant, saturated colors and extremely expressive faces, but the in-game models don’t really try to emulate this look. Instead, they go for this generic vaguely stylized mobile game look.”
*Character Design*
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“When you look at early concepts for Kidd, you see something with a personality. You know he’s a little rough around the edges, a little cocky, a little sure of himself. You then look at his final design, and you get nothing from him. He could be anyone; his design doesn’t sell him as a character and that’s why people don’t latch onto him. You see the shape lacking, too - A strong upper torso and inverted triangle shape that is replaced with a much less defined one in the final asset.”
"Almost all the stages use camera blur and depth of field to seperate the main stage from the background. Smash only does this on one or two stages for artistic reasons, like the Pikmin stages, to make everything seem small. Smash uses strong art direction and lighting to ensure the background doesn't interfere with the main stage."
*Models*
"The concept for every single character is bold, filled with personality, fantastic shape language and silhouette work and then the final models have none of that. They resemble the concept art only in surface level ways.
What does the concept art have? Very strong shape language. Her pose is just standing but even the way she places her feet injects personality. The 3D model is standing there awkwardly. The other issues is that the Splash Art has style that the models lack."
*Facial Expressions*
“The Splash Art is very strong, very comic-booky, with vibrant, saturated colors and extremely expressive faces, but the in-game models don’t really try to emulate this look. Instead, they go for this generic vaguely stylized mobile game look.”
*Character Design*
“When you look at early concepts for Kidd, you see something with a personality. You know he’s a little rough around the edges, a little cocky, a little sure of himself. You then look at his final design, and you get nothing from him. He could be anyone; his design doesn’t sell him as a character and that’s why people don’t latch onto him. You see the shape lacking, too - A strong upper torso and inverted triangle shape that is replaced with a much less defined one in the final asset.”
3. Marketing
Even if your game has sound artistic cohesion, poor marketing can still mess with you, as seen with Gigantic. In the case of Icons, the developers had a sound business strategy (you’d have to have some to seal six million dollars, anyways), but business is not to be confused with marketing. Business is the planning and groundwork—it’s the answer to questions like “How will your product be sold? What’s the plan to get money back?” Marketing and advertising, on the other hand, breach into how your product can reach as many people as possible.
Icons’ issues with marketing are twofold. The first problem was with scope and approach; the game’s initial testing came in the form of focus-testing sessions, where only select individuals out of the Smash Bros. community would get to try out the game at a major (or at gaming-related after-parties). While it is understandable to not want to show your game too early (we’ll speak on that later), this focus testing provided an extremely limited scope for getting feedback.
While it appears that the team had their connections and was easily able to show off the game at events like Summit or EVO, its promotion elsewhere was quite limited. This was in part due to some implied confidence that the game would be instantly picked up by Wavedash’s core audience. Eventually, the advertising seemed to peter out completely after the game had entered Early Access, and public relations was mostly sectioned off into their official Discord server. While this meant that anyone within the community could easily talk with fellow players or even developers, there were a variety of hoops to get into this sort of in-group, even if the requirements to join were fairly limited.
The second of these issues relates to Wavedash Games’ apparent intended market. Given their progression and monetization model as well as their art style, it was evident that they were aiming for mass appeal. However, given the Smash community’s structure and the lack of Icons’ "casual-competitive" aspects like Overwatch or League of Legends have, an important question had reared its head: does this untapped market even exist?
The team-based nature of a lot of casual-competitive games is often what keeps people invested—you can buddy up with friends for a group queue, and even when paying solo, there are still other players to fall back on...or shift the blame to. In a game like Icons where the main mode of play is 1v1, you’re on your own. Sure, you can set up a lobby with some friends, but even after alleviating the grind, the free-to-play treadmill in a 1v1 game gets old fast, especially for a new player dealing with the skill gap between them and everyone else.
The marketing and advertising for a game should never be underestimated. While a game can genuinely have potential and quality to match, if its marketing is poor, either because of scope or dubiousness of a potential market, it may simply fall flat on its face.
4. Don’t play your hand too early
As many might remember, the original response to Icons was met with very… mixed reactions, to put it kindly. Much of the criticism came from the fact that the game and what features they showcased didn’t do a great job at differentiating itself from Melee—It exhibited a far-from-complete product, and many of the showcased characters were highly derivative of Smash characters. When giving your game a grand reveal, you need to do it loud and proud. Icons’ reveal had such a negative reaction that the original upload has been removed from their channel.
