Brett Molina

USA TODAY

Before competitive video games — better known to many as eSports — morphed into the growing giant it is today, there was the fighting game genre.

The video game type — which pits two brawlers against each other in a multi-round duel — surged in popularity in the early ‘90s in arcades, with classic games including Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter. But arguably none were as big as Street Fighter, specifically the arcade hit Street Fighter II.

Capcom brought back its signature fighting game with the release of Street Fighter V on February 16 for PC and PlayStation 4. We talked with Matt Dahlgren, Capcom’s director of brand marketing, about what’s new with the publisher’s fighting franchise. (This interview was edited for length and clarity).

What was your top priority for development when working on Street Fighter V?

The top priority for Street Fighter V was hitting the reset button on the franchise, bringing the series back to its fundamentals and making it more inviting to new players, while creating a solid foundation that we can grow on for many years to come. This is a product that learns from all of its Street Fighter predecessors, both in terms of gameplay and also with how we manage the product post launch. We at Capcom all believe that Street Fighter has plenty of room for growth, especially with the recent surge in eSports, and we’re extremely excited to begin this new era.

How do you choose which fighters to introduce when rolling out a new version of the game?

The starting roster was one of the most heated discussions internally. We took a variety of factors into account, including a large character popularity poll, as well as ensuring proper diversity in fighting styles and context within the upcoming story expansion.

We wanted a cast that felt fresh and new when compared to Street Fighter IV, yet still had the key staples that make the franchise recognizable. We felt that 16 characters was the ideal starting point for the fighting game, and split the count up into three categories.

— Eight classic characters, such as Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li, who you could expect in just about any Street Fighter game.

— Four characters from Street Fighter’s past. We resurrected Nash from the dead, Birdie was “heavily” redesigned, R. Mika now fights with her tag-team partner Nadeshko, and Capcom brought back Karin, the most requested character from Japan into the game.

— Four brand new characters. To design these, we focused on the World Warrior aspect of the game, and tried to pay homage to some regions that have strong growing communities. Additionally, we tried to come up with designs or concepts we haven’t done in a Street Fighter game before. The result ended up with Necalli as a powerful Aztec warrior, Laura as our first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter, Rashid from the Middle East who uses the power of the wind, and F.A.N.G, our first poison-based character.

The result is a roster that has familiarity for longtime players, but also has a lot of new concepts we haven’t done before. We are very proud with what we came up for our initial launch, and still have six post-launch characters we are working on which will be released before the end of the year.

Why swap out focus attacks for the V Gauge? How does that change the flow of the game?

The new system for Street Fighter V is called the Variable System, and the goal is to give every character a unique tool, as well as intensify their personality and individualized play style. We also wanted to make sure that this new system could be used by players of all skill levels.

Each character has a V-Skill, which is a unique move that gives the character an extra utility. For Ryu, he gets to parry, for Chun-Li, she does a jumping attack at a different angle, Ken gets a quick run. This adds diversity to the game, and gives our development team a lot of opportunity to implement new concepts for different characters. Once the player builds up their Variable Gauge, they can execute their V-Trigger. This unleashes a character’s true potential, and can put them in a powerful stance or it can be a devastating move. The result is a system that makes every character truly unique, and since both the V-Skill and V-Trigger only require the player to press two buttons at the same time, these new moves can be used by all players, no matter their skill level.

Esports has increasingly become a big part of video games and Street Fighter at its core has always been competitive. Were there specific concepts you added to Street Fighter V to cater more to competitive video games?

This is the first Street Fighter game that we have designed from the ground up with eSports in mind, and we are developing around our official eSports league, The Capcom Pro Tour. Our season starts in March with Final Round (Atlanta), and culminates in December with our grand finale, called the Capcom Cup. Any time we implement major new balance updates, we will plan these during the offseason of the Capcom Pro Tour.

Additionally, we have an increased focus on online play. In the fighting game community, there has always been a stigma that online play was not as precise as local play, but we feel that it’s necessary to break down this barrier to achieve the growth that fighting games deserve. With our proprietary rollback netcode (called Kagemusha), players are now able to have smooth online matches with opponents from across the world. That being said, we are now including online qualifiers to each of our regional Capcom Pro Tour circuits and also revamping our leaderboard system.

Also we have the Capcom Fighters Network, which makes it easier than ever to study the game. You can view replays from your favorite players, and we collect and display a lot more stats to the player to help them analyze their game. We also keep our Capcom Fighters YouTube network up to date with the latest strategies and tactics to take your game to the next level.

Overall, how do you view the health of the fighting game genre? Do you see eSports giving games like Street Fighter a larger spotlight?

I believe that the fighting genre is strong, but there is still a lot of room for growth. Street Fighter has always had a very passionate grassroots community, but it hasn’t really seen the meteoric growth that some of the other competitive genres have had.

That said, Street Fighter is just getting started in the realm of eSports and I firmly believe our scene is ready for prime time. There is something inherently easy to understand about one-on-one fighting, and Street Fighter events are some of the most exciting on the planet. The rivalries that exist are intense, both between individual players as well as regions throughout the world. Anyone can have fun watching a Capcom Pro Tour event, and the skill of our players is undeniable. There are more incentives now than ever to get involved.

What does this game do differently with storytelling?

For Street Fighter V, we have two types of story content. At launch, each character has an individual character story that will get the player familiar with each of the character’s personalities and motives for fighting.

In June, we are delivering a huge cinematic story expansion. This will be a first for the franchise, and will bring the Street Fighter universe to life like never before. With over an hour of cinematics alone, this will be a very hefty update and is the type of story content we believe our fans have been waiting for.

With Street Fighter IV, we saw several follow-ups like Ultra. What's the approach for this game?

Capcom has completely revamped the way that we deliver post-launch content for Street Fighter.

We are no longer going to produce new “Super” or “Ultra” iterations of the game. While this system was necessary back in the pre-DLC era of games, there were a lot of drawbacks. Players generally had to wait 1-2 years for new content to get added to the game, and if you stopped playing for a year or so and wanted to come back, you’d need to purchase an upgrade bundle to have the latest balance iteration and play in the largest player pool. Also, players didn’t have any choice as to what content they actually wanted. They either bought it all in the bundle pack, or none at all.

Our new model is much more player-friendly. We are now promising that all balance adjustments will be made available to all players, free of charge, so if you take a break from playing, you can always come back and play with the characters that you own.

Additionally, we have changed the way that we handle development. We will continue developing the product post-launch, and release content as it is finished. Now players will always have something to look forward to, as new content will be added to the game at a regular cadence. In fact, our first new post-launch character will be released next month.

We also wanted to have a system which rewards players for remaining engaged with the game, so we have a new in-game currency called Fight Money which allows players to earn post-launch content free of charge. Anything that can affect the outcome of a match will be earnable with in-game currency. This will be the first iteration of Street Fighter where players will be able to own all of the characters released throughout the product’s lifespan, just by playing the game on a regular basis.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.