Here’s our first Agoners podcast. I hope you enjoy it! 🙂
This episode focuses on a subject dear to our hearts – fighting games, and our thoughts on some current fighting games, and about the latest news on new fighting games that are currently being developed.
We also give an intro to Agoners and talk a bit about ourselves… and of course the big attraction – our excellent voices 😉
Soundcloud version (including an alternative download link).
And special huge thanks to the new Official Agoners iTunes Partner Dan “ineedleladybra” for helping us get up an iTunes version (as I refuse to install that horrible bit of software on anything I own!):
The music used in the cast is by a very talented friend of ours, Zak Rahman, you can listen to the full version of the track we use “Night of Something” or check out some of his other tracks at his Soundcloud page.
Here’s the links related to the discussions we have:
Our “About” page which describes more about the name “Agoners” and how this site came about.
Sirlin’s post about his Patreon where he explains more about the fighting game he’s begun to work on.
Sirlin’s podcast where he talks in more depth about his original ideas for a simple fighting game.
My Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix review which explains more about my history with fighting games.
The Agoners post from when Seth Killian left Capcom.
Complexity, Depth and Skill: Good Games? A very old Agoners post about the different kinds of depth there can be in fighting games as you change the amount of execution skills needed.
The first part of Agoner’s Street Fighter 4 article series (from vanilla SF4) about the execution requirements of SF4. Click from it for part 2 and onwards if you want to read in depth about the things I wasn’t so keen on about SF4.
An article from a year ago about SF5 and Capcom’s thoughts on possible new ways to monetise it.
A SRK post about possibly finding a “crouch tech” in SF5.
Sirlin’s existing online turn-based games we mention – Yomi, Puzzle Strike, and Flash Duel, are playable online at: www.fantasystrike.com which we highly recommend, and there is also an excellent Steam release of Yomi which you can check out here, and it’s also available on iOS.
Please leave us a comment to let us know what you thought about us talking about gaming in this different format, cheers!
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Interesting first podcast guys, but character packs for SF5?…..seriously?….SERIOUSLY??
If Capcom pull that shit for SF5, I’m out…
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Thanks Carl 🙂
Re: pay per character – It all depends on how much things are and how much it’s worth to you… would you rather have had Juri & a bunch of other characters you actually play for every version of SF4 than have to buy 5 versions of the same game for example?
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I think one of the biggest problems with online sf4 play is lack of variety. When vanilla came out, it bored the crap out of me to play 9 kens in a row (followed by a Ryu!).
It’s still a massive problem now, and I think character packs would make it even worse. A bunch of peeps would buy the ‘shoto pack’ day 1, and never think to experiment with new characters.
I don’t actually mind buying 3 boxed versions of the game over the course of 5-6 years. I remember picking up Ulta day 1 for only 20 quid on ps3. And I would sell my old physical copies.
I hate the idea of a subscription service too. Just give me all the content for a reasonable price!
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I think the main point Nath is making though is that, if possible, having different payment options is ideal for maximising or expanding your playerbase.
Some kind of free-to-play option and buy-all-in-one option and even subscriptions and things would be great ideally to cover all the different preferences players may have, including your own preference. However the problem with the buy / sell multiple physical copies of the same game that you prefer is that it splits the playerbase up even further every time you do it. Also, physical copies are going to be defunct pretty soon anyway, so there won’t be any re-sales etc. So I don’t think that model can survive really – and it doesn’t support the needs of any ongoing competitive game either.
My ideal is actually totally different – an ongoing “Street Fighter as a Service” kind of model – I mentioned it way back in my SF4 articles, maybe could do another podcast about that and payment models, it’s a huge topic we only just touch on in this cast to be honest.
I wonder if Killer Instinct’s model will prove more popular than SF4’s. Obviously you can’t directly compare the two games as a ton of other factors means it would be comparing apples with pears, but still, interesting differences I think.
As for imposing opposition character variety, I don’t think there’s anything you can do to fix that with any payment model… I think that’s basically unrelated – lots of Street Fighter players will always only play Ken or Ryu no matter what you do!
The only viable solution I can come up with is you could put into matchmaking an option where you could force different character selection opponents. Once again though, you’d definitely need to be willing to play vs the CPU etc while waiting a while, the more narrow you made your matchmaking options. I expect in a model like KI too though with a free character rotation, you’ll always get a heavy dose of the ‘free character of the week’, so that right there could force more variety at least over time. It’s certainly the case with Yomi that you tend to see a lot more of the free character. But then you also always see all characters thanks to the fact many players have also opted for the “buy all characters” options that it has. It’s close to my ideal world really – all options available.
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hmmmm…..I don’t know anything about the economics of producing a successful video game, but a subscription service just sounds unpleasant! It would undoubtedly be costlier, and I think that would scare off a LOT of the more casual players too (there go my wins!). You would have to elaborate on how that would work in Agonisers 2!
I see what you mean about major upgrades fragmenting the player base, though it would be interesting to see some online player numbers to back that up. I never felt the SF4 online community suffered in anyway after a new version was released. In fact, for me, it got better after ‘super’ came out! Mainly ‘cos there are far less f***ing noob Kens bouncing across my tv.
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There’s a few nuggets here from Capcom:
http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2015/jun/28/combofiend-crouch-teching-was-intentionally-removed-street-fighter-5-high-damage-should-aid-traditional-comebacks/?utm_source=Did%20you%20see%20this%20link&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=dystlink
They are saying the right things at least!
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It all does sound really good and like they’ve got some of the right ideas ! … However the cynic in me could point out lots of comments and videos from Capcom before SF4 and when they said similar things then – and we saw how that turned out
I also then watch current SF5 footage like Birdie doing super safe hit confirms from c.LP as we talk about in the podcast and it really makes me go “Hmmmm”!
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I’ve just got the first alpha test build for FSFG! Really looking forward to trying it out 🙂
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Really digging the first episode of the podcast! Any chance you’ll be providing it in a manner that I can subscribe to with Overcast, my podcatcher of choice?
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Thank you very much good Doctor 🙂
I saw your comment on fs.com too – I’m hoping to get Youtube and iTunes uploads sorted too, if either of those work for Overcast?
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It absolutely would!
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Post updated with iTunes, Youtube and Soundcloud 🙂
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You know how I explained all this stuff in this podcast I heard from Seth Killian about how Capcom Japan and Capcom USA are often at odds and don’t work together properly (and that was what killed HDR mainly), well… it’s still happening for SFV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BbohwVzPVQ
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