There can be tremendous hurdles that video game developers face when trying to get a new project off the ground, and the latest Virtua Fighter entry is no exception.
Speaking with Sega’s Masayoshi Yokoyama, who’s an executive and CS Research and Development No. 1 head, along with Riichirou Yamada, the new Virtua Fighter project producer, where both individuals discussed how multiple other attempts were made to revitalize the storied fighting game franchise.
Getting right into it, both Sega team members were asked why they chose this timing to announce a new Virtua Fighter game, and the whole story of how it came to be.
Yokoyama: The Virtua Fighter series development team is part of my ‘Sega CS Research and Development No. 1’ division, and recently they tried their hand at the Virtua Fighter eSports initiative. Besides that, as game development techniques and our experience develops we’ve been trying several times to make a plan for a new game in the series, but we always ended up with ‘will current day game fans accept this?’ and not being sure of the answer. There’s actually been a lot of happenings leading up to this announcement.
Yamada: Virtua Fighter is one of Sega’s top IPs historically, so a lot of people in the company held feelings of ‘we want to do something with it’. Like Yokoyama said, because of various circumstances a lot of time has passed since Virtua Fighter 5 and it’s taken us a very long time to figure out ‘what would be appropriate for today’s market’.
But like was said earlier, we have a lot of developers from the Virtua Fighter series in our studio as well as a lot of Virtua Fighter fans, too. All of them constantly wished to make a new Virtua Fighter game. Amidst all this, I was chosen to be in charge of the new title and listening to all of their passion for the series as well as their beliefs for what Virtua Fighter would need in the future and trying to make a plan that connects the series’ past with its future, we finally go the ‘GO’ sign from management, and that’s how it went down. “This will be a big project, so good luck,” they said.
Yokoyama: At Sega as a company, our CEO, our executive producer and even people who previously held such positions, they were all Virtua Fighter fans from various perspectives. Our previous executive producer, Yukio Sugino, was very arcade-focused and had a long history with arcades, so from an arcade perspective he had fondness for Virtua Fighter. Our current CEO, Haruki Satomi, has a lot of love for not just Virtua Fighter but Sega’s IPs in general and his approach is to ‘redefine the value of Sega’s IPs and show them to the world’. The approach with Sonic in recent years, including the film franchise, is part of that.
Yokoyama: And also, our executive producer, Shuji Utsumi, refers to Sega as a ‘treasure island’. His approach is ‘with the IPs Sega has, we should be able to be on the world stage’ which led to him heavily pushing the legacy project where we’re reviving IPs recently such as Golden Axe and Shinobi. So looking at all these approaches, Virtua Fighter has always been at the forefront of our minds and we’ve constantly been discussing ‘when and in what form will we be able to make a new Virtua Fighter’?
Yokoyama: Like Yamada said, there’s been a lot of people on the development side who’ve been thinking about a new Virtua Fighter game, there’ve been people who wanted a natural progression and there’ve also been people who wanted to make something completely different as a revival of the Virtua Fighter IP and neither approach ended up feeling right. From these circumstances, the project ended up being put into my hands.
Yokoyama: So when looking at a project to revive Virtua Fighter, I thought if we were just trying to make an extension of existing fighting games it would be difficult for us to compete on the world stage. Looking back at Virtua Fighter’s history, which was formed via innovation and by looking ‘slightly into the future’, and to make a new game concept that lined up with that I needed a true ‘planner’.
And Yamada here instantly came to mind when I realized that’s what I was looking for. We’d worked on planning at Sega at the same time and I felt like I knew both his history and abilities better than anyone. He had already left Sega for a while and when I called him back to us, the very first day, I asked him ‘Please make a Virtua Fighter’.
He’s worked as a planner on real-time strategy and simulation games and also established several social games that are still alive here at Sega and also has management experience as well. He’s someone who has experience with game design, producing and even the business side of things, and with all this in mind I felt like I couldn’t ask anyone but him to take this project on.
Yamada: I hadn’t heard a word of this before they hired me back, so my first thought when I heard it was ‘That’s impossible!’, *laughs*. To start with, both Yokoyama and myself are console game developers working in the consumer field.
The interviewer said this likely put a lot of pressure on Yamada-san…
Yokoyama: I’m sure it did, *laughs*. But after that talk, we had 3 months of turbulence and then the project was established.
If you want to go further, you can read how the development team behind the new Virtua Fighter is aiming to make most innovative fighting game around.
Interview from Famitsu, translated by Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor.
Source: Event Hubs