It wasn’t just the game’s reveal that might have been a harbinger of doom— its implementation of free to play garnered quite a bit of concern as well. Dan Fornace published a great piece about how he originally intended Rivals of Aether to be a free-to-play game; however, due to the varying complications that a free-to-play game can present, including progression systems maintenance, negative reception of loot boxes, and the smaller size of Rivals’ team, Fornace decided against it.
Icons' monetization model was one that was quite derivative of Overwatch, featuring loot boxes that held a variety of non-match items and a leveling system. Most notably, however, was that characters were mostly tied to loot boxes or purchases. This system was released as it entered Early Access and was a primary factor that contributed to its extremely negative user ratings on Steam. The model, and making modifications to reduce its predatory nature, was publicly stated to be a major time sink on the developers’ end.
When something is out in the open, you have to be ready to commit to it or hope it goes unnoticed. While Icons was supposed to have wide appeal from the get go, its less than lukewarm reception (~39% reviews on Steam are positive, as of November 2018) and shrinking playerbase had them appear to shift over to fostering towards a smaller community. Because of this approach, they ended up focusing less on some of the major metrics that some potential players use to look into games, which does not work well when you’re looking to grow your playerbase.
That being said, there are genuine benefits to Early Access despite the initial risks and current attitude many have about it. Most importantly, your core audience can provide you with feedback and assist with finding crucial bugs, as long as they find the experience is enough to chew on. With tools like Early Access and success stories such as Tooth & Tail and Darkest Dungeon, development out in the open is a viable path to success, albeit a difficult one. It’s even been applied well for Platform Fighters, such as Rivals of Aether and Slap City, with the former offering the majority of its core cast at their Early Access launch and the latter featuring a scaling price system starting at a significantly lower price than Icons’ asking price for all of its characters.
5. Less is More
Looking at Icons’ Early Access plans on its store page, one can see that the team has a lot of ambition—make a game with fantastic online, develop it in the Bay Area and polish the art assets to Triple A standards, all to boot with about six million dollars. Remember that the team is an independent studio that peaked at around 30 members and this was their first title? The term scope creep is suitable here.
Every game developer wants to make the greatest game they possibly can; it’s something we can definitely empathize with, but at the same time, less is more. Start with something simple and small but addictive and build on that later. Stick to the fundamentals with your game’s design. Icons tried to test a variety of systems all at the same time, including their monetization system, and often updates in Early Access would come at a much slower pace than in the Beta. They had quite a bit they wanted to do, after all. But at the end of the day, while many of the mechanics and systems adhered to Early Access, a handful of systems (namely the aforementioned monetization and loot boxes and the push for a tournament circuit right out of the gate) suggested a different message to consumers.
While it might be a bit of a contradictory example given the eventual growth of the game, it’s worth noting that Minecraft was a fairly basic sandbox title when it started out, with one of the main goals by the developers to put in RPG elements with their take of the genre. Much of the experience is modular and can differ vastly from person to person, but its art style is instantly recognizable beneath the array of clones that came in its wake. Overall, Minecraft still is relatively simple to get into and doesn’t feel invasive to the player with all its mechanics, despite nearly a decade of updates and a change in ownership.
Final Thoughts from the Authors
From Thirdkoopa:
"There’s a reason I tried to avoid writing this as a reflection of the game that happened: I was not personally a fan of Icons, but I did want to talk about some ideas for developers who find themselves making a new platform fighter. Game development is no easy task, and when under the pressure of investors, it can be very hard to escape from all of these. Crowdfunded, self-funded, investors or a big publisher—Many of the hurdles all remain the same, with new and unique challenges added in the way for each one of those.
If one point is to be made, it’s from the initial team founders in their 2016 Super Smash Con appearance: There’s a lot of space for untapped potential in the platform fighting scene. Melee’s appearances at EVO and the success of Brawlhalla and Rivals of Aether showcase this, and I still believe there’s a ton of uncharted territory."
From Liberation:
"Unlike my co-author, I was much more significantly involved with the community of Icons, being both one of the best players of the game and a former community moderator. While I inevitably would come to have more than my fair share of gripes, it was an enjoyable community to be a part of, and I wish no ill will towards them or the developers. I also acknowledge that the failure of Icons also serves as an example for many aspiring developers, even as harsh as that may seem—while I do not have the direct experience my co-author does, I think outside insight can be quite important as well.
There’s definitely some potential in the platform fighting scene, but it’s also important to acknowledge that it may not be as large as to warrant a massive scope from the get go. To tap into those waters, you have to expand beyond the Smash community, as Brawlhalla and Rivals of Aether have done."
From all Authors and Editors that worked on this piece
"We wish any employees from Wavedash Games and anyone working on a platform fighter all the best."
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